Wormwood

Intro

• Shorthand

  • Full Name: Leslie Secretan
  • Race: Dullahan
  • Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
  • Height: 6'1
  • Weight: 170lbs
  • Complexion: Olive, vitiligo on his left side
  • Hair: Wine red
  • Eyes: Undead violet
  • Handedness: Right
  • Mannerisms: Over exaggerating body language, Slightly obsessive personality
  • Likes: Cemetaries, Spiders, Adventure, Halloween, Horseriding, Music...
  • Dislikes: Modern technology, Logic, to a lesser extent, Violence...

• The Caretaker

  Leslie Secretan was the son of the town cemetary caretaker in the late 1300s, the tail end of medieval times and the beginning of the infamous witch hunts. The European town he lived in was of fair size, big enough that not everyone knew each other and that the town received the occasional bits of news from outside but not big enough to squander the cult-like mentality that consumed many small towns. This spelled danger for Leslie who, on top of being rather reserved, quiet, and good at his job, tended to spend a bit too much time at the graveyard for the townspeople's liking.
  
  Anyone who's lived in a town of such a size (or really, lived at all) would understand how rumors can spread like wildfire. Especially under the condition of boredom, it only takes one small spark to start a wildfire. To the off-season farmer, this is how Leslie was cast:
  

  He's a witch Witch rumors from outside of town Too quiet (hiding secrets) Hangs around graveyard (doing witch things) Works at graveyard (more contact with witch things) Weird marking on his face and arm (probably because witches)

  Not a witch Heavier than a duck I guess he's kinda nice

  
  The odds weren't exactly in his favor.
  
  Over time, the rumors of Leslie and a handful of other young adults in town being witches got out of hand, and, after a freak thunderstorm burnt down the local church building, the town was forced to hold a public hearing to address the issue.
  
  With the crowd of attending townspeople blurting out the rumors they heard to the city officials, who were poorly equipped to handle to riotous mob, the situation quickly escalated. One thing led to another, and in no time at all the platform had been rushed and Leslie and the other accused were lost in the fray. Out of the swarm, a strong hand grabbed Leslie's shoulder before he could escape and jerked him off his feet.
  
  Luckily for the officials, the subsequent fountain of blood from all of the severed arteries in Leslie's neck was just the shock factor needed to quiet the crowd.
  
  He doesn't remember much after that.

• The Headless Horseman

  Shortly after that fiasco, Leslie miraculously found himself awake, discarded in the river outside of town. Of course, he wasn't exactly alive--his head had been cleanly severed from his body and was no where to be found--he'd been resurrected by a spirit of vengeance: having been murdered in cold blood for an unjust crime he didn't even commit made him a perfect candidate. He had been cursed to be a dullahan, meaning he was doomed to wander the earth as a harbinger of death and revenge for the rest of his immortal undeath. However, there were a few ways to break this curse. Die. Aside from the fact that dullahans are naturally difficult to kill, not a favorable outcome. Find a powerful wizard. Freed from the curse, but without a head, you won't last long. Retrieve head. Once the head is reconnected to the body, the dullahan's mind is freed from the curse. Being a dullahan, Leslie possessed a constant awareness of the direction of his head relative to his body. However, his insatiable bloodlust and impulse to gather the souls of the near-death, on top of the fact that the strange vagabonds who had made off with his head just wouldn't keep still, made his hunt incredibly difficult. Years passed. As time distanced him from his childhood, Leslie forgot about it in all but a basic, historical sense. As his last human memories faded, time became nothing but a blur of destruction as the world changed around him. The people who survived his visits to towns lent him the running nickname Wormwood, both due to the damage he left in his wake and the mottled pattern on his skin that looked like worm-eaten wood. He did eventually find his head, however.

• And now?

  Having finally regained a sense of humanity after years of bloodshed, Leslie sees it as his responsibility to at least attempt to reintegrate into society. However, having not been raised with the technology he now finds himself surrounded by, he has his cynical moments. Although he is no longer controlled by the dullahan's bloodlust, he is still a dullahan nonetheless, and he possesses a rather strong morbid curiosity, although he'd say this is just due to his being the caretaker's son.
  
  He has also been left with a dullahan's constitution and strength, the strangely undead looking eyes, and a somewhat amusingly removable head. Not that Leslie enjoys having his head removed, accidental or not. Thievery of his head would reinstate the curse, after all, and he'd rather not go through another several centuries of wild goose chase.
  
  Although he mainly wears whatever he needs to fit in, Leslie refuses to get rid of his ancient, black jacket, even though centuries of repairs have nearly replaced it on its own.
  
  Despite his chronological age, Leslie has no more personal or mental development than your average teenager and no schooling on top of that. Regardless, he likes to pull the "I'm older/more mature" card a lot and tends to be manipulative, consciously or not. He has a dulled sense of faith in humanity and the politeness he shows is usually fake.
  
  Leslie possesses the bladed weapon he acquired as a dullahan; he won't carry it on him if it's not socially appropriate. Cuts left by the blade feel icy cold.