Reyn
Undying God of Eurobeat
Name: Edwin Faust
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Generally asexual, but can occasionally lean towards homosexual. It's just very rare that he feels any sort of attraction.
Age: 199
Appearance: Faust is tall and slim, standing at around 6'3. He is usually seen wearing a suit in either black or teal, and always keeps his clothes as neat as possible. His skin is very pale and he has long, ash blonde hair tied loosely in a ponytail that either falls down his back or drapes over his right shoulder. He is short sighted, so he wears glasses to correct that (contacts would ruin his image). Despite his efforts to appear somewhat benign, his eyes are quite piercing and unnerving to look at, being a light blue/green that seems a little too pale to be natural. As a way to mark the date, Faust appears to be the age he was when he was first brought to the gallows: 36. Due to the poison on his skin, he always wears a pair of white gloves.
Power: Toxikinesis - The ability to generate and manipulate poisons. (I have a long thing written about exactly what it does, so I won't be pulling things out of nowhere. I'll put it behind a read more or something once I figure out how the new layout works, but it doesn't seem to like me so I guess you get to have the Wall Of Text instead.)
Faust can generate a highly poisonous liquid, able to harm someone through their blood, their skin, or their digestive system. It also happens that all of his bodily fluids contain lethal amounts of this poison- most notably his blood, which is used as a last resort, and the fact that his sweat is just replaced by the liquid in its purest form. In fact, just touching Faust's bare skin is enough to inflict very minor damage, but 'minor' isn't what he's looking for.
The effects of this poison vary from person to person, but there are always some constants. The victim feels nothing for 2 minutes after contact, then a severe burning pain over the area where the poison first entered them. The pain then slowly spreads throughout their body, the victim's movements are slowed, and breathing becomes difficult. After a while, the entire area around the entry wound (be it an arm or a leg) is completely paralysed. Of course, the poison can be fatal after a while, but Faust can speed up the dying process by just stabbing them through the chest or something. Left alone, the poison would take anywhere between 10 minutes to 1 hour to kill a human, depending on the dosage and their general immunity. For immortals, however, death is out of the question. They simply remain paralysed whilst their organs fail. Left alone in an immortal, it takes days for the effects to fade out, so finding a way to stop it before this stage is certainly not a wasted effort.
Some side-effects only occur in certain people, such as hallucinations, paranoia, more complete paralysis, and sudden heart failure. These also depend on the person's prior health (both mental and physical) and the last one is very rare. When the poison is ingested, victims usually vomit excessively, and their vomit often contains large amounts of blood. The process is also sped up by about 50%. Similarly, whilst he is able to create a vapour of the poison, it is slower and weaker.
The cure to this is simple, yet a little odd: capsaicin. If the poison was inflicted by a wound, simply coating the wound in any substance with a large enough amount of capsaicin will stop the effects immediately, despite the obvious short-term pain of rubbing capsaicin into an open wound. If it was inflicted via skin contact or ingestion, eating things like chilli or hot sauce will work to remove it, but the person will still feel a little sick for a short while afterwards.
There will always be a lingering ache even after it has been cured, but it is no worse than a common headache. It usually fades after a day or so.
Tl;dr: 4 methods of being poisoned: blood contact (ie. through open wounds), skin contact (only blisters), ingestion(faster + more severe), and inhalation (very difficult to actually create, acts slower). Nothing is noticed for 2 minutes, followed by severe pain, slow movements, breathing issues, paralysis, and eventual death (unless a person is immortal, then they survive the organ failure and get to feel their lungs give out). The effects are not as bad when contracted via skin contact; just blistering the skin around the affected area for a bit. Ingestion is the worst, but unlikely to happen (to player characters, at least) since it involves the person actively consuming the poison. There are other effects, but they only occur in some people. The cure is a large amount of capsaicin (active ingredient in chilli).
I made it a tiny font so you wouldn't all hate me... if you want me to alter this ability, let me know. I used it a while ago and tried to adapt it for this, hence the frequent mention of humans and death.
Personality: Faust is, to put it bluntly, about as poisonous in person as he is with his ability. This may not be apparent at first, however. He appears to be a polite and kind gentleman, treating people respectfully but seeming to hide some kind of malicious intent behind his smile. His demeanor is usually quite formal and calm, although he can occasionally seem quite cynical, depending on his mood. Although it is very rare for Faust to lose his composure, he can be very irrational when angry and will pretend that these rage-fuelled decisions were logically thought out. Image is very important to him. Image and reputation. He has developed a sort of persona for himself over the years and can be quite dramatic about it, occasionally reminding anyone who irritates him about his status over the years and the numerous terrible, terrible crimes he had a hand in committing.
Backstory: Faust was born to a family of German traders in 1818, frequently moving around and selling things. Unfortunately, they had a bit of a reputation. A few of their products would spontaneously fail, sometimes with fatal results. This angered a lot of people. Faust was no stranger to angry mobs showing up at the door of his family home, demanding answers as to why they were sold such items. It eventually got so bad that, when he was 13, his family left Germany and moved to London, where they set up a more permanent shop and continued to trade. Faust was sent to school, and they lived comfortably off the money they made.
That money had to come fromsomewhere, however.
Many of their frequent customers came from Black Sparrow; a gang notorious for their footholds in law enforcement and politics, as well as the brutal ways in which they killed their enemies. Faust seemed to be on good terms with them, and eventually began to visit the pub which held their meetings in the evenings. He was taught how to fend for himself and, despite his rather feeble physique, Faust was a natural. Throwing knives seemed to be the weapon he was most skilled in, and his aim rivalled that of older members who had been using the weapons for years.
Unfortunately, this good relationship was not to last. One of their products fatally malfunctioned and killed a member of Black Sparrow, causing the gang to seek revenge on Faust's parents. They did this by kidnapping Faust at knifepoint, holding him prisoner in the pub and demanding that he chose between two sacrifices: either he killed his parents, or he was no longer an ally of Black Sparrow. Faust's parents tried to save their son, they begged the gang to let him go, to give them another chance... but their efforts were futile. Ultimately, it was all down to Faust to save the lives of his parents.
But Faust was no fool. He knew that disobeying Black Sparrow would be fatal, and he knew that his parents would die either way. It would be better to kill them painlessly and save his own life than have to deal with the cruel deaths that Black Sparrow would plan for them. So, he told the gang what he was going to do. The following week, Faust would stab his parents with a kitchen knife and take the bodies to the pub as proof of the act.
But things didn't go quite as planned.
On the day of his parents' death, Faust decided it would be nice to at least do something for them as a last act of kindness, so he cooked them a meal before he killed them. His hands were shaking as he prepared the food, barely able to stay still under the anxiety and guilt that was tearing Faust up inside. Perhaps if he wasn't so nervous, he would've noticed the faint black tinge to the boiling water, the steam that smelled a little more strongly than water usually did, the way the knife's handle seemed to be wearing away as if it had been smothered in a harsh chemical...
It came as a shock to all of them when Faust's mother collapsed just minutes after eating the meal, followed shortly by her husband. Faust tried not to look relieved, thinking that both of his parents had just been struck off by a mysterious illness as opposed to being poisoned. He went to see a doctor about the illness to see if he had contracted it, and it was only once the doctor contracted the illness after touching Faust's skin with his wounded hands that he realised something was up.
It didn't take long for Faust to figure out that there was something toxic on his palms, able to kill people if they ate it or if it touched their blood. He began coating his knives with this before he threw them, and he became infamous within Black Sparrow because of this. Faust went along with the gang's wishes but harbored a deep hatred for their leaders who made him kill his parents. When he was 23 years old, he killed off the leaders in the same way he killed his parents: poisoning their meal.
By the time he entered his thirties, Faust was able to control his ability to a fine degree, even isolating some of the effects and creating purer toxins from his own. Whilst he was a notorious gang leader at this point, Faust also held a stable job in a law firm. He had a sort of double life. Only those very close to the top of Black Sparrow ever saw him when he was leading them; to everyone else, he was just a nickname: The Serpent. His two lives were held in perfect balance: those who knew him as a lawyer never suspected his other identity, and those who knew of his other identity either didn't know it was him or were kept silent by the fear of what he would do to them if they turned him in.
When he was 36, his luck ran out. Faust was arrested for serial murder and sentenced to death by hanging; an execution which shocked most people, since they only ever knew him as the mild-mannered lawyer he pretended to be by day. As the floor dropped, however, something strange happened: he didn't die. It was assumed to just be a botched hanging, so the gallows were fixed and Faust was hanged again. And again. And again.
After several tries, the executioner turned to beheading him instead. Unfortunately, this didn't work either; as soon as the axe was removed, Faust's head just reformed. In a last, panicked attempt to kill him, Faust was taken down to the south coast and thrown into the sea with his hands and feet tied behind his back, hoping that he would be at the bottom of the ocean forever, even if he wasn't dead.
He resurfaced in France a few years later, and moved to Germany as soon as he got his bearings. There, he started a new life with a new gang and a new identity; and this time he made it stick. This new gang, called Unschuld (innocence), ended up having ties and contacts all over the world, which meant that Faust travelled frequently. Because he was rarely seen in one place, nobody seemed to be too suspicious that he never aged, but his strangely flawless appearance coupled with his ruthless efficiency at his job lead to a few rumours that the man was Death itself.
In early 2001, Faust moved the main base of Unschuld to America, due to growing concerns that the German authorities were close to uncovering some truths about the organisation.
Additional Information: Faust speaks with a noticable German accent that thickens considerably when he's irritated.
Whilst he is pretty infamous as far as gang leaders go, many people don't know of his crimes just by his face or his name: he kept up a double life all throughout his career. It's not hard to fit the pieces together once you have them, though.
Part of the reason for his nickname (the Serpent) is the pet snake he always seems to have. He currently owns a Formosan odd-scaled snake (small, harmless, has black scales that are iridescent under light) named Weiss.
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Generally asexual, but can occasionally lean towards homosexual. It's just very rare that he feels any sort of attraction.
Age: 199
Appearance: Faust is tall and slim, standing at around 6'3. He is usually seen wearing a suit in either black or teal, and always keeps his clothes as neat as possible. His skin is very pale and he has long, ash blonde hair tied loosely in a ponytail that either falls down his back or drapes over his right shoulder. He is short sighted, so he wears glasses to correct that (contacts would ruin his image). Despite his efforts to appear somewhat benign, his eyes are quite piercing and unnerving to look at, being a light blue/green that seems a little too pale to be natural. As a way to mark the date, Faust appears to be the age he was when he was first brought to the gallows: 36. Due to the poison on his skin, he always wears a pair of white gloves.
Power: Toxikinesis - The ability to generate and manipulate poisons. (I have a long thing written about exactly what it does, so I won't be pulling things out of nowhere. I'll put it behind a read more or something once I figure out how the new layout works, but it doesn't seem to like me so I guess you get to have the Wall Of Text instead.)
Faust can generate a highly poisonous liquid, able to harm someone through their blood, their skin, or their digestive system. It also happens that all of his bodily fluids contain lethal amounts of this poison- most notably his blood, which is used as a last resort, and the fact that his sweat is just replaced by the liquid in its purest form. In fact, just touching Faust's bare skin is enough to inflict very minor damage, but 'minor' isn't what he's looking for.
The effects of this poison vary from person to person, but there are always some constants. The victim feels nothing for 2 minutes after contact, then a severe burning pain over the area where the poison first entered them. The pain then slowly spreads throughout their body, the victim's movements are slowed, and breathing becomes difficult. After a while, the entire area around the entry wound (be it an arm or a leg) is completely paralysed. Of course, the poison can be fatal after a while, but Faust can speed up the dying process by just stabbing them through the chest or something. Left alone, the poison would take anywhere between 10 minutes to 1 hour to kill a human, depending on the dosage and their general immunity. For immortals, however, death is out of the question. They simply remain paralysed whilst their organs fail. Left alone in an immortal, it takes days for the effects to fade out, so finding a way to stop it before this stage is certainly not a wasted effort.
Some side-effects only occur in certain people, such as hallucinations, paranoia, more complete paralysis, and sudden heart failure. These also depend on the person's prior health (both mental and physical) and the last one is very rare. When the poison is ingested, victims usually vomit excessively, and their vomit often contains large amounts of blood. The process is also sped up by about 50%. Similarly, whilst he is able to create a vapour of the poison, it is slower and weaker.
The cure to this is simple, yet a little odd: capsaicin. If the poison was inflicted by a wound, simply coating the wound in any substance with a large enough amount of capsaicin will stop the effects immediately, despite the obvious short-term pain of rubbing capsaicin into an open wound. If it was inflicted via skin contact or ingestion, eating things like chilli or hot sauce will work to remove it, but the person will still feel a little sick for a short while afterwards.
There will always be a lingering ache even after it has been cured, but it is no worse than a common headache. It usually fades after a day or so.
Tl;dr: 4 methods of being poisoned: blood contact (ie. through open wounds), skin contact (only blisters), ingestion(faster + more severe), and inhalation (very difficult to actually create, acts slower). Nothing is noticed for 2 minutes, followed by severe pain, slow movements, breathing issues, paralysis, and eventual death (unless a person is immortal, then they survive the organ failure and get to feel their lungs give out). The effects are not as bad when contracted via skin contact; just blistering the skin around the affected area for a bit. Ingestion is the worst, but unlikely to happen (to player characters, at least) since it involves the person actively consuming the poison. There are other effects, but they only occur in some people. The cure is a large amount of capsaicin (active ingredient in chilli).
I made it a tiny font so you wouldn't all hate me... if you want me to alter this ability, let me know. I used it a while ago and tried to adapt it for this, hence the frequent mention of humans and death.
Personality: Faust is, to put it bluntly, about as poisonous in person as he is with his ability. This may not be apparent at first, however. He appears to be a polite and kind gentleman, treating people respectfully but seeming to hide some kind of malicious intent behind his smile. His demeanor is usually quite formal and calm, although he can occasionally seem quite cynical, depending on his mood. Although it is very rare for Faust to lose his composure, he can be very irrational when angry and will pretend that these rage-fuelled decisions were logically thought out. Image is very important to him. Image and reputation. He has developed a sort of persona for himself over the years and can be quite dramatic about it, occasionally reminding anyone who irritates him about his status over the years and the numerous terrible, terrible crimes he had a hand in committing.
Backstory: Faust was born to a family of German traders in 1818, frequently moving around and selling things. Unfortunately, they had a bit of a reputation. A few of their products would spontaneously fail, sometimes with fatal results. This angered a lot of people. Faust was no stranger to angry mobs showing up at the door of his family home, demanding answers as to why they were sold such items. It eventually got so bad that, when he was 13, his family left Germany and moved to London, where they set up a more permanent shop and continued to trade. Faust was sent to school, and they lived comfortably off the money they made.
That money had to come fromsomewhere, however.
Many of their frequent customers came from Black Sparrow; a gang notorious for their footholds in law enforcement and politics, as well as the brutal ways in which they killed their enemies. Faust seemed to be on good terms with them, and eventually began to visit the pub which held their meetings in the evenings. He was taught how to fend for himself and, despite his rather feeble physique, Faust was a natural. Throwing knives seemed to be the weapon he was most skilled in, and his aim rivalled that of older members who had been using the weapons for years.
Unfortunately, this good relationship was not to last. One of their products fatally malfunctioned and killed a member of Black Sparrow, causing the gang to seek revenge on Faust's parents. They did this by kidnapping Faust at knifepoint, holding him prisoner in the pub and demanding that he chose between two sacrifices: either he killed his parents, or he was no longer an ally of Black Sparrow. Faust's parents tried to save their son, they begged the gang to let him go, to give them another chance... but their efforts were futile. Ultimately, it was all down to Faust to save the lives of his parents.
But Faust was no fool. He knew that disobeying Black Sparrow would be fatal, and he knew that his parents would die either way. It would be better to kill them painlessly and save his own life than have to deal with the cruel deaths that Black Sparrow would plan for them. So, he told the gang what he was going to do. The following week, Faust would stab his parents with a kitchen knife and take the bodies to the pub as proof of the act.
But things didn't go quite as planned.
On the day of his parents' death, Faust decided it would be nice to at least do something for them as a last act of kindness, so he cooked them a meal before he killed them. His hands were shaking as he prepared the food, barely able to stay still under the anxiety and guilt that was tearing Faust up inside. Perhaps if he wasn't so nervous, he would've noticed the faint black tinge to the boiling water, the steam that smelled a little more strongly than water usually did, the way the knife's handle seemed to be wearing away as if it had been smothered in a harsh chemical...
It came as a shock to all of them when Faust's mother collapsed just minutes after eating the meal, followed shortly by her husband. Faust tried not to look relieved, thinking that both of his parents had just been struck off by a mysterious illness as opposed to being poisoned. He went to see a doctor about the illness to see if he had contracted it, and it was only once the doctor contracted the illness after touching Faust's skin with his wounded hands that he realised something was up.
It didn't take long for Faust to figure out that there was something toxic on his palms, able to kill people if they ate it or if it touched their blood. He began coating his knives with this before he threw them, and he became infamous within Black Sparrow because of this. Faust went along with the gang's wishes but harbored a deep hatred for their leaders who made him kill his parents. When he was 23 years old, he killed off the leaders in the same way he killed his parents: poisoning their meal.
By the time he entered his thirties, Faust was able to control his ability to a fine degree, even isolating some of the effects and creating purer toxins from his own. Whilst he was a notorious gang leader at this point, Faust also held a stable job in a law firm. He had a sort of double life. Only those very close to the top of Black Sparrow ever saw him when he was leading them; to everyone else, he was just a nickname: The Serpent. His two lives were held in perfect balance: those who knew him as a lawyer never suspected his other identity, and those who knew of his other identity either didn't know it was him or were kept silent by the fear of what he would do to them if they turned him in.
When he was 36, his luck ran out. Faust was arrested for serial murder and sentenced to death by hanging; an execution which shocked most people, since they only ever knew him as the mild-mannered lawyer he pretended to be by day. As the floor dropped, however, something strange happened: he didn't die. It was assumed to just be a botched hanging, so the gallows were fixed and Faust was hanged again. And again. And again.
After several tries, the executioner turned to beheading him instead. Unfortunately, this didn't work either; as soon as the axe was removed, Faust's head just reformed. In a last, panicked attempt to kill him, Faust was taken down to the south coast and thrown into the sea with his hands and feet tied behind his back, hoping that he would be at the bottom of the ocean forever, even if he wasn't dead.
He resurfaced in France a few years later, and moved to Germany as soon as he got his bearings. There, he started a new life with a new gang and a new identity; and this time he made it stick. This new gang, called Unschuld (innocence), ended up having ties and contacts all over the world, which meant that Faust travelled frequently. Because he was rarely seen in one place, nobody seemed to be too suspicious that he never aged, but his strangely flawless appearance coupled with his ruthless efficiency at his job lead to a few rumours that the man was Death itself.
In early 2001, Faust moved the main base of Unschuld to America, due to growing concerns that the German authorities were close to uncovering some truths about the organisation.
Additional Information: Faust speaks with a noticable German accent that thickens considerably when he's irritated.
Whilst he is pretty infamous as far as gang leaders go, many people don't know of his crimes just by his face or his name: he kept up a double life all throughout his career. It's not hard to fit the pieces together once you have them, though.
Part of the reason for his nickname (the Serpent) is the pet snake he always seems to have. He currently owns a Formosan odd-scaled snake (small, harmless, has black scales that are iridescent under light) named Weiss.
Last edited by a moderator:
