Fantasy Ain't No Rest for the Wicked Pt. 2 (CS)

[Soviet Panda]

Appearance:
Role: (Either one of the available Horsemen or Outlaw)
Name:
Age: (21+)
Personality:
Backstory: (A solid paragraph or more.)
Magic: (What kind of spells do they do? Do they shoot fireballs from their gun? Generate toxins to coat their blades? Go nuts here)
Equipment:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Role: Horseman of War

Name: Connor James McKinley

Age: 31

Personality: Connor has grown to become a very hard man and full of sharp edges. Not one for sarcasm and little patience for flowery talk, Connor often cuts to the most direct solution, this solution often includes violence.

Backstory: Connor used to be a nobody, plain and simple. He was a small time thief making small time money without a hint of magical powers. Times got rough, and he got desperate, so he made a deal with someone he really shouldn't have. Sammael, proud owner of the most popular printing company in all of the Below. He promised Connor a lot of things, chief among them the power to get whatever Connor wanted, and all Connor had to do was provide suitable material for his penny dreadfuls. Connor gladly took him up on that bargain, and signed on the dotted line.

Connor began making a name for himself, a daring outlaw who always seemed to one up himself with each robbery, the penny dreadfuls with him in it practically flying off the shelf down Below. As far as Connor was concerned, he had it made. Until he met her, Elizabeth. Where most people shrank into themselves whenever Connor so much as spoke to them, Elizabeth stood her ground. She was shaking the entire time they first met, but there was something there that softened the dangerous outlaw Connor had become. He began going out of his way to visit Elizabeth on her parent's homestead, hiding who he really was from her family so they didn't shoot him on sight. And slowly, like the wind and rain eroding a rock, Connor and Elizabeth fell in love.

She knew who he was, he couldn't keep that a secret from her, though he had tried. And every time he came back from another derring do of outlawmanship, she was furious with him. One day, however, Connor decided he had had enough of the bandit life. And so, he gave it up. With the money he had made from his past career, he managed to buy a plot of land and built himself a frontier of his own. He even had a child, little Arin. Connor the outlaw was no more, in his place stood Connor the homesteader. And though he didn't have as much money as he had before, Connor was more content with his life.

Sammael, however, did not like this reneging on their contract. One day, in the middle of a storm, a lightning bolt struck out in the field, and started a fire. The fire spread with otherworldly speed until it reached the house. Connor was awoke to a house engulfed in flames, and the screams of his wife and child in his ears. No matter how hard he tried, he could not find them, could not reach them. The smoke began to make him pass out, but before he slipped into unconsciousness, he saw a shadowy figure with glowing eyes the color of blood. "We had a deal, Connor my boy. No going back on it now."

When he regained consciousness, all that was left of his home was ash. He didn't even bother searching it for his wife and kid, he knew what happened to them. All that was left was their work horse, Stepper. And so, Connor once more masked his face from the law. This time, he caught the eye of the most gang there was, the Four Horsemen. Of course, he was surprised to find out that there were actually five Horsemen. Their last War, a man by the name of Tom Horn, had gone and gotten himself caught by the Virtues, and so they were in the market to get another one. And they knew Connor's track record, the violence only getting worse after his years long bout of silence. And so, Connor became the Horseman of War, the muscle of the group, not expected to think but to act with such a level of aggression as to make others recoil in shock. Something he considers himself to have become quite good at.

Magic: Connor can fire explosive projectiles from any firearm he wields, becoming an ashen wraith and able to continuously fire without needing to reload, the infernal shots seemingly coming from nowhere.

Equipment:

• 2 Revolvers
• Lever action rifle
• Double barreled shotgun
• Large Bowie Knife
• The large draft horse, Stepper, the only thing he shows any real affection towards.

 

[Axeykins]

Role: Horseman of Famine

Name: Sisceal Patrick Anderson

Age: 42 (looks and claims to be only be in his mid 20s/early 30s at most.)

Personality: Sisceal is a sleazy smooth talker and snake in the grass. Tending to try and get himself out of a situation through words before any rash actions most times. As well as getting himself in trouble by buttering up or trying to flirt and get with the wrong person. But if spurred into action he will very much become uncaring and do whatever it takes to keep his freedom.

Backstory:
Sisceal grew up in humble beginnings. Just the son of the pastor in a decent sized town in the greener side of the continent. He never knew his mother seeing as she died shortly after he was born and his father never remarried. Leaving the man to raise Sisceal all on his own which was not quite a task he was up to. Whether it was just his own strict upbringing coming through or some resentment, blaming his son for the death of his wife it came out in extremely strict rhetoric. He was only to eat, breath and live at the church, only allowed out for a further education to make sure he was well rounded. Whipped and locked in to study more when he disobeyed or talked back which only got worse as the teen years hit.
There was one positive in his life at that point and it came in the form of Una. A shapely fairy queen who took a liking to the boy when she found him wandering her forest. She saw how he'd grow up to be and wanted to take him in, giving him healing abilities that would be praised by his town at the promise he'd come find her again and become hers entirely when he was of age.

That moment never came as the daughter of a very powerful man in town joined the church. Alyse. Her father Claudeus wanted her to remain chaste until he could marry her off and gain even more power over the town. So by his logic he sent her off to the church. What both him and Sisceal's father did not think through was putting two young adults in the same area with absolutely no talk of the birds and the bees whatsoever. Or anything related to such a thing at all. It went about as well as one can imagine. The longer the two were together the more deeply they fell in love. That pure stupid naive kind of love that eventually lead to them being found late at night bare in the church gardens. Enraged by this Claude took up whatever he could nearby and dashed Sisceal across the face, scarring him for life as unbeknownst to them it was a tool made of recycled cold forged iron. A little weakness Una never told him to watch for.
If only it had ended there for him, but not long after it was discovered that little garden tryst resulted in Alyse being pregnant. Warranting Claude damn near busting the doors of the church down and swiftly ensuring with his boot the man, who he now held a burning hatred for for ruining his plans of power, was never going to have children again. Claude forced the two into a quick marriage and silence any rumors to save face on his family. Such a scandal would never be known about. Aside from Una who took it as breaking her promise and would hold him to it.

Claude made his life a living hell. Making sure daily he never forgot what he did by every single means he could. Sisceal could only work for him, eat and drank when and what he was told to, go where he was told. He couldn't even mention the word divorce without getting his ring finger swiftly removed and threats of worse when the marriage and raising a kid became riddled with nasty fights near daily, no thanks to Claude's abuse and his own spiraling habits. It wore him down. Wore him down until he snapped entirely and ran. Leaving nothing but a letter behind for his wife and child and half the town burning.

He never thought of becoming an outlaw, not in a million years. But the Four offered him something he'd never had before and that was pure raw freedom. It was far removed from the wealth and warmth of his family but nobody would put a boot to his neck again without damn good reason which he was glad to give em. He didn't have to answer to a damn person's orders when he was around them. He would find more about himself than ever before in more ways than one. In his mental state good or bad it was some form of release without hurting his loved ones back home. Least in his cracked mind it was.
He's most often the one to get the four into a town for a while without notice. Using his priestly demeanor from years of training to lower the guard of the people and even set up shop in the church if they have one. Bolstering their faith through lies and collecting tithes from them all. Saying it will go towards a greater good and preying on the weakest of families he can get himself near. Even going so far as to hide his face behind paint and burn fields and homes down for extra donations the families will never see again then leaving as the town slowly starves and lays in poverty. It's what earned him the title of Famine.

Magic:
Healing. He can heal faster than normal people can, even faster when asleep. He can also either take or transfer an injury. Though cannot take on too much himself or by some safety measure he does pass out until fully healed again. But when it comes to "giving" someone else an injury there is no limit except their death. He's taking their life force and can drain them until they're nothing but a husk. He can do the same to a healthy person to bolster himself but prefers not to because it's like a drug. Makes him feel better than ever and changes him slowly but surely into something...unpleasant.

Equipment:
Single revolver
Large bone hunting knife
small decorative dagger he stores extra cash in
Rosary and wedding ring worn around his neck.

 

[Worthlessplebian]

Role: Horseman of Plague;

Name: Abraham Abel Wolff;

Age: 29

Personality: A reasonably calm, former lawman-turned-outlaw with an addiction to science, hard liquor, and sleight of hand. Though he prefers to resolve situations nice and peaceful like, he'd just as sooner poison or infect the opposition. Or shoot them. It'll be no skin off his back, so as long as they were a threat to him.

Backstory: There is a familiarity with the Law in Abraham's life. He had been surrounded by it ever since he crawled out of his ungrateful mother. His father had been the sheriff of a little, dusty town called White Hill. Sheriff Wolff poured heart, sweat, and blood into raising his son. Not just raising him, but grooming him to be the potential successor. High expectations were placed on the kid as soon as he could understand words. He wrangled the best educators in town, sometimes they were travelling as well, to teach the boy. At first, the tutelage combined with the rigor of exercise had been difficult, but he saw the gleam of love in his father's eyes. Pride as well, approval galore. He chased those feelings, committing himself fully to the role his father ordained for him.

By the time of his seventeenth birthday, Abraham had been deputized as the right-hand man with a heart of solid gold and silver smile. He had gotten to know many of the townsfolk, spent a lot of his time with them when he wasn't actively working. Patrolling, defusing conflicts, serving court orders took up a lot of his time, but he always found a way to shoot darts, drink a mug of beer (paying even if he was offered no expense), and teaching youngster how to horseride. He found himself a sweetheart too, nice farmer's girl of his age to court.

So if life had been all dandy, how did this lawman festered into the master of plagues?

It had been the deplorable deeds done by that acrimonious woman known as Isabella Wolff, his mother. It was not enough that she jabbed him with snide remarks, downplayed his achievements at every corner. It wasn't enough that she had been a mischievous, cowardly snake who bore the mask of the good housewife and mother when his father had been around; sometimes he still asks himself why his father never believed him. But the ultimate evil had been tarnishing Sheriff Wolff's reputation. Whispered rumours of unfaithfulness, of incompetence, falsified witnesses, and an unusual string of crimes shattered decades of goodwill that his father had accumulated.

The straw that broke the horse's back was the appearance of a woman with a blond haired child. An almost striking resemblance to a young Abraham. Sheriff Wolff tried to defend himself against these accusations, but nobody would believe him. It seemed the wives' gossip had been true all along. The Sheriff took off with Abraham on his tail. They rested in the meadow where they camped every summer. And Abraham asked him if it was true, was that boy his half-brother. At the question, his father broke down into tears. The pressure had finally been brought to a boil and his steely soul couldn't take it anymore. He cupped his tear-stained face and howled like his surname. His son only patting him on the back. They stayed away from White Hill for two years after that, but unfortunately his father grew ill and he was incapable of helping him. All his fancy tutors, his mathematical formulas, his knowledge of herbs proved worthless when push came to shove. His father died in a dainty, leather tent.

Abraham, now going by Abel, promised his father that he would not harm his mother. But poisoned with virulent vengeance as he was, he broke that promise. Coating his blade in animal dung, toxic plants, and mineral toxins, he dawned a black mask and hat then snuck back into town. Finding his mother remarried to the new lawman stirred the fire in his guts higher. But they had grown lax, fat, and lazy in their absence. Creeping into their house had been easier than hunting a frenzied boar.

With a backhanded blow, he knocked out Isabella and the new beau. Once tied up, he awoke them with smelling salts. The woman instantly recognized her spawn and threw vitriol-leaden statements one after another, demanding to be released immediately. She was quickly silenced with the toxic knife was struck in her husband's thigh. Yelps of pain were choked by a gag. Then he bound his mother, rotated her chair then wrapped his fingers around her chin and head to make her watch as the man died. Not of blood loss, but septic shock. With fear in her eyes, Abel touched the barrel of his revolver to her temple. The trigger was depressed and brains were scattered onto the bed.

Abel spent much of his time amidst the wild animals, there he had bonded with a mysterious entity. One that spewed sickness, illness, but curiously had no affect on the young man. This had imbued him with unnatural powers. Throwing his lot in with the four (five for some odd reason) horsemen seemed like a natural progression for this outlaw. Spreading disease by any vector: be it darts, contaminated grain, sickly cattle, rodent fluids or bug bites.

Magic: This horseman can shoot out a noxious stream of airborne bacterium which inflict rapid fever onto infected targets, confusion then finally death if left untreated. He can also command similar pathogens which are already present in a person's body, either acting as an adjuvant to the pathogen or calming it, but he cannot cure it. He exhibits command over rodents and parasitic insect species. He also posseses a type of gaseous wraith form, however he mainly uses it as a traversal form as it is quite ephemeral to the physical world.

His eyes also flicker a sickly yellow-to-green, making him quite distinct and easily-identified.

Equipment:
Twin-shoulder holstered Revolvers,
Derringer Pistol,
Kukri Machete,
Bola,
An Andalusian named Stert,
Blowgun,
A deck of flash paper cards coated with an extra-layer of accelerant to make the flash and burn stronger.

 

[Karcen]

Role: death
Name: Abigail " Pandemonium" Eldrige
Age: 24
Personality: Spite full and theatrical Abigail loves nothing more that sowing chaos as she turns town on their heads and on their protectors. She cares far less about gaining money or pulling off heists as she does bringing down a lawman. Towards other outlaws she can be quite friendly and despite her love of chaos she detests hurting children and those that would hurt them.
Backstory: Sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong times, so more than being in one place in one moment and rather one's entire life. Abigail's life was one such case as what should have been a quiet life in the middle where would instead become the birth of a terrifying outlaw. The small town of dread chapel, which despite it's name was a rather nice place, for a frontier town where peace was upheld by one man alone. That man being the sherif Colt Esher. Abigail was born to a loving mother and father who planned to give their daughters the best they could living where they did. There was just one problem, Colt had always had a thing for Abigail's mother and well he did not take well to her getting married to anyone but him. Colt had tried to have her father arrested on the spot, but back in those days he had a partner that had stopped him. Years would pass and Abigail would know constant harassments from the virtue and the townsfolk he had managed to gaslight into shunning the family. Dark rumors were spread and when Abigail was 10 they would finally reach a boiling point. As cattle died and a girl went missing they anger of the town was directed towards the town outcasts.

Colt would come to Abigail's home and tell them that the town was ready to hang them, but her mother could save herself if she would be his woman. He would tell the townsfolk that it had been her husband alone that had killed the cattle and the girl. Abigail's mother instead dove for a gun as if they were going to die then she wanted to take colt with them, or perhaps they might escape. Abigail would never know as Colt was much faster on the draw and before her mother even grabbed the gun, colt had shot her and all that reached the gun was a dead corpse. Colt then quickly changed his target and Shot both her father and Abigail herself, however neither was a kill shot. Instead of finishing them off there Colt instead knocked over a lamp and let the house start to burn. Assuming the fire would finish the Job Colt left to tell the townsfolk how he had saved them.

If colt had been a bit more through with his work he would have noticed Abigail despite being shot was not crippled only injured she could still move. Fighting the pain as the flames rose and consume the house Abigail would try to drag her father out of the house, but despite the shot not being instantly fatal is was mortal. He would tell his daughter to run, to leave the town and escape anywhere was safer than here. Crying Abigail would nod and before the flames trapped her in she got out of her now ex home. What the town thought of finding only 2 bodies in the charred house Abigail wouldn't learn till many years latter.

Instead of running to try to find a new life Abigail instead ran so she could one day avenge her parents and kill the man that had taken them and her home from her. She would somehow survive the harsh lands and over time strike dark deals for power she could use against any lawman. She would make promises of souls she would claim in the name of her dark patrons. She would sign away her soul in exchange for feeding others to the darkness. Eight long years would pass before Abigail would return to Dread chapel.

The town had changed little in the years that Abigail had been gone, but she had changed enough that no one could even recognize her as that little girl that had wanted dead. Abigail would not take her vengeance instantly instead she would start to employ the power she had bargained for, the power over mind and body. She would slowly plant seeds of fear in the minds of those that had made her feel fear her whole life. Over the coming days she would slowly create more and more dread making everyone be on edge at all times as her hold over then grew stronger the longer she stayed.

A whole week would go by as day by day the fear grew as Abigail added small illusions to continue to further agitate people. She could have worked faster, but she didn't want this town to ever recover from her homecoming. Soon enough the town would gather the mayor and his favorite lawman deciding to address the situation. This was it the stage Abigail had waited for and on that day as the mayor spoke she walked up onto the stage that was in the center of the town. When they saw the strange woman walk onto the stage they asked her who she was.

Feeling a flair for the dramatic she answered " I am the righteous hand of god, I'm the devil that you forgot and I've brought hell with me" With that she unleashed a powerful illusion that brought the towns fears to life and with their mind already primed to to brim with fear from the past week chaos erupted. The townsfolk would give into the madness and while Abigail could have just walked away or shot Colt she instead made him look like a monster to the frenzied people and watched with a smile as they tore him apart. Seeing her work here done, and honestly not caring what happened to the rest of the people Abigail would leave. The mod meanwhile would start to burn the town down and tear each other apart in their madness. that was one lawman's soul and who knew how many townspeople sent to her patrons, but such dark forces were every hungry and Abigail didn't want to default so she needed to find another city to work on.


Magic: Abigail gas bargained for the power over the minds and senses of others. While mind control isn't something she can do she can nudge, plant ideas, and persuade others to beilive what she says. Her power is best used to slowly influence others building ideas and feelings. The longer she has to work the more she can do. Still when she needs to have something work now she can create illusions tricking peoples senses beyond just what they see and hear.

Equipment:
A pair of revolvers
Havoc: a black horse with red eyes and main. It is a "gift" from her patrons and is in fact a nightmare sent to keep Abigail from reniging on her deal.

 

[Remembrance]

Role: Horseman of Death

Name: Estes Filemonsen

Age: 29

Personality:
Estes has only ever known battle. His mind is a sharpened stick, made lethal by its many years of reinforcing. It is no lie to say that Estes is resilient, having experienced unimaginable hardships. It is through those that Estes has learned to push through and keep fighting. Though he may be pragmatic and stoic, he is deeply troubled by the violence and bloodshed he has witnessed, he grows ever increasingly tired of the constant fighting.

Backstory:
Estes was born too late. For years, a movement westward had washed his people from their ancestral grounds. He witnessed, with his own virid eyes, the friends and families he has had to abandon. However, in spite of the dangers and risks, he remained dedicated to defending his people and upholding their way of life. It was only after a heroic victory against the invaders, did Estes truly regret the life he was living. With the years that went, he grew wiser. His knowledge of the world changed. He questioned, for once, why his people had to suffer. Estes wondered, for once, if there was a better way to live.

His pleas and concerns went unheeded; left at the feet of his leaders; let loose into the fire for it to be forgotten. Rebuffed by others, Estes was told in many varieties how this one war was absolutely necessary to protect their way of life. Without a doubt, it was his duty to fight against the enemies of his people, but could there not be an end? Over the course of many campaigns and battles, Estes became disillusioned with the destruction this war had wrought. It caused violence amongst brothers and deaths amongst families. He knew there was a better way, a world where two could become one. It was so simple, yet they could never reason peace.

Eventually, Estes began to distance himself from the other warriors in his clan. He fought when he was required to, but he could never take as much pleasure in the violence as others did. He began to reflect, to look inward on his weary life and judge it. During one of his many leisure-like activities, he came across a thing undescribable.

It spooked his lacrid eyes, failing his brain in understanding what he gazed at. There was nothing there yet that pocket of space contained unimaginable concepts. Flashing depictions of prideful slaughter. Nay, it was not pride, it was a rightful slaughter. As if the loss of life was a thing that could be reaped and sowed. It frightened him, yet its dreadful images carried a promise. One that could end everything. That was a promise Estes was willing to make.

Magic: Wherever Estes may be, on whatever surface his body may interact with, he will promote the full cycle of life. His step upon grass will cause dormant seeds to sprout, bloom, then wither into dust. This effect carries out on whatever touches Estes, though he can mitigate it to some effect.

Equipment:
Blowpipe equipped with both lethal and non-lethal darts
Bow & Arrows, quiver included
A strong, foreign steed named Takoda.

 

[Mx. Broken]

Appearance:
Role: outlaw

Name: Elijah Cutter

Age: 32

Personality: Elijah thrives for battle and the smell of death in the air. He's extremely trigger happy and acts childish when he doesn't get his way. Most of the time he's found draped over a couch or a man if it suits him. He's always had a penchant for mischief and fighting but when he turned 16 he really started to act on his impulses.

Backstory:
Elijah was born piss poor in the dirtiest part of town. His mother was nothing more than an alcoholic who sold her body to anyone who had money, of course that meant that his father wasn't in the picture. At a very young age Elijah had to learn how to protect himself against the world around him, learning to shoot a gun by the age of 6. He's killed many people over the years may it be for money or for fun.

Elijah ran away from home as soon as he turned 10, stealing his mother's horse and her money, he was a wonderer for many years, finally finding a home when he turned 27 living in an outlaw camp, taking any job he could to scrape by. He stole, killed, and attacked anyone he could, just to calm himself down. By the time he turned 29 he'd become an alcoholic like his mother, turning to booze as an outlet for stress.

Elijah was alone most of his life which means that he's had no time for women or men or even friends, and he prefers it that way, he's always been a one man show, just him and his horse.

Magic: he can reanimate the corpses of people he's killed and use them to attack people.

Equipment: Elijah carries a .45 pistol and rope at all times, he considers them a nessesity. Other things he usually carries around are a bottle of rum, a box of ammo, and a hunting knife

 

[zilcher]

Appearance: Fair-haired, light tan, buttoned brown clothing begotten by the most muddied leather in the continent. Built like a barley stalk in several respects he aches to correct. Always keeps a hand in his pocket, fiddling with a find from the road or the tangled tails of his vermin friends. Art by Javier Charro.

Role: Horseman of Pestilence

Name: Bennett Lazarus Boone

Age: 27

Personality: Bad temper, worse grip on reality. Boone clings to his morals the way a parasite might drain its host of all that it has, leaving a shrivelled, mindless carcass that’s impossible to recognise as a derivative of anything natural. Polite, courteous, and incredibly judgemental, his gilded cage of an upbringing makes itself known in his needlessly wordy turns of speech as well as his brash stance in conversation. He detests beginning fights, and the idea of finishing them alone is as horrible as the notion that he might ever be alone. Though he’s played the devil’s advocate for the team to stay in more luxurious accommodations than what’s strictly plausible when they’re trying to lay low, his loyalty goes far beyond his puerile whining, and he would lay down his life to protect that of his teammates’. Only if he knew he’d get a nicer procession for it, obviously. His cautious, creative nature is riddled with the rot of greed and envy, and if fortune swings even an inch closer to threatening the illusion of lavish, hard-earned wealth he’s built up for his future, he’s liable to have every one of his facades crack to reveal the self-obsessed man within. Seeing as he already talks to rodent corpses on the regular, he isn’t very sure how much farther he’s got to fall, but neither is he keen on finding out where others can see.

Underneath his pretence for democratic solutions, which he really only keeps in the hopes a ransom might pay more than a ‘dead or alive’ poster maker, he has quite the admiration for brutal efficiency and continues to work up the courage to get in closer with his fighting style. Red is a much prettier dye for gloves than a purely passive white, no?

Backstory: As was proper for any bastard, Bennett Lazarus Boone was born among rattling bones and crumbling cathedral graves, his baptism without glamour and his various funerals without mourners. His mother, now a bedridden mass of bile and less describable ailments, was a sacrificial wolf of a woman, gambling with the game of love until it won her fortune and lost her everything else. His father, now a Templar whose only actionable miracle would be keeping his head away from the barrel of Boone’s gun, was a holier-than-thou chaplain whose soldiers were nothing more than glorified horseback tourists, guns holstered and tax demands spat out their mouths like prayers. Boone was and will be dust unto dust, confused and desperate for companionship, the likes of which he could only attain through control. Control he couldn’t have without the influence only criminals could claim.

His parents had influence, when they hadn’t ruined each other just yet. While their respective domains began and ended with seedy saloons and seedier medical camps, there was an instant connection to them that commanded rooms whittle themselves into tunnels of star-crossed love. Moth to flame, man to wine. There had been a civil war brewing between the territories, but at the time, soldiers were no more concerned with the possibility of sabotage than the outcomes of their drunken dalliance. His mother was a pretty little hellion dodging the responsibilities of her parents’ decaying ranch, and played along with their antics as long as it could guarantee her survival for another day or two. After a few years in this position, she was in possession of many pretty little assets other than her proficiency with firewater fermenting, as an uncomfortable Boone has been told by some dozens of jilted suitors. In time, she became a staple of the bar, unmoved by even the most obvious threats against her family’s property.

Enter his father: stupid, reckless, handsome in comparison to all other stupid and reckless clients for his forbidden nature alone. Mostly stupid. A member of the clergy forced to join his side’s frontlines as some kind of moral support (meat shield, more likely, but the conflict refused to place itself on sacred ground), he kept up an air of romantic disinterest and mild-mannered humility. He was pure, and thus a challenge to be conquered. Little did his comrades or his future wife know that he was very easy to conquer in any definition of the word, or that they would soon descend into the hell they called love. But for then, it was pure mishap, an accident of proximity. Such were the excuses they told themselves again and again and again, for what was the point of contrition if one had nothing to apologise for?

Their trysts remained clandestine for years. Even after the battle had been settled, Father Lazarus–and he became a Father at one point or another, to one god or another, before he became Boone’s father, and though Boone doesn’t want to think of him as a father he is bitter every time he’s reminded he will remain second to the gods until he can become an archfiend–visited and spent empty hours in the confession booth crying out for several types of sin with his darling Clementine. On their wilder nights, they would challenge each other to marathons of petty thievery, seeing how much they could syphon from their professions’ patrons until they were dizzy enough to think the other was a good enough lover again, and again, and again. Clementine was more lucid, as difficult as it is for Boone to imagine his mother as lucid these days, and took to dipping in Lazarus’s pockets with ease. Eventually, she amassed enough to get the old ranch up and running again, while Lazarus became known as a veteran saint taking pity on their decrepit chapel to the public and a scholar of underworld magicks in private. Everything was quite nice, really.

There was another circle of hell for them to be admitted to, though, and that was childbearing. As the symptoms of this terrible misfortune began seeping into Clementine’s daily life, Lazarus whisked her away daily to ‘bless’ her body, whisper petitions, compare the size of her stomach to the diagrams of his hallowed texts. While Clementine interpreted this as paternal concern, his motives were better recounted as damage assessment and subsequent control. Control he couldn’t have without the influence only those of heaven or hell could claim.

On the eve his son had been born in the chapel graveyard, swathed in too many blankets to scream in the slightest, Lazarus had put into motion the greatest blessing of all, for his damned family: a path to subliming above. Which, needless to say, would exclude him, since he had much left to do for this world, and Clementine, for she had much left to do for him. Boone would be nothing more than a forgotten passage in the scripture of their life together, a lamb laid to stone for the benefit of their community at large. The appropriate movements of the procession had already been discussed with Lazarus’s gods, or whatever they were. Candles burning, lightning crackling, fresh soil laid out in labyrinthine patterns around the swaddled-shut baby. The curses’ rites were recited with fervour, attracting throngs of scampering creatures dressed in disease to the baby, ready to welcome another pest into their ranks. Everything was quite nice, really, until by pure chance, a grasshopper carrying foreign bacteria had landed in Lazarus’s eye.

Bystanders will tell you about the explosion. The debris. It wasn’t particularly nice to look at, wherever you were standing.

The boy had survived, against every precaution his father had taken. Before the hearsay could ruin his reputation for eternity, Lazarus was gone, and with him went most of Clementine. Her unceasing, inconsolable wails echoed through ruined stone and ashen wood, while Boone continued his stillness in her arms. In uncertainty of his next meal, yes, but also in curiosity for the way the scene was something. Keening, kneeling, a figure genuflecting in a broken palace. The plague-carriers, gathering around, almost lifting her up. A good son would’ve felt concern for his mother rather than himself, he’s sure now. He’s just as sure now that good does not equal effective, and further asserts that if he cared about anything other than money and company, he would be truly dead.

Boone grew up with the sort of money that bought adequate education but neglected to present its footnotes of social debit and include any guides to healthy outlets of emotion in its curriculum. His mother took over the crumbling church, furbishing it with the remnants of Lazarus’s blasphemous research as though he had ascended, after all, and he was the new deity to pray for. Boone was left to contend with scandalmongers and debt-collectors for the majority of his childhood and adolescence, to run errands and cast himself in the mould of someone terrible enough to make a living yet virtuous enough to be desirable.

He was never interested in being a farmhand, for the record. Or a farrier. Or a cattle dung collector. It was just another expectation he had to meet, another piece of his mother he had to keep shoving in the hollow husk she was for posterity. And, perhaps, an idiotic hope that she would return to how she was before the tragedy of his existence. He was lonely, after all, his evident welfare nothing more than sluggish quicksand layered over the wounds of rejection and abandonment. Potential playmates, human ones, were concerned with such negligible hypotheticals as ‘hygiene’ and his ‘tendency to violent possessiveness over objects that weren’t his in the first place’. Quickly, he found his favourites in the farm’s seasonal nemeses: Mice were silent, the deceased of their numbers quieter yet. The locusts that tore apart the trees and crops, meanwhile, were the closest of friends, working in tandem to annihilate the world that gave them life. It did humanity no good to sympathise with nature, as went the proverbs, for nature did nothing to make itself a sympathetic force. Boone thought otherwise. Against his better judgement, he continued talking to them without questioning if they ever heard, leaving bark and grain for them to steal away when he was feeling particularly spiteful towards his employers.

Still, the boy was loyal. When a rival barn managed to reap a profit greater than anyone could’ve earned without some dirty digging, Boone decided to put his connections to use, sending the diseased to gnaw on every leg in the vicinity and making them chuck their diseased down the throats of the opponents’ horses. His plan worked much better than expected, creating an epidemic that drew the attention of a frontier doctor famed for his brutal methods. Boone thought that the doctor would be his day of reckoning, the moment where the jig went belly-up. Then he saw the doctor using his rats to finish off the rest of the horses.

So maybe their family-like partnership was entirely partly dependent on blackmail. That didn’t make it any less fun for Boone. He learned all the ropes of a medical practitioner as swiftly as they could be said to him: poisoning, bloodletting, faking tears. The good doctor, as he called himself ironically and others vowed of him wholeheartedly, was an expert at extortion in his own right and incredibly nimble despite his age. While Boone discussed the effects of this herb or that ointment with their customers, the good doctor would be ransacking the bedrooms for anything that could possibly be pawned, silencing anything in his path with a specialised formula for tranquility. They were symbiotic, two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, they eventually stole enough coin to circle back around to Boone’s residence, where the good doctor met Clementine. She still had her irresistible charms, and her onset insanity only made her more attractive. Boone wasn’t stupid, but he was desperate to pretend the father he never had wasn’t becoming the original father he never had, just as the good doctor was desperate to own Clementine. Not love. Own.

“All this would be forgotten if you’d simply act grateful, for once in your worthless life. Your mother could marry me,” the good doctor had said. Not in such kind words, though.

“She could,” agreed Boone. “But she wouldn’t.”

That was all that mattered, when he’d crept into his mentor’s tent in the night with a vial of permanent sleeping potion meant for only the most dangerous animals. The good doctor went out with a gurgle and a smile, the clock church striking twelve. As the lights in his eyes flickered the red of Boone’s old night terrors, an epiphany struck the young man: he was alone in every way but one, and he had to get as far away from home as possible.

Overnight his town had become a landscape of contagious horror. He knew that, on some level, he was immune. Decades of working with induced illness would strengthen natural bodily defenses, and the supernatural curses that had been placed on him spared him solely for the torture of watching those he knew be consumed by viral infestation.

As his nightly sojourns to more dangerous locations brought him farther from home, Boone adopted the identity of the good doctor’s estranged son, which already bought him more of a reputation than money ever could. There was also the bonus of a spot in one of the bigger county’s gangs. He was their field physician as well as their expert in small-scale subterfuge; a meek bartender whose ingredients always happened to cause expensively-treated stomach problems, a smith’s prentice whose. He grew bolder and better at deceit, though he never dared tell an outright lie. His words were the truth, merely adorned with shiny loquaicousness that may or may not have distracted from their ugly message.

His cover went down brilliantly until the doctor’s true offspring came calling as none other than a newly promoted deputy. Boone could’ve fought for his legacy, to swear off crime until every single person who’d succumbed to the illness had been saved. He could’ve dueled the hothead to the death, using a gun he’d never shot anyone with in a lethal sense. He could’ve stayed. But really, when did he ever start working to get what he wanted?

Death via insect-born illness seemed like the best exit. Plausible, theatrical. He would’ve penned the obituary himself, if he wasn’t utterly convinced that his would give away his identity from the first word. So, the local press dedicated a scrap of paper to him, and that was that: Bennett Lazarus Boone, male spinster and practitioner of utterly ineffective medicine, was dead. It pained him to read through all the errors, obviously, but he doubted most people would notice a difference in either his apparent lack of life or the fact all their budding historians were illiterate.

What pains him most, less obviously, is his last memory of his mother. He sent the tenth member of the Carnavales, a merry troupe of roadkill he’d grown attached to, to root through the memorabilia of his less successful experiments. It was meant to be a calming activity, one that preoccupied him with something that looked fanciful and significant and totally preventing him from helping haggle for supplies or fight off bandits. Instead, he was met with an image brought from his childhood visions to life, with changes he can neither fully remember nor ever forget: she was crying, again, kneeling again, but for him. Not for the son of her falsely betrothed Lazarus, but for her Bennett. Their home’s condition had already begun to decline, he noticed, in lieu of looking at his mother. Too little, too late, and the corner mold was undergoing a fascinating transition from green to greener.

He looked at her again, obviously, for as long as the rat’s body could withstand it. More crying. More pleas for some kind of panacea in an old language he neither knew nor knew his mother to speak. And was she eating–?

Boone has sought the cure for half a decade. Along the way, he’s been distracted. His naivete has been a double-edged sword, as has been proven by instances wherein he’s insisted on talking things out with rivals and ended up with a double-edged sword slicing up his clothing. His sense of justice has been, slowly but surely, turned into a revolting selfishness, with every insistence of the greater good’s future gratitude bringing him closer to Lazarus in spirit. His sentimentality has prevented him from accepting the desecration or deserting of several allies, chipping away at his cognitive cornerstone every day. Yet, his information-gathering abilities kept him going with many a disorganised mob, with his undying gullibility being a shiny scutcheon on the carriage to infamy. He has yet to grasp the scales to which his magic operates, and he knows he must learn more on the path to notoriety if he is to be judge, jury, executioner, and most importantly, savior. He knows, then, that he must make himself a useful kind of pest. No pests are safer than the Horsemen, in his mind, even if their numbers are sometimes as confusing as their mission.

Magic: Something other than a relative rancidity that tethers Boone to the very nature of disease; something arcane that he both desires to exploit and craves to rid himself of once and for all. Aside from his seeming immunity to illness, he’s discovered an ability to understand the hissing of rodents and the buzzing of locusts, and is furthermore able to communicate with them for hours on end. Through a series of rituals that require only a pinch of sand over flame and the words of an ancient, now long destroyed tome, he may gain control of a given rat until it is destroyed, disintegrated, or decomposed past the point of letting him into its psyche. This trick works particularly well with the band of companions he calls the Carnavales, who wear miniature hats, don miniature buttons, and have been thoroughly abused to the point where he can hardly hear, see, or move in some of their remains. In general, however, he prefers to keep the subjects of his forsaken kingdom alive, given that gossip spreads faster than infection in their insipid circles.

Equipment:

• A satchel often fastened to his belt, containing nine rats in various states of decoration and/or mutilation, their limbs brought together by bloodied twine.
• Two Peacemaker-model revolvers, routinely shined.
• A farrier’s knife, its paring hook slightly rusted.
• A more traditional pocket knife, its blade spanning the length of his hand.

 

[Aridis]

Role: Outlaw

Name: Blair Wight

Age: ~26

Personality:
Blair isn’t necessarily quiet or shy, but she isn’t the type to initiate an encounter. With her frequent inability to tell the difference between living and dead, she’s learned that it’s best to not be the first voice. More than once, she’s struck up a conversation with someone who wasn’t physically there, and had ended up embarrassing herself. As soon as she’s certain of your mortality, she’s likely to open up right away. Blair is awful at interacting with other people, though damn does she try. With how often she gets her foot stuck in her mouth, it’s a surprise she’s still alive.

She can be a bit distant at times, even if there is only one person and object to physically focus on at a time. She often fades into a different world entirely (in a purely figurative sense), which ends with her missing important and obvious details. At the same time, there are moments where she’ll pick out small details that most people would miss even if they were paying close attention.

She’s a bit of an odd-ball with a contradictory personality, but she’s doing her best. Don’t mistake clumsiness and fogginess with stupidity, though. Blair is very aware of how dangerous the world can be.

Ironically, death isn’t something that scares her. It’s everything that comes before it that’s terrifying.

Backstory:
That's the thing, not even she knows her own past. Not all of it, anyway. Blair can remember small moments, but nothing to point her in the right direction.

She remembers being surrounded by books in a small, cramped area. She remembers a kind, smiling face leading her down a damp tunnel for another adventure. She remembers the smell of flowers. The taste of bad wine and the warm feeling of leaning against someone on a cold night. Melodies and inside jokes that she can’t recall the context of. Small burst of anxiety that keeps her up at night, but without any apparent reason. Small, insignificant things that never give her a clue.

Her story begins when she woke up at the base of a ravine, after being washed away from wherever by a flash flood. No amount of backtracking helped her to discover what had happened. No town she visited held any answers, and in fact being around other people only brought trouble. Blair found out very quickly how dangerous her own touch was. On more than one occasion, she had accidentally caused mass hysteria. In the first town she found herself in after waking up, her touch caused a man to panic and become severely paranoid; he was convinced that if anyone tried to touch him ever again, he'd die. In the next town, she caused several people to fall unconscious or ill.

This wasn't even including her other ability, which made it just as difficult to find honest help. Blair could see dead people. She could see peoples' souls as they were, whether they were in a body, free floating, or in some kind of object. Problem is, she can't tell the difference between them and their more fleshy counterparts. That made it extremely difficult to talk to people, as half the time she'd just be speaking to a ghost. And by the time she realized her mistake, she'd be seen as a lunatic. It was a never ending cycle of bad luck.

Eventually, she started skipping the middleman and just started to take what she needed. She took to sneaking around and stealing. Blair left behind payment where she could, but it wasn't often that she had cash to burn. She'd stolen a fair share of horses, and only drove one of them mad by mistake. Any time she'd get caught, if fighting didn't work she'd resort to spreading panic or sickness. The effects of her ability only lasted so long, however, so she'd need to keep running.

That's where she is now. Running. Hopping from group to group and place to place until either Death takes her or she unlocks her past.

Magic:

• Passive: Can see souls, alive or dead. Cannot tell the difference between the living and the dead, except at night. More of an inconvenience than a useful ability.
• Main: Blair doesn't just see souls, she can touch them. This ability requires skin-to-skin contact, but she holds the ability to not only wound the flesh, but one's very essence. This power is most effective against regular mortals, as people like the Horsemen and the Virtues have an extra layer of "protection" around their souls. Just touching a soul doesn't injure it, but the feeling is incredibly invasive and unsettling; to the point where some weaker minds go crazy just trying to get away from the sensation. An injury to one's soul can come with several negative side effects such as: The inability to heal physical injuries without divine/extraplanar aid, Weakened power, Weakened immune system/prolonged illness, or a Damaged tie to one's deity/patron.

Other:

• Inability to feel pain: Great 10% of the time, for the other 90%, it causes the idiot to not notice her own limitations
• Inability to feel hunger/fatigue to a certain point: Much less useful than the pain threshold, this quirk just causes issues if left unchecked. Luckily, Blair is pretty decent at keeping track

Equipment:

• Extra pair of leather gloves
• Engraved Pistol (stolen, of course)
• Silver Dagger
• So many rusty knives
• Pocket journal
• Apaloosa mare named Dolly (also stolen)