Chaplin Ashdown

Name: Chaplin Ashdown

Real Name: Earl Grimald de Wynter

Gender: Male

Age: 1812

 
Power: The ability to enchant items to place curses on people. He can’t directly curse someone directly; only with various limitations he can fully curse someone. First, he needs the life essence of living things to enchant curses onto an object. Depending on how strong the life essence is, the more powerful and deadly a curse can be; multiple essences also have the same effect. With larger objects like cars or buildings, multiple essences are required. Depending on how much life essence is used, the giver can die. Secondly, once the enchantment is placed on the item, conditions must be placed in order to activate, without them, the curse will affect him. The conditions can be anything he desires, from very loose to extremely exact. Curses will not activate until the conditions are met. Thirdly, curses last as long as Chaplin wills it. He can directly remove curses whenever he wants to as long the cursed is in touching distance.

His curses are ranked on how much life essence the curse needs and how deadly the curse is:

Minor Curse – Annoyances like itching, constant buzzing in an ear, minor bad luck, etc. A small animal or a few bugs can do the trick.

Lesser Curse – Minor harm like falling pots, constant tripping, back pain, etc. One or two small animals, a jar full of bugs. Bugs start dying at this point.

Tender Curse – Mental effects like night blindness, no sense of direction, color blindness, minor illusions. Two small animals, one large animal, a couple jars of bugs. Weak animals can die.

Tolerant Curse – More stronger illusions like imaginable objects, small paranoia, etc. Same as above, but small animals will die.

Vex Curse – This is when things get a little serious. Harmful accidents, bad luck, and slight memory loss. Humans are getting involved, two large animals.

Voodoo Curse – Doll binding. Needs an actual heart about human size and part of the soon to be cursed, like hair.
Aggrieved Curse – Messes with the five senses. Major illusions and paranoia with a touch of insanity. Humans can die from this.

Tragic Curse – One of the strongest curses. Death or suffering by ‘natural’ body causes or ‘unnatural’ causes. Need more than one human.

Hollow Curse – Affects the bloodline of the cursed. Unable to have children, misfortune for the whole family, or decline in the family line. Need a dozen or so humans. Magical beings can be used.

Mocking Curse – Mass insanity or for even greater effect, curse entire areas of people. About 20 humans will do. A magical being can replace humans.

Grand Curse – Only a mass slaughter of humans or five magical beings can generate enough life essence for this to work. Extremely rare for Chaplin to perform. Unspeakable cruelty and torture for the cursed, even in death, the curse will still linger. He only performed this curse 32 times in his life.

Unravel Curse – The strongest curse only in legends. Only a destruction of an entire nation can satisfy the life essence needed to power this curse. Centuries ago, an Earl once ordered the slaughter of a hundreds of thousands of peasants and serfs just to perform this curse, he failed.

Nowadays, it’s rare for one of his curses to go past Vex Curses, as capturing living humans is extremely risky of getting caught by government officials or revealing his condition. He can only extract life essence from living being only. Also, the higher the curse, the more conditions he needs to place on the enchantment just to make it stable, if the enchantment isn’t stable enough, the curse will bounce back right at him.

Desired Job: Originally a merchant, he works as a shopkeeper selling curses as minor pranks, though he doesn’t have a viable place to settle. He hopes to turn an abandoned farm he scooped out when he got here into something livable. Now, Chaplin usually sits at the square with a bunch of trinkets that are most likely to be cursed.
Personality: When talking with the public, he seems like a jokingly, talkative guy who gossips whenever he can. He’s intellectual enough to be a history professor if he wants. Quick on his mind and mouth, he is rather organized and neat. He also talks like when you cross an aristocrat, a drunk, and a wise scholar; it doesn’t make his chatter less absurd. He enjoys the company of children and sometimes elders with him telling stories or idle chatter respectively. He also has a taste for alcoholic beverages and various fruits. He has a special attraction to gifted individuals as he relates to them in experience outside the island. He dislikes cats and prefers any reptile over anything with fur. He usually tells stories about an evil earl who was vile and mean and ends them with the hero overcoming the villain in every story. He’s been getting into mobile gaming recently, especially with rhythm games. He loves music and live performances. Sometimes when he gets serious, he talks like a ruler; cunning and aggressive in a monotone voice oddly enough. He gets really outraged if you threaten anyone any child or young women. Finally, if you ask about any atrocities he committed in his life, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell you, due to either indulging for warning, or to someone to confess.

Appearance: Chaplin is a very bony man with wrinkled skin all over his body. Any strains of hair left on his head are white with a few strains coming out in random spots. His head resembles more of a skeleton than a head with flesh. Two inverted black eyes with tiny red pupils is he most noticeable feature on his face, as if the red is the only thing in is eye sockets. His mouth has no lips at all, completely showing his teeth for the world to see, he doesn’t even have any ears. How he could even hear things is a mystery. When he talks, he pronounces every word perfectly, even without moving his jar, as his voice seems to come from deep within his throat. The only time he ever moves jaw is to pour drinks or take a bite from food. Moving down, most about everything about his body appears to be skin and bones, but with a few veins popping here and there. He has a tattoo of an leafless ash tree on his back. He normally wears a long, black leather coat with a vest underneath. He wears knee length shorts that are hardly noticeable under the coat and leather square sandals that make a ‘clacking’ sound whenever he walks. He always has a wide brimmed hat, even when bathing, sleeping, or almost everything.

Picture: Will update later with better hands.

 
Weaknesses: His hat is a very precious belonging in this world and would go over great lengths to retrieve it. While durable on his own, he still have the strength of an average human being, and thus have limits on what he can do. He is also allergic to roses. Finally, compared to others on the island, he is hideous.

Strengths: Chaplin mastered several forms of martial arts in his lifespan, and thus has a very fit, yet bony body. He can easily overpower anyone bare-handed. He is also a deep manipulator, thinking up possibilities and predicting others moves; it’s how he is able to make his conditions for his curses. Also, Chaplin has several skills to disguise himself, mostly his face, as seeing a scary face like his would lead to a lot of problems. Most importantly, Chaplin can’t be truly dead. His curse on himself prevents him from dying, bound to life, cursed with suck. He can still feel pain, but at least he can be alive.

History: Grimald de Wynter was born on an unknown date in an unknown nation. Not much is known about his early life, but he was rather a unruly child, spoiled, cruel, and unappreciative about life. What we do know is that at the age of 15, he ordered the execution of his entire kitchen staff for messing up a single dish. Later, he went on to being crowned the next Earl of his nation. At the time, he was researching magic, and done horrible experiments on prisoners and unlucky workers. At the age of 32, he learned to use curses on people. This was around the time the region was ready to overthrow Grimald’s rule after months of planning and terrorist attacks. With overconfidence and rage at his subjects’ rebellion, he sent out his men to perform a grand massacre of every single man, women, and children. He planned to use the life essence of the whole nation to perform an Unravel Curse, something even the greatest of sorcerers can’t even fathom to cast, as the act required inhumane sacrifices and by one’s self, would takes decades, that is, if you didn’t have an army.

For the next three years, the nation was slowly dying out it was the final days of the nation, and Grimald was ready to activate his curse. This curse was going to curse all of Europe into his subjects. Wiping every single thought about free will and radical ideas and only answering to their new king without ever dying, as they continue to serve him for an eternity.

However, fate had other plans.

On the day of his curse, he was ready to make the world his. Almost every peasant, serf, rebel has given up their life essence, and nothing, NOTHING can stop him now. In his castle courtyard, where all power is stored, he was preparing this moment. He looked at soon to be curse, almost in reach both literally and figuratively. The Earl walked up and started to cast his curse.

He failed.

The power inside the courtyard exploded. The castle, and the surrounding area, was completely decimated. The curse failed, and the Earl was never seen again. It became a local legend in the area where the kingdom once stood. A moral of never being power hungry, crazed person. Thus ends the life of Earl Grimald de Wynter.

But come on, his page wouldn’t be here if he died.

In the remaining ruins of his great castle, Grimald awoke. The curse backfired on to him, changing him into what he wanted to control. Whatever was left on him was burnt skin, a cursed body, and an broken mind. He realized what happened, and was completely distraught in his appearance. Grimald became completely suicidal, trying everything to leave this existence. Once realized he couldn’t die, he went into hiding, disappearing from history and the world.

Days became years, and years became decades as two centuries passed. During the time, Grimald learned that his curse spells can’t be casted directly anymore. What he did find out that he can enchant items with curses, but now with limitations that he’ll later find out over the years. He rejected his name, and renamed himself Chaplin as a start of a new life.

From there, he wandered the world, staying for a few decades before moving out when he attracted too much attention. Chaplin was still quite the same he once was, but from his accident, he became less overconfident and more predicting. He learned from the world around him, and the more he learned, the more he realized that the world isn’t just Europe itself. As he moved into Asia, he learned various martial arts and trained himself. He learned more about curses and their uses, and during the way, became a merchant. He slowly faded from history again, but did have occasional mentions of a “walking skeleton” roaming the lands.

In the 17th century, he stopped at a village to settle for the time being as various conflicts were happening at the time. He was still aggressive everyone in general, though not as extreme as he once was. During his stay, he met a woman running an orphanage on the outskirts of town. Since it was on the path where he did business, he found himself being asked questions of the children of his travels, which he only yelled at them grumpily, thinking of cursing them when he had the chance. The woman was also curious of the Chaplin, not because of his appearance, but of his mood. Most of the time, he only threatened the woman with curses of utter torture, but she only smiled and treated him like a child. Eventually, every time he went down the path, he and the woman chatted with him doing most of the complaining. After a few years of yelling at each other and complaining, he slowly warmed up to her, though he didn’t admit it. He kept his line of work a secret during the time, posing at a simple trader.

As time passed again, he was warming up to the villagers, even the kids. Before he even realized it, he didn’t felt aggressive as before. Sure, he was doing some high ranked curses behind everyone’s back, but he began doing it less and less and spent time with the children and the woman. He felt… satisfied. Grimald, a tyrant ruler and deadly sorcerer became Chaplin, someone who was enjoying his time with the village his old self would have destroyed.

Yet tragedy struck one day as the 18th century had just started. Chaplin and the woman were chatting to one another when a wounded villager was limping away from the village. It was under attack from an enemy nation who just invaded the border. Chaplin and the woman hurried to the orphanage, where they evacuated the children into the woods. It was when the last child was away from view that soldiers came and shot at the two. They both ran into the woods, only for the woman to be shot right into her torso. Chaplin only noticed the wounds when they came into the clearing. She collapsed and was drifting away. On her last breath, she told Chaplin she was sorry for leaving him before finishing all of their arguments. It was there Chaplin told the woman of his previous life and what he did with his career, either out of sheer terror of losing his friend, or just to enlighten her before he fades away, he confessed everything without thinking. When he was done, the woman hugged Chaplin and died whispering to him still hugging.

History was jumbled after this event, but it’s implied that the village erupted of horrific screams and in the wreckage was unimaginable corpses of barely any recognition. Chaplin faded away again, but as a change man. The woman’s dead was the final push in Chaplin becoming what he is today as he added “Ashdown” in his name, as ash trees were plenty around the orphanage. While in his disappearance, his personality changed. He became an early version of himself, respecting life instead of ending it.

Centuries pass again to modern day as Chaplin came to Foresta due to a request from a friend he made during his disappearance, A friend who asked him to watch a “certain troublemaking lich.” He sailed to the island with his goal in mind, though, he had a oddest feeling when he came to the island… whatever it was, it didn’t bother him.