Doug Ramsey

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PHASE 1

PHASE 2

Doug Ramsey
Portrayed by Ryan Phillipe
Codename:	Cypher
Affiliations:	X-Force
Birthdate:	May 7, 1987

Journal:	xp_cypher
Player:	Twiller

Doug Ramsey, formerly a student at Xavier's, currently works as the entirety of the Snow Valley Research Center's IT department. His mutant powers are based around pattern recognition. In addition to granting him comprehension of both the written and spoken word of every language ever created (and in one notable exception, a language that had not been invented yet), he can also crack codes and interpret body language.

Details

Character Journal: xp_cypher

Real Name: Douglas Aaron Ramsey

Codename: Cypher

Aliases: Lexicon, Aron Hugaldrson, Nick Wood, Joe Crockett Jr.

First Appearance: August 25, 2003

Date of Birth: May 7, 1987

Place of Birth: Denver, Colorado

Citizenship: American

Relatives: John Ramsey (father), Mary Ramsey (mother), Katie and Jennifer Ramsey (younger sisters)

Education: Graduate of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, class of 2005. Degrees in Computer Science and Comparative Language Studies

Relationship Status: Dating Marie-Ange Colbert, and Wade Wilson

Occupation: Doug is part of the IT department for Snow Valley Memorial Center, along with Nina Thurman.

Team Affiliation: X-Force

Biography

Childhood

Doug is the eldest of three children born to a typical Denver middle-class family. Whilst his bookish habits and slightly smaller stature made him a target for bullying in school, for the most part his childhood and early adolescence were happy. He was part of the Alison Blaire fan club, enjoyed his computer games and Magic: The Gathering tournaments and was otherwise a normal, if slightly geeky, teenager.

The difficulty began when, as part of a normal physical, blood tests were taken that revealed Doug was a mutant. He appeared to have no active power, however, and it was felt there was no need for special training or assistance. Then the results were somehow leaked to the public. Doug's family began to be harassed by the anti-mutant group, Friends of Humanity, who had a presence in their city. Reluctantly, in order to protect his family, Doug agreed to leave home and attend Xavier's, arriving there in August 2003.

Phase 1

Life At The Mansion

Despite his natural shyness, Doug settled in quickly at the mansion. After several months he discovered his power was to understand any language, and after a minor freakout and an incident at the local mall where he was assaulted by FOH sympathisers, he adapted quickly to the idea. He became firm friends with Jamie Madrox, with whom he had much in common, as well as Everett Thomas, Kitty Pryde and Marie-Ange Colbert. He also became an older brother figure to Artie Maddicks and later, Miles Blaire. He also had the habit of falling for girls who were, inevitably, in love with someone else, thus dooming himself to disappointment; first with Paige Guthrie and then later with Marie D'Ancato.

It was this propensity to fall in love quickly that resulted in the love potion debacle. Driven to the point of contemplating suicide in the aftermath, it was Jamie and Marie-Ange who brought him through; it was this act of friendship that led to him and Marie-Ange later developing a relationship. In Asgard, Doug came into his own as a bard, his language ability and his natural singing talent allowing him to blend well with the heroic culture. With Amanda Sefton providing the power, it was Doug who cast the teleportation spell that allowed them to return home.

Doug continued to show in various small ways that there was more to him than the bookish nerd. But when his pattern-recognition abilities translated a series of Marie-Ange's visions and dreams as an attack against Alison Blaire which would result in Rahne Sinclair's death, he made plans of his own to prevent it. In the aftermath of his being shot and nearly killed, Doug was put on punishment training by Scott Summers. He was still recovering when the Halloween party was crashed by a demon, his language skills enabling to find out what the demon wanted. He also used his powers for the first time to project body language, providing a commanding presence to clear bystanders out of harm's way. His hacking and coding skills, combined with Forge and Kitty's talents were also invaluable in repairing Haroun's cyberware and in the Las Vegas breakin.

These various incidents, plus his girlfriend becoming a trainee, prompted Doug to recant his earlier declarations he would never be an X-Man and he joined the team under the trainee name of "Lexicon". He found he was more useful than he had anticipated, although he tended to be relegated to safer, more background tasks, something that he began to chafe against as 2005 ended.

X-Force and the Snow Valley Center

2006 began as a series of losses for Doug. After assisting Pete Wisdom in retrieving his sister, Doug and Marie-Ange returned to the school, only to have a spectacular public argument as a result of a journal thread with Doug's oft-times rival, Forge. It was clear things were not well with the couple - Marie-Ange was frustrated by Doug's passive nature, and Doug resented her pushing him so much. They broke up and his intervention in the Quentin Quire incident only widened the rift between himself and Marie-Ange. The departure of Jamie and Kitty to California was another loss, and another reason to not remain at the school: shortly after Doug received and accepted an offer to become the new Snow Valley Memorial Research Center's IT department and a member of the shadowy strike force team, X-Force.

Doug's new life was challenging, but more rewarding than his life at the school. Despite having to work with Remy LeBeau, against whom he still held something of a grudge, he was less sheltered than he had been with the X-Men, and his talents used to their utmost, beyond computer hacking and code-breaking, and he began combat training with Pete. He became more self-confident, and began dating again, although his relationship with the newly-returned Marie was brief. Marie-Ange's acceptance of a position at Snow Valley created tension, but with the support of their mutual friend Amanda Sefton, he managed to begin creating a friendship and working relationship with her. It was only when Marie-Ange began dating Garrison Kane that Doug realised he was still in fact in love with her, something Amanda realised during one of their regular curry nights. Following the stress of Tennessee and China (where he was crucial in communicating with Xorn) and meeting Marie-Ange's new beau, he and Amanda went drinking, after which they ended up sleeping together. By mutual agreement, they decided to remain friends, however, since both of them were in love with other people.

In a twist straight out of a soap opera, after Forge determined that Doug still had feelings for Marie-Ange, and still feeling somewhat responsible for their initial breakup, the mutant inventor took Marie-Ange out on several dates in a ploy designed to make Doug admit that his feelings for Marie-Ange had not gone away. Despite the convolutedness of it all, the plot worked, and Doug and Marie-Ange began dating again.

2007 was an eventful year for Doug, between narrowly escaping a sticky situation in Africa, dealing with prehistoric bugs in the brownstone, death worms, and being turned into a woman, and Belladonna Boudreaux-LeBeau's machinations and their effects on Amanda and Marie-Ange. 2007 ended with a whirlwind around-the-world trip with Forge, trying to puzzle out a mystery brought on by events at the Tesla Club.

2008 was a continuation of 2007's dangerous situations and difficult decisions for Doug. After tracking Amahl Farouk to Madripoor with the rest of X-Force, Doug was ready to kill him in order to reverse the effects he was having on the Astral Plane, though events wound up making it unnecessary. While investigating strange events surrounding one of his contacts in Adensville, New Mexico, Doug became caught up in the idyllic 1950s construct that Ben DeRoy had created, becoming "Joe Crockett, Jr." college letterman who was dating "Anna Barret", Illyana's cheerleader identity.

2008 was also a year of loss averted for Doug, with both Mark and Amanda going missing, but ultimately found again. He defeated the Radioactive Man in poker as part of a large operation to foil Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil. He, Amanda, and Marie-Ange were abducted by neo-Lokian cultists who were attempting to sacrifice the students that had been kidnapped by Loki in 2004. And most recently, as part of Apocalypse's attempt to take over Manhattan as a mutant nation, Doug was psionically prepared by Emma Frost and fed to an old foe who had taken over the New York Stock Exchange. He was able to defeat the Horseman Pestilence (nee Mastermold) from inside, and reconstitute his digested body before the "meat computer" fell completely apart.

Hellfire

Aside from the obvious physical and mental fallout from Day Zero, there was another important event for Doug that came out of Apocalypse's attack - Emma Frost claimed him as White Knight of the Hellfire Club, though it was a small amount of time before he was formally invested. However, in between he decoded crucial information regarding Taygetos' activities in Wakanda, as well as a sleeper program left by Weapon X to cover their tracks, which led to David North joining X-Force. Emma slowly helped him put his mind back together, but it was clear that he was a changed man, going so far as to start carrying a gun at times, a very dissonant practice given his previous fear of them.

In March 2009, Doug and Marie-Ange took the next step of their relationship, moving in together in a single apartment. This was followed by Doug's formal investiture as White Knight in April. June brought a trip to Dubai for the premiere of a fully computerized and automated hotel that went awry when Doug and Forge ran into two old foes. Other than that, 2009 was largely a year of balancing duties between X-Force and the Hellfire Club, duties which Doug has been lucky enough not to have compete for his attention. But who knows what 2010 will bring...?

Queens, Knights, and Unwilling Pawns

2010 brought the conflict between Doug's duties as White Knight and member of X-Force that he had managed to avoid previously, and in the process shattered friendships, his romance with Marie-Ange, and even his relationship with his family.

It started innocuously, if awkwardly, enough, with Doug's family visiting in March during Spring Break. That was a whirlwind of keeping his family from finding out the true nature of his job, and keeping the Snow Valley cover firmly in place.

But things came rapidly to a point in April, when Selene broke free of her imprisonment and began to exert control on Meggan Szardos. While Amanda was planning a way to turn the tables on the energy vampire with the help of her new apprentice Nico Minoru, the Inner Court met behind closed doors and struck a deal - when Selene inevitably turned to the Black and White Courts to defend her, she would instead be killed and replaced by a new Black Queen - Belladonna Boudreaux-LeBeau. X-Force, unwarned of the deal, moved to take out the woman who had been a thorn in so many of their sides...and Doug was forced to stand in their way to defend her.

In the face of his friends' (and girlfriend's) anger over his betrayal of them, Doug threw himself into his work, struggling to maintain even his professional relationships with his teammates, and finding some friendships outside the office, like his one with Angelo impacted. And after foiling D. Ken Neramani's ambitions and the possibility of global thermonuclear war, Marie-Ange left Doug a a Dear John letter and then left on her own for New Orleans. Even if Doug had wanted to follow her, Remy dropped a bombshell on him: the Guilds had placed prices on the heads of every member of the Hellfire Club due to their providing Belladonna safe haven.

Besides the extra work Remy threw on his plate, Doug did his best to drown out the pain of Marie-Ange's departure in the most direct possible way - casual sex. Laura Kinney, Cammie Black, and Jubilee all shared his bed on various occasions, and Doug's growing reputation as a Casanova wound up turning on him, and led Amanda to tease him about a liaison gone wrong when the reason for the injuries he sported was actually much more sinister - an attempt to collect the bounty on Doug's head.

It would get much worse, though - while helping Tabitha Smith look into Telford Porter and a brief mention of the Black King during her kidnapping, Porter was looking for a way to ingratiate himself with the Black Court, and when he overheard Doug speaking about his sister, who had come to Columbia for college, the flesh peddler had himself what he saw as leverage. Porter had Katie Ramsey abducted from her dorm and stashed in a New York safehouse. Doug called in every favor he could to get his sister back - X-Factor, who had already been looking into Porter's dealings for Doug, raided the safehouse and recovered Katie. Doug went to Amanda in desperation as the only person who could check Porter's bordello in Madripoor. And Emma, Doug, and Tabitha went to the Club itself to confront Porter.

Once he had news of Katie's safety, Doug emptied all of Porter's bank accounts and shoved a gun in the teleporter's face, giving Tabitha time to grab on for the ride to Madripoor, where she demolished the bordello that Amanda had already cleared out while searching for Katie. Faced with the impact his allegiances had taken on his sister, Doug convinced Emma to wipe all knowledge of the events from Katie's brain and put together an emergency transfer to a college as far away from Doug as possible, all while convincing their family that it was Katie's idea, and not Doug's desperate gambit to keep his family safe from the enemies he'd made.

Mending Fences

After sending Katie off, Doug finally began to mend some of the fences he had burned with his actions as White Knight. Wanda visited him with scotch and an offer to move forward, and Amanda came by to tell him that she'd decided she'd held on to things for too long. The most unexpected avenue of support, perhaps, was Jubilee, who wound up dating Doug. Things got complicated, though, when Marie-Ange returned, reopening all the wounds that her departure had caused. Marie-Ange moved in with Amanda, and while the pair managed to interact professionally, everything outside the office was a complete mess, degenerating into angry words within a few minutes, especially when he asked her if she'd seen the events surrounding his sister.

Strangely, though, for all the awkwardness between him and Marie-Ange, he quickly developed a friendship with her new boyfriend, Wade Wilson, and in fact, Doug even commented once about the lack of "awkward turtle" between them. This helped, when after Remy was captured in a setup, leaving X-Force seriously short-handed, Doug was the one to suggest asking Wade to help when the team discovered a mystery surrounding their neighbor, Mr. Barnes.

2011 has been a rather busy year thus far for Doug, as on top of his missions for X-Force, he assisted X-Factor in their investigation into a mutant serial killer, and then just after returning home extremely injured from recovering Remy from HYDRA, acting as part of a cobbled-together team that retook the mansion from Parker Matthews and his henchmen when they used Matthews' connection to Dr. Jean Grey-Summers as a way to take over the mansion and leave its inhabitants and visitors (including Jubilee) trapped in nightmare scenarios.

Things are hopefully finally smoothing out for Doug after a rocky year and a half. It remains to be seen if the trend will continue, though, or if his still-divided loyalties will be put to the test again.

The rest of the year passed in a more or less typical way (or as typical as things can ever be for a mutant spy) - including helping rescue Nico Minoru from her parents, and helping rescue a young mutant being used in a bank robbery. It all could have been a lot worse, though.

2012

2012 was a rocky one for Doug - it started with him being mentally regressed to sixteen - a horrible time for him - which led to him ending his relationship with Jubilee and beginning an undefined thing with Terry Cassidy. In March he helped break up a mutant-smuggling ring, which seemed simple enough, but it turned out the ring was connected to a wider problem. That problem came to light in May, when a group of Xavierites and associates were kidnapped from a rally at the Genoshan embassy. They were found in Genosha, and a plan was devised to rescue them. The plan ultimately failed however, resulting in most of the rescue team being captured. Doug was thrown in jail along with most of X-Force and a few X-Men, where he found himself being tortured extensively - mentally and physically - for information. The group managed to escape after one pretend escape attempt, and Doug assisted in destroying the mutant monster Moreau.

The return to home wasn't the end of it, however. Doug tried to hide his PTSD from his fellow teammates, but it ended up coming out when he had a flashback and subsequent break down in front of Amanda. Sofia recommended him to Gus Grim, a therapist known for discretion, and he began his recovery.

Compared to the first six months, the last part of the year was very quiet for Doug - he helped stop a magical gang war in London and rescue a young magic user, assisted in helping Adrienne Frost take down Jason Wynegarde, and ended up part of a team tricked into leaving the Brownstone so it could be invaded.

2013-14

The new year started off with a metaphorical bang when the New Mutants were kidnapped by an internet meme, and Doug joined an X-Force team going into a bubble world to save them. In April he helped infiltrate Arcade's casino to save Artie, and ended up with Artie as a roommate when he joined X-Force. In December he joined a team to help recover Illyana's lost bloodstones. He and Laurie Collins - after much talking about it - finally had their first date, officially beginning their relationship.

In contrast to everything else, 2014 started off relatively quiet for Doug. He continued his therapy and his relationship with Laurie. In September he ended up with a bit of work, first helping Kyle and Laurie track the social media data of a young vigilante and then tracking Hope Abbott's online activity when she and Laurie were kidnapped while visiting Hope's hometown. In October he was part of a team that infiltrated Rudolph von Habsburg's (who they believed took Hope and Laurie) headquarters during a Hellfire Club event, using the cover to steal data about a mutant organ smuggling ring. In December he was shot by a mercenary out to get Wade. He would have died, if not for some quick thinking on Marie-Ange's part that shielded him and resulted in him being shot in the shoulder rather than chest.

The End of the World

January 2015 went to hell almost right off the bat - it started with the destruction of Muir Island and oddly, just got worse. Upon discovering that Apocalypse had a new plan for destruction, Doug led a team on a hacking mission that went horribly wrong when they were attacked by alternate versions of themselves. They escaped - barely. When the universe began to fall apart he tried to help keep it together with Wanda, Strange, and North, but they ultimately failed.

Phase 2

The new world Doug woke up with the other survivors was a kick in the teeth almost from the very beginning. Doug threw himself into work and his relationship with Laurie (who had lost an arm in the course of the fight on Muir), trying very hard not to think about the Frankenberry world outside his door. In February he uncovered the sale of the personal info of many US Politicians in the Baltics, sending a small strike team on a mission that nearly killed them.

And the world, as strange as it was, went on as normal for the mutant spy. He continued his relationship with Laurie, and it opened up into a foursome-type thing with Marie-Ange and Wade. He met and became drinking buddies with the new world's older Clinton Barton, and noped out hard at the new world's teenage, bitter, Korean Quentin Quire. When the Black Court's rook was killed in police custody, he assisted, however reluctantly, in helping to restructure the Hellfire Club to help it stand against the new, anti-mutant world. In May he helped to investigate the disappearance of several Chinese artificats, and helped discover the new Mandarin. In July, when David North disappeared, he helped rescue his fellow spy, acting as translator while Wade tortured a man for information. At the end of the month he found himesf caught up in an accidental time loop caused by Wanda's powers, that always seemed to end with a friend of Wanda's being killed and then resetting with Wanda taking a phone call from said friend. The time loop eventually broke - however Wanda's friend - Simon Williams - was believed to be dead for good. The end of the year was a time for rescues - first in October when he went with Amanda to help rescue her wayward student. Then again in November when Clint needed help rescuing an old SHIELD friend whose cover had been blown.

Thankfully, Doug was able to ring in the new year quietly.

2016

2016 didn't bring with it too much more excitement beyond the usual. February was by far the most eventful time, when he found himself both helping Hope Abbott prove her innocence after she was framed for espionage and also helping to stop a mutant terrorist attack. He took a well-deserved vacation with the rest of the team to a ski lodge after all that.

He found himself with a protegee of sorts in the form of Hope, whom he found himself training in various mostly legal skills. In September, he helped Hope investigate when she heard murmurs about the Foundation for Genetic Harmony - now known as GenetiX United - still being active in this universe. They managed to find two of the members, who unfortunately later escaped SHIELD custody.

A Typical Year In The Life Doug Ramsey

August was, by far, the most exciting month of 2017 for Doug, when Asgardian troubles leaked over to Earth, and he was recruited to help contain it. Fighting the wolf pack of Garm is probably something one should only experience once in their lifetime.

On the happier side of things, he "graduated" Hope from her apprenticeship with him, releasing her into the world with a new set of questionable skills. He also, for the nth year in a row, forgot his birthday. And to wrap up the year with a bit of fun, he got to go to (another) new dimension to rescue two of Amanda's students when a mysterious force kidnapped them. The usual, basically.

God Damn Magic

2018 somehow managed to be typical and far from typical at the same time. There was the regular tech stuff - helping track down old people from a case Kevin Sydney was working before he was "killed", disarming a bomb, and so on. Then there was the not-so-typical in July, when Adam Destine returned for revenge, and successfully lured Topaz out of the mansion after cursing several people. Doug joined the rescue team to get her out, and during a fight with Grace Destine, he was accidentally inflicted with a blood curse, which he later discovered seemed to be permanent. Marie-Ange bullied him into taking Topaz to Gus Grim for therapy, successfully getting Doug up and moving. He came to understand his limits quickly, however, and ended up hiring Phoebe Stepford as his new secretary.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'9"

Weight: 150 lbs.

Eyes: blue

Hair: blond

Other Features: Doug's left ear is pierced, and he wears a small silver or gold stud in it. Previously, he had one notable scar, on his chest right above his heart from the events in Asgard. That scar and any other minor scars were removed due to the events of Day Zero. Prosthetic nanite arm.

Powers

Doug's mutant ability is best described as an extremely advanced form of pattern recognition. The main focus of this ability is language; Doug can reconstruct an entire spoken or written language with only a few words as a sample. By identifying linguistic context, Doug's brain can decipher the meta-context behind a language's structure and use that as a sort of "universal translator" with the end result being the ability to speak fluently in any language he is exposed to. The more familiar he is with a language, or the larger a base sample he has to work from, the more natural his speech becomes, often to the point of speaking with an impeccable regional accent.

Doug's power also applies to interpretation of unspoken communication forms such as Braille, Morse code, and sign language. Through experience, he has also learned to apply his power to interpret subconscious body language from people, gaining the ability to accurately judge a person's intentions or emotional state from unconscious physical cues. With training, he has adapted this facet of his power to self-defense, using it to predict an assailant's strike fractions of a second before it is thrown.

Doug's pattern recognition also applies to the intuitive logic of computer programming "languages" and mathematical algorithms used in cryptography. He has shown an ability to break highly complex cryptographic encoding without the use of a supercomputer, and can read some forms of encoded messages as easily as plain text.

Doug's powers ran a bit more intensely than usual since Day Zero and Emma's removal of his distractions. One example of this is Doug winning 58 games of chess in a row against Forge while spending time in the lab. With Emma's assistance at returning to what passes for normalcy, his power is not quite as high-running, though he is operating at a higher level than he did prior to Day Zero.

Equipment

Doug always has his smartphone with him. Additionally, depending on the situation (especially on X-Force missions), Doug now carries a pistol of currently unestablished type. Robot Arm.

Trivia

Doug enjoys what has been termed as "waging savage war on his taste buds", that is, he has an obsession with spicy food. He and Amanda frequently go for curry nights after work.

In Phase 1, he, Jamie Madrox, and Guido Carosella knew each other previously from an Alison Blaire fan site.

He was one of the lead singers for the student band People Covered In Fish.