Name: Rodney Hardcastle 
Occupation: Parapsychologist
Nationality: English
Clearance: Yellow Beta (deceased)
EDU 17 POW 16 CON 7 DEX 5
HP: 7
MP: 16
SAN 72
SKILLS
Library Use
Meditation
Occult
Psychology
Psychoanalysis
Computing
Ufology
+
contact: Gareth Craig. 52 years old, MI5 Agent
member of the SPR etc, cover - retired civil servant.
Has worked (unbeknown to me) in several Government Agencies,
though not Cassandra 23 (of which he has no knowledge).
Experience: 5
Background
Member of the British Society for Psychical Research & ASSAP.
1988 Member of the Cult of the Blue Serpent. The cult practised
a bastardised for of Sabbasius style worship - that is devil
worship, without the devil.
1990 Blue Serpent Fellowship is bust by unknown individuals claiming to
have no links with any government agency. I am to this day
the only known surving member of the Blue Serpent Cult.
These individuals kept me imprisoned for 18 months whilst
they broke the cult's hold on me. For a reason I have never
been able to fathom, though I now suspect the truth, I was
well educated, whilst kept in darkness, well fed and generally
looked after. Though somehow, looking back at those days is
a strange haze, where I remember terrible nightmares of waking
in the middle of the night to listen to hypnotic voices,
whilst strange lights flashed past me. Of these things I
like not to remember - only wake some nights screaming.
I have very little memory at all of my first days there,
save kicking and fighting and wishing that I had died with
my friends. But something changed and.....
I did not see 'those people' (as I now think of them),
after they were sent away.
At 25 I graduated (English/ Psychology) and, spuriously,
received a job advertisement from the Library at Cambridge
University. Sadly, I failed the interview, but secured work
locally as a freelance English teacher. To my surprise I
quickly secured a permanent post a residence on the outskirts
of Cambridge, to tutor a teenage boy. With the broad
education I recieved from my days of improsonment, I was able
to convince my employer to let me be the boy's sole tutor.
My employer seemed most impressed by my interest in the
paranormal and very quickly opened up his private library
to me, where I have spent the last three years studying
books and scrolls, both ancient and new.
Gareth Craig, my employer, introduced me, a year later,
to friends of his from the Society for Psychical Research
which I eagerly joined.
My interest in the paranormal, UFO's and the Occult is often
only surpassed by my wonder at the knowledge hidden, nay I say
embeded, at the back of my mind. No wonder that when Cassandra
23 recruited me, I began to wonder who my 'saviours' of old were,
and what their true purpose with me was.
Soon after joining the society I got a strange 'phone call from
a man claiming to a 'Mr J'. He said that he was calling on the
recommendation of several individuals and that I was just what
he was looking for. He asked me to say nothing of him to anybody,
but gave me the numbers of 4 'others' to contact who would transport
me to my 'case' in Cheltenham. He assured me we would be fully
briefed when we got there and to prepared for the unexpected.
It was that night that Gareth left a document on the table in his
private library, to which he has entrusted me the key, that without
doubt identifies my employer as an MI5 agent. I'm left wondering
whom has been speaking to whom, but I feel secure NOW that
I'm working on the right side.
It just remains me to contact the other agents and to start work with
'Cassandra 23'
John Freeman, 2000
Return to C23 Personnel Index.
As always, this character is entirely fictional and part of the ongoing C23 roleplaying game.
Last Updated: 22nd March 2000