Post by jestercarr13 on Oct 26, 2020 16:25:19 GMT
Name: Aberfitch Berenger Cromwell
Alias: None
AKAs: Aberfitch B. Cromwell, Aberfitch, Ab, Fitch, Mr Cromwell etc.
Physical Description
Hair: Short, neatly pomade-ed, silvering, short full beard
Eyes: Black irises, but he wears contacts to simulate hazel eyes
Ethnicity: White American
Age: 142 (born 1878)
Build: 5'11; sturdy, broad build
Uniform: None
Personal Style: Aberfitch wears a rugged leather jacket, check or denim shirts, sturdy but worn working shoes or boots, and always his old, worn cowboy hat
Psychological Description
Personality: Aberfitch is a penitent man, seeking redemption for the mistakes of his past. He is gruff, hardy, with a tough unwelcoming exterior, but a heart of gold (if a little tarnished).
Relationships: Aberfitch keeps no significant relationships; everyone from his past is dead, and he's made no meaningful connections with anyone since the early 1910s.
Powers & Abilities: Aberfitch is, essentially, a demon hunter. He is an immortal, through supernatural means, cursed to fight back the variable forces of darkness. He is tougher and stronger than most, though not impervious to harm or by any stretch super-strong, it just takes a lot more to put him down for the long sleep. And even then, he might just pop back up again a few weeks down the line. He ages extremely slowly, having been cursed at the age of 24 and now appearing to be somewhere in his late 30s/early 40s. He has an innate sixth sense concerning the supernatural, as if able to sniff it out or track it like a hunter in the old west would track a deer. Whatever object he wields with the intent to use as a weapon becomes imbued with supernatural properties able to harm demons or similar creatures that wouldn't otherwise be able to be harmed. This includes guns, which he wields often. There are a few other minor advantages he has over mortals, though nothing ridiculously outlandish and possibly more to do with how long he's been alive: generally more acute senses/instincts (experience and a life hard-lived?), above average agility and dexterity (honed over many years of practice?), and very very occasionally, if he 'wishes' it hard enough, he can make things come out, play out, happen somehow in his favour (these are usually quite small things that he then has to do a lot of extra work in order to capitalise on.
Weaknesses: Aberfitch isn't an especially personable individual. He takes no particular issue with the company or presence of others, and is actually quite the people-watcher, even engages in conversation easily enough, but he doesn't easily connect to people in any meaningful way. Also, as an immortal with no easily explainable or maintainable identity, day-to-day life in the modern era is becoming increasingly difficult.
Skills: Aberfitch is an extremely practiced gun-fighter and brawler. Over the years he's amassed quite the knowledge of the supernatural and occult, assisted by his innate awareness and/or affinity for it. Aberfitch is also quite the equestrian, wrangler, tracker and hunter amongst other varied skills he picked up in the slowly receding wild west of his youth, and the many years since.
Equipment: Aberfitch tends to keep himself equipped with a variety of weapons, or at least have them very close by. Revolvers, pistols, rifles, repeaters, shotguns, knives, even a lasso. He also has various other useful trinkets for camping and survival-ism etc.
Background: Aberfitch Burton Cromwell was born when the west was still wild to a father you could easily define as an outlaw, and a mother who just wanted to settle somewhere and live a nice, quiet life away from her husband's past sins. As such, he grew up with quite conflicting influences, and ultimately followed more-so in his father's footsteps.
In his late teens and early 20s, Aberfitch ran with a gang that robbed stagecoaches and banks, amongst other crimes, and scoffed in the faces of lawmen too cowardly to do anything about it. He wasn't, by character, an evil man. But he certainly wasn't a good one. This was never more clear than on the day he let a small township be tortured and killed for sins he'd committed, and they paid for simply due to his apathy and cowardice.
Aberfitch and several of his brothers-in-arms were taken on as guns-for-hire by a government man who needed to bolster his numbers before taking down a ruthless tribe of savage indians. Aberfitch had been unsure and uncomfortable at first, not sure he wanted to take an active part in a white American campaign against the natives, but when he and his associates arrived they found other indians had also signed up for the raid. For the money. Talking the night before the raid would take place, they told Aberfitch this particular tribe were a nasty, vicious group of primitives that believed they were closer to the animals than to the lands, and acted as such.
The raid went surprisingly well. The government man lost a few of his hired thugs to arrows and tomahawks, the savage indians fighting tooth and nail like beasts. But they were no match for American lead and gunpowder. All but one of the primitive tribe's men was put to death, unwilling to be captured and forcing the government man's hand even while they were tied up. The remaining man seemed to be some sort of chief or shaman, and even while hog-tied and left face down in the dirt, muttered and mumbled some sort of native chant under his breath even while the women and children of the tribe, those that also weren't put down for their savagery anyway, were loaded into caged wagons.
The government man led the wagons away, and asked Aberfitch, the two of his friends that hadn't been killed, and a couple of indians to stay behind with the chief/shaman and what remained of the savages' settlement. He'd return the next day to load new wagons with anything else of value that remained.
That night they lit a fire and celebrated their success. Even their indian allies reveled, however hesitantly. They didn't really want to remain, and kept eyeing the mumbling shaman warily, but hadn't been paid yet.
Aberfitch's friends became impatient with the savage's incessant chattering eventually, and in their drunkenness gave into their lack of inhibitions. They tossed the older indian around, booted him in the back and ribs, held his feet over the fire, and pissed in his hair and hands. The other indians looked away, obviously uncomfortable, and offered their good-nights before retiring to a tent. Aberfitch, not as drunk as his friends, berated them and sent them off to their bedrolls to sleep it off as well. He took the savage shaman and dragged him away from the fire, intending to tie him to a post out of the way so he could sleep briefly himself as well.
As he did so, however, a particular tent caught his attention. Even as he prepared the rope to tie the already bound shaman to a hitching post, trying to ignore the now tired ramblings he still continued, something about the tent drew him to it. It was more ornate, and larger, than the others. He asked the shaman if it was his tent. Still chanting breathily, the shaman looked up at Aberfitch, then over his shoulder to the tent, but didn't respond either way before slumping forward again, still mumbling. Aberfitch pulled the man to his feet and half-dragged him over to the tent. Inside, Aberfitch realised it was a meditation tent. Like indian church, he'd joked out loud before pushing the shaman to his knees over to the side before walking around the tent and admiring the trinkets and do-dads, all undoubtedly very important to the savage tribes beliefs and worship.
Aberfitch noted the shaman's chants got more strained, and somehow angrier, the more he touched the objects. Picking them up, turning them over, analysing them before putting them back with a mocking level of carefulness. He asked questions about them all, knowing he wasn't going to get an answer, and laughed as he invented more and more absurd and disgusting stories for each object. This one was for picking your teeth after a bad venison steak. That one was for cleaning out your ears. And this one must be for wiping your ass, of course!
It was his handling of one particular object that seemed to really aggravate the shaman. His chanting had become more invigorated the closer Aberfitch got to it, but with more panic than anger. When Aberfitch picked up what looked like a bleached wolf skull with painted on smears of blood, the shaman screamed, suddenly speaking in English and begging him not to damage it. Aberfitch just laughed, fondling the fragile bone that must have been decades, if not centuries old. He teased the shaman, who became more and more panicked the less careful Aberfitch was with the artifact. He pretended to drop it, then proceeded to drop it from one hand and catch it with the other. The savage tried to explain something about a curse, something the skull protected them all from, something that was already waking up after what had happened there today and would bring with it death.
Aberfitch started to lose his patience, the fun wearing off with the shaman's annoying ramblings. He tossed the skull up into the air, with every intention of catching it and putting it back, but the sound a low, rumbling growl that seemed to come from underfoot distracted him and the wolf skull missed his hand, landed on the ground, and cracked into pieces. Looking up at the shaman, Aberfitch could only describe the man's face as having lost all hope in... anything. Aberfitch grabbed the shaman's arm and pulled him back out of the tent. At first things were silent, eerily so, even the night birds and insects seemed to have shut up. Oddly enough, the utter lack of sound seemed to wake the other indians, if they even had been asleep yet, as they emerged from their tent to investigate the sudden silence.
They looked to Aberfitch, and he shrugged. When he noticed them look past him at the shaman on his other side, he looked also, and saw the old man had turned toward a cave in the shallow rock cliff the settlement was nestled against. It was a small hole, but somehow Aberfitch understood that it was suddenly very important. He had to kick his two gang-mates to wake them up, and by the time they came around the low rumbling growl had started up underfoot again, and a louder and louder part of it started to emanate from the hole in the shallow cliff-side.
The shaman turned, stepping over a couple of the bodies of his tribesmen, to sit on the log near the fire, his expression defeated but accepting. The other indians spoke to him in one of their own tongues, and he responded with a nod. Aberfitch asked what was happening, but the two indians either couldn't bring themselves to tell Aberfitch what was coming, or simply couldn't find the right words in English with which to do so.
After a few more long moments during which Aberfitch's friends argued about just leaving, damn the money, and the indians argued between themselves presumably about the same thing (ultimately they must have decided they were desperate enough for the money), the hole suddenly spat forth a swarm of insects into the night sky. The shaman watched the cloud of creatures for a moment, before sighing and looking down at his feet, drawing shapes in the dirt with his toes.
Everything was quiet again. Aberfitch began to calm down, as did his friends who laughed and mocked the indians for the prissiness. But when Aberfitch looked to them, he could see it plainly on their faces. It wasn't over yet. The rumbling growl of the swarm of curious insects rose again and they were suddenly all surrounded by them, feeling little filmy wings and tough little insect bodies graze and bounce off of them. Aberfitch kept his eyes open well enough to spot that the insects seemed to be swarming over the bodies of the dead. Carrion bugs; strangely that actually made him feel better. It wasn't unusual for insects to eat the dead, hell it was the natural pecking order. But the longer he watched, the less pacified he felt. The insects didn't simply amass on the bodies for a feast; they swarmed around the corpses open orifices and crawled their way inside. There was another extended period of calm, in which one of Aberfitch's friends kicked a body to see if it would move with all those bugs eating it from the inside out. It didn't. Aberfitch marched over to the two indians, and demanded an explanation. All they did was advise that he get his guns ready. They'd all woken something up, and now it was their responsibility to put it to sleep again. They began to load and clean their weapons, eyes warily watching the bodies of the dead.
Aberfitch simply cussed and marched over to the savage, demanding an explanation from him. Just as cryptically, he told Aberfitch the same. They'd never be able to outrun it, or hide from it. They were the ones to wake it up, now they had to stop it before it spread. Clearly, it was all superstitious nonsense, and Aberfitch refused to entertain it by preparing any of his weapons. But he sure as shit wasn't going to sleep surrounded by a bevy of infested cadavers. He told his friends they were leaving, riding out a ways to sleep somewhere away from the bodies, and would return before the government man did to make sure they got paid. As his friends agreed, one of them had squatted and was poking one of the corpses in the face with a twig, but much to his disappointment it still didn't wriggle or squirm under the skin. But he looked away to Aberfitch at just the wrong moment, missing the eyes of the corpse snap open, glowing an irradiated green. Aberfitch saw it however, his face falling, but before his friend could turn to see why the corpse threw itself inhumanly from its limp, prone position and clamped its jaws closed on his neck and instead of biting down hard, began to gnaw and chomp, tearing the flesh to pieces deeper and deeper as the blood sprayed and gushed across the creatures clammy, wrinkled, grey skin.
Aberfitch heard gunshots close behind him, and spun to see the two indians shooting at more corpses that were walking or crawling toward them. They called out for him to take up his guns. Aberfitch spun again to get an eye on the last of his gang-mates and saw him already with his six-shooters in hand, emptying bullets into the chests and faces of the creatures bearing down on them. But nothing stopped them, not even those shots that tore chunks out of their skulls seemed to put them down.
Aberfitch finally swung his repeater from his back and started to open fire as well, but it all seemed to be for nought. He and his gang-mate were pushed back to the fire, where the shaman still sat, eerily calm and still. The other two indians were standing back to back feet away, managing to keep a small circle of free-space around them as their bullets slowed down the creatures. It seemed only when enough of these things bodies had been obliterated or separated were they inclined to stop moving, the light in their eyes going out. But they couldn't do enough damage quickly enough. While Aberfitch was concentrating on his left flank, his friend was taken to the round from the right. Aberfitch had to club his way past several of the corpses to get back out into an open space where he wasn't entirely surrounded, but the group of them surrounding the other indians, one of whom had now had to resort to lashing out with a tomahawk if they got too close, blocked any further retreat.
They called out, asking for bullets as they knew he had come with many to spare. Aberfitch looked back at the shaman, a creature grabbing at his shoulder and face from behind before clamping down on his neck, and another approaching from in front to do the same with his face. This seemed to distract some of them from him, as they fed on his friend and the savage. He looked again to the two indians, still just about holding their own, but now completely out of ammo. They looked through the crowd of the dead with hopeful glances.
And Aberfitch ran. He took the opening afforded him by their distraction and ran for his horse, vaulting to its back and spurring it to a gallop in short order.
He heard them call after him, something about how he could never escape this, that it would follow him, and he was dooming anything that came between it and him. He didn't realise how literally he should take that warning.
He rode until the sunrise to reach the nearby town the government man had taken the first wagons to. He could see them, lined up near the tavern and lodging house; they'd be planning to head back to the settlement soon. Aberfitch burst into the building, yelling loud enough to wake the... well...
The government man confronted him, demanding an explanation. And he got one. The government man refused to believe him, branded him a lunatic and promised him no pay for having deserted the job at hand. Aberfitch surprised him by breezing right by the fact he wasn't getting paid, and begging him to not go back there. The government man brushed him off, and set about his preparations for the half day's travel. The law arrived due to the ruckus, and Aberfitch was forced to calm down or be locked away in a cell with the savages that had been brought back the night before.
He tried to calm himself, demanding whiskey at the bar and being entertained just to keep him from causing more of a scene for at least a little while. He watched, swaying drunkenly, as the government man, his men and their empty wagons left the township heading back to the settlement. He didn't know what they'd find there, if anything... in truth, he'd begun to question his own sanity thanks to the forced clarity of a belligerent drunken stupor.
He hadn't realised he'd fallen asleep, face first on the bar, until panicked voices from outside roused him. Somebody was very concerned about something. Standing, with the hangover from hell, Aberfitch rested a hand on the grip of one holstered revolver as he bust through the tavern doors and saw a small gathering of people watching a solitary wagon rolling into town. One of the government man's wagons. The horse was tired, uneasy, and it's hide smeared with dark greasy marks. The solitary man sat holding the reins was slumped forward, chin buried in his own chest as if in deep slumber, but as the horse stopped at the behest of a man from the general store, he slowly slid sideways and fell to the ground between the horse and the wagon. Dead.
Aberfitch tried to make himself speak, stepping forward slowly, trying to tell the townspeople to get away from the wrinkled grey corpse. But the words never came. He drew his weapon when he was halfway there. He pulled the hammer back two strides away. As soon as he was close enough, he shoved the woman stopped over it away and fired several shots into its skull until the dirt was soaked in blood and brains.
The crowd rallied against him, chiding him for his drunken foolery and threatening the cells again. That was when he found his voice, but none of them listened to a single word. He kept yelling regardless, begging them to listen, to understand, to believe him, climbing onto a nearby bench to try and force their attention as he bellowed. It was from that vantage point he saw the lights in the pitch black surrounding the township.
He recognised his fallen friends. He saw the savages he'd already killed once, and more he'd shot again since. He saw the two indians, and the savage shaman... all grey, glowing green eyes, marching toward town, stopping for a moment as more and more of them joined the swarm. The government man, his men... and more people besides that Aberfitch didn't recognise; poor fools caught up along the way.
The undead seemed to survey the townspeople before them for that moment. Until one met eyes with Aberfitch, and they all screeched before descending upon everyone present. Some hobbled, some marched, dependent on the state of their bodies... but more than enough of them seemed capable of sprinting at inhuman speeds, vaulting the townspeople that the slower ones would feed upon to reach Aberfitch.
He had both six shooters out before any of them got any closer to them, slowing them or stopping them briefly with well placed shots to faces, knees, feet, chests, stomachs. He bought himself enough time to duck between two buildings, sprint to the dark behind them, and hide amongst discarded boxes and barrels. They knew he was there, could sense he was nearby, he could tell... but they didn't know exactly where he was, it seemed. He took advantage of that, sneaking through the shadows behind boxes, crates, hay-bails and more.
By some innate instinct, he made his way to the most secure building in town. The lawman's office, and the jail cells therein. There'd be weapons there. He made entry at the rear, into the aisle between the rows of cells at the back of the building, and was immediately presented with the huddled groups of the women and children from the savage tribe that had been locked away there. He could tell they knew what was happening, and something in their eyes told him they knew his significance in it all.
He found the lawman's double barrel, loaded it, and shoved extra shells and slugs into his duster pockets. He extinguished the lanterns, quietly locked the front door, as he had the back, and ducked under the front window, peeking now and then to see the creatures milling about aimlessly, or sprinting around in agitation. They showed no sign of leaving town any time soon. Of course.
One of the women savages made a small noise to get his attention, gesturing for him to come over. She was older, her face showing its first wrinkles, but she had kind eyes. Slowly and carefully, Aberfitch sidled over to her, keeping low. When he reached the bars, he squatted close to let her whisper at him. Suddenly, she firmly grasped his wrist and demanded, in a quiet but forceful whisper, if this was indeed his fault. His instinct was to deny it and strike the woman with the stock of the shotgun, but instead he found himself telling the truth. Her hand was very warm on his wrist. She went on to chide him over the seriousness of the blight he'd released upon the world, and how it was now up to him to stop it. Because it never would, even if it got him first.
He refused. He snatched his arm away, and in fear and panic he found an empty cell, locked himself in it, hid under the bed and pulled the blanket down to conceal himself. And just in time. The front window of the lawman's office shattered inward, one of the creatures leaping inside and quickly followed by two more climbing in after it. Peeking under the small crack around the blanket he saw it was the two indians and one of his gang-mates. Or at least, it was their bodies driven by whatever unholy demon now resided in them.
The savages screamed and panicked as the creatures tried to force their way into the cells to get to them. Eventually more came into the office, and the cell doors eventually came apart under their force.
Having looked away when the slaughter first started, Aberfitch chanced a glance to see that the woman who had grabbed him before had pulled the same trick as him, but with two young ones hidden with her. The creatures hadn't noticed, and didn't seem focused enough to try too hard to look for them.
Some time later as the sun rose again, after the newly dead savages had already risen again, the last of them was still lingering at the door to the lawman's office. Aberfitch held eye contact with the savage woman, whose gaze said everything he'd already been told over and over again with a cold, hard glare. Quietly, he gestured for her to follow him with the young ones, pointing to the back door. Very slowly, they all four crept low to the busted open door. Aberfitch peeked out both ways to see that though there were some of the creatures about, they weren't very close, not looking in their direction, and seemed to have calmed to an almost dormant state. He could hear on the wind that this wasn't true of all of them, however, so they still needed to be careful. He gestured to a barn across the empty dust patch behind the lawman's office, and they swiftly and quietly made their way over to it.
Thankfully, they reached it without incident. The indians retreated to a corner of the barn away from Aberfitch, while he clutched the double-barrel to his chest like a bible and huddled under a window he could peek out of every now and then. Sure enough, whenever he did, he got the feeling the creatures seemed to gravitate toward the barn and the bare fields around it, though they didn't seem to show a specific interest in the structure.
Wanting nothing more to be quiet and wish this all blew over, Aberfitch closed his eyes tight as if expecting he might just wake up from a bad fever dream. Instead, it was the hot hard slap of the savage woman that woke him up to the truth of the matter. She was chanting, grabbing his duster coat and pulling his face close to hers as she did so. In her eyes he saw something he couldn't explain, something like dark fluid swirling in her pupils and irises. Her voice became louder and louder in his ears, but he knew she was chanting no louder than the old shaman had been back at the settlement... but he still begged for her to stop. Lights flashed in his eyes, and the world tipped and spun despite him being still. He thought he screamed, but he wasn't sure, as in the next moment there was only the empty black of unconsciousness.
Or rather, that dark moment of consciousness that greets you when you wake with your eyes still closed. His body ached, burned, and his mind pulsed. When he opened his eyes he could hear the sounds of the creatures all too uncomfortably close to him. He was buried in hay and horse-muck for some reason, and as he threw it off of him, some of the creatures that had now gathered turned as if they hadn't already noticed him. As he surveyed the scene, his senses somehow incredibly acute to all that was going on around him now, he realised the woman and the two children had climbed a ladder to the upper level of the barn to get away from the creatures. She must have covered him up before doing so.
But the creatures were already starting to climb the ladder as well. Clumsily, but effectively enough.
Instinct kicked in, an instinct he didn't even know he had, and Aberfitch grabbed the double-barrel shotgun from the ground next to him and started firing. The creatures were close by, and took massive damage from the concentrated blasts, but even so Aberfitch could see the difference in what was shot from the weapon while he wielded it. The shot was expelled as you might expect, but it was suffused with something else, something other, that empowered it against these creatures.
His suspicions were confirmed, as when he threw aside the empty shotgun and drew his six-shooters, they too fired more than just bullets, and though his shots didn't destroy his targets bodies on their own, something about the paranormal projectiles caused harm to the creatures as though they were normal men, dependent on where he hit them.
Aberfitch fought back the horde, every sense, instinct and reaction sharper and quicker than they'd ever been before. He was able to reload with a dexterity he'd never experienced before, and avoid harm with agility and strength he could never have dreamed of having. Even when he struck the creatures with the butt of a weapon, they fell despite how hard they'd been to kill before. He was now somehow able to dispatch these creatures as though they weren't what they were. Or as though he was not what he once was.
Once the dead had been put back to rest, Aberfitch called up to the woman and the children, and they descended to him. He begged the woman to explain what had happened to him. During the heat of battle, his newly honed senses and awareness had been a boon amongst the noise and chaos... but now in the calm again, they pulsed in his mind and he found them severe and painful. She told him he was cursed. She apologised, half-heartedly, but it was the only way.
It was a curse she and her people had shared, as guardians of the cave Aberfitch had released the blight from, but now he had to carry it alone. It would be a hard life for him, to carry this all alone, but it was his to carry for what he had done. He begged her to take it back, but she couldn't. To do what she had done, she had had to give up the small piece she had as well. The two children would now never receive the piece that their heritage had promised them from birth. The children seemed annoyed by this, in their childish, non-understanding way... but the woman seemed pleased, relieved for them.
Aberfitch had a lot to learn about himself now. His whole life had changed over the course of two days, and he was only 21. Out of pity, and possibly a begrudging sense of responsibility, the savage woman stayed with him. She was called Inola. The two children (a boy, Wesa, and girl, Ahyoka) stayed also, in the end. They taught him about his new abilities and responsibilities, and even assisted him where they could. Wesa died first, not long 16 years old, mauled by a demon bear they were hunting on the Minnesota border with Canada in 1906. Aberfitch killed the beast the next day.
Inola died in 1911, succumbing to the rigors of age and a hard life. Aberfitch and Ahyoka performed the death ceremony according to their tribes customs on both occasions. Ahyoka was 18 then, and Aberfitch had appeared not to have aged since that night he was cursed. Where once they had been a small group, ignored for the most part, when they rode into towns together now questions were being asked, and people looked upon them disapprovingly. But Aberfitch considered Ahyoka a daughter, or younger sister, and nothing more. For her part, Ahyoka had confessed she had stronger feelings for the man he had ultimately become, but did not expect anything of Aberfitch.
Ultimately, Aberfitch came to feel it was unfair of him to keep her with him. She was young, uncursed, and had her own life she should be living. She argued that this was the life she knew, hunting demons and fighting by his side, but he convinced her that that was no reason she couldn't want for more. To want a normal life, and love, to have a family and not have to fight for survival every day and every night because she sought out the darkness with him. That was his curse to bear, and his alone now.
The Eastern Cherokee people of the Qualla in North Carolina welcomed her in 1912, as the pair had previously saved them from a pack of were-coyotes several years prior and offered an open invitation. She was happy there, her original tribe in Georgia being a close relative to the Cherokee tribe and so accepted as a welcome member. Ahyoka didn't know it, but Aberfitch kept an eye on her for decades to come, when he could. She married a good man, had many children, and used much of her knowledge of the supernatural to help her new people in ways they didn't even realise. She passed this knowledge on to her children, but over the generations it lessened in importance as the modern era bloomed around them. Ahyoka died, old, happy and fulfilled, in 1979, 86 years of age.
Since then, Aberfitch has carried his torch into the dark alone, all around the globe as travel has become more efficient; wherever his curse might lead him.
Alias: None
AKAs: Aberfitch B. Cromwell, Aberfitch, Ab, Fitch, Mr Cromwell etc.
Physical Description
Hair: Short, neatly pomade-ed, silvering, short full beard
Eyes: Black irises, but he wears contacts to simulate hazel eyes
Ethnicity: White American
Age: 142 (born 1878)
Build: 5'11; sturdy, broad build
Uniform: None
Personal Style: Aberfitch wears a rugged leather jacket, check or denim shirts, sturdy but worn working shoes or boots, and always his old, worn cowboy hat
Psychological Description
Personality: Aberfitch is a penitent man, seeking redemption for the mistakes of his past. He is gruff, hardy, with a tough unwelcoming exterior, but a heart of gold (if a little tarnished).
Relationships: Aberfitch keeps no significant relationships; everyone from his past is dead, and he's made no meaningful connections with anyone since the early 1910s.
Powers & Abilities: Aberfitch is, essentially, a demon hunter. He is an immortal, through supernatural means, cursed to fight back the variable forces of darkness. He is tougher and stronger than most, though not impervious to harm or by any stretch super-strong, it just takes a lot more to put him down for the long sleep. And even then, he might just pop back up again a few weeks down the line. He ages extremely slowly, having been cursed at the age of 24 and now appearing to be somewhere in his late 30s/early 40s. He has an innate sixth sense concerning the supernatural, as if able to sniff it out or track it like a hunter in the old west would track a deer. Whatever object he wields with the intent to use as a weapon becomes imbued with supernatural properties able to harm demons or similar creatures that wouldn't otherwise be able to be harmed. This includes guns, which he wields often. There are a few other minor advantages he has over mortals, though nothing ridiculously outlandish and possibly more to do with how long he's been alive: generally more acute senses/instincts (experience and a life hard-lived?), above average agility and dexterity (honed over many years of practice?), and very very occasionally, if he 'wishes' it hard enough, he can make things come out, play out, happen somehow in his favour (these are usually quite small things that he then has to do a lot of extra work in order to capitalise on.
Weaknesses: Aberfitch isn't an especially personable individual. He takes no particular issue with the company or presence of others, and is actually quite the people-watcher, even engages in conversation easily enough, but he doesn't easily connect to people in any meaningful way. Also, as an immortal with no easily explainable or maintainable identity, day-to-day life in the modern era is becoming increasingly difficult.
Skills: Aberfitch is an extremely practiced gun-fighter and brawler. Over the years he's amassed quite the knowledge of the supernatural and occult, assisted by his innate awareness and/or affinity for it. Aberfitch is also quite the equestrian, wrangler, tracker and hunter amongst other varied skills he picked up in the slowly receding wild west of his youth, and the many years since.
Equipment: Aberfitch tends to keep himself equipped with a variety of weapons, or at least have them very close by. Revolvers, pistols, rifles, repeaters, shotguns, knives, even a lasso. He also has various other useful trinkets for camping and survival-ism etc.
Background: Aberfitch Burton Cromwell was born when the west was still wild to a father you could easily define as an outlaw, and a mother who just wanted to settle somewhere and live a nice, quiet life away from her husband's past sins. As such, he grew up with quite conflicting influences, and ultimately followed more-so in his father's footsteps.
In his late teens and early 20s, Aberfitch ran with a gang that robbed stagecoaches and banks, amongst other crimes, and scoffed in the faces of lawmen too cowardly to do anything about it. He wasn't, by character, an evil man. But he certainly wasn't a good one. This was never more clear than on the day he let a small township be tortured and killed for sins he'd committed, and they paid for simply due to his apathy and cowardice.
Aberfitch and several of his brothers-in-arms were taken on as guns-for-hire by a government man who needed to bolster his numbers before taking down a ruthless tribe of savage indians. Aberfitch had been unsure and uncomfortable at first, not sure he wanted to take an active part in a white American campaign against the natives, but when he and his associates arrived they found other indians had also signed up for the raid. For the money. Talking the night before the raid would take place, they told Aberfitch this particular tribe were a nasty, vicious group of primitives that believed they were closer to the animals than to the lands, and acted as such.
The raid went surprisingly well. The government man lost a few of his hired thugs to arrows and tomahawks, the savage indians fighting tooth and nail like beasts. But they were no match for American lead and gunpowder. All but one of the primitive tribe's men was put to death, unwilling to be captured and forcing the government man's hand even while they were tied up. The remaining man seemed to be some sort of chief or shaman, and even while hog-tied and left face down in the dirt, muttered and mumbled some sort of native chant under his breath even while the women and children of the tribe, those that also weren't put down for their savagery anyway, were loaded into caged wagons.
The government man led the wagons away, and asked Aberfitch, the two of his friends that hadn't been killed, and a couple of indians to stay behind with the chief/shaman and what remained of the savages' settlement. He'd return the next day to load new wagons with anything else of value that remained.
That night they lit a fire and celebrated their success. Even their indian allies reveled, however hesitantly. They didn't really want to remain, and kept eyeing the mumbling shaman warily, but hadn't been paid yet.
Aberfitch's friends became impatient with the savage's incessant chattering eventually, and in their drunkenness gave into their lack of inhibitions. They tossed the older indian around, booted him in the back and ribs, held his feet over the fire, and pissed in his hair and hands. The other indians looked away, obviously uncomfortable, and offered their good-nights before retiring to a tent. Aberfitch, not as drunk as his friends, berated them and sent them off to their bedrolls to sleep it off as well. He took the savage shaman and dragged him away from the fire, intending to tie him to a post out of the way so he could sleep briefly himself as well.
As he did so, however, a particular tent caught his attention. Even as he prepared the rope to tie the already bound shaman to a hitching post, trying to ignore the now tired ramblings he still continued, something about the tent drew him to it. It was more ornate, and larger, than the others. He asked the shaman if it was his tent. Still chanting breathily, the shaman looked up at Aberfitch, then over his shoulder to the tent, but didn't respond either way before slumping forward again, still mumbling. Aberfitch pulled the man to his feet and half-dragged him over to the tent. Inside, Aberfitch realised it was a meditation tent. Like indian church, he'd joked out loud before pushing the shaman to his knees over to the side before walking around the tent and admiring the trinkets and do-dads, all undoubtedly very important to the savage tribes beliefs and worship.
Aberfitch noted the shaman's chants got more strained, and somehow angrier, the more he touched the objects. Picking them up, turning them over, analysing them before putting them back with a mocking level of carefulness. He asked questions about them all, knowing he wasn't going to get an answer, and laughed as he invented more and more absurd and disgusting stories for each object. This one was for picking your teeth after a bad venison steak. That one was for cleaning out your ears. And this one must be for wiping your ass, of course!
It was his handling of one particular object that seemed to really aggravate the shaman. His chanting had become more invigorated the closer Aberfitch got to it, but with more panic than anger. When Aberfitch picked up what looked like a bleached wolf skull with painted on smears of blood, the shaman screamed, suddenly speaking in English and begging him not to damage it. Aberfitch just laughed, fondling the fragile bone that must have been decades, if not centuries old. He teased the shaman, who became more and more panicked the less careful Aberfitch was with the artifact. He pretended to drop it, then proceeded to drop it from one hand and catch it with the other. The savage tried to explain something about a curse, something the skull protected them all from, something that was already waking up after what had happened there today and would bring with it death.
Aberfitch started to lose his patience, the fun wearing off with the shaman's annoying ramblings. He tossed the skull up into the air, with every intention of catching it and putting it back, but the sound a low, rumbling growl that seemed to come from underfoot distracted him and the wolf skull missed his hand, landed on the ground, and cracked into pieces. Looking up at the shaman, Aberfitch could only describe the man's face as having lost all hope in... anything. Aberfitch grabbed the shaman's arm and pulled him back out of the tent. At first things were silent, eerily so, even the night birds and insects seemed to have shut up. Oddly enough, the utter lack of sound seemed to wake the other indians, if they even had been asleep yet, as they emerged from their tent to investigate the sudden silence.
They looked to Aberfitch, and he shrugged. When he noticed them look past him at the shaman on his other side, he looked also, and saw the old man had turned toward a cave in the shallow rock cliff the settlement was nestled against. It was a small hole, but somehow Aberfitch understood that it was suddenly very important. He had to kick his two gang-mates to wake them up, and by the time they came around the low rumbling growl had started up underfoot again, and a louder and louder part of it started to emanate from the hole in the shallow cliff-side.
The shaman turned, stepping over a couple of the bodies of his tribesmen, to sit on the log near the fire, his expression defeated but accepting. The other indians spoke to him in one of their own tongues, and he responded with a nod. Aberfitch asked what was happening, but the two indians either couldn't bring themselves to tell Aberfitch what was coming, or simply couldn't find the right words in English with which to do so.
After a few more long moments during which Aberfitch's friends argued about just leaving, damn the money, and the indians argued between themselves presumably about the same thing (ultimately they must have decided they were desperate enough for the money), the hole suddenly spat forth a swarm of insects into the night sky. The shaman watched the cloud of creatures for a moment, before sighing and looking down at his feet, drawing shapes in the dirt with his toes.
Everything was quiet again. Aberfitch began to calm down, as did his friends who laughed and mocked the indians for the prissiness. But when Aberfitch looked to them, he could see it plainly on their faces. It wasn't over yet. The rumbling growl of the swarm of curious insects rose again and they were suddenly all surrounded by them, feeling little filmy wings and tough little insect bodies graze and bounce off of them. Aberfitch kept his eyes open well enough to spot that the insects seemed to be swarming over the bodies of the dead. Carrion bugs; strangely that actually made him feel better. It wasn't unusual for insects to eat the dead, hell it was the natural pecking order. But the longer he watched, the less pacified he felt. The insects didn't simply amass on the bodies for a feast; they swarmed around the corpses open orifices and crawled their way inside. There was another extended period of calm, in which one of Aberfitch's friends kicked a body to see if it would move with all those bugs eating it from the inside out. It didn't. Aberfitch marched over to the two indians, and demanded an explanation. All they did was advise that he get his guns ready. They'd all woken something up, and now it was their responsibility to put it to sleep again. They began to load and clean their weapons, eyes warily watching the bodies of the dead.
Aberfitch simply cussed and marched over to the savage, demanding an explanation from him. Just as cryptically, he told Aberfitch the same. They'd never be able to outrun it, or hide from it. They were the ones to wake it up, now they had to stop it before it spread. Clearly, it was all superstitious nonsense, and Aberfitch refused to entertain it by preparing any of his weapons. But he sure as shit wasn't going to sleep surrounded by a bevy of infested cadavers. He told his friends they were leaving, riding out a ways to sleep somewhere away from the bodies, and would return before the government man did to make sure they got paid. As his friends agreed, one of them had squatted and was poking one of the corpses in the face with a twig, but much to his disappointment it still didn't wriggle or squirm under the skin. But he looked away to Aberfitch at just the wrong moment, missing the eyes of the corpse snap open, glowing an irradiated green. Aberfitch saw it however, his face falling, but before his friend could turn to see why the corpse threw itself inhumanly from its limp, prone position and clamped its jaws closed on his neck and instead of biting down hard, began to gnaw and chomp, tearing the flesh to pieces deeper and deeper as the blood sprayed and gushed across the creatures clammy, wrinkled, grey skin.
Aberfitch heard gunshots close behind him, and spun to see the two indians shooting at more corpses that were walking or crawling toward them. They called out for him to take up his guns. Aberfitch spun again to get an eye on the last of his gang-mates and saw him already with his six-shooters in hand, emptying bullets into the chests and faces of the creatures bearing down on them. But nothing stopped them, not even those shots that tore chunks out of their skulls seemed to put them down.
Aberfitch finally swung his repeater from his back and started to open fire as well, but it all seemed to be for nought. He and his gang-mate were pushed back to the fire, where the shaman still sat, eerily calm and still. The other two indians were standing back to back feet away, managing to keep a small circle of free-space around them as their bullets slowed down the creatures. It seemed only when enough of these things bodies had been obliterated or separated were they inclined to stop moving, the light in their eyes going out. But they couldn't do enough damage quickly enough. While Aberfitch was concentrating on his left flank, his friend was taken to the round from the right. Aberfitch had to club his way past several of the corpses to get back out into an open space where he wasn't entirely surrounded, but the group of them surrounding the other indians, one of whom had now had to resort to lashing out with a tomahawk if they got too close, blocked any further retreat.
They called out, asking for bullets as they knew he had come with many to spare. Aberfitch looked back at the shaman, a creature grabbing at his shoulder and face from behind before clamping down on his neck, and another approaching from in front to do the same with his face. This seemed to distract some of them from him, as they fed on his friend and the savage. He looked again to the two indians, still just about holding their own, but now completely out of ammo. They looked through the crowd of the dead with hopeful glances.
And Aberfitch ran. He took the opening afforded him by their distraction and ran for his horse, vaulting to its back and spurring it to a gallop in short order.
He heard them call after him, something about how he could never escape this, that it would follow him, and he was dooming anything that came between it and him. He didn't realise how literally he should take that warning.
He rode until the sunrise to reach the nearby town the government man had taken the first wagons to. He could see them, lined up near the tavern and lodging house; they'd be planning to head back to the settlement soon. Aberfitch burst into the building, yelling loud enough to wake the... well...
The government man confronted him, demanding an explanation. And he got one. The government man refused to believe him, branded him a lunatic and promised him no pay for having deserted the job at hand. Aberfitch surprised him by breezing right by the fact he wasn't getting paid, and begging him to not go back there. The government man brushed him off, and set about his preparations for the half day's travel. The law arrived due to the ruckus, and Aberfitch was forced to calm down or be locked away in a cell with the savages that had been brought back the night before.
He tried to calm himself, demanding whiskey at the bar and being entertained just to keep him from causing more of a scene for at least a little while. He watched, swaying drunkenly, as the government man, his men and their empty wagons left the township heading back to the settlement. He didn't know what they'd find there, if anything... in truth, he'd begun to question his own sanity thanks to the forced clarity of a belligerent drunken stupor.
He hadn't realised he'd fallen asleep, face first on the bar, until panicked voices from outside roused him. Somebody was very concerned about something. Standing, with the hangover from hell, Aberfitch rested a hand on the grip of one holstered revolver as he bust through the tavern doors and saw a small gathering of people watching a solitary wagon rolling into town. One of the government man's wagons. The horse was tired, uneasy, and it's hide smeared with dark greasy marks. The solitary man sat holding the reins was slumped forward, chin buried in his own chest as if in deep slumber, but as the horse stopped at the behest of a man from the general store, he slowly slid sideways and fell to the ground between the horse and the wagon. Dead.
Aberfitch tried to make himself speak, stepping forward slowly, trying to tell the townspeople to get away from the wrinkled grey corpse. But the words never came. He drew his weapon when he was halfway there. He pulled the hammer back two strides away. As soon as he was close enough, he shoved the woman stopped over it away and fired several shots into its skull until the dirt was soaked in blood and brains.
The crowd rallied against him, chiding him for his drunken foolery and threatening the cells again. That was when he found his voice, but none of them listened to a single word. He kept yelling regardless, begging them to listen, to understand, to believe him, climbing onto a nearby bench to try and force their attention as he bellowed. It was from that vantage point he saw the lights in the pitch black surrounding the township.
He recognised his fallen friends. He saw the savages he'd already killed once, and more he'd shot again since. He saw the two indians, and the savage shaman... all grey, glowing green eyes, marching toward town, stopping for a moment as more and more of them joined the swarm. The government man, his men... and more people besides that Aberfitch didn't recognise; poor fools caught up along the way.
The undead seemed to survey the townspeople before them for that moment. Until one met eyes with Aberfitch, and they all screeched before descending upon everyone present. Some hobbled, some marched, dependent on the state of their bodies... but more than enough of them seemed capable of sprinting at inhuman speeds, vaulting the townspeople that the slower ones would feed upon to reach Aberfitch.
He had both six shooters out before any of them got any closer to them, slowing them or stopping them briefly with well placed shots to faces, knees, feet, chests, stomachs. He bought himself enough time to duck between two buildings, sprint to the dark behind them, and hide amongst discarded boxes and barrels. They knew he was there, could sense he was nearby, he could tell... but they didn't know exactly where he was, it seemed. He took advantage of that, sneaking through the shadows behind boxes, crates, hay-bails and more.
By some innate instinct, he made his way to the most secure building in town. The lawman's office, and the jail cells therein. There'd be weapons there. He made entry at the rear, into the aisle between the rows of cells at the back of the building, and was immediately presented with the huddled groups of the women and children from the savage tribe that had been locked away there. He could tell they knew what was happening, and something in their eyes told him they knew his significance in it all.
He found the lawman's double barrel, loaded it, and shoved extra shells and slugs into his duster pockets. He extinguished the lanterns, quietly locked the front door, as he had the back, and ducked under the front window, peeking now and then to see the creatures milling about aimlessly, or sprinting around in agitation. They showed no sign of leaving town any time soon. Of course.
One of the women savages made a small noise to get his attention, gesturing for him to come over. She was older, her face showing its first wrinkles, but she had kind eyes. Slowly and carefully, Aberfitch sidled over to her, keeping low. When he reached the bars, he squatted close to let her whisper at him. Suddenly, she firmly grasped his wrist and demanded, in a quiet but forceful whisper, if this was indeed his fault. His instinct was to deny it and strike the woman with the stock of the shotgun, but instead he found himself telling the truth. Her hand was very warm on his wrist. She went on to chide him over the seriousness of the blight he'd released upon the world, and how it was now up to him to stop it. Because it never would, even if it got him first.
He refused. He snatched his arm away, and in fear and panic he found an empty cell, locked himself in it, hid under the bed and pulled the blanket down to conceal himself. And just in time. The front window of the lawman's office shattered inward, one of the creatures leaping inside and quickly followed by two more climbing in after it. Peeking under the small crack around the blanket he saw it was the two indians and one of his gang-mates. Or at least, it was their bodies driven by whatever unholy demon now resided in them.
The savages screamed and panicked as the creatures tried to force their way into the cells to get to them. Eventually more came into the office, and the cell doors eventually came apart under their force.
Having looked away when the slaughter first started, Aberfitch chanced a glance to see that the woman who had grabbed him before had pulled the same trick as him, but with two young ones hidden with her. The creatures hadn't noticed, and didn't seem focused enough to try too hard to look for them.
Some time later as the sun rose again, after the newly dead savages had already risen again, the last of them was still lingering at the door to the lawman's office. Aberfitch held eye contact with the savage woman, whose gaze said everything he'd already been told over and over again with a cold, hard glare. Quietly, he gestured for her to follow him with the young ones, pointing to the back door. Very slowly, they all four crept low to the busted open door. Aberfitch peeked out both ways to see that though there were some of the creatures about, they weren't very close, not looking in their direction, and seemed to have calmed to an almost dormant state. He could hear on the wind that this wasn't true of all of them, however, so they still needed to be careful. He gestured to a barn across the empty dust patch behind the lawman's office, and they swiftly and quietly made their way over to it.
Thankfully, they reached it without incident. The indians retreated to a corner of the barn away from Aberfitch, while he clutched the double-barrel to his chest like a bible and huddled under a window he could peek out of every now and then. Sure enough, whenever he did, he got the feeling the creatures seemed to gravitate toward the barn and the bare fields around it, though they didn't seem to show a specific interest in the structure.
Wanting nothing more to be quiet and wish this all blew over, Aberfitch closed his eyes tight as if expecting he might just wake up from a bad fever dream. Instead, it was the hot hard slap of the savage woman that woke him up to the truth of the matter. She was chanting, grabbing his duster coat and pulling his face close to hers as she did so. In her eyes he saw something he couldn't explain, something like dark fluid swirling in her pupils and irises. Her voice became louder and louder in his ears, but he knew she was chanting no louder than the old shaman had been back at the settlement... but he still begged for her to stop. Lights flashed in his eyes, and the world tipped and spun despite him being still. He thought he screamed, but he wasn't sure, as in the next moment there was only the empty black of unconsciousness.
Or rather, that dark moment of consciousness that greets you when you wake with your eyes still closed. His body ached, burned, and his mind pulsed. When he opened his eyes he could hear the sounds of the creatures all too uncomfortably close to him. He was buried in hay and horse-muck for some reason, and as he threw it off of him, some of the creatures that had now gathered turned as if they hadn't already noticed him. As he surveyed the scene, his senses somehow incredibly acute to all that was going on around him now, he realised the woman and the two children had climbed a ladder to the upper level of the barn to get away from the creatures. She must have covered him up before doing so.
But the creatures were already starting to climb the ladder as well. Clumsily, but effectively enough.
Instinct kicked in, an instinct he didn't even know he had, and Aberfitch grabbed the double-barrel shotgun from the ground next to him and started firing. The creatures were close by, and took massive damage from the concentrated blasts, but even so Aberfitch could see the difference in what was shot from the weapon while he wielded it. The shot was expelled as you might expect, but it was suffused with something else, something other, that empowered it against these creatures.
His suspicions were confirmed, as when he threw aside the empty shotgun and drew his six-shooters, they too fired more than just bullets, and though his shots didn't destroy his targets bodies on their own, something about the paranormal projectiles caused harm to the creatures as though they were normal men, dependent on where he hit them.
Aberfitch fought back the horde, every sense, instinct and reaction sharper and quicker than they'd ever been before. He was able to reload with a dexterity he'd never experienced before, and avoid harm with agility and strength he could never have dreamed of having. Even when he struck the creatures with the butt of a weapon, they fell despite how hard they'd been to kill before. He was now somehow able to dispatch these creatures as though they weren't what they were. Or as though he was not what he once was.
Once the dead had been put back to rest, Aberfitch called up to the woman and the children, and they descended to him. He begged the woman to explain what had happened to him. During the heat of battle, his newly honed senses and awareness had been a boon amongst the noise and chaos... but now in the calm again, they pulsed in his mind and he found them severe and painful. She told him he was cursed. She apologised, half-heartedly, but it was the only way.
It was a curse she and her people had shared, as guardians of the cave Aberfitch had released the blight from, but now he had to carry it alone. It would be a hard life for him, to carry this all alone, but it was his to carry for what he had done. He begged her to take it back, but she couldn't. To do what she had done, she had had to give up the small piece she had as well. The two children would now never receive the piece that their heritage had promised them from birth. The children seemed annoyed by this, in their childish, non-understanding way... but the woman seemed pleased, relieved for them.
Aberfitch had a lot to learn about himself now. His whole life had changed over the course of two days, and he was only 21. Out of pity, and possibly a begrudging sense of responsibility, the savage woman stayed with him. She was called Inola. The two children (a boy, Wesa, and girl, Ahyoka) stayed also, in the end. They taught him about his new abilities and responsibilities, and even assisted him where they could. Wesa died first, not long 16 years old, mauled by a demon bear they were hunting on the Minnesota border with Canada in 1906. Aberfitch killed the beast the next day.
Inola died in 1911, succumbing to the rigors of age and a hard life. Aberfitch and Ahyoka performed the death ceremony according to their tribes customs on both occasions. Ahyoka was 18 then, and Aberfitch had appeared not to have aged since that night he was cursed. Where once they had been a small group, ignored for the most part, when they rode into towns together now questions were being asked, and people looked upon them disapprovingly. But Aberfitch considered Ahyoka a daughter, or younger sister, and nothing more. For her part, Ahyoka had confessed she had stronger feelings for the man he had ultimately become, but did not expect anything of Aberfitch.
Ultimately, Aberfitch came to feel it was unfair of him to keep her with him. She was young, uncursed, and had her own life she should be living. She argued that this was the life she knew, hunting demons and fighting by his side, but he convinced her that that was no reason she couldn't want for more. To want a normal life, and love, to have a family and not have to fight for survival every day and every night because she sought out the darkness with him. That was his curse to bear, and his alone now.
The Eastern Cherokee people of the Qualla in North Carolina welcomed her in 1912, as the pair had previously saved them from a pack of were-coyotes several years prior and offered an open invitation. She was happy there, her original tribe in Georgia being a close relative to the Cherokee tribe and so accepted as a welcome member. Ahyoka didn't know it, but Aberfitch kept an eye on her for decades to come, when he could. She married a good man, had many children, and used much of her knowledge of the supernatural to help her new people in ways they didn't even realise. She passed this knowledge on to her children, but over the generations it lessened in importance as the modern era bloomed around them. Ahyoka died, old, happy and fulfilled, in 1979, 86 years of age.
Since then, Aberfitch has carried his torch into the dark alone, all around the globe as travel has become more efficient; wherever his curse might lead him.
