RADE (NIKOLA) TESLA
As you might have already noticed, famous inventor Nikola Tesla appears in Arcadia Tenebra as one of the strong Non-playable characters. However, his family is alive and well, and we’re not talking only about his noble father The Priest, who also features as one of the NPCs.
Tesla clan has plentiful offspring, apparently less fortunate than the world-renown scientist Nikola Tesla. One of the Playable Characters is a famed inventor’s cousin Rade Tesla, a young man whom the luck fates didn’t favor at all, not when it comes to looks and certainly not when it comes to filial affection. Rade’s father, a sadistic drunkard, scared his kid deeply and irreversibly. When Rade entered puberty, he discovered the sadistic beating he suffered at the hands of his dad gave birth to a horrible ecstasy, a trance-like state. Knowing better than to spill this news out, and instead choosing to appear an underdog at all times, Rade noticed his newly gained ability enabled him to discover the locations of missing objects, cattle, or even people, an ability he used to earn little money on the side. However, this new power had an unpleasant side effect – priapism. Painful groins chained Rade to his room for days, until he searched for help in Brothel and eventually became famous among its wealthy customers for his insatiability and stamina, allowing him occasional freelancing outside Brothel and thus patch his ever depleting funds. With no proper schooling apart from a period spent as a carpenter’s apprentice, and no special skills other than finding missing people and objects, Rade occasionally steals his famed inventor cousin’s identity. Around the time when the mysterious and gruesome murders rattle his home province of Arcadia Tenebra, Rade works at Hotel in the City. Using his family name to appear as an engineer, he tries (with failing success) to keep maintenance of the Hotel’s heating system and waterworks.
Emaciated and shy, with self-inflicted wounds on his hands, he spends days in Hotel’s boiler room, a victim of poor concentration and altered states of mind. However, the missing people, gruesome murders, and twisted darkness of it all call to him, and he joins the murder investigation. There might yet be some money and recognition in this affair, he reckons. However, deep inside, Rade Tesla knows the real reason he joined the investigation is a chance to discover the whereabouts of his sadistic father, who disappeared without a trace into the Arcadian woods some time ago.
Recalling his motto, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”, Rade joins the investigators, finally getting some sense of purpose and direction. Somehow, his pained quirkiness doesn’t get in the way of him liking other people’s company. In the end, everyone and anyone is better than his father!
