Vital Information
Gender: Male
Appearance: Stripped of his rags, cleaned, and freed of his mark, Alastor would be seen as a fine boned man in his early middle years, with pale complexion, dark brown eyes and straight brown hair cut raggedly short. Given the proper attire, it might even be said that he resembles a young scholar or a guild artisan. Stripped of the rags he wears, Alastor would be an entirely different person. Alastor's rags cover his entire body, the remnants of a hooded greatcoat that has been repaired and patched over a decade of constant hard wear. Filth and unidentifiable stains cover the coat of rags (and presumably the body beneath), and, in any weather or climate, the hood is kept up. Should the wind blow it back or the unfortunate get a look under it, they would get a flash of greasy hair, a filthy wrap bandaging one of Alastor's eyes, and a glimpse of a face bruised and wracked with sickness.
Mark: Alastor's left eye is simply gone. There is an impossibly black hole where it should be, and lines with the color and character of the killing stage of blood-sickness radiate from it. Even in good light, Alastor's left eye will appear has a bottomless hole. Which is why he keeps it covered from the curious and the foolish.
Personality: The most fundamental part of Alastor's personality is his self-sacrificing nature. He believes that if a person has the capability to help another, he has the duty to do so. Regardless of the cost. Before the beginning of his life in the slums, Alastor also had a quick sense of humor and an arrogant streak, but both of long since been crushed. The humor may yet reemerge, but the arrogance is forever broken.
Catalyst Emotion: Despair
History
Background: Alastor was born into a guild family. Not the richest, but not terribly far off from it. His family sold grains and foodstuffs along the river, with minority interest in expensive merchandise such as dyes and perfumes. Smuggling those minority interests inside grain barges to avoid customs fees was what kept his family rich, and, as far as Alastor knows, still does.
When he was fifteen, his mother took sick, a wasting illness that healers could not touch. She coughed pus and saw demons, but she held on to life. She became bedridden in Alastor's sixteenth year, driving Alastor half-mad with despair. There was nothing that could be done by healers, no alchemy to save her, no god that would have mercy. She was truly dying, and she was never going to get better. It was in his sixteenth year, when he should have been assuming his place beside his father and older brother as a guild merchant, that he made his deal.
Curse: Like many of the young in the city, Alastor's parents had told him stories of the crying man to frighten him into doing his chores and complying with the rules of civilization. The crying man came for boys who were out past their bedtime and gave them fever, he stopped up the noses of little girls who told lies, and gave stomach pains to children who ate too many sweets. The crying man was a children's story, but, like many, it contained some truth. In the long dark year when Alastor sought to help his mother, he came across the legends of shrines in the darkest and worst parts of the city. There were those who worshiped the crying man, call him by his older, more simple name: The Weeper.
When his mother's illness bound her to fevered dreams and childlike weakness, Alastor reached out to the shrines. He was the middle son of a prosperous merchant house, and, while young, he was not without resources. He bought knowledge from sages, bribed watchmen, and made black market purchases for the location of a Weeper shrine and the ingredients needed to bring His presence into contact with the world. The mercies of Gods had been nothing to rely on, but perhaps the greed of a demon-monster could be trusted.
The summoning of the Weeper was long, arduous, and involved rites that Alastor still sees repeated in nightmares. If Alastor had any innocence left, he destroyed it on that night. When it was done, and the final vein woven and the last mark of blood blackened, the voice of the Weeper resonated within Alastor's mind. It was not human, as the children's stories had made it seem. It was stronger, deeper, and unimaginably more ancient and implacable than any myth had been able to describe. Alastor offered it everything, anything he could lay hands on, in return for the power to reverse the sickness in his mother, the power to heal. The Weeper assented, for but one small price.
An eye in the world of men.
Weighed against the life of family, an eye was a very, very small thing to lose. Alastor agreed, submitting to the will of the Weeper. The pain was like nothing he could have imagined, the flesh of his face contorting toothily to consume his left eye from within. A permanent channel was created there, a link between Alastor and the shard of the Weeper inside of him.
Retreat: Mad with pain and triumph, Alastor returned to the family estate. His bloody face was crudely bandaged with one of his own shirtsleeves, and the rest of his body was still covered in the filth of the black ritual, but he strode through his home unwilling and perhaps unable to allow himself to be stopped by the servants or his brothers. Alastor only stopped moving when he flung open the doors to his mother's chamber. His father was there, standing alongside his wife's bed with eyes red and hands clenched. An unfamiliar man stood beside him, dressed in the white and gold of a priest.
In death, Alastor's mother looked more peaceful than she ever had in the year past. It was as if whatever force had kept her alive had finally evaporated, and she was glad to have been finally allowed to die. The Weeper had granted Alastor the power to save his mother, but not the timing.
As it was, the timing could not have been worse. Alastor stood before a temple priest, still covered in the gore of a foul ritual, and bearing the ill concealed mark of a demon-monster of sickness. A mark that he received on the very day that his mother died to a terrible wasting sickness. Alastor was very lucky to escape from that house, and even that city, with his life. He disowned, exiled, and become a bloody myth in his own right; a terrible wizard who killed his mother for power over sickness and plague.
Still, Alastor has lived on for the last two decades. Living in slums, and healing the sick as best he can. He is the last resort of the desperate, but he heals all who come to him. He takes the visual symptoms of every disease that he heals, and though is connection to the Weeper prevents the diseases from harming him, Alastor still bears the look of one sick to dying. He has a terrible, terrible debt to pay, a debt incurred when he failed his family. The life of rags was the only way he could see to pay it back, until now.
Important Game Data:
Element: Living Flesh
Attributes:
Endurance: 3
Focus: 2
Knowledge: 4
Quickness: 4
Resistance: 2
Spirit: 5
Strength: 2
Training: 5
Wisdom: 3
Skills:
Flesh-Shaping: 5
Bargaining: 2
Stealth: 2
Intimidation: 1
Hardiness: 1
Survival: 1
Scavenging: 1
Traits:
Iron Senses: The things Alastor has done, the things he's seen... Not much can overwhelm him, let alone put him off-balance or nauseate him.
Terrifying Legend: Alastor has his own legend, of an evil wizard who tortured and horribly killed his mother to make an unholy pact with a demon-monster of illness. Considering that the mark he bears does a good job of identifying him as that 'evil wizard', Alastor has an ace in the hole when intimidating others or bluffing power.
One-Eyed: Alastor's left eye his completely missing, and while the Weeper might see out of it, Alastor definitely can't. It's relatively easy to blindside Alastor.
Other:
Coat of Rags: This hooded greatcoat is covered in filth, stains, and unidentifiable blotches. It's also surprisingly warm due to its number of layers, and the haphazard nature of its design gives it an unusual number of what might, politely, be termed pockets.
Ragged Bandage: This ragged bandage is tied diagonally across Alastor's face to obscure the mark. Close inspection reveal that it was made from the sleeve of some once fine garment.
Here we are. A little long, but a good character if I ever wrote one.
Author
Topic: Thawed (Wrapping Up) (Read 111436 times)