Hotel Haven - Masque Reference

HERP DERP IS THIS ENOUGH INFORMATION??? 8B
_{aka "Everything I ever wrote about Masque but never told you, and you're not sure you even want to hear it because GODDAMN there's a lot."}

for ~

Audition here! = [link]

Oh man. I spent so much more time writing this stuff than I did actually drawing poor Masque. He'll forgive me when I get around to the audition, I hope. 9_9;;

edit: 'cuz I don't feel like going back into the pic-- the colour for his shoes/hat/cane is the same for his coat

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<sub>Name: Masque (his real name will be revealed in good time)
Sex: Male
Species: Revenant Zombie
Nationality: French (but you wouldn't suppose it from his impeccable English)
Age: Pre-death, 29; post-death, 141; TOTAL-- 170
Hair: Flaxen
Eyes: Hazel (grey-brown w/ a hint of green)
Height: 5'10''
Weight: 112 lbs (the dead are rather lightweight)
Key characteristics: The personality he displays to the world-- Debonair, elegant, cunning, self-centered, conceited, histrionic, wayward, persuasive, charming, proud, merciless, shrewd.
Underneath it all-- things aren't quite as stable or clear-cut...a great deal of uncertainty about who and what he is (and what he has done over the decades) swims just beneath his outwardly charismatic demeanor. He would sooner kill you than let you realize this.
...Although he apparently has a soft spot for truly benevolent specimens of the fairer sex. Perhaps they remind him of someone he once knew.

Weapon(s) of Choice:

When it comes to physical battling, Masque is in possession of a silver-capped swordcane that can be opened with a single twist and pull; the blade is rapier-thin, but sturdy enough to, for example, cut a man's head from his shoulders. He's got some fencing skills buried down there, somewhere. Masque also keeps a smaller dagger up his left sleeve that can be brought into play (usually in an emergency, if he can't get to his swordcane for some reason) with a flick of his wrist. The small knife is also used to give him access to a head's brains (if, for some reason, he doesn't return home to use his trepanning drill in privacy).
Masque, however, is more a scavenger than an outright predator-- that is, fighting someone head-on isn't exactly his first course of action when combating a being who is clearly more powerful than himself (if he sees no evidence otherwise that he can be bested, however, he will readily go for the kill). Still, in most cases, he'd sooner think of a way to get out of a situation than plow straight through it. Or charm his way out.
...But he'll still kill you without hesitation if he considers you his next meal.

The Masks:

Masque, true to his moniker, is never seen without one of his masquerade masks. He's got at least a dozen to choose from, and in this OCT, I've included a set of five that he will cycle through (well, depending on how far he makes it or if any get damaged).
WHY does he wear the masks? Is it because, as he says, of his “incurable proclivity for theatrics”? Is he hiding some gross disfiguration à la the Phantom of the Opera? Perhaps is it something psychological? Or does he just like the freaking things?
Maybe you'll find out. You certainly would find out something if you managed to take one of his masks off.

Brief History:

Masque used to be --as most dead people are-- very much alive. His origins are shrouded in mystery and a fair amount of reticence, as he doesn't typically strike up conversation with passersby and regale them with his life/death story (although he's been known to muse about it to his already-dead victims). More than fragments of his past will make their way into this OCT, since it IS from his point of view, but right now I'll just be sharing enough to...y'know...shed a LITTLE light on his history, at least. But let's stick to short n' sweet bullet points! 8D

• was once happily married o_o
• died, but did not stay dead for long, thanks to his wife pulling a few strings and contacting a shady sorcerer/necromancer
• once brought back, was bound to the sorcerer, relying on him for sustenance and required to obey his orders
• ...his wife soon died...and let's just say it wasn't pretty >_>
• MANY years passed, and eventually the sorcerer also died, which left a morally-decayed Masque free...but presumably doomed to starvation and deterioration
• a little research revealed that there was a solution: BRAINS (the French Revolution was quite delicious)
• fast-forward a century or so to the year 1912-- Masque has traveled all over Europe, but is currently cruising the streets of London, dining on its denizens and enjoying the London Opera

What it means to be a Revenant Zombie:

Physiology:

Masque is essentially an animated corpse, and while he appears to function like a living person, most of the inner-workings are less-than-working. Much of this defies explanation (yay magic), but the few ground rules are:
• no pulse/circulation/blood
• no need to breathe
• no digestion/etc. (despite the fact that he does, incontestably, EAT brains...who knows what happens to them after he swallows?; if normal food is consumed, he just expels it right back up)
• CAN sweat, cry, salivate (very minimal, and God knows how)
• CAN'T swim (he just sinks, lol)
• ahem, let's just say his sex life is as dead as he is
• nerve-endings are numbed, so while he can tell from pressure and impact that something is touching him, he can't REALLY feel anything-- that is, he can't tell the difference between something soft brushing his skin or something sharp piercing it; thus, he can feel neither pleasure nor pain
• upon injury, his body automatically restores itself (calling it “healing” is a stretch, since…well, he doesn't have any health to speak of)
• is only as strong as he was in life, and even before he became undead he was a skinny guy 9_9

Magic:

Masque, by himself, is not exactly magical. He was brought back to life/undeath by a twisted mess of necromancy and sorcery, but he possesses no powers to speak of. In fact, one could consider magic his greatest vulnerability.
As mentioned, his body restores itself once injured; if the injury was inflicted by magic, however, it takes much longer to “heal”-- we're talking a difference of seconds and minutes versus hours and days. This wouldn't be a problem if he were still linked to the necro-sorcerer who raised him, but now, on his own, he's essentially defenseless.
On that note, it is a simple thing for a true necromancer to take control of Masque. On the other hand, a powerful enough sorcerer can bind themselves, through a blood ritual, to Masque and recreate the bond he once had with the necrosaur (lolwhut) that raised him. Breaking it down simply:
Necromancy = no ritual needed, complete control, Masque is mindless
Sorcery = ritual needed, Masque retains senses but is required to obey orders
…Needless to say, Masque is not a fan of magic and those who practice it.

Mortality:

Masque is RATHER dead, and has been so for over a century. As far as he knows, he cannot die again, but he has never exactly experimented. Due to natural wear and tear over the years, however, in addition to a few angry townspeople or misinformed vampire-hunters, he has discovered that he's typically incredibly resilient to otherwise mortal injuries. He's been shot through the heart with a rifle, for instance, and was even decapitated on one instance...which he thought would surely be the REAL-death of him. But, inexplicably enough, he managed to survive. As mentioned before, his body, when injured, restores itself rapidly, and even in the case of his head becoming detached from his shoulders, it found its way right back to the spot where it belonged. Knowing this doesn't change the fact that he PREFERS to avoid such unseemly injuries; there's no guarantee, after all, that he'll ALWAYS be okay.
Two things worry him more than anything else:

Complete annihilation of his body-- what would happen if he were crushed by a huge blunt object, or blown to smithereens, or swallowed and digested?? He doesn't know, and isn't keen on finding out.

...and then there's starvation.

Sustenance/Starvation:

Masque MUST eat a brain every night (day/night/whatever...he happens to hunt at night) or he enters into a period of progressive starvation. It takes about a week for him to gravitate from one extreme state to the other, and for every day that he “loses”, he needs to eat a brain to make up for it (so if he misses three days and then eats just one brain, he'll only be back to Phase 2 of starvation) . As he starves, he begins to decompose both physically and mentally. It's unknown what would happen if more than a week passed, but it can be assumed that he would eventually rot into nothingness.

Phase 0 - normal Masque, nice and well-fed!
(and now, a phase for every day he misses a meal)
Phase 1- paler, more hollow-looking
Phase 2- slight fatigue, loss of focus, looking even more poorly
Phase 3- motor skills start to suffer, everything prior becomes more pronounced
Phase 4- more grey than pale, starts to smell more like death, even more scatterbrained (lolpun)
Phase 5- further discolouration, very ungainly, speech becoming disjointed and slurred
Phase 6- beginning to rot, mostly incoherent, can't seem to walk without stumbling
Phase 7- essentially a shambling, mindless corpse who will kill the first thing he lays hands on

Is there a way to force him to starve more quickly? Perhaps, if you're a necromancer or are capable of, I dunno, controlling time itself. o_O But what are the odds of that? >_>

Soul?:

Yes. Masque has a soul, but the whole body-soul-connection is a bit of a mess right now. Souls aren’t meant to be trapped within corpses, after all. Thus, he’s never able to fully tap into and benefit from all the “perks” that entail the possession of a soul...but it’s still stuck within his body. The connection becomes even more warped as he starves or is controlled by a necromancer-- the soul remains trapped, but virtually inaccessible.</sub>

OVERALL:


<sub>Strengths

• well, he's undead-- most things won't permanently kill/harm him
• smart, sophisticated SUAVITY (epic charisma, lulz)
• pretty darn handy with his swordcane
• feels no pain (so while he isn't exceptionally strong, he can push himself)
• quite willing to kill
• doesn't need to breathe
• has had over a century of practice ambushing people in the dark to nom on their brains, so he's rather stealthy

Weaknesses

• no faster nor stronger than…well, a skinny white guy (easy enough to pin him, knock him flying, etc., and chains will easily hold him)
• destroying his body completely WILL kill him
• starvation is a bitch, he WILL rot completely in time
• can't swim (in a river/lake this isn't a problem, he can just walk along the bottom until he gets to shore, but in an ocean? Yeah, THEN it's a weakness)
• soft spot for good ladies
• restoring his body after a MAGIC attack takes considerably longer
• utterly vulnerable to necromancy, somewhat vulnerable to sorcery
• mentally far less stable than one might think
• and taking off his mask results in “NOT SO GOOD FOR MASQUE”

A few interesting and/or important tidbits:


• speaks several European languages (has a firmer grasp of the Romance languages and of English, and, of course, French is his first language)
• is a patron of the arts, and is especially fond of classical music (French composers are his favourite!!)
• incongruously enough (hey, since he seems artsy), is very good with numbers/figures
• being as he is currently from a story set in 1912, and is older than that to boot, if any modern technology shows up in the OCT he will be BAFFLED; he's still getting used to the idea of the telephone, let alone cars (newfangled contraptions); for that matter, he's not a fan of technology in general...doesn't trust it in the slightest
• ANIMALS DO NOT LIKE HIM; dogs bark, cats hiss, birds squawk, etc.-they either want him to GTFO, or THEY'LL GTFO (any part-animal contestants would probably just feel extra nettled/spooked around him)
• while he may be a relative softie when it comes to kind-hearted women, he does not necessarily share the same view on children; he'd sooner eat the brain of an adult than a child (more mass, after all), so he doesn't spare kids out of the goodness of his heart…and he doesn't always spare them
• if his suave exterior is disturbed in any way, revealing the mental turmoil beneath, then it’s fair to say that he becomes FAR less predictable or practical; be prepared for uncharacteristic and erratic behaviour if Masque gets unhinged

Links to other refs: [link] [link] [link] [link]
...wow, his hair has evolved.</sub>


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God knows I probably forgot something, even IF all this crap is TL;DR. 9_9


...Actually, wow. It's so long even I didn't read it.


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