Misanthrope

The Bat

• Basic Info

  • Birthname: Ix Kan Boar
  • Sex: Male
  • Race: Camazotz
  • Alignment: Neutral Evil
  • Language: Tazeltal, K'iche, Common Tongue
  • Deity: Guzkumatz, Ixtab, Camaztoz
  • Age: 32 (Undead)
  • Body Type: About average, gangly, with potbelly.
  • Height: 6'3"
  • Weight: 184 lbs.
  • Complextion: Pale Fawn
  • Hair: None.
  • Eyes: Black, beady, menacing.
  • Scars: Torn ears; a large, gaping mouth where his stomach should be.
  • Orientation: Straight
  • Relationship Status: Single and primarily not interested.
  • Likes: Floral perfumes, money, tobacco, whiskey and rye.
  • Dislikes: Modern religion, "lesser" species.

• Gallery

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• The Demon

  Like two sides of a coin, within the monster there waits two very opposite faces, both seamlessly entwined to one another. Not particularly volatile, though neither the sweetest berry on the bush, the entirety of his complex can be simmered into one very potent trait: manipulation. There is not one step that he takes, one smile he forces, or one bone he snaps without first considering the benefits to himself. He is more than willing to be a charming and debonair gentleman of great esteem when there is a wealthy vixen on his arm, lining his pockets with gold and making sure each meal has a dozen courses. However, if the cash flow runs dry, he would not hesitate to make a meal out of her instead. Cannibalism, though his cultured mind finds it barbaric, is a bad habit he’s kept from long ago, and is practiced as somewhat of a guilty pleasure. Due to a mostly unsavory past, neither fear nor happiness come fairly easily to him, leaving him to live his life at an uncomfortable baseline covered by elaborate masks of slyly feigned emotion. His only true alliance, while forced, is to the demon laying directly beneath his ribcage, the toothy grin of the devil named “Leit”. Though this demon tricks his pulse into believing he's still alive, it has robbed him of earthly pleasures like the satisfaction of being full of a warm meal, the buzz of alcohol, the high of tobacco, and the climax of being with a woman. This, of course, doesn't mean he has stopped trying. His rigid, stony, religious training had long ago been tormented and twisted into his own corrupt version of prayer and worship. He has a strong affinity for jazz music, floral perfume and rabbit meat, and a lovable distaste for species without wings.

• The Story

  The problem with telling stories is knowing where to begin, isn’t it?

  
  
  I could tell you about my birth, which I of course have no recollection of. I imagine it took place in the great city of Ox Te' Tuun to a beautiful girl of about seventeen, who had perhaps died to give me life, or otherwise was probably very surprised to have her infant son taken away from her by the very priest who had impregnated her. I’m not entirely sure if I never asked for the story about mother, or if I’ve forgotten it all together, but regardless I obviously wasn’t too heartsick about it. After all, I had my father.
  
  Dear old dad was a high priest in our city. He was the second son of our previous king, whose name I’ve forgotten, brother to our current king, whose name has slipped my mind, and uncle to the child that would kill us all, my cousin, Cocom. His priestly duties included watching the stars for signs of chaos and distress, following the cyclical life of maize to predict if our society would boom or starve, offering counsel to grieving families, creating important calendars, and pretending to abstain from fucking my many step mothers when the Gods were angry with us.
  
  Oh, and training me, I suppose.
  
  I never really had much say in my career. From the time I was six years old I was taught to read and write, to see the stars and to interpret their meanings, to see the life cycle of plants as a very real metaphor for our own, to reach an enhanced spiritual state in dreams and “altered” states, and of course the duty everyone wants to hear most about when I tell this story; to tear the heart out of a (barely) living man’s chest. Or should I say “person’s” chest. There were ladies, too. I don’t want to sound like a chauvinist. But I digress; that was the duty I was intended to preform. Sacrifices. Being the son of the High Priest doesn’t actually win you many favours, and only the lowest witch doctors on the totem-pole actually get their hands dirty - pardon the expression. Now that I think back on it, my work was more about culling the population when times got tough and food got scarce than actually appeasing the heavenly bodies, but I took my work seriously.
  
  Hmm? What did I mean by “altered states”? My friend, my brothers and I had no rivals when it came to how ridiculously goddamn high we used to get. Mushrooms, leaf milk, marijuana incenses; fuck, we even licked a toad once or twice. All in a days work, right? Anyway, what was I talking about?
  
  Most of my previous life is a murky blur, to be honest with you. I married when I was eighteen - yes, we were allowed to do that. Her name was Xoc, and, by God, she was absolutely beautiful. I still remember how soft she was, how the cream in her fur spotted - how strangely blue her eyes were. She gave me two daughters, who, without question, were tied in being the most beautiful women in the world. We were together for thirteen years, during that time Cocom had come into power, and the strangers had started to arrive.
  
  At first they were just a nuisance. Occasionally they’d waltz into our city and, in their strange tongue, ask us to trade goods with them. They would ask for our gold and emeralds and metals of our city, and in return they offered ugly sheets of shiny cloth - which I now know as satin - spices that tasted awful on anything, poorly made weapons, terrible teas and awful, smelly, ridable creatures. Yes, horses, I mean you. Needless to say, we weren’t stupid. They had nothing that we needed or wanted, particularly in exchange for our most cherished goods. We turned them away time and time again, and each time they came back more and more insistent, until I suppose they just couldn’t handle rejection anymore. In an act that was probably intended to intimidate, one of their soldiers mortally wounded one of our children. Unfortunately for both them and us, they over estimated the benevolence of our dear king. His verdict was immediate and unwavering; they had killed one of our precious youths, the ultimate insult, and there was only one appropriate response.
  
  We would eat them.
  
  Yes, I know, I sort of left that part out before. It’s a fact not commonly appreciated amongst pleasant company, but it is a fact nonetheless. Every life I took, every heart I removed, every body I mutilated was all put to good use. I actually ate one of my own sisters with corn and sweet potatoes.
  
  Anyway, we began capturing them one by one, then two by twos, when finally we had a sufficient collection livestock - a farm big enough to at least make a point. To be honest, it was a heartfelt but ill thought out plan. Keeping them alive and fat was taking up more food and resources than their bony asses actually gave us, so eventually, as to not waste all that blood, we organized a mass sacrifice. By that time, we had captured the very same soldier that had started this whole messy situation, and being the head of our clergy, Cocom himself declared that he would be the one to commit the sacrifice. Little did we know that this soldier - I think his name was Alfonso - was the very important head of the stranger’s expedition, and had very important connections back in where ever it was they had come from. Word spread, I suppose, of his murder to the mother country, and while we were all good and proud of ourselves for a long time, we didn’t know how soon the axe would fall.
  
  Hah. Excuse me, you’ll understand soon.
  
  After a long period of peace and quiet and mostly normal daily lives, a day came when men on horses in shiny metal armour came and raided our great city. It happened so quickly, I don’t think I could describe it even if I tried. Our city was modest in population in comparison to the cities of today. When I say it was great, and powerful, I mean there was, at best, 20,000 people within it’s walls, and only about two thousand of those were soldiers, along with the fifty trained priests. The invaders had at least matched our strength, and coupled with better weapons, better shields, and those goddamn horses, we were easily taken. They took our civilians first, then to our sorry excuse for an army, and when they finally came for us, the monsters that had slaughtered their people, we had no fight left in us. My wife and I accepted our fates and silently watched as they separated us from our daughters, and us from each other. That was the last time I saw those gorgeous blue eyes.
  
  They corralled us, the priests, together, away from the city. I expected - I’m sure we all expected - that they were just bringing us to their commander to slaughter us in front of him. We were wrong, however. We were condemned to a fate much worse. We were forced to live among them - as slaves and prisoners, but among them nonetheless - and each day they corrupted our saintly minds. We were taught to speak their language - your language - and punished harshly when we didn’t. We were taught to read and write, to cook their food and to make their clothes, but the most degrading act they forced upon us is also the biggest part of me today. They stripped us of our gods - of our father Camazotz, and mother Ixtab - and replaced them with their own. A selfish, wrathful, twisted single entity who we bowed to and prayed to and ate bread and wine to appease. Their indoctrination took a year, maybe two, but eventually our strong wills were bent to theirs, and the one they called the True God. After we could understand their tongue, their culture, and their religion to its fullest extent, they held counsel and, finally, sentenced us to execution.
  
  By this time, our once intimate and respectful relationship with death had been warped into utter terror. We had been told - we had been brainwashed into believing that our entire lives had been a pit of sin, and that we needed severe penance in order to reach the all-loving afterlife; a place that, in our old life, eating our mothers and hanging ourselves would have been a straight ticket to. They made us believe that it was likely that no amount of retribution would wash our souls clean, and we would probably burn for eternity in a place they called Hell. They told us it would take years - decades, maybe, and we had but days left. We were scared. We prayed and cried and begged every night for God to have mercy on us, that we were sorry, that we were blind to his ways but had seen the light!
  
  ... I remember standing before my executioner, masked in a black cowl, though I knew exactly who he was. His stench was undeniable. He was rabbit. They knelt me in front of a block of wood, one side conveniently shaven so I could fit my chin “comfortably” over it to expose my bare neck and vertebrae. They read me the same script they had for the recently deceased brothers before me, and then they asked me something odd, but I didn’t question it in the moment. They asked me to forgive my executioner, for he was just acting as the hand of God almighty, and I gave my forgiveness without thought. It wasn’t until I rested my chin on that conveniently carved nook that I realized how absurd I had been these last few months. How my fear in this one true God was foolish. What God would do this? What God would tell me I was wrong for killing by allowing another follower to kill me? I realized how stupid I had been, fearing hell, when I knew mother Ixtab would be there to ferry me to my rightful home. In that moment I hated them, these strangers - I hated them so passionately that it boiled in my belly. I did not forgive this fuck of a rabbit, nor could I barre to hear him breathe. Why would I submit to death like this? Why would I just roll over and die without a last stand?! Fuck their god and fuck their hell!
  
  And that’s when the axe fell.
  
  I told you you’d get it.
  
  The transition between life and death was so quick I don’t think it really existed at all. One second, I was breathing, scared, and furious, and the next I was kneeling, in the same spot I had been, but everyone around me had gone. There was no block of wood with one side shaved down, no fucking rabbit with an axe, no strangers at all. There was only me, the jungle, and a light breathing on my neck. When I turned around, there was only what I could describe as ... something, behind me. It was grotesque, misshapen, with long, black fur and huge serrated teeth. It was twisted and deformed, yet I didn’t fear it. It called me by name, and offered to make a deal with me. He - and I say he tentatively. To this day, I don’t know whether the voice I heard was female or male, or neither at all.
  
  He said his name was Leit, that he had heard me, my cry of sacrilege and my martyrdom - my unwavering love to Ixtab. He told me I was stupid for believing any of it, and that he was going to make me a deal. In that moment, I’m not sure why, and I honestly can’t describe it, but I saw what he meant immediately - like I was seeing the world through his ancient eyes. I was stupid. I was stupid for fearing and praying and worshiping and devoting my life to ridiculous rituals. He told me that he was going to return me to their realm - to the world of the living. He told me I would have my vengeance, he told me I would have power, he told me that I would be able to live a life anew, and his price would be small. “Share your body with me”, he cooed, “I will fill your lungs with air if you also breathe for me. I will fill your veins with blood if you also bleed for me..”
  
  He went on forever, really, but because that anger I had was still drilling through what I can only describe as my body, I accepted his offer without ever once weighing the options. He had told me that, he would keep be alive indefinitely, but should I die again, that was it. We would switch roles. He would own my body, and I would - you know, I’m not sure. Perhaps be lost in a void somewhere, or not exist at all. Before I could reconsider, I felt a tremendous weight upon me - and it was then I realized how at peace I had been. I knew I was alive again, and it was torturous. The hunger I felt in my gut was agony, I had to consider every breath I took, my eyes hurt, my whole body was heavy. All I wanted to do was be in that peaceful jungle again - back on the other side. Back with Leit. I thought about hanging myself - letting Leit take me. All I wanted was death.
  
  “I would reconsider,” I heard a voice - a very familiar voice - say. It took a moment for me to realize where it had come from, and I wasn’t too impressed when I figured it out. Upon my abdomen was a gash, and in that gash was a fine set of serrated teeth. It was then I realized I was grasping at my neck, which around it had some sort of leather corset, with long, black, silky fur stemming from the base. The teeth on my chest continued, “That’s the only thing that’s keeping your head on. I wouldn’t go playing with it. Come now, darling. We have work to do. did I mention they cut out your heart?”
  
  That was the first time I felt Leit inside me. His words gently reminded me why I was here, what I needed to do, and filled me with a rage that was so unfamiliar to me, I’m sure it wasn’t my own. They had cut out my heart? After I was dead? To add insult to murder? My teeth felt tougher, my jaws stronger, my claws sharper, all of them ACHING to be used...
  
  I wont bore you with that part of the story, or how I came to be here. That’s unimportant. In fact, I don’t know why I told you any of this at all.
  
  Come now, dear. What is it that you wanted to confess?