[Other OPEN] Venice: Masks & Monsters [M]

Gualterott "Il Gaudente" Cancharello
Male || Ghoul || Seeking Affiliates
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Mask: "Il Gaudente": A balta mask with gold flourish around its edges, its cream-colored face designed to look like dry, friable clay.

Age: Appears to be in early or mid-thirties; Is forty-three years old as of reanimation

Affiliation: Yes.

Appearance: Caucasian; 183 CM, 75 KG. Due to his penchant for stealing the facial features of his victims every so often, his own change and are thus not constant. What stays the same for him should he keep from bleaching blonde is his short, dark hair, both on his head and kept trim over his lips and chin--unless he feels to shave like a Frenchman. He enjoys the physical build of a squeraroli, kept lean and strong from their shipbuilding, and so he favors and currently sports their extremities.

In terms of clothing, in the day he prefers high-collar ruffled shirts, bright, mismatched doublets and jerkins that compliment each other in a unique aesthetic, and the onion-shaped trunkhose pants with knee-high boots. At night he likes to keep his colors dark and subdued, though he characteristically sports golden, ornate embroidery to retain his aesthetic.

He keeps himself heavily perfumed in order to mask the odor of decomposing bacteria that infest the hodgepodge, reanimated corpse that is technically his body.

Personality: Gualterott is a kind of bon vivant, reveling in base affairs to the point of decadence. He is driven by the desire to indulge, idealizing a hedonistic lifestyle to quickly fill the void of the everyday malaise he has convinced himself is so ever-present and confining him. His destructive pleasures manifest particularly in his palate and psyche. He enjoys food, its aroma, its many tastes, its temperature and textures. Though that may sound discerning, because of his unnatural nature, he will find an appetite for things that would otherwise repulse a human gourmand, and would neither turn down French blancmange for raw, bloodied human flesh. Likewise, he is stricken by the figure of a human, so much so that he will sexually fetishize it, and as an even further perversion, objectifies it in such a way as to equate it to the strong sensations he experiences in downing fine meats.

Besides being a lecherous glut with an underlying nihilistic view, he is a domineering sort. He enjoys exerting power, more so in demonstrations of wit as opposed to strength, delighting in manipulation that may or may not be subtle. He is neither wholly an extrovert nor wholly reserved, choosing instead to take whatever action may either benefit him or excite him. Although when he is angry, he often jumps to threats of egregious violence, implicit or blatant.

History: For forty years, Gualterott has crafted some of the finest gondolas for purchase by private persons and the Venetian government, working as a single man in utter competition to the shipbuilding guild and other independents. He learns of certain information and happenings through his more acquainted patrons. In his spare time, he sculpts the human figure. All his crafts are signed under the alias "Rialto", named after the district of Venice in which he works. At night, he frequents places welcoming of libertine fiends like him, picking up bits of gossip, rumor, and prey all the while he sates himself.

In the past year, he has been training a sixteen-year-old young man by the name Niccolo, who had been insistent on learning Gualterott's skill in sculpting statuettes after observing him carving wood in the park one day. Niccolo visits the ghoul's villa for two-hour private sessions in the early afternoon before running off to address his daily duties as an apprentice of a goldsmith guild. In the interest of keeping his identity of Rialto secret to all, Gualterott wears a stark white, unpainted volto mask when out in public sculpting in the evenings, when crafting in his workshop, and when Niccolo visits for tutoring. This mask is not to be confused for his night outing mask of personal affairs. Gualterott has developed a kind of twisted fondness for Niccolo, enjoying the boy's company and comeliness, and the fantasy of tearing him to shreds that he, for some reason, has yet to act upon.

Very recently he came upon the Compass of Raum, a lost artifact he found locked away in a small ark after an incident of dropping his longtime ring, the Band of Berith, into the Grand Canal. He recovered them both.

Powers/Skills:

• Apoptosis: Extreme. Typical of a ghoul, is able to regulate the death of the body's own cells, though in a concentrated purge, en mass. Diseases that affect tissue can therefore be contained indefinitely, removed, or if caused by natural means, destroyed.
• Band of Berith (Artifact): A demonic ring of gold that, when worn, can allow the wearer to transmute any metal that fits wholly in one's fist into permanent gold. A magical substitute to alchemy, activated through a short incantation. The item to transmute must be held in the ring-bearing hand.
• Black Bile: Able to regurgitate a tarry, bilious bile from the depths of his gut. Worse than its odor is its highly corrosive properties.
• Compass of Raum (Artifact): A demonic compass that points into the direction of artifacts strongly imbued with some kind of supernatural potential.
• Grafting: Typical of a ghoul, is able to transplant and graft both living and necrotic tissue to his body, controlling their function through demonic power.
• Inhuman Strength: Typical of a ghoul, with enough force and will, is able to tear door from hinge and limb from body.

Weapons: None