Ricardo Rocha Rodrigues

For other uses of this name, see Ricardo (disambiguation).

Ricardo Rocha Rodrigues is the main talent of Ahnidras, who lost the last basketball championship to Víboras.

No one knows how that school slender boy got so big all of a sudden. Neither does he, actually.

GM

"Ronaldo"?! Ricardo!!

Ricardo Rodrigues^[1]

Ricardo Rocha Rodrigues is one of the protagonists of the Paranormal Order series, present in Gruesome Christmas.^[2]

He is a basketball player of the Ahnidras team. After the team’s last defeat at the local basketball championship, Ricardo was called to spend Christmas with his old school friends, in the Goodwill Moon's Camp.

At the end of the events of Gruesome Christmas, after an intense chase, in which the Night Mutilator ran after Ricardo furiously, he had his chest pierced by the serial killer’s axe, falling in a boat while bleeding; however, the Ordo Realitas agents were not able to find his body.

Appearance[]

Ricardo is a fair-skinned young man, 6'3" feet tall, with great muscles. He has a defined face, greenish eyes and dark brown hair messy shaved on the sides. He uses an athletic yellow regatta with the name "AHNIDRAS" printed, brown trousers with a scarf hanging at the waist, black belt and dark boots. Ricardo also uses as sports accessories, a cell phone holder on his left arm that connects to his headphones.

Personality[]

Ricardo is very friendly and altruistic, helping others without expecting anything in return, as seen when he carried with him the luggage of three of his friends, when he helped Shanyqua to escape from a bear trap or when he killed one of the Hunting Dogs to save Melissa. Even with his colleagues constantly misnaming him, he seems not to bother or simply care at all, demonstrating his self-confidence and security. Ricardo also shows himself as a very brave and resilient person, as demonstrated when he stabbed the Night Mutilator and endured his torture, both physically and mentally.

Biography[]

Past[]

Ricardo was the old "skinny boy" of the school, but surprised everyone with an impressive transformation that even he couldn't explain completely, where, with his enviable physique, became an emblematic figure in the local basketball scene. Even after the bitter defeat to the Víboras in the last championship, he decides, together with old school friends, to meet again at the Goodwill Moon's Camp, where new possibilities and memories awaited to be built.

Gruesome Christmas[]

In the late afternoon of December 24, 2022, crammed into a small blue car on a mountainous road in the Paraná region, the six young people arrive in the Goodwill Moon's Camp. Ricardo goes off after Shanyqua, heading to get the luggage of his friends inside the trunk of the car.

After some discussions about having come there and deciding who would take the luggage, the six go towards a cabin near where they parked, with Ricardo carrying several bags. When they open the door of the cabin, they see a huge room with partitions of living room, bedrooms and a fireplace. However, after some conversations and the decision to go to a better place, they return to the car and walk a little more, arriving at a huge house called Juno House. When they open ot, they discover a huge space with several religious paintings, many with the face of Jesus Christ, Christmas decorations and rustic rooms. While the others split up and go to different places in the house to see what was there, Ricardo finds a room to leave their luggage, almost sticking his finger in a rusty needle of a sewing machine.

Time passes and the six gather in the kitchen to get something to eat and to start immediately the Secret Santa they had organized, until suddenly, something begins to scratch the back door. Ricardo knocks on the door back, and the scratches start getting faster, stronger. He claps and asks whatever was scratching to leave, and then they stop. Among cries and despair, especially of Shanyqua, Leandro decides to open the door, and to his surprise, a small dog with a collar appears. Ricardo sees in the collar that his name is Joto, and so they let the puppy pass, who enters the house and begins to scratch the stove, noticing some snacks to eat.

The six gather to eat panettone and turkey breast, and after that, Ricardo takes several selfies of the group to then definitely start the Secret Santa. Ricardo ended up receiving from Leandro a small skull, which belonged to him, just as he gifted Shanyqua with a dancing cactus. After the end of the game, everyone begins to feel drowsy and begin to get ready for sleep. Ricardo and Leandro go to the other cabin to get a missing mattress. While walking, the two see a police truck entering the camp with the lights off and parking next to the group's car. They turn off the flashlights on their cell phones and crouch themselves, still watching, until they see the silhouette of a man with an axe coming out of the vehicle. The individual takes out a black bag that was moving in the truck’s bucket, puts it on the ground and gives a blow with his axe in the bag. Leandro takes a small stone and throws it towards the figure, which looks back, revealing, illuminated by the moonlight, a white mask with the stain of a red hand printed. Leandro remembers the stories about the Night Mutilator, a supposed serial killer, responsible for the disappearances in that region, and associates that man is just this killer, talking to Ricardo so that both go back to the house.

So the two return to the Juno House, and while Leandro stands as a guard at the front door, Ricardo warns the others about the presence of the masked man. Leandro notices the killer walking towards him and goes to meet the others, explaining better about that serial killer. The group as a whole discusses what to do next, but it’s too late: he’s already there. The Night Mutilator begins to search for the young people around the house who, in turn, do their best to hide. Ricardo takes a knife in the kitchen and tries to hide in the Living Room, but drops the vase where he tried to hide behind. Thus, he is attacked by the Mutilator, who gives him a strike with the handle of the axe, but also suffers a stab in the chest, which doesn't affect him much. With this, Ricardo is knocked unconscious and is dragged out of the house. Leandro decides to follow the serial killer furtively to save his friend.

The basketball player is taken to a destroyed cabin, where he is hung by a meat hook. After a while, Leandro arrives and tries to get Ricardo off the hook, but is interrupted by the Night Mutilator approaching the cabin. He goes out and runs to distract the killer, who calls his two hunting dogs. The basketball player manages to get off the hook and starts running away from the dogs too. The two young men run from the animals until they reach a fork, where Ricardo shoots towards the lake and Leandro tries to hide, but is found by the dogs and killed by the Night Mutilator.

Ricardo, running as if there was no tomorrow, arrives at the docks, entering a boat house, also hearing the sounds of bodies falling into the lake, associating that perhaps more friends of him had died. He finds a note from someone talking about something hidden in some door from above, thinking that maybe there was something in that big house where they were. He starts to go out of there, analyzing the place around, finding a scout’s manual. However, he knows that he needs to find out something in that house, and so he goes there. On the way, he meets Joto, who follows the basketball player.

Ricardo arrives at the house and meets with Jorel and Shanyqua, who were trying to open the attic of the mansion, because they had heard people inside. They hear more voices, a rattle of keys, and ask someone to open the door. The hatch opens and the three come across Breno, Melissa and Jorge, Jorel's brother, that were stuck by meat hooks in the attic for the last three days. While Jorel, Jorge, Melissa and Shanyqua discuss the whole situation of being there and why Jorel brought everyone to find Jorge, the group notices steps entering the house, and to hide, Breno and Ricardo take a barrel, placing it on top of the attic trapdoor, but making a lot of noise. Soon after they put it on, they hear closer steps and a sound of a stopwatch. The Night Mutilator just looks at the door, shrugs and walks away. The rest of the group investigates the other side of the attic, while discussing about the information that each trio had with them, about the history of Alice Lucina, the rituals she and her husband did, the tomb previously dug by Jorge, among other matters. Ricardo notices a staircase next to one of the attic windows, and so the six quickly organize themselves to get out of the attic there. After some obstacles, with the ladder almost falling, everyone manages to get down.

After the descent, they start walking around the camp, soaked by rain. The group notices the old chest that Jorel and Shanyqua had noticed, but when the girl tries to open it, she doesn't notice a bear trap placed right in front of her, trapping her foot and immobilizing her. The rest of the group mobilizes to get her out, but while they try to help her, they don't notice the silence. The sound of the request for silence. Coming as a shadow, the figure passes through everyone, appearing behind Shanyqua and stabbing on her back. At the same time, on the other side, the Night Mutilator corners them. The other survivors run, leaving behind only Shanyqua, trapped in the beartrap, and Ricardo who insists on trying to help. However, the girl asks to be left behind in order to attract the attention of the two killers. She hands the basketball player a picture of her and her family, and Ricardo runs. Everyone hears the screams of Shanyqua being killed by the assassins.

After the escape, the rest of the group continues to run, looking for something to help them, finding the bus that the first trio was before. Walking a little further forward, they find the cabin where Ricardo had gotten hooked, where Jorge, when entering, almost steps in a bear trap. When entering, they notice a radio to use. Breno turns on the radio, putting in the frequency indicated by the card of the police officer, contacting someone on the other side of the line, which was part of a kind of group: the Blue Condominium Detectives. The person tells them to set up a plan and join together to fight the assassins as they prepare to go to the site, assuming and stating that the assassins could be strong but they are dumb. In addition, Melissa and Jorge find a sensacionalist magazine talking about a certain sales influencer named Jae-Yoon, who got involved in a controversy with another influencer, and then disappeared suddenly, attaching this name to the X-mask killer.

As the group discusses how to fight the killers, they recall a paper talking about a poem of Santa fighting an evil force, and seeing that the drawings of the figures looked like the killers, they try to come up with a plan to confront them. Meanwhile, Ricardo comes down from the cabin and finds both Mutilator's Hunting Dogs. Melissa stands in front to try to distract them with the plush bone she had, succeeding. However, when Joto starts moving inside her shirt and falls down, she fails to maintain the distraction, and one of the dogs jumps on her, biting her arm. Breno and Ricardo try to help her, but when Ricardo tries to attack one of the dogs, he awakens a bestial force along with flashes of memory of him having served as an experiment for something, ending by tearing the animal in half. They don’t have much time to think, because the Night Mutilator saw everything and now rushes quickly to find his dog’s killer. Jorel, Melissa and Jorge get into a fight but are ignored by the killer. Breno continues to run, but eventually realizes he is not the target and comes back. Only Ricardo is running away from the killer, running towards the docks as fast as he can.

Arriving at the docks, Ricardo runs towards the boat tied up on the pier. He gets into the boat, unties it and pushes it away from the docks, creating a big distance between him and the Night Mutilator. After a while, the killer takes the rope that was tied on the boat, ties it to his axe and throws it towards Ricardo, who has no time to react and is hit in the chest by the weapon. He tries to pull the rope to bring down Aguiar in the lake, but his blood, which now gushes out of his chest, gets in the way and he can’t. Ricardo falls into the boat, which slowly begins to sink.

However, Ricardo's corpse was never found by the Order agents who arrived in the camp.

Abilities[]

Mutation: Ricardo gains damage resistance 2 and +2 in a skill of his choice that is originally based on Strength, Agility or Vigor. However, he gets −1d20 in Diplomacy.

Effort: When doing a skill test, Ricardo can spend 1 DP to get +2 on that test.

Tough: Ricardo receives +4 HP.

Lil' Skull: Contemplating the skull makes Ricardo think that there is still a long time to live. Once, and only once, if he is in a life-or-death situation, he can spend 1 Determination Point to redo a die roll.

Relationships[]

Leandro: During the school season, Leandro bullied with Ricardo, because of his short stature, but some time later, Leandro was heavy on his conscience and apologized to him. Ricardo doesn't seem to hold any resentment of Leandro, ignoring most times when he misnames his name, and even helping him escape the Night Mutilator.^[3]

Trivia[]

Ahnidras, name of the basketball team that Ricardo participates, is "sardinha" (sardine) backwards.
- The original team's name would be Gulliraz, but Cellbit warned that Matt had chosen the same name for his character's favorite band, with Felps finding better to change to Ahnidras at the end.^[4]^[5]
The name Ricardo Rocha was inspired by the presenter of the amateur reality show "New Face Reality", Rogério Rocha.^[6]
- Felps even thought about putting Rogério Rocha as the character's name, but he thought the reference would be very obvious, leaving only the last name next to a similar name.^[6]
The origin announced for Ricardo was "Sportsman?", a purposely mysterious choice that contained clues about his true origin. Among these clues, there was the fact that the "Sportsman" origin didn't exist in the Paranormal Order RPG Playbook or in its add-on, Surviving the Horror, indicating its fictitious nature. In addition, the inclusion of "?" in the end made the fake origin have exactly the same number of characters as "Experiment", his true origin.