Notebook
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Description:Name: Confidential, addressed as the Acolyte.
Origin/Class: Cruel Fate (Church Servant).
Status: Acolyte of the Healing Church.
Age: Sixteen or so; he himself is uncertain.
Birthplace: Unknown; orphaned foundling.
Gender: Male, or at least ostensibly male.
Religion: Communion of the Healing Church.
Education: Instructed at the Orphanage.
Scent: Incense, clinical linens, lumenflowers.
Appearance:Height/Weight: 5'4" (164 cm). 46 kg (102 lb).
Build: Slender, willowy, compact, ectomorph.
Posture: Diffident, slack, listless, awkward.
Skin: Pallid, the colour of old white cinders.
Hair: A ghostly thicket of wild ashen tangles.
Eyes: Pthumerian eyes with black sclerae.
Face: Youthful, but with bruised eye sockets.
Voice: Childlike, mumbling, languorous.
Marks: Incision scars on spine, arms and legs. -
Background:
The circumstances surrounding the Acolyte and his origins remain something of a secret, as does the nature of his Pthumerian heritage. But it is a matter of clerical record that the unnamed foundling was deposited and subsequently accommodated within the Orphanage of the Cathedral Ward in the city of Yharnam, alongside fellow orphans who would become potent unseen thinkers for the Healing Church. The child's formative years differed from those of his peers, however. His unique condition recommended him to be suitable as a subject for a range of experiments carried out under the skilled direction of the White Church Doctors in the Grand Cathedral’s highly secretive Research Hall.
Throughout his juvenile years, the Acolyte was subjected to certain esoteric medical treatments not unlike those employed by and administered upon his much larger kinsmen, the Pthumerian Church Servants of the Cathedral Ward—treatments involving the confidential concoction referred to as Blue Elixir or Medicamentum Caeruleum. This neuroleptic solution enhanced the child's predisposition to arcane reception, but it also had the unfortunate side-effect of severely numbing his mental faculties—ruling out any possibility of his receiving the same academic education as the other young students of the Orphanage, those destined for bright futures in the Choir. Instead, the Church felt his potential lay in other avenues.
Amongst other things, the Acolyte was introduced to those curious eldritch invertebrates which are commonly referred to as Phantasms. Thanks to his particular physiology, the child’s body soon proved amenable to symbiosis with the Phantasms, and before long he had been nurtured into a living receptacle for these writhing mediums of the ineffable Cosmos. This had the desired effect of instilling in the boy a prodigious affinity for the arcane arts, and a profound sensitivity to perceiving the unseen. Thus empowered, he would serve as an instrumental asset for the mystics and doctors of the Healing Church in their pursuit of the Eldritch Truth. -
