Maladict

Fiyero brought up a good (if spoilery!) point in IRC the other night, so I decided to put my explanation here, in case anyone else was wondering.

The name itself? Entirely non-canon. It was taken, as it were, from this bit:

He was short and quite slim, which was fairly usual in a country where it was rare to get enough food to make you fat. But he dressed in black and expensively, like an aristocrat; he even had a sword. The sergeant was, therefor, looking worried. Clearly a man could get into trouble talking wrong to a nob who might have important friends.

"You sure you've come to the right place, sir?" he said.

"Yes, Sergeant. I wish to enlist."

Sergeant Jackrum shifted uneasily. "Yes, sir, but I'm sure a gentlman like you-"

"Are you going to enlist me or not, Sergeant?"

"Not usual for a gentleman to enlist as a common soldier, sir," mumbled the sergeant.

"What you mean, Sergeant, is: is anyone after me? Is there a price of my head? And the answer is no."

"How about a mob with pitchforks?" said Corporal Strappi. "He's a bloody vampire, Sarge! Anyone can see that! He's a Black Ribboner! Look, he's got the badge!"

"Which says 'Not One Drop,'" said the young man calmly. "Not one drop of human blood, Sergeant. A prohibition I have accepted for almost two years, thakns fo the League of Temperance. Of course, if you have a personal objection, Sergeant, you only need to give it to me in writing."

Which was quite a clever thing to say, Polly thought. Those clothes cost serious money. Most of the vampire families were highly nobby. You never knew who was connected to who . . . not just to who, in fact, but to whom. "Whoms" were likely to be far more trouble than your common, everyday "who." The sergeant was looking fown a mile of rough road.

"Got to move with the times, Corporal," he said, deciding not to go there. "And we certainly need the men."

"Yeah, but s'posin' he wants to suck all my blood out in the middle of the night?" said Strappi.

"Well, he'll just have to wait until Private Igor's finished looking for your brain, won't he?" snapped the sergeant. "Sign here, mister."

The pen scratched on the paper. After a minute of two, the vampire turned the paper over and continued writing on the other side. Vampires had long names.

"But you can call me Maladict," he said, dropping the pen back in the inkwell.

( And the spoilery bit of explanation under the cut and whited-out )

And tangentially related...

Relative to Enjolras, I'm playing a little more fast and loose with the nature of Mal's canon. Just because of, you know, the nature of the beast. Les Misérables is all reality-based and grand and such. Discworld is largely comic and pretty damn meta at times.

So... that's it!

So. Maladict wants to know what you think of him. ^_^

[Last Updated: 23 June 2006]

1. What are your character's basic stats?

[Canon]
Name: Maladict
Title: Corporal of the Tenth Regiment of the Borogravian army
Species: Vampire
Blood Type: No, thank you (*rim-shot*)
Other: Slim, short, pale. When not in uniform, dressed in black and carries a sword. Aristocratic in bearing.

[Non-Canon]
Age: 18
Hair: Black
Eyes: Black
Height: 5'5"
Weight: 115

(Though Mal is described as short when first seen in canon, he is tall enough to grab a man by the throat and lift him off the ground, so.)


2. Please give some canon explanation stuff here.

Mal joined the Tenth Regiment of the Borogravian army, where he was a private under Sergeant Jackrum and Corporal Strappi. Then, when word came that they were going to be attacked, Strappi went spare, so Jackrum made Maladict corporal, due to his having a cool head and being by far the most competant combatant of the lot. Mal is fond of his regiment, all a bunch of kids like him, except much more... kid-like. He establishes himself as something of the uncle of the pack. That is, with the exception of Polly (a.k.a. "Ozzer" or "Ozz"), whom he treats much less patronizingly. As a matter of fact, he seems to genuinely respect her and be a teensy bit fascinated by her.

Also, Mal is a black ribboner -- a member of the League of Temperance, whose motto is "Not One Drop." Members of the League swear off the drinking of human blood; Mal has been a member for two years. When a vampire swears off blood, his craving is transferred onto something else. In Maladict's case, his craving was transferred onto coffee. If forced to go without coffee for an extended period of time, he will begin to go into withdrawal and eventually revert to full-blown blood-sucking vampirism.

Borogravia is a tiny, backwards country that is constantly at war with some other country or another, despire the fact that it is completely impoverished, nearly drained of young men and, overall, completely incapable of winning. It is supposedly ruled by the Duchess, who is also worshipped, though no one has seen her for decades and the more cynical types suspect that she's actually been dead for years. The god of Borogravia is Nuggan (whom the extremely and dangerously radically cynical also believe might be dead). From Nuggan comes edicts on what is abominable and forbidden, which are passed on to the people. Some examples of things which are abominable unto Nuggan are oysters, the smell of beets, women doing the work of men, the color blue and crocodiles being shown eating figures of authority. Needless to say, do not expect a citizen of Borogravia to be familiar with radical concepts such as a free press, etc..


3. What skills or powers does your character have? In particular, list any skills or powers that could be used in a combat situation.

Maladict has no magical powers, but he is stronger, faster, stealthier and more stylish than a human. He can break bones and rip people's heads off with his bare hands -- and do it without breaking a sweat. Right now, I'll estimate that he might be able to go up against a ninja and be almost evenly matched.

He carries a sword, but he doesn't know how to use it (beyond, you know, "pointy end goes there," and other such common sense things). He can use a crossbow, though.

Additionally, his senses are sharper than those of a human -- sight and smell we know of, and I suspect that hearing probably is, too. There is also that intuitive someone-is-watching/following-me sense, a personal-space sense of sorts. It's much larger in radius for a vampire than it is for a human, and it becomes especially sensitive, to the point of inducing extreme paranoia and just contributing to overall craziness, when he is going through withdrawal.

Also, a big advantage on his part is that he can undergo severe injury -- a sword through the chest, having his head cut off -- and not only not be killed, but take no more than a minute or so to heal.

He is not adversely affected by daylight, but a strong flash of intense light (such as a flash from a camera) will crumble him to dust. Pouring a drop of blood (any kind) on the dust will restore him.

We'll call garlic and silver severe allergies.


4. Quick List of Friends and Foes.

So far, Maladict has taken a shine to Kon, Swift, Cher, Umeda and Akiha.

Of the lot, he trusts Kon the most and is most intrigued by Umeda.

He has a mild negative impression of Axel, but doesn't really dislike him. And he's watching Natsuo carefully.

He doesn't consider anyone a real friend yet.