Mal Morrigan

Look, just because space monsters exist doesn't mean ghosts do. Monsters are just aliens, science. Ghosts are very different. -- Mal     Mal is a largely off-putting, socially stunted, black-market organ harvester. He's incredibly good at his job, skilled in medicine, and strong enough to deal with the inevitable risks that come from a life lived on the edge of society, a combination that's largely lead to him also being a neurotic, awkward mess. Blunt, and unnerving to be around, can all of the horrific aura and persistently gross presentation be blamed on his occupation, or is something more sinister bleeding through-     Table of Contents Backstory Personality Abilities Skills & Stats Usage Notes Gallery Author's Notes Backstory Found abandoned in a bog as an infant, Mal was adopted and raised by the doctor who found him. His father, while meaning well, had no idea how to raise a child. Mal ultimately grew up to be academically intelligent, and hard-working, learning his father's surgical trade much younger and much faster than was ethical or healthy. Living so far from the rest of the world, and growing up in such a clinical environment, surrounded by death and disease, Mal ultimately became deeply disconnected from much of the world, and struggled to connect to other people.   In his teens a poorly thought out attempt to make money, and a misunderstanding with his father led to Mal running away from home, and joining up with a violent criminal organization. His own skill with medicine and borderline psychotic willingness to work helped establish him as a valuable asset to the group early on, and he did as well as someone could in the harsh world he'd found himself a part of. The work was violent, his own co-conspirators were often cruel, and Mal rapidly grew uncomfortably numb to scenes that would have left most people horrified. Even after ultimately reconnecting with his father and a small slice of the more normal world, he was in too deep to get out.   For his part Mal largely took to the work well. As awful as it could be, he loved the travel involved, the "science" he got to do largely unregulated, and couldn't complain about making enough money he doesn't have to think about it at all anymore.   At some point a vague sense of wrongness that had always lurked under his skin devolved into lingering dreams of his own flesh melting around him, and a yellow sign that seared itself into his mind. The pull lead him to uncovering a much darker, more ancient piece of himself, as well as meeting Fran.   Life has largely been getting better for Mal, finding a fellow feral soul for a girlfriend, and learning to control his foul newfound power. But years of bad luck and worse have left Mal paranoid, and it remains to be seen if a sudden end to this new peace is just around the corner, or lurking in the depths of the Bifrost Terminal.

Mal Morrigan Unnerving Malefactor Aliases/Nickname(s) None. Many people assume 'Mal' is a nickname or short for something. It's not. Profile Race Vaguely Human | Eldritch Monster Pronouns | Gender | Sex | Sexuality He/They | Nonbinary | Intersex | Pan Age 27 Height | Build 6'4 | Muscular, Slightly Underweight Hair | Eye | Skin Color Black | Dark Green | Pale with Dark Freckles Distinguishing Features ✦ Missing right eye. ✦ Lots of old scars on hands and arms. ✦ Always kind of gross. Job/Vocation Organ Harvester Hobbies ✦ Studying Medicine ✦ Travelling ✦ "Befriending" (annoying) Local Wildlife Creator Epiale

Personality

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✦ Public Face

Outwardly stone-faced, Mal is a fairly calm person. Largely willing to go along with anything happening, it's hard to get much of a reaction out of him, and he's normally content to simply observe what is going on, and listen to other people. He's generally friendly, in his own estimations, but extremely blunt when speaking, and comes across as unpleasant and unintentionally harsh. Will largely be incredibly honest with people, uncomfortably honest, but doesn't hesitate to lie if it'll get him out of a tight spot, and is extremely good at doing so.

Won't typically strike up a conversation himself, but happy to talk if someone approaches him first, or something has caught his attention. Genuinely interested in other people and can come across as invasive in a conversation. Horrifically tone deaf, and will not pick up on social cues. Inherently doesn't respect authority, hierarchies, or any other social duty to be particularly graceful with any one person, and will not adjust how he naturally acts regardless of who he's dealing with.

Mal will pretty much always act in his own self interest over the interest of anyone else, but won't go out of his way to be cruel, and if his self interest is simply enjoying someone else's company then acting in their best interest becomes the obvious choice. He's extremely practical to the point of seeming cold, but generally likes people, and if he decides he doesn't like you, it will be painfully, undeniably obvious, ranging from scowls to stabbing.

Keeps up a pretty solid emotional wall in public that can be instantly obliterated if introduced to a cute animal. His definition of cute includes almost every animal on Earth, and several from space. As much as he is an expert in humans, he's an idiot when it comes to animal identification, and will accidentally call your Pomeranian a squirrel as he coos over it.

✧ Private Face

More reactive, but not by a lot. Will actually crack a smile around the very few people he's close to, and tends to relax and let emotions out. Mal is not a particularly emotional person even internally, but has passions, and genuinely gets excited talking about things he loves. Extremely affectionate and clingy with friends and partners.

Has poor self-esteem, and is deeply lonely. He holds his current relationship very dear, and is constantly paranoid that something bad is going to happen to ruin it. Is protective, and extremely reactive in regards to Fran as a result.

Mal is deeply anxious and paranoid, and is very very reluctant to trust anyone.

✦ General~

It's shockingly hard to make Mal mad. He's prone to simply letting things go, and moving on, and it takes a lot of of deeply personal needling to get him to actually anger. Harming someone he likes will also earn you instant enmity. He can seem extremely reactive, as he won't outwardly express anger until it's built to an explosive point, leading to situations where he's gone from outwardly completely neutral to stabbing someone in about half a second flat.

Also hard to scare. He's seen so much that it's just difficult to phase him at this point. In the lineup of Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn the only option available in his brain most of the time is fight. Will run from overwhelming forces as a practical measure.

Doesn't take care of himself very well, and tends to be somewhat underweight and greasy. Smells pretty bad, like some unholy combination of sweat, swamp, and rotting meat. The smell lingers even if you can convince him to shower, most likely caused by his eldritch nature. He's aware of the fact he's gross, and will pointedly ignore people's reactions to it.

Likes

• Animals
• Fran
• Science, particularly Human Anatomy and Physiology
• Coffee
• Smoking
• Curiosities / Weird and Novel Things
• Travel

Dislikes

• Showers
• Being called weird
• Crowds
• Cops
• Authority Figures
• Not being mostly covered
• Being stuck in one place for too long

Abilities

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✦ Surgeons Knowledge

With an extensive familiarity with human anatomy, and a dexterous touch, Mal can very very quickly take out an unsuspecting human target. Whether that be a temporary incapacitation, or something much more permanent, he knows where to hit, and how hard.

This also lends itself to more beneficial skills, such as treating wounds. Part of stealing organs is then successfully putting them into new people, and combined with having to patch up himself and others he works with over the years he's a fairly adept medic.

✦ Raw Feral Strength

It turns out brute force breaking down doors, frequent fights, and having to drag bodies up multiple flights of stairs lends itself to developing some decent strength, and learning at least the basics of staying up in a fight. Mal doesn't believe in honor or a fair fight, and will throw out any dirty punch, or cheap beatdown he can to win.

◉ T̴h̴e̵ ̵S̸l̷u̸d̵g̵e̷

Mal is not truly human. By nature of being a creature that defies the very laws of reality he can contort and bend his flesh into a great, horrible mass of biomass, filth, and hunger. Pale skin melts away into a putrid black slime he can move and shape at will, a messy mass of tentacles, eyes, and gnashing teeth. He's still getting the hang of fully controlling the transformations, but when taking on his eldritch form he becomes significantly stronger, and much more durable.

Mal can choose to turn only parts of himself into this form, shaping hands, hair, and even his own face into whatever vile form he needs. These forms will always be organic, often messy and shifting. In an emotionally excited state his exact control over what shape he takes wanes, and while a shifting mound of platonic filth tends to be incredibly hard to damage, Mal does still, ultimately, have human organs in there that need to stay functional for him to stay alive. These can be repaired in the flesh slurry if not immediately fatal.

Mal is ultimately incredibly reluctant to fully transform. This is due almost entirely to his extreme aversion to ever being undressed in any way, and the simple fact that turning into slime and back again doesn't lend itself well to staying clothed.

It should be noted this form is included under physical strength stats. It could be argued the transformation is in some way magical, but ultimately it's a physical body changing shape, and then physically attacking. Eating someone isn't a spell.

Being made from eldritch filth also has, counterintuitively, antimicrobial effects. He himself is so rotten, the sludge so efficient in consuming anything it touches, that he's functionally immune to most disease. It's similar to the concept of preventing bad bacteria growth with "good" bacteria, but turned up by a thousand.

Skills & Stats

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Largely covered under Abilities.

Weapons

When using a weapon tends to default to small, sharp weapons kept on his person (scalpels, knives, etc), or random improvised "weapons" in an environment. Does carry a basic survival surgical kit with him.

Since getting in touch with his more "monstrous" side, tends to default to that first in a full blown fight, leaving his scalpel for things like sneak attacks.

✦ General Stats

✦ Strengths	✧ Weaknesses
Strong physically. Mentally hard to shake. Can take a hit. Extremely persistent. High stamina. Willing to do nearly ANYTHING.	Sloppy Slow Still ultimately reliant on human form. Skeptical Poor vision. Zero social skills. Inherently gross, and stands out. Paranoid Doors

✦ Imperative Strengths

• Strong physically. See Abilities.
• Mentally hard to shake. After a lifetime of seeing some of the most disgusting human cruelty imaginable, and a more recent delving into horrors of the eldritch variety, Mal has simply Seen Too Much, and is largely numb to it.
• Can take a hit. Used to taking punches, and a lot worse, and has a high pain tolerance as a result. Can heal damage over time using eldritch abilities, and his own medical skills.
• Extremely persistent. Truly embracing the human past as a persistence hunter, it's very very hard to get Mal to ever give up once he decides he's going to do something. This stubbornness can also lead to overworking, and a blind single-mindedness than can cause problems.

✧ Imperative Weaknesses

• Sloppy. Mal is not a trained fighter, and is still very much adjusting to using his eldritch form. While they hit hard, they also leave a lot of openings, and can accidentally completely expose vital organs while shifting shape.
• Slow. While Mal can react fairly quickly to familiar dangers, he's painfully slow on the uptake, and will painstakingly experiment with random solutions to problems before stopping to think them through. In human form not particularly fast, and while the goo can shift explosively it's more often a slow, dragging process if he wants any amount of precision.
• Still ultimately reliant on human form. Even as sludge he retains human organs, and while he can survive and to some degree repair damage in sludge form, he still needs a heart to keep going.
• Skeptical. Mal sincerely does not believe the ghostly threat in the terminal is real, and will not treat it with the kind of caution any normal person would.
• Poor vision. Mal only has one eye. While he can see out of it fine, he naturally has much more limited vision on his right side. While his eldritch form often comes along with eyes, they tend to be more disorienting than helpful, and unless carefully controlled don't help much in actually seeing things more clearly.

✦ Psychological Stats ✦

Charisma	✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧	Kindness	✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧
Patience	✦✦✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧	Intelligence	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧✧✧
Confidence	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧✧✧	Perception	✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧
Discipline	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧	Psych stamina	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧✧
Courage	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧	Caution	✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧
Honesty	✦✦✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧	Loyalty	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧✧✧
Maturity	✦✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧	Creativity	✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧
Cleanliness	✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧	Work ethic	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦

✧ Physical Stats ✧

[See Abilities for a Clearer Idea]

Physical Strength	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦	Speed	✦✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧
Magical Strength	✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧	Constitution	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦
Physical Defense	✦✦✦✦✦✧✧✧✧✧	Dexterity	✦✦✦✦✦✦✧✧✧✧
Magical Defense	✦✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧	Stamina	✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✧

Usage Notes

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I'm not really bothered by anything. Shipping, violence, death, whatever seems fun or suits your story is totally fine. I only request that the character is acknowledged as mine, and that he not be used for monetary gain, or in bigoted content. If you have any questions feel free to send me a DM on discord. (Epiale)

Gallery

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Primary Ref

Partially Gooey	Full Gooey Ref WIP	[etc]

Author's Notes

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✦ Mal's Eldritch abilities are based loosely off an Abhoth, a God of uncleanliness, miscreation, and abomination. That is to say the goo form is extremely chaotic, and gross, and you can be as creative as you want in its depiction.

✦ Despite liking animals a lot, doesn't really know much about them. Consistently gets species names wrong.

✦ I, author, Epiale, am happy to talk, and answer any questions you may have, even if they're weird. If anything here is unclear, or you're just wanting more detail, or you're curious my inbox is always open.