Lenny Davis

Lenny Davis is a full-time conspiracy theorist who operates from the basement of "The Vaper's Knoll," a vape and other assorted legal-to-semi-legal drug shop run by Maurice Berget-Arnoll. He serves primarily as an information gatherer for the party in "Resonance in Drowning" using his vast wealth of knowledge on the supernatural (Dubious Lore) and his propensity for chaotic logical-leaps that somehow bring him to correct answers to questions. He is mostly non-combatant, but has been known to pull decisive pot-shots with pistols and space-guns.

Appearance
Lenny Davis looks precisely like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos from the "Ancient Aliens" TV series. He is at first glance rather short, though his hair accounts for another several inches and he can appear even taller on the rare occasion that her stands up completely straight.

Lenny wears a variety of tacky shirts, mostly Hawaiian shirts or similarly garish, loose over-shirts. Beneath these is often a shirt detailing some eclectic band or picturing a cryptid, alien, ufo, or new-agey hypnotic pattern. He prefers cargo shorts at all times, and has been known to frequent socks with sandals as a favored footwear. He occasionally wears faux-shamanistic necklaces and bracelets.

Personality
Lenny is generally laid-back and easy-going, taking pleasure in his constant search for "the REAL truth" even when working without any kind of plausible information. Indeed, most of the time he constructs his conspiracy theories in such a way that he could never actually encounter any significant conclusions. However, he may be triggered to become neurotic and existential when faced with real, often terrifying answers to his questions about the world and himself. In this way Lenny functions in the midst of paradox: comfortably neurotic, confidently clueless, and purposefully pointless. Perhaps it is precisely this mindspace that gives Lenny his peculiar talents.

Well, that or the fusion experiments and botched mental-wipe. Who's to say.

Backstory
[Lenny Davis' backstory is currently still being revealed. The following is a summary of all currently known information and is subject to revision.]

Lenny Davis came into existence when two men, Shaun Davis and Lenny Smalls, underwent an experiment which fused both their bodies and minds. Shaun Davis was a scientist working for the Suppression Bureau, a prodigy in his youth who made startling discoveries in cryptid science. It was his potent formula that allowed the complete fusion of two separate beings into one, new hybrid being. Dr. Davis had previously used his formula to fuse Mongolian Death Worms to regular people, creating Kasdeya and her children in the process.

On the other hand, Lenny Smalls was an underpaid security worker at the Suppression Bureau's South Sandwich Isles laboratory installment. He had signed up to participate in Dr. Davis' experiments on the promise that he would receive higher pay as a test subject than as a guard. Lenny was aware that there would be potential memory loss as a result of the experiments, but continued out of a simple desire to improve his living conditions.

One day, on board a small ship in the center of Lake Chelan, the two underwent the fusion procedure. From there an unknown amount of time passed, leaving a potentially large swath of time between Lenny Davis' creation and the beginning of his memory. The Suppression Bureau is known to employ memory-erasure when necessary, so the running theory is that Lenny Davis had his memory erased and was left in captivity until being found and rescued by Maurice.

From there, Lenny Davis (hereafter referred to just as "Lenny" now that Lenny Smalls no longer exists) began his life anew, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had not truly existed until recently and had large gaps in his memory. Lenny initially tried working at the Vaper's Knoll and maintaining a normal life, but soon memories began inexplicably showing up in the gaps detailing things like cryptids, magic, aliens, parallel worlds, and other subjects of study at the Suppression Bureau. The world opened itself to Lenny as a giant puzzle, one that only he could solve since only he really could see what was going on. The real world was full of magic and mystery, and the Suppression Bureau was trying to cover it all up! As if they know better!

As his fleeting mundanity spilled as if poured from a broken cup, to be replaced rapidly by eclecticism and eccentricity, Lenny began his deep-dive into the world of conspiracy theories, gathering info from a broad number of sources. Nothing wasn't hiding secrets, and nothing was too out-there or too crazy for Lenny: local news, urban legends, the crazed ramblings of online conspiracy forums, classical mythology, the weather forecast, banned library books, occult graffiti, newspaper crossword puzzles, drug-adled manifestos and more were all scoured, interpreted, and amended to a growing conspiracy board in Lenny's room (Maurice's basement) and held together with a confluence of Elmer's glue, duct tape, thumb tacks and criss-crossing strands of yarn. Despite having absolutely nothing of real scientific or even broadly academic value in his theories, Lenny would soon find that he had quite a bit of the information on his board inexplicably correct. It all started on the last night of May...

Story
....when, out of his basement window, Lenny caught sight of Virgil Night and Victor Hayne (who had once before rescued Lenny from the clutches of a thuggish band of skinheads) racing across the road in flight from a strange old man, who was after Virgil's life. Lenny saw Virgil use his magical-musical power to summon a turret to fend off the man in a blast of light. Lenny's eyes widened at the sight: '''finally. '''Right before his very eyes was real proof - REAL PROOF! - of the existence of magic. Upon tracking down Virgil and Victor, Lenny was at first rebuffed by the (rightly) wary duo. Despite initial reservations, the three began working together to once again fend off Virgil's mysterious assailant. Later that weekend at one of Virgil's concerts, Lenny encountered Mothman (THE Mothman) standing over the corpses of several Suppression Bureau agents and, again, the mysterious man chasing Virgil. Mothman hinted that there was something terribly, horribly dangerous going on in Lake Chelan. This piece of info would become the crux of Lenny's theories from this point forward: everything was connected to the strange "Resonance" described as somehow living within or arising from the Lake.

Lenny would meet up with the rest of the party soon after, having accompanied Victor and Virgil to the local Mattress store only to encounter a gang of rich preppy-jerks holding up Lucian with an anti-psychic raygun. He would tag along with them to investigate the Resonance later at Virgil's big concert, when a bunch of Mongolian death-worms attacked. From there it became apparent that the source of the rabid cryptids, and by extension the Resonance (though this was only vaguely understood at the time) was the dangerous experiments of the Suppression Bureau. Lenny and the party were now focused and mobilized towards a goal: bring a stop to the experiments and ongoing operations of the Suppression Bureau to protect the city.

Throughout all of this, Lenny was still mostly oblivious to his own origins and the role "he" had played in the Suppression Bureau. A piece of it cam back to him while the party was raiding a Suppression Bureau Lab: he was recognized, partially correctly, as Dr. Davis who had worked at that lab to develop his fusion-serum. And indeed, suddenly memories of his time spent in the lab and the precise workings and operations of his machines and formulas came rushing back to him. To Lenny it appeared as if he had been Dr. Davis all along, having been memory-wiped at some point for a supposed conflict between himself and the Bureau that led to him leaving its official ranks. The thought terrified and nauseated him: he was now all of a sudden the perpetrator of several crimes against life and humanity, including the unwilling fusion of several ordinary citizens with Mongolian Death Worms to create brainless, abominable mouth-monster-people. Luckily these people had their minds and personalities (though not their prior memories) restored to them with the help of ?Kasdeya's exceptional empathy, thought the weight of existential dread and guilt still hung heavy in Lenny's gut for a while (or at least until the Leshy cracked five of his ribs in a fight and he forgot to feel his ennui for a bit).

Much later, after learning of the location of the primary Suppression Bureau base on the South Sandwich Isles and enduring a month-long journey by ship to get there, Lenny was faced with even more confusion regarding his identity. The people at this base recognized him too; however, they did not recognize him as Dr. Davis. To them, he was "Lenny Smalls," and when asked they would respond that they were only familiar with one "Dr. Shaun Davis" who exactly fit the description and memories collected from the Bureau labs by Chelan. Lenny even found a note left at what was supposedly "his" old locker which was signed "Lenny Smalls" and detailed who he was in the case that he lost his memory during Dr. Davis' experiments (which, in a way, he did). A paradox and a conundrum: was Lenny Dr. Davis, or Lenny Smalls? Was he one of them in the body of the other? One body with the other's mind? Or was it something far more mysterious?

Answers came forward slowly, often spawning yet more questions.One night, a memory of two men standing on a ship performing a strange experiment and talking about "ascension" slammed through Lenny's mind. Mothman even told Lenny that Brock of all people had the exact appearance of Shaun Davis when looked at through infrared vision. But after the Cherish of Resonance banished the party to the world of Drowning Collapse, Lenny encountered his parallel-reality counterpart: Shaun Smalls. Shaun was old, and dying from diseases caused by Elimination Bureau experimentation, but about both his own and Lenny's condition he had this to say:

Lenny Davis is a complete fusion of both the bodies and minds of Shaun Davis and Lenny Smalls. The same formula used by Dr. Davis to fuse Mongolian Death Worms and people was used to fuse two humans into one. Lenny Davis was neither one nor the other, then: he was both.

Now, having apparently resolved his mystery identity, pieces and cracks in the theory still remain: The name "LeBlanc" bounces around Lenny's mind like a billiard ball, and he cannot explain why. But in his quest to escape Drowning Earth and stop the Cherish's conquest/slaughter of the Resonant Earth, perhaps he will find out...

Trivia
-Lenny's favorite website to share his conspiracy theories and catalog his ideas is called https://column-ring-chronicles.fandom.com