| Relatives | Clara Génessier (mother) (alive)
Frederick Génessier (father) (alive) Efia Floret (ex-wife) (alive) Amalia Floret (daughter) (alive) + many cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and so on. |
|---|---|
| Languages | common
french elvish (skovik) dwarvish bremish troverthian trudgeon |
| Affiliations | University of Xyrneiros (College of Restoration, Medicine and Botany) (previous) |
| Aliases | "Faust" when referring to his masked identity, "Ergo" when referring to the man underneath the mask. |
| Marital Status | estranged |
| Place of Birth | galik (city) |
| Species | human |
| Gender | male |
| Height | 6'2" |
| Eye Color | black |
Faust is a human and self-proclaimed 'doctor'. He travels the world seeking a deeper understanding of life and death.
Character Type: NPC
Full Name: Ergo Faust Génessier
Physical Appearance
Ergo's face has been seen by very few. He is tall and thin, with high cheekbones and a sharp, sloped nose. He has one dark, sunken eye (the left is scarred shut) with heavy circles underneath, and more lines on his face than someone his age should have. His skin is quite tan. His pitch-black hair is unkempt, wavy and coarse. When his face isn’t covered, he wears a pair of small, thin-rimmed glasses, oval-shaped and shaded in the lenses.
He is more easily recognized by the beak-shaped mask that he always wears, as well as a black flat-topped, wide-brimmed hat, and a heavy cloak adorned with black feathers and tiny bells that quietly chime while he walks. Those who are near death may hear his bells approaching, a foreboding sound, despite the gentle cadence.
Personality
Calm and quiet, yet deeply morbid. He is a man of very few words, living in his own mind, always mulling over the many intermingling theories he happens to be concocting at the time. He has a great respect for the concept of death, and a deep connection with it as well. He views life as an instrument, a tool to be poked and prodded at, all to discover the wonders that it holds within itself through any means necessary. As long as the living vessel is alright with it, of course. He is a doctor, after all. His intent is to halt untimely death and ease the plight of others. Although his methods can be lengthy, eccentric and painful, he can heal ailments and injuries that most would consider impossible to survive. He also respects death, however, and will not try to stop it if the time seems right. He will often save the living from the brink of death and then ask them to let him perform a few tests for the sake of science. People usually refuse, but when they don’t, he is quite pleased. He is also helpful at healing minor injuries, although his lack of empathy and his fascination with open wounds makes him rather stressful to have as a medic.
Despite being a doctor, he is not against taking life, should the situation call for it. He carries upon his back a massive crescent-shaped cleaver with a serrated blade covered in rust. He has used it countless times in the past. The victims of this cleaver are tallied upon the side of the blade in thin scratches, and on the other side, he tallies the number of lives he has saved. He tries to keep the numbers even, remaining a neutral vessel in the world, existing merely to discover what potential lies beyond the curtains of life and death.
Being a human, he does not possess the special abilities or extraterrestrial knowledge that many other races do. He has attempted to tap into any magical potential which he might possess, but has discovered, much to his despair, that none exists within him. He has always felt trapped this way, eternally aware of his limitations. This only serves to fuel his desire to become as inhuman as possible by creating inventions of unnatural and seemingly impossible quality. His connection to death is not literal, more religious. He worships the concept of death itself, beyond any deity or God, and all its twisted potential. He chases after death as though he were in love with it, unable to let it go, unable to look away from the twisted scenes he comes across in his pursuit. Wherever a famine, a plague, or a battle occurs, he follows in the wake.
History
Early Life:
Ergo was a bright, intelligent boy, born into a very wealthy upper-class family. He excelled in his studies as a youth, but always harbored a strange affection for dead animals, funerals, and the pain of others. His parents brushed this off as an adolescent quirk and paid it no mind. He read extensively, hardly ever leaving the vast library in his father’s study.
College Life:
When he was a young man, he was accepted into the University of Xyrneiros, and attended the College of Restoration, Medicine and Botany. He was a handsome man and caught the eye of a young woman attending the same classes as him. The two of them quickly bonded over their shared fascination with death. The families of Ergo and the woman were of similar class, and the marriage between the two was arranged the same year.
The more time Ergo spent learning, the more aware he became of his lack of knowledge. His fascinations grew into obsessions, and even the woman who had once listened to his confessions with a smile grew concerned. They began to argue often, as Ergo fell deeper in love with the macabre, and began to lose his connection with the humanity inside of him. He became a recluse in his study, skipping class to pursue experiments he had come up with on his own. These were morbid, gruesome projects that slowly ate away at his body and soul, as he sampled parts of his own body to study, including his left eye. His wife, horrified by the monster her husband was becoming, went to a professor at the college and asked him for help. The professor and his associates looked into the experiments occurring in Ergo’s study, and quickly expelled him from the University, urging him to step away from academia altogether for the sake of himself and those around him.
The Quarter Life Crisis:
Ergo was treated as a pariah from his family, having disgraced them, and he found himself alone with his madness. Ashamed with all sides of himself, both the human and the madman, he hid his face behind a long-beaked mask and donned a black cloak. Dressed as an image of death, he set off to travel the world, trying to piece together a sense of identity, reflecting on his morality while still his mind produced more and more questions like a machine without an off button. On his travels, he encountered much suffering in every corner of Quelmar. Wherever he did, he would try to ease it, heal the wounded, cure the ill, but he couldn’t stop his curiosity from boiling over. He began actively seeking out places where horror had struck. He would scavenge items, medicines, and biological samples from the dead for his studies, while healing the survivors. The cleaver he currently carries was obtained off the body of a burly thug during one of these scavenges, because Faust needed something to hack off limbs with. He enjoyed the weapon and kept it with him. While healing the aforementioned survivors, he would ask the living if they would lend their suffering to him as a means of study, with the promise that he would heal them completely in the end. On the rare occasion in which he was allowed, this morally dubious method of study resulted in a great many discoveries for Faust, and his skills as a doctor improved expansively, although his methods would have been considered improper practice by any scholar of medicine from an ethical standpoint. His love of death remained but evolved from crazed obsession into admiration. He learned to respect it, to follow it as a loyal subject, rather than one trying to harness and control it. During his travels, he would come into the face of danger quite often, and he never hesitated to defend himself, or those he thought undeserving of death, but he began to question whether it was truly something he should do, saving life and taking it away. As an admirer of death, how dare he interfere? So, he became fixated with keeping the scales balanced. If he saved a life, he would be allowed to take one away. If he took one away, he would have to save another. This way he could remain in death’s good graces, and he would be able to study it in subjective peace, without any unnatural variables.
The New and Improved Years:
After many years of travelling as a doctor of his own making, Faust had gathered a great many new theories he longed to test out. Without any sort of laboratory, he couldn’t experiment properly, so he ceased his travels and took up residence in an abandoned stone tower not far from the city of Ahol.
After much cleaning and refurbishing, Faust began to set up a lab, travelling on occasion to collect more items or to balance the scales of life and death from his previous expeditions. He was satisfied living near Ahol, as there was always suffering and death quite nearby. Plenty of cadavers. Plenty of illegal substances to buy and sell to make ends meet. This was satisfying for a while, as Faust lost himself once again in his research, but soon he began to grow bored. He itched to be out in the world again, a feeling he hadn’t quite expected.
His plans to leave were shortly delayed, when he picked up a live specimen off the streets of Ahol, a half-elf named Fären. He had originally assumed the body to be dead, as battered and blood-soaked as it was, but upon further inspection he discovered a heartbeat. Faust brought Fären back to the lab and patched him up, more or less. Once Fären was able to speak, Faust asked him if he would like to partake in some clinical trials, a question that was usually refused by those in their right minds. The half-elf agreed, however, on the condition that Faust continue supplying him with any drug he desired. He seemed rather to enjoy the feeling of pain, so the two of them got along swimmingly.
The clinical trials were all non-lethal, mostly just physically and psychologically taxing for the patient.
After a few years, Fären no longer returned to the tower, and with nothing more to study, Faust became restless once more.
The Fantasial Freeze:
Just when Faust was about to move out of his tower, the frigid weather of the Arctic Autumn began. Such spectacular weather phenomena fascinated Faust. He set off on his travels once more, leaving his laboratory behind. Perhaps he would return someday, perhaps he wouldn’t.
Notable Inventions:
*This list is highly incomplete*
Drugs:
- Nazareth: Clear, slightly viscous liquid to be dropped in the eyes. Hallucinogen. Highly addictive.
- Ligeia: Grayish-green, metallic liquid. When poured on an open wound, it mingles with the bloodstream and makes the body feel as though it is melting, melting, melting. Perfect for enduring a particularly painful wound.
- Shaman’s Root: Grows in cold, damp, dimly lit conditions. It is the most potent when brewed as a tea, but it can be eaten raw as well. Provokes thought and connects the user more deeply with nature and their emotions.
- Lupin: Opioid. Small, black capsules made to be ingested orally. Highly addictive.
Medicines:
- Liquid Steel: A metal in liquid form that hardens under extreme cold. Cannot be turned back to liquid after it has hardened. Can be used to mend broken bones and fortify them against future injury. The hardening process is terribly painful for the patient.
Powers and Abilities
Extensive knowledge of medicine and anatomy, how to cause pain, how to take it away. Can invent any drug or medicine possible within the laws of science and outside the laws of society.
Attacks and Weapons
Faust carries a large, serrated cleaver which he uses to chop his foes into pieces.
Notes on Ergo/Faust's character design:
The inspiration for Ergo stems from multiple sources, as detailed below.
- Ergo’s Name: The name Ergo means ‘therefore’ in latin. It is intended as a very loose reference to the phrase “Cogito, Ergo, Sum”, translated as “I think, therefore, I am”, originally written by philosopher René Descartes. This phrase rose to popularity in modern times due to the 1967 short story ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’ written by Harlan Ellison, where this phrase is uttered by the main antagonist, a supercomputer named AM. Ergo feels trapped in his body and mind, limited by his human nature, haunted by the vast theories that spiral within, those which he will never have the means to unravel. His last name, Génessier, is taken from the 1960 film ‘Eyes Without a Face’.
- Inspiration for Ergo’s Weapon and Garb: Both his mask and feather-adorned cloak are heavily inspired by the character Eileen the Crow from the game ‘Bloodborne’, and his weapon is based on the ‘saw cleaver’ and ‘saw spear’ weapons from the same game.
