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NightmareDetective

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  • Nightmare Detective
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Nightmare Detective (a.k.a. Detective, "ND," The Boss, John Harkear Harlan) is an eldritch Private Investigator and primarily horror gamer. He has medium length brown hair with greying tips, a green eye and a red eye, and is often pictured with a gun holster, button-up vest, styled to be reminiscent of classic noire detectives (VTuber model pictured in the "assorted media" section below).

Personality[]

While Detective has a predilection for the darker, disturbing, and downright dangerous games and content, he is an utter delight to be around. With an exceptional memory for his friends and important community milestones, his stream hospitality is exceptional.

He tracks stream goals and milestones with an "Employee of the Month" board, and shares this in the discord (link below) when it gets updated. He actively recognizes newcomers and reads and interacts regularly with chat, and is very active in the community discord, nicknamed "The Lounge."

With a wicked sense of humor and a mischievous streak a mile wide, ND never fails to find the laughter in many of the darker games he plays, while still allowing the story elements to breath and suspension and tension to build when the moment and immersion call for it. He's also smart as a whip, and has near inhuman reflexes and memory for the multiplayer games, survival horror, third-person shooter, and first-person shooter games he plays on stream.

Appearance[]

Nightmare Detectives usual model is a classic cell shaded design of a Detective. With a white button-up, various necklaces, vest, and gun holster. His full size model has dress pants with a red handkerchief hanging from the left back pocket, but this portion of his model is typically hidden behind the desk asset. He has shoulder length brown hair with white tips that is tied back in a low ponytail, with a few loose pieces framing his face. He has one green eye, and one red eye, but sometimes he changes these via toggle mid-streaming. His undercover version is depicted in the highlight box above, and recently he has acquired a chibi model that reflects this. Previously the undercover "Mr. Wolf" ensemble would only be seen in fanart.

History[]

Background[]

This section is incomplete. You can help by adding more information.

2024[]

This section is incomplete. You can help by adding more information.

Mascot and fans[]

Betty in her high-res glory (artist unknown, presumed devoured)

Betty in her high-res glory (artist unknown, presumed devoured)

The Agency has one mascot/admin individual/horror-about-town, a tentacled eldritch creature named Betty. While Betty has presumably no need for gender and gender roles, ND and members of the Agency use She/Her pronouns to refer to her and her shenanigans. Channel point redeems and bits can be used to torment ND and provide sustenance for Betty (throwing trash and bitties, respectively) or channel points can be used for text to speech functions on stream. Despite the seemingly endless exasperation for Betty that ND regularly displays, and the amount of interns and bill collectors she eats, it's clear ND is very fond of Betty (even though he'll never admit it without some coaxing). That being said, the second of ND's scars is from a fight with Betty, a fight she thinks she won.

Despite being an avid bowler and general menace, Betty is either incapable of, or does not understand the concept of paying rent. Detective brings this up frequently whenever it's discovered she's caused some sort of non-specific havoc or hidden a file in a dimension unavailable to human eyes (at least she's funny). On stream, she's depicted as a writhing mass of teal and purple tentacles, undulating near ND's desk.

Lore[]

John Harkear Harlan vanished June of 1946, somewhere outside of Quedlinburg Abbey in Germany while on operation "Wolfsbane." No body was ever recovered and he was declared MIA by OSS Officer Grant Jones (OSS: Office of Strategic Services-the precursor to the modern day CIA). No further details have been released on his life prior to this mission and all information regarding Wolfsbane and John's previous life has vanished or has been sealed away.

Any and all material regarding Operation Wolfsbane is under orders to be destroyed, and mention of the name around the German Abbey will result in pale faces, hushed whispers, and hastily closed doors. Any unauthorized Agency investigation will result in consequences.

What happened to John in the spaces between worlds and during the time he became no longer fully human remains between the Detective and the entity who now shares his body. When ND was in between life and death this entity caught him, expecting it could "hitch a free meat suit" during ND's dying moments and last minutes of real sanity. It appeared before him as a wolf and refused to give its name. This entity has been nicknamed "Baskerville" by ND in a nod to the old Sherlock Holmes story.

The Agency has codenamed this entity "Ghostlight," and the full extent and suite of it's powers remain unknown. Agents should exercise extreme caution if they suspect they may be in contact with Ghostlight rather than John, any contact may prove fatal. Encounters and any new information should be stored in internal files only. External data regarding Baskerville/Ghostlight is found in file 437819-E, materials provided by outside agency [REDACTED] please contact [DATA CORRUPTED].

a shadowy depiction of a wolf with multiple eyes, fangs barred and teeth drawn

Artist depiction of Baskerville/Ghostlight as it is perceived in the Detectives Mind (art by Brandon McCamey)

While Baskerville is capable of lending aid to ND, whether it chooses to do so is entirely at whims unknowable on this plain of reality. However leaving ND's body will result in the loss of a semi-corporeal form for Baskerville, so it's assumed it has a somewhat vested interest in keeping ND alive. Unharmed or sane is another matter entirely. Prior to the arrival of Baskerville, John had blue eyes, they are now a red eye, and a green eye when he's in a somewhat relaxed posture or not at full alert. One of his facial scars is from "a tentacle monster", the other from Betty (see "Mascot" below).

"John Harlan is a man out of time, who sought occult relics for the Allies after WWII until an accident stumbled him into the pitch of the void. He fought his way back, changed forever. He's a fun loving gunslinger and a detective with each eye searching for truth between worlds. After finding his way back to his own world, years had passed; to catch up on events as well as investigate the unexplained, he opened an agency and secretly fights things that do more than bump in the night [...] Cocky to mask uncertainty with hair fading grey from what he's seen" -@Nightmare Detective, April 18, 2022 via twitter

While his career with the OSS was cut short, the parasitic relationship with Baskerville has allowed him to peer into the depths of the unknown at near abyssal levels compared to the current worlds detectives. His reasons and motives for the cases he takes are seemingly random, with the final patterns only visible to him (with the exception of a Classic Dame case, of course).

How old the Detective is also remains a mystery, as time flows differently where he vanished off to, and his original birth records have been obscured. He's fond of saying he's "older than you and younger than god" should anyone choose to ask, or he overhears any speculation within the agency.

Should the need for undercover work arise, ND dons a half-mask with the snarling fangs and snout of a grey wolf, dropping the Detective moniker for a more ambiguous and less easily traceable "Mr. Wolf" (disguise pictured above). In other streams and imagery, ND will often lean a bit more into canine design elements.

While Detective is often gruff and unforgiving with new arrivals to The Agency, this is for two reasons; one, they may be there to work off unpaid case fees, and the sooner they leave, the less likely it is that Betty (see: Mascot, below) will devour them, and two, the Eldritch World is unforgiving in revealing its mysteries, and the sooner new agents learn to leave their egos and needless curiosity at the door, the greater the chance they will survive missions into the Detectives hidden world.

Post-encounter John H

Post-encounter John H. Harlan, drawn by Dawizurd (ND's main player type in Hunt: Showdown)

ND picked the name John Harkear Harlan for several reasons:

John is a solid noir detective name, also John 1:5 states “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Harkear comes from Harker: To eavesdrop or listen. Harlan means dweller by the boundary wood. So: A strong, focused light near the dark woods. -@NightmareDetective, May 27, 2023 via twitter

This entry is reserved reading for new Agents who have met all requirements and training, and may be subject to immediate destruction upon discovery (outside of the lore, ND is planning to upgrade to a 2.0 model, and this may all be re-written in the near future).

Stream lore[]

  • As mentioned above, ND's community is referred to as "The Agency". The Agency is fun an inclusive place for anyone to crash and "study the dark", whether this is purely classical horror, slasher films, subversions of modern day horror, and places to share this media within the discord. Subscribing to his channel brings up a series of glowing green runes and a "____ has joined the agency" notification.
  • Subscriber badges are ornate "protection circles" that increase in complexity and become different colors the longer a person has been subscribed for. There is a running joke within the community that ND owes a significant amount of back pay dues to agency members, and each time this is brought up, ND will insist that "the check is in the mail" (it's more likely that Betty ate the check, if there was any check at all). Leaning further into the horror elements, any time ND is raided into, a "X filled the office with # of cultists" notification is displayed, with mysterious red-hooded robed figures holding torches (the song that plays is the "Joke ending" music from Silent Hill 2).
  • There are multiple channel point redeems that allow chat to interact with ND's model, and Detective Noire redeems that can lead to ad-libs regarding stream cannon or whatever game he happens to be playing at the moment. Other redeems include various sound alerts and jump scares, or the ability to pick which champion or character ND plays in a multiplayer game.
  • ND has worked hard on creating a fun, inclusive, and congenial community within his stream and discord, and it's reflected in the many friends he regularly plays with, or who pop into chat to say hello. The discord often has members gaming together until all hours of the morning, or watching horror movies together. It's a reflection of ND's personality and the effort he puts into streaming and to make all feel welcome.

Quotes[]

  • "What do you meeean?"
  • "You guys used to be so nice to me"
  • "What can I say"
  • ....."Anyway"
  • "If the check clears, I'm all ears"
  • "Pay me or you work for me"
  • "Every hole is the goal"
  • "If you stay ready, you never have to get ready"

Relationships[]

🎮 - A streamer ND frequently games with (Divinity II, Deceive Inc., Dead by Daylight, other Multiplayer games)

📺- Another Vtuber or PNGTuber in ND's friend group

Trivia[]

Lore[]

  • Runs an Eldritch Agency
  • Dr. Pepper aficionado
  • Is a partnered content creator for Death Damnation
  • Has a creator code (Detective) with Fortnite

Content[]

  • Alan Wake
  • Divinity: Original Sin II
  • Deceive Inc.
  • Hunt: Showdown
  • Dead by Daylight (offers mentorship and is, frankly, insanely skilled at the game)
  • Resident Evil
  • Smite
  • The Outlast Trials
  • Sherlock Holmes Games
  • Fortnite
  • Death Damnation
  • Evil Dead
  • Soulsbourne games
  • Speed runs Silent Hill and other horror games

Likes and hobbies[]

  • Horror
  • TTRPGs (Tabletop role-playing games)
  • Lore discussions
  • Storytelling analysis
  • Speed running

External links[]

Media[]

Hashtags[]

Statistics[]

References[]
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