Phineus
Contents
Information
Player: Pete
Character Full Name: Phineus Q. Cromwell.
Character In-Game Name: Phineus
Nickname(s): (The) Doctor, Doctor Cromwell.
Association(s): Undercity, Royal Apothecary Society.
Race: Forsaken
Class: Warlock
Age: Fifty-four. Forty-seven at death.
Sex: Male.
Hair: Completely bald, both as a result of his hair-style at death and his close proximity to the many dangerous chemicals he now works with.
Eyes: Glowing orange.
Weight: 140 lbs.
Height: 5'9"
Alignment: Lawful Evil.
Appearance
Phineus can often be seen wearing goggles and rubber lab-coats, boots, and gloves. Otherwise, when not in the lab, he can be seen wearing a tattered, faded business suit with a black fedora. When in public, amongst the "lesser races", he will commonly adopt feeble false-identities, and wear clothing fitting to the occupation. Although the facade very, very rarely fools anyone, Phineus is far too caught-up in his own intelligence, and the assumed unintelligence of others to realize.
Other: Phineus's skin is, like many of his peers, discolored to a sickly looking gray. His body is covered with many large lacerations, which have all been sutured closed by his own hand.
Personality
Phineus is a cold individual, as seems to be the nature of the undead. While he is not completely devoid of emotion, all others are shadowed by hate and disgust. He is megalomaniacal, and eccentric, even by the standards of the Undead; serving as a good example of this is the fact that his middle initial Q. does not stand for anything. He constantly speaks to himself, and appears to suffer from a combination of several psychological disorders. He looks at those who are useful to him as colleagues, and maybe, in one or two instances, as something that loosely resembles a friend. Those who are purposeless in his schemes do not garner the same respect; At best, he will give them the silent respect of staying out of their way, ignoring them completely. At worst, they may find themselves the victim of one of his cruel, sick experiments. Phineus, unlike his subjects, is quite fond of his experiments, which often serve as the basis for a new creation, or invention. Phineus is a member of the Royal Apothecary Society, and is constantly striving to advance himself in the organization's.
Phineus treats the living, as put in his own words, as "imbeciles who are bound to the all too predictable tendencies of the animals that they are". He is an avid scientist, and an inventor: His creations range from the outlandish ( Cockroaches that explode when stepped on ), to the diabolical ( Plagues that affect only infants ), to the down-right insane ( Make-shift robots with human-skin stretched over the frames ). Although he treats the races of the horde with a grudging respect, he is not much fonder of them than he is the humans. He has little memory of his life before the scourge, though he remembers the acts he committed whilst under the control of the Lich King quite vividly. He used to be disgusted by the acts he committed, but over time he abandoned that mind-frame, adopting the thought that all of the killing he did could have been put to use under a better cause.
History
The night was silent. Dead silent.
The five men, if they could be called 'men' anymore, noiselessly scampered through the forest's wirey underbrush. Not a word was spoken amongst themselves; None of the idle banter of regular soldiers, for these were not any normal soldiers. These were the seemingly mindless undead, slaves to the Lich King, warriors of the scourge. Phineus was amongst them, watching his body as it went through the motions of scrambling under vines and hurdling over fallen trees. Occasionally, his rotting flesh would catch and tear on a thorn or snagging branch, but he didn't care. He couldn't feel it, or any other sensation in his body. He was trapped inside of his own husk, nothing more than a sentient marionette.
The group reached the edge of the small, quaint village. Many of the placid collection of cottages held the light from flickering candles, windows casting dancing shadows onto the ground outside, and all of them had columns of smoke stretching upwards to dissipate into the night sky. Phineus and the group vaulted over the picket fence of the nearest home, and pressed themselves against the wooden siding, positioning themselves around the door. All throughout the village, five-man teams of the undead followed suit, and as they kicked in the doors, rushing in to greet the inhabitants with death, it was performed with a brutal uniformity that made the entire ordeal look rehearsed. And they had been practicing.
Phineus had been the monster that he was now for what felt like years now, and since, it seemed to him as if he had not stopped killing. The door flew inwards, the lock that held it in place breaking easily against the force of the undead man's surprisingly forceful kicks. Phineus was the first inside, eyes fixed on a family eating their dinner. He wished that he could have closed them as he watched the father of the family stand, ready to defend his family against the intruders, and he himself gratifying the man's bravery by driving a short-sword through his chest. He wished he could have apologized to the woman as he lunged over the table, sinking his teeth into her throat, blood spraying onto both of their faces. He wished he could have calmed down the screaming children, assured them that everything was okay.
He wished he could do many things. Once more savor the taste of a plump, juicy steak. Feel the warmth of a lover's flesh against his own. Enjoyed the blissful nothingness of sleep, and the whimsical pleasures of a dream. He wished he could close his eyes, apologize, and assured the screaming children. He wished he could just die. He wished he could do anything, anything at all, besides for kill any more people. But he couldn't.
After a few minutes, he stepped out into the night, wishing that he could beg the family for forgiveness, for taking their lives and, invariably cursing them to the same fate as he. But instead, all his body did was observe the no-longer silent night; Large, wicked-looking siege engines tore through the village, some literally rolling over homes. Here and there abominations lumbered, groaning and gurgling, mountains of flesh and steel, cutting down any poor souls not fast enough to outrun them. Phineus felt his lips curl into a smile, and though inside he felt as if he were about to break down into tears, externally he seemed to be enjoying the deafening symphony of chaos: The screams and the sounds of destruction and death.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement: A man breaking off into the woods, desperately running for his life. Phineus took off after him, wishing that he had a choice in the matter.
He'd been walking for days, if not weeks. He didn't feel like he knew where he was going, but he didn't really care. He was a free man now, and he was going to exercise his new freedom, aimless or otherwise. He took in the sights and smells of the country-side, but they didn't do anything for him. He remembered vaguely that one of his greatest passions in life was art, but the scenic views of nature and its creatures brought him nothing; He felt empty and cold inside. So he just kept walking, aimlessly.
He learned to stray from the path at times, to avoiding the glowing light from caravan's lanterns, because no matter how humanely he treated travelers, they refused to acknowledge him in kind, refused to see him as a human; So in a strange way, he somewhat missed the Scourge, and the wordless camaraderie of he and his forced brothers and sisters. At least then he had a people, but now, in his mind and in his heart, he was completely and utterly forsaken.
One day, for no reason at all, he stopped walking, forgetting his misery for just a moment to look up at an abandoned, decrepit manor at the crest of a hill. The building and all of the land surrounding it had been long destroyed by war and plague, and the only hint that any life had ever existed here at all was the splashes of blood adorning the ground and walls here and there, but it gave him an odd, warm feeling inside. He felt comfortable, and he felt. . at home.
". . Home.", he mumbled out to no-one but the wind, stumbling forward, onto the building's porch, through the door which had been kicked in in an all-too-familiar fashion. Indeed, this had been his home in his last life, and he had no idea how he'd brought himself here. All at once, broken, fractured memories flooded back to him; Small, teasing portions of his life, the memory of a beautiful young woman whom he assumed to be his wife or lover. He was finally at home, and regardless of what state it was in, he liked it.
And so, instead of walking aimlessly, he began standing aimlessly: Skulking about the estate's grounds, pointlessly haunting up and down its halls, but, for the majority of the time, standing on its porch, staring down the ravaged brick path that connected the building through a thicket of woods to the main road.
And one day, he realized with a faint sense of joy, that he had a visitor; Not a scavenger, no, for the building had already been stripped of everything of worth. Maybe it was some sort of warrior, hearing rumors of his existence, and was here to slay the 'mindless zombie', as he was sure that was what humans thought of him; At this point though, he welcomed death, so the thought slightly amused him. But no, as the figure came nearer he saw that it was a woman, thinly-framed, certainly no warrior.
She approached the steps, staring up at Phineus with ghostly, glowing, orange eyes. If his tear-ducts functioned, he probably would have began crying with joy, because the emotions he felt, no matter how empty they were, felt as if they were a wave crashing over him; Though it was graying and empty, just as his, he recognized his wife's face instantly. He rushed forward to meet her, even going so far as to press his rotting lips against hers: And for the first time in years, he genuinely felt good. Or at least he told himself he did.
Much had changed, he thought to himself.
Throughout the years, much had indeed changed. His entire personality had seemed to change, since then. He now had a clearer, yet still muddied recollection of his 'life': He had worked in a factory, where he painted wooden children's toys. He was the heir to a large inheritance, which left him with no need to work, but the desire to do so anyhow. The woman who had once been his wife was named Patricia; after leaving the mansion for the Forsaken Mecca that was the Undercity, Phineus had not seen much of her, being that she joined the Queen's army and was off fighting somewhere, or something. He didn't mind too much. In fact, he didn't mind at all, being that soon after the reunion, he realized with pain-staking detail every single flaw he had overlooked while suffering from the illusions of morality.
However, he did mind the memories. He leaned back, carefully pouring the contents of one vial into another. He hated what he had been as a human, so weak and lacking. Now, he was free to exercise his intelligence in whichever way he pleased, free of the chains of morality that bound many of the living. He pinched at a small mound of lime green powder, sprinkling it into the tube. He was a creator now, the greatest creator that the world had ever seen: It was just going to take a bit of effort to convince everyone.
DOCTOR Cromwell, and he couldn't stress the Doctor title enough, approached his subject, a thin smile crossing his slate-colored features. The man kicked against the leather straps that held him in place, and as Phineus poured the thick, bubbling fluid into a freshly opened wound, he surely would have screamed if he were not gagged and bereft of tongue. As the human thrashed violently, Phineus simply watched. After around a minute, the man's wild attempts at escape came to a sudden end as he went limp and soon thereafter expired. Phineus scribbled something in a small, leather-bound book, muttering to himself.
"Interesting. . but it needs some work".
