~Paradise Lost, Book X, Line DCCXLIII
Name:
Age: Over two centuries.
Gender: Male
Species: Creation
Height: 8'1"
Weight: A little over 55 stone.
Family: "I Once Believed I Held A Father. I Was Mistaken."
Physical Description:
Victor, as he's taken to calling himself now, is unique. One of a kind, and he'd damn sure keep it that way. No man or woman, no matter how cruel or wretched, should ever walk in the life he holds. Victor was not born. He was assembled. Crafted by two hands eager in the pursuit of science over the spirit, and brought into this world cold and frightened by the stolen power of God. Victor is Frankenstein's infamous Monster. The creation, abandoned by it's creator, and tormented by it's own hellish existence. Centuries pass, the book has closed, yet here he stands in this age of "modern" Man. Forced from his seclusion, and bound to walk just beyond the light of the human world.
He travels in concealing garments, hand stitched and scavenged from whatever he can find to blanket his colossal form, usually in the form of a long, patch-work leather duster and hood, often held closed with several scavenged belts. His britches are stitched together from random parts cloths, canvas, leather, and even tarp, tied up with a length of rope or whatever else he could find. His body, head, and hands are densely wrapped in gauze and bandages. His last article of clothing is oddly enough one of his more treasured possessions: his boots.
Mortal minds can not possibly conceive how hard it is to scavenge foot wear for a being just over eight feet in height. The pair are not a matching set, with one being far older and a lingering survivor of his previous set of boots. It's sole is hard leather, compressed by hand, and took nearly a decade before it and it's now-deceased twin could be called functional. The newer model is similar to it's predecessors, being hand-stitched together from various normal work boots, held on with laces, belts, twine, duck tape, or anything else that could do the job. What differs is it's sole, made from the fractured rubber pieces of a great many other shoes, slowly melted and fused together. It's other half is already in production, and has far surpassed the hard leather prototype. While every other piece of his wardrobe is entirely expendable, the shoes are far from this. Have you ever walked bare foot for 50 years across the North Pole? No, you have not.
Then comes the matter of the flesh. Pale-yellowish skin stretched taut enough to betray the details of his arteries and veins. Massive, mismatched musculature woven together from various "donors". Scars and burns covering his body in random patterns. Black lips receding back from decay to expose yellowed teeth in a skull-like scowl. Dull, darkened eyes sinking back into their deeply shadow sockets, appearing as tho empty voids. No nose, and a series of staples holding together a cracked skull. His body holds several struts and parts of solid steel within it, reinforcing his skeletal structure as a cheap repair for postmortem damage.
Victor was not blessed in sharing the nearly flawless asymmetry of God's creations, either. One ear has been fused to the flesh by burns, while the other is gone entirely. One side of his lower jaw is not the same as the other, and it's teeth had to be replaced by brass duplicates. His right Index finger holds the same length as his middle, because isn't an index finger. His left hand has no finger tips, instead only the bones, capped with copper reinforcing to complete the closed conduit of his nervous system. His right leg is three inches longer than his left. His left foot is a size larger than his right. Left shoulder higher than his right by 2 inches, right arm 5 inches longer than his left, right hand about an inch wider than the left. The list goes on.
His voice has a deep, raspy gravel to it, unpleasant for any ears. His mannerisms are those of someone who'd much rather keep to themselves. Defensive, private, and suspicious of everything. But this is when he's calm. When angered, the story changes entirely. The low whisper becomes a booming howl, powerful enough to shake the walls. Sparks can be seen in his eyes and mouth at times. Green and vibrant, as well as the cinders which appear to glow from within his visible patches of muscle tissue. When particularly enraged, or charged, emerald arcs radiate from his body, and fill the air with the stench of burning flesh.
Personality:
Cold. Lost. Confused. Afraid. Alone. This was how he came into the world, and 200 years later it hasn't changed much. New things emerged. Bitterness, anger, hatred, envy, but the old him is still in there. For all the dark. For all the few spots of good, as well. Of course, those seem to be getting more rare as the years progress. He is still an affront to creation, an unnatural abomination of man and science. A mockery of "Intelligent Design". This life, this world we live in, it rejects him on a fundamental level. So, he rejects it. Isolation became his protector. Walking in the lands no human would touch for over a century, the loneliness did take a hefty toll. Voices of both the dead and those he'd never heard before became his companions, but one would stand higher than the rest. The one who tormented him the most, who had abandoned him to this world's clutches, and who Victor haunted in retribution. His persecutor in life, and now Victor felt compelled to drag him around in death. Well, a piece of him, anyway. Keeps the other voices abated.
Victor is private, defensive, and sometimes even callous. He doesn't want to give a damn about anyone, because he doesn't wish to ever feel the need to. His acts of random kindness often end with mobs and pitchforks, and so the world and all it's living creatures are kept at a distance. It wasn't long before he found out about the other, not so normal living creatures in this world. Along with a few of the unliving one's, that is. It didn't matter, changed nothing. They belonged, probably around since forever. Part of some balance, or cycle, or natural order. He still isn't, so he avoids them as well. That's how the years got spent, watching the world slowly turn from his side of the looking glass. Seeing how we act, what we create, the stereotypes we justify, and the one's he justifies for us. Not just with humans, but all creatures. Odd exceptions exist, but keeping to what he expects from other beings has kept him alive.
There was a time, a better time, where he at long last felt at home. He utterly refuses to even remember it, now. Afraid of the pain that brought, and the fire. He knows better than to believe he can belong, now. No, far better to keep to himself. It may not be how he wants to be, but it's how it must be. Holding on to things is difficult, complicated. The tighter you hold on, the more fragile it becomes. Someday it will break, and it'll cut you. Victor was cut deeply. This has applied to everything, it seems. Friends, family, home, love, faith... That's the one which held on the longest. He still carries that bible he'd found so long ago, and has recounted it's pages a thousand times in hopes of answers. Two hundred years, and he still hasn't found God. His mistakes haunt him, and they are many. Lives he's taken, lives he's ended. From destroying all his Creator held dear, to following in his damned footsteps. To playing God himself. Victor has made many mistakes. He's learned a great many lessons. But does what we know now ever truly make up for what we have done?
The world has changed, now. He has a job, a mission to do. One last purpose to complete, and maybe earn his right to rest at long last. At least it's kept him moving forward, tho at times it's made him ruthless. Victor will lie and manipulate to whoever he needs to for his mission. He's broken, burned, and destroyed before. It hasn't come to bloodshed yet, but... He understands that day may come. Do the ends justify all? Will he be vindicated in the end? Will the few, small lights he's scattered about balance out so much darkness?
Can he ever be forgiven?
He... doesn't know.
Strengths & Weaknesses
+ Fire of the Gods~ Brought to life by storm, sound, and light. Birthed by stolen divinity. Victor is still animated by the power which first brought him into this world, carrying within him to this day. Like a battery, he holds the current of pure, raw lightning within him. An immeasurable force of sheer power which to this day we do not fully understand the magnitude of. But like a battery, his current needs to be charged, and can run dry. God-made or man-made, it does not matter. Victor can store and unleash nearly unquantifiable levels of power. Coming into contact with anything that holds a current, or consuming anything that can burn, Victor can live indefinitely. He need not breath, though the instinct still compels him. He need not sleep, though the curse of dreams still claim him. Heat or cold pose no threat, though he still feels their touch. Were he not to tax his animated form, he could simply exist anywhere in the world without need of any sustenance.
+ Strength of Titans- It is not size, nor muscle which propels Victor's body. It is that same bolt of lightning which granted him life. A power he can channel into his physical countenance, empowering sinews, muscles, and the viscous humours which still flow through his veins. A small charge, and he can crack brick and stone. With a bit more, his fists start to shatter concrete. A moderate charge lets him bring a small building down into ruin. With a large enough current of energy flowing through him, he could deliver titanic blows the likes of which could shake a city block. However, this is not his limit. Victor once housed the most powerful form of energy humanity has ever come into contact with, and has done so repeatedly on occasion. We're still unsure of how great that power is, and so his capacity could be theoretically limitless. With enough rage, and enough voltage coursing through his unliving flesh, Victor could, in theory, level a city.
+ Reconstruction- Two centuries of walking the earth in a body comprised of various cadavers, yet his appearance has never changed. Victor's body is strong, both from his mass, his muscle tissue, and the steel reinforcing it in various places. However, this does not account for his ageless quality. From the moment he was born, Victor's body somehow developed a sort of blueprint of his physical state. Through the expenditure of his current power, his body restores whatever components of his makeup it finds missing. Extraordinarily, this applies to all things that comprise his body, organic or otherwise.
+ The Things You Learn- Victor's brain seems affected as well. His memory is eidetic, if not photographic. While he may not posses any sort of natural talent or knack, whatever he sees, he remembers. This does allow him to learn skills extremely fast, so long as he's exposed to it. Victor is a master lock pick as well as a grand pickpocket, if he can manage to be unnoticed. He knows a wide variety of card tricks, appears as a "gifted" violinist, has a nearly complete knowledge and understanding of human anatomy, holds an understanding of physics and medicine on par with a late 18th century professor, and can read from three separate books simultaneously in the time it'd take most people to read from one. Indeed, Victor never seems to forget things. No matter how much he desires to...
+ Shadow in the Night- Hands of a Strangler, Eyes of an Ax-murderer. That's how the tale goes, isn't it? There is a sad truth to the rumors. Victor is almost instinctually gifted at remaining unseen. Somehow. Perhaps this is not stealth as most would imagine it, but it's kept him safe for a century at the least. Victor seems to posses some innate sense of where people are looking. He walks swiftly, yet silently. Spreading his massive weight evenly and darting from shadows with his large gait, avoiding the eyes of mobs and manhunts comes as second nature. His large hands seem perfect for his task. His left clamping on the mouth, silencing the scream. His right wrapping tightly around the throat, till the struggling stops. Just like when he crept ever so silently into the bedroom of Elizabeth Frankenstein....
+ EMF- Victor's physical reaction to technology is.... strange. At times, things will go haywire. At others, they simply short out. Cameras can't seem to capture him clearly, either blurring the image beyond all recognition or being filled with white noise and static. Batteries drain around him. Electronics malfunction. However, it isn't all random. Victor's found he can act as a radio receiver or even an antenna just as much as he can distort transmissions. It's taken years of practice, though he's finally starting to get the hang of it. Sometimes.
- The Rage- All those years of torment. Never were they acquitted, never were they sated. All his sadness, his anger, his jealousy. It all creates the darkest part of his heart. When it burns cold, Victor his callous, envious, dismissive. He walls himself off by casting everything else away. He wants what others have, and so sometimes he takes them. To hell with what others think, they've already made their minds. They're already dead set in what to expect from him. So, he gives them what they expect. What they want. He gives them a monster, alive in all his ugliness. But what of his fear? His abandonment? That turns to something worse still. That burns hot. When Victor's rage burns hot, it is terrifying. That is the true Monster.
- Isolation's Steep Tax- The years have not been kind to Victor's sanity. His guilt and regret haunt him as ghosts, with faces and names to boot. They torment him with screams and accusations. They plague him with memories and fears. Serving as Judge, Prosecutor, and Orchestrator for this accursed play, the very man who created him. The bastard plays his part well. Victor hates this new, modern age, but he is thankful in how different it is. Sometime's, that is the only line between reality and the world he hallucinates.
- The Power Fades- Victor is a battery, and just like a battery, he lives in fear that one day his will run dry. Any exertion of his power drains him. Some far more so than others. Victor has never allowed himself to run dry, for fear that his life will simply fade away as well.
- The World of Tomorrow- Technology and Victor do not get along, beyond what was previously mentioned. Nobs, levers, buttons, all the simple sorts, he understands. That mentality of controlling technology has existed since the 1800's. Straightforward and direct on/off switches, basically. Hell, he even figured out how to drive an old British army jeep once. However, things like phones, card locks, and God forbid the Internet baffle him entirely. He has no concept of how computer security systems and cameras work, only that they do. That, and smashing said cameras with a brick seems an effective strategy. He tries to avoid most of the modern world for several reasons, with this being one of them. Victor's an intelligent and crafty sort, but it's not hard to trick him with a bit of tech.
- Bane of Monsters- Fire. Fire has always been his greatest fear. On an instinctual level, Victor knows that one day fire will take him. It is his doom. It is how he will die. Neither gun, nor blade, nor hammer, nor even the unforgiving ice of the arctic can bring him much harm, but fire can. Whether as symbolic power, or some manner of alchemical reaction to the lightning that coarse within him, fire can hurt him. Fire can kill him.
Tools and Trinkets:
Several alchemical vials filled with a noxious brew, composed of wolfsbane, garlic, white oak shavings, and whatever else old tales say find off the supernatural. Victor made these for a dual purpose. To ward off or part a crowd of supernaturals, should he so need, or to mask his scent from certain key beings with senses far beyond the norm.
An old doctor's kit, bound in leather. Has all the big, sharp, and scary instruments needed for 18th century surgery.
A live car battery. Probably stolen.
A bag of potato chips, candy bars, beef jerky, and any other edibles you'd find if you had, oh let's say... broke into a gas station in the middle of the night.
A rosary. For rosary reasons.
A medallion holding the collected images of Saint Nicholas, Saint Vladimir, Saint Christopher, Saint Florian, and Saint Jude.
A very old, very beaten, but very cared for bible.
Seven journals, four of which are his while the other three belonged to previous owners of the Promethean Manuscript. Usually if he isn't writing in one, he's buried in the others. Studying them repeatedly for any hint of who they may have spoken to about certain kinds of "experiments".
An original copy of the Promethean Manuscript. Or, as Victor calls it: "How to step on the toes of God, for dummies". This is one of the many copies derived from the original research notes of Dr. Frankenstein's experiments. The pages containing most of the good parts are missing, for obvious reasons, but Victor keeps this with him as a comparison to any other copies he may find. Letting him judge how much they are changing in complexity, how much they are deviating from the original process, and worse of all, how much the new process is evolving in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.
The half-finished twin to his newer boot.
An old, human skull. I wonder who it use to belong to.
Lastly, the hand-made leather dufflebag he keeps all of this in.
The Story Beyond The Story: WIP