mungojerrie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mungojerrie) wrote2012-11-28 08:16 pm
mungojerrie) wrote2012-11-28 08:16 pm
JOHANNES
anon: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer
Character: Johannes Cabal
Timeline: At the end of the second book (Johannes Cabal the Detective) immediately following the crash of the airship.
Personality: Johannes Cabal is, first and foremost, a man dedicated to his job. As a necromancer of “some little infamy,” he is devoted to his profession in a way that very few people in life are. In fact, to say that he is committed to necromancy is a bit of an understatement: he is a man who literally sold his soul to Satan in exchange for secrets of the art. This is, of course, evidence pointing to the fact that Cabal is not a man who does things in half measures; giving his soul away for the secrets of necromancy was just a trifling matter, a rung on the ladder leading toward uncovering the true secret of bringing someone back to life. (As a note – while his life remains entrenched in magic and necromancy, he is hardly solely reliant on magic and the arcane. This is the reason that he carried around a switchblade and a Webly .577 revolver, and when that was lost, picked up a 10.35mm revolver to replace it. It turns out that guns and knives are much more efficient when it comes to offing people than spells.)
Necromancy is not an exact science, and is generally one that is looked down upon. (While Cabal holds the profession in high regard himself, he often thinks poorly of other necromancers, because – really, the ones that do manage to survive tend to be foaming half-mad men more intent on raising skeletal armies of the dead than doing any real good for humanity.) It is, after all, “for the good of humanity” that he has embarked on his quest to bring the dead back to life.
Altruism is hardly a trait that anyone can accuse Cabal of having, however. While he acknowledges that the endgame of perfecting the art of necromancy will better humanity (because what is death but life’s greatest foe?), he maintains that most people are stupid, insipid, and barely worth the calcium in their bones. Cabal does not enjoy people, he loathes being touched, and he would rather be caught naked in a tornado than suffer small talk from a stranger at the grocery. He is blunt and cares little about hurting the feelings of others, usually taciturn when he does have to speak, and can be scathingly caustic when annoyed or irritated.
To his great frustration, as of the second book, Cabal does have a soul. He and it often do not agree completely on the nature of things, and while the soul has hardly caused him to transform into a nice or kind person, the conscience does exist, and has caused him to perform the occasional act of kindness or life-saving. Once, in a surprisingly pleasant mood, he even bought a red carnation from a street-vendor and let her pin it to his jacket, creating a burst of color in his otherwise incredibly boring ensemble that makes him rather resemble an undertaker. (I will mention that the mood was soon ruined by the presence of laughing children, with the youth being one of the things that never fails to annoy Cabal to great lengths.)
Scientifically-minded and with little interest in humanity anyway, he acknowledges that he knows very little about the way that people interact socially. He was repeatedly thrown out of college as a youth. Since being a necromancer is dangerous, he has fostered a sense of paranoia in himself that is generally conducive to survival, but can be of great hindrance to him when trying to deal with the rest of humanity. He often misses blunt social cues (he is unable to recognize even the most obvious flirting directed his way. He is better at understanding motivations than he sometimes gives himself credit for, though; he is often aptly able to manipulate people using their emotions and is not above taking cleverly worded jabs at people. This isn’t to say that he is droll and completely humorless; he actually has an acerbic wit that comes out more now that he has his soul back, but even before that, he wasn’t above doing things like throwing up some flyers in Hell openly mocking one of the more annoying demons that he had had the displeasure of meeting.
In conclusion, Johannes Cabal is a goal-oriented man who pays attention to detail and rather dislikes it when his plans derail, though they often do. He is adaptable, clever, and sharp, making up what he lacks in social graces with intelligence and ability. He dislikes senseless murder, though he is hardly a moral man, and while he dislikes humanity, he does believe that what he does will result in better things for mankind as a whole. He is, in short, a necromancer.
Background: Born in Germany but raised in England, Johannes was a clever child always overshadowed by his elder brother Horst. Where Horst was gregarious and engaging, Johannes preferred science: clean and cut facts, things that were easy to understand. While other boys his age were out letting hormones dictate their actions and lives (and while Horst was being Horst -- that is to say, the perfect son, the handsome brother who has never done and will never do any wrong), Johannes devoted himself bettering himself with knowledge.
Repeatedly kicked out of college, Johannes inexplicably managed to fall in love with a young woman. Little is known about her other than that she drowned, and that she was important enough to Johannes to cause him to change his career goal from doctor (he had never really liked doctors anyway) to necromancer, a profession that many found at best disgusting and at worst absolutely horrifying. With an iron stomach and a clinical mind, Cabal began to search for the cure for death, and a way to bring the dead back to life and not just a shuddering, rotting impression of it, even going as far as to sell his soul to Satan to discover some of the unearthed secrets of necromancy.
Unfortunately for Cabal, things did not go according to plan. While the trade did leave him in a better place profession-wise, the simply existing as a human without a soul opened him up to all sorts of Satanic interference; as a result, he was never sure if the results he got from a certain experiment were due to the testing conditions or because of the otherworldly meddling. Not having a soul confounded his experiments and made them all useless. He decided to get his soul back and entered into a wager with Satan himself.
Tasked with taking over one of Hell’s carnivals and convincing one hundred people to sign their souls away, Cabal recruited the help of his charming and charismatic brother Horst, who he had incidentally locked into a crypt with a vampire about eight years prior. Horst agreed to help him and Johannes promised to help find a solution for the nasty case of vampirism that Horst had come down with while in the crypt. Ninety-nine collected contracts later, Horst committed suicide in the sunlight and Johannes tricked Satan into giving him his soul back in exchange for the ninety-seven contracts signed by souls that were damned into hell anyway.
Months later, and with the pesky soul still in his chest, Cabal ended up on an aeroship leaving the country of Mirkarvia (which he was - again rather incidentally – a fugitive of.) The details are of little importance: against his better judgment (and at the insistence of that damnable soul), he was the catalyst for the destruction of said aeroship, and managed to save the three passengers on the entire blasted plane that weren’t embroiled in secret military war affairs.
The aeroship crash-landed, but slowly, and Johannes was able to grab to a passing tree-branch and scale down. Dressed in his usual black-and-white attire and with his Gladstone bag (filled with the Principia Necromantica, which is a book he had stolen full of arcane secrets about Necromancy that has driven at least one man mad, and his empty revolver), he would be arriving in Adstring after scaling down the treetrunk.
Abilities/Additional Notes: Johannes is a necromancer, and his skills mainly involve things like raising the dead. I realize that’s impossible given the setting, but I read the last Johannes’s notes about being able to experiment on animals and dead NPCs. Would that still hold true for this incarnation of him?
Sample Journal Post: [The feed flickers on mid-scene: Johannes has picked the PCD up and is toying with it, though his method doesn’t employ the standard random mashing of buttons. He seems to notice immediately that the little light has come on, and both of his eyebrows shoot up in mild surprise.]
Interesting.
[His tone suggests otherwise, however; it is low and contains thinly-veiled anger. He seems tired, pale face covered in a thin sheen of sweat. There is a twig in his hair, and his countenance is certainly bemused and mildly incensed. A vein in his jaw jumps.]
Some cosmic joke.. [He is muttering to himself as his eyes rove across the PCD. He doesn’t seem to be aware that others will be able to see this – enjoy, Adstring, this is the most candid that Johannes Cabal will likely ever be in front of you.] Though it doesn’t come as a surprise.
[And then, beep. Whatever button he just hit just ended the feed.]
Character: Johannes Cabal
Timeline: At the end of the second book (Johannes Cabal the Detective) immediately following the crash of the airship.
Personality: Johannes Cabal is, first and foremost, a man dedicated to his job. As a necromancer of “some little infamy,” he is devoted to his profession in a way that very few people in life are. In fact, to say that he is committed to necromancy is a bit of an understatement: he is a man who literally sold his soul to Satan in exchange for secrets of the art. This is, of course, evidence pointing to the fact that Cabal is not a man who does things in half measures; giving his soul away for the secrets of necromancy was just a trifling matter, a rung on the ladder leading toward uncovering the true secret of bringing someone back to life. (As a note – while his life remains entrenched in magic and necromancy, he is hardly solely reliant on magic and the arcane. This is the reason that he carried around a switchblade and a Webly .577 revolver, and when that was lost, picked up a 10.35mm revolver to replace it. It turns out that guns and knives are much more efficient when it comes to offing people than spells.)
Necromancy is not an exact science, and is generally one that is looked down upon. (While Cabal holds the profession in high regard himself, he often thinks poorly of other necromancers, because – really, the ones that do manage to survive tend to be foaming half-mad men more intent on raising skeletal armies of the dead than doing any real good for humanity.) It is, after all, “for the good of humanity” that he has embarked on his quest to bring the dead back to life.
Altruism is hardly a trait that anyone can accuse Cabal of having, however. While he acknowledges that the endgame of perfecting the art of necromancy will better humanity (because what is death but life’s greatest foe?), he maintains that most people are stupid, insipid, and barely worth the calcium in their bones. Cabal does not enjoy people, he loathes being touched, and he would rather be caught naked in a tornado than suffer small talk from a stranger at the grocery. He is blunt and cares little about hurting the feelings of others, usually taciturn when he does have to speak, and can be scathingly caustic when annoyed or irritated.
To his great frustration, as of the second book, Cabal does have a soul. He and it often do not agree completely on the nature of things, and while the soul has hardly caused him to transform into a nice or kind person, the conscience does exist, and has caused him to perform the occasional act of kindness or life-saving. Once, in a surprisingly pleasant mood, he even bought a red carnation from a street-vendor and let her pin it to his jacket, creating a burst of color in his otherwise incredibly boring ensemble that makes him rather resemble an undertaker. (I will mention that the mood was soon ruined by the presence of laughing children, with the youth being one of the things that never fails to annoy Cabal to great lengths.)
Scientifically-minded and with little interest in humanity anyway, he acknowledges that he knows very little about the way that people interact socially. He was repeatedly thrown out of college as a youth. Since being a necromancer is dangerous, he has fostered a sense of paranoia in himself that is generally conducive to survival, but can be of great hindrance to him when trying to deal with the rest of humanity. He often misses blunt social cues (he is unable to recognize even the most obvious flirting directed his way. He is better at understanding motivations than he sometimes gives himself credit for, though; he is often aptly able to manipulate people using their emotions and is not above taking cleverly worded jabs at people. This isn’t to say that he is droll and completely humorless; he actually has an acerbic wit that comes out more now that he has his soul back, but even before that, he wasn’t above doing things like throwing up some flyers in Hell openly mocking one of the more annoying demons that he had had the displeasure of meeting.
In conclusion, Johannes Cabal is a goal-oriented man who pays attention to detail and rather dislikes it when his plans derail, though they often do. He is adaptable, clever, and sharp, making up what he lacks in social graces with intelligence and ability. He dislikes senseless murder, though he is hardly a moral man, and while he dislikes humanity, he does believe that what he does will result in better things for mankind as a whole. He is, in short, a necromancer.
Background: Born in Germany but raised in England, Johannes was a clever child always overshadowed by his elder brother Horst. Where Horst was gregarious and engaging, Johannes preferred science: clean and cut facts, things that were easy to understand. While other boys his age were out letting hormones dictate their actions and lives (and while Horst was being Horst -- that is to say, the perfect son, the handsome brother who has never done and will never do any wrong), Johannes devoted himself bettering himself with knowledge.
Repeatedly kicked out of college, Johannes inexplicably managed to fall in love with a young woman. Little is known about her other than that she drowned, and that she was important enough to Johannes to cause him to change his career goal from doctor (he had never really liked doctors anyway) to necromancer, a profession that many found at best disgusting and at worst absolutely horrifying. With an iron stomach and a clinical mind, Cabal began to search for the cure for death, and a way to bring the dead back to life and not just a shuddering, rotting impression of it, even going as far as to sell his soul to Satan to discover some of the unearthed secrets of necromancy.
Unfortunately for Cabal, things did not go according to plan. While the trade did leave him in a better place profession-wise, the simply existing as a human without a soul opened him up to all sorts of Satanic interference; as a result, he was never sure if the results he got from a certain experiment were due to the testing conditions or because of the otherworldly meddling. Not having a soul confounded his experiments and made them all useless. He decided to get his soul back and entered into a wager with Satan himself.
Tasked with taking over one of Hell’s carnivals and convincing one hundred people to sign their souls away, Cabal recruited the help of his charming and charismatic brother Horst, who he had incidentally locked into a crypt with a vampire about eight years prior. Horst agreed to help him and Johannes promised to help find a solution for the nasty case of vampirism that Horst had come down with while in the crypt. Ninety-nine collected contracts later, Horst committed suicide in the sunlight and Johannes tricked Satan into giving him his soul back in exchange for the ninety-seven contracts signed by souls that were damned into hell anyway.
Months later, and with the pesky soul still in his chest, Cabal ended up on an aeroship leaving the country of Mirkarvia (which he was - again rather incidentally – a fugitive of.) The details are of little importance: against his better judgment (and at the insistence of that damnable soul), he was the catalyst for the destruction of said aeroship, and managed to save the three passengers on the entire blasted plane that weren’t embroiled in secret military war affairs.
The aeroship crash-landed, but slowly, and Johannes was able to grab to a passing tree-branch and scale down. Dressed in his usual black-and-white attire and with his Gladstone bag (filled with the Principia Necromantica, which is a book he had stolen full of arcane secrets about Necromancy that has driven at least one man mad, and his empty revolver), he would be arriving in Adstring after scaling down the treetrunk.
Abilities/Additional Notes: Johannes is a necromancer, and his skills mainly involve things like raising the dead. I realize that’s impossible given the setting, but I read the last Johannes’s notes about being able to experiment on animals and dead NPCs. Would that still hold true for this incarnation of him?
Sample Journal Post: [The feed flickers on mid-scene: Johannes has picked the PCD up and is toying with it, though his method doesn’t employ the standard random mashing of buttons. He seems to notice immediately that the little light has come on, and both of his eyebrows shoot up in mild surprise.]
Interesting.
[His tone suggests otherwise, however; it is low and contains thinly-veiled anger. He seems tired, pale face covered in a thin sheen of sweat. There is a twig in his hair, and his countenance is certainly bemused and mildly incensed. A vein in his jaw jumps.]
Some cosmic joke.. [He is muttering to himself as his eyes rove across the PCD. He doesn’t seem to be aware that others will be able to see this – enjoy, Adstring, this is the most candid that Johannes Cabal will likely ever be in front of you.] Though it doesn’t come as a surprise.
[And then, beep. Whatever button he just hit just ended the feed.]