Poxy Dennis

[Poxy Dennis]

Name: Poxy Dennis
Age: 42
Race: Human

Physical Description:

Dennis is a lanky man of just over six feet, though his outward appearance hardly reflects his true height. Grimy and hunched, Dennis' near skeletal, malnourished frame swims inside a secondhand set of rough-spun robes which over the months have deteriorated to little more than rags afflicted with numerous small snags and tears. Every inch of mud tanned skin visible from underneath his attire is covered with inflamed, pussy lesions; some bulging and ready to burst, others sunken and slowly leaking across his flesh, leaving dried crusty lines. Thinning sprigs of oily black hair hang tangled off his irregular shaped skull which seems squashed slightly, one dull grey-blue eye, one gone milky, a hooked nose left crooked from many breaks, a minefield of facial craters and the whole package tied together with a mouth near bare save several plank shaped brown teeth. From his neck sprouts a squishy tumor large enough to rest his head upon when he becomes tired,, the skin of which has turned slightly shiny and translucent, accentuating a network of blue veins underneath. Coarse black hairs grow from it in tight packed patches which often hold crumbs and sticky bits of food. The man more shambles than walks, a poorly healed series of fractures in his left leg and ankle have left the attached foot turned nearly sideways and it doesn't make the motions proper any longer, instead it drags slightly with each step. Yet despite all this Dennis seems fairly happy with his station in life, always sporting a gapped smile even when there's been slim pickings at the dump.

Possessions: Dennis has few possessions, most of which are repurposed trash collected from around the city.

A spoon strapped to a fork: Dennis uses this to eat pretty much everything he can't just shove into his face

A plain brown sack: He puts things in it.

A large rat: It's not exactly a pet, but it follows him around and hangs out, often inside the sack.

A molding sheep's bladder: He drinks stuff out of it.

A hobo knife: This rusty hunk of iron is probably the most valuable thing he owns.

Powers or Strengths:

Dennis has a good eye for opportunities, and can often nose out the best scores in a pile of rubbish

He is also possessed of the power to sleep through almost anything, as such he often wakes up far from where he fell asleep.

Though not particularly strong or fast, any man who's survived extreme poverty on the streets of marn for as long as Dennis has did not manage the task through pacifism. The notched and rusty knife he carries has tasted the blood of more than a few who tried to take what was his. He may look pathetic, and in many ways he is, but it's best not to underestimate him all the same.

Dennis is possessed of innate magical potential that has not manifested itself at this time.

Because he only has one good eye, and it doesn't see so much better than his bad one, Dennis relies heavily on his ears to navigate daily life. Even in the pitch dark, Dennis can manage to find his way around, and sneaking up on him is very difficult, so long as he can hear.

Weaknesses and Flaws:

Dennis is frail and very weak physically. One good beating could leave his body even more horribly disfigured than it is currently, and thanks to his already mangled leg the beggar won't be running away from anyone very fast.

Though not entirely stupid, the beggar has never gotten a proper education, and he bases his vision of the truth mainly on personal experience, rumor, and superstition.

Dennis is completely unable to resist a good deal. Maybe it's a particularly fat score. Maybe it's 40% off on a bowl of soup. Maybe it's the promise of payment for a task he has yet to complete. All the same, the beggar is always keeping an eye out for any way to get a little bit more. Though sometimes this works to his advantage, Dennis often becomes wrapped up in overcomplicated schemes which are doomed to fail and is easily manipulated by those with a silver tongue.

Since he only has one good eye, and it doesn't see so much better than his bad one, Dennis relies heavily on his ears to navigate daily life. Put him in a crowded marketplace and the excess noise can leave him in a very small bubble, outside of which anything could happen without him knowing.

History:
Dennis was born near half a century ago in Marn's very own 'historic' district. A polite thing to call it, all things considered. He never knew his father, and it's likely his mother never knew which of the men she'd been with was the bastard responsible. You might call it a professional hazard of whoring yourself out to survive one of most cruel places in Thar Shaddin. They were safe from the dangers of the wilderness, safe from the bloodthirsty beasts everyone knew could snap a man in two with a single gnashing of their teeth, even relatively safe from the magical world, back when the black market trade was not so overrun with enchanted items.

Yet for the residents of the slums, their worst enemy and greatest danger has always been themselves.

The historic district has been a piss hole for as long as anyone can remember, a slovenly tinderbox ready to go up both physically and metaphorically, always locked in a steady rate of decay. Yet many of those born there will tell you that It was never quite so bad as now. Maybe there's some truth in it, or maybe it's just the nature of remembering, but Dennis might tell you how his childhood wasn't so different from most. His mom fixed him supper, he played with his toys, he made friends and ran around with them getting into trouble and having fun. Reminiscing about the better days always causes Dennis' grin to grow even more broad than usual. But when you've never truly known any other life, it's easy to forget that some children eat more than hard bread, grey gruel, and spoiled scraps of meat from creatures you wouldn't probably want to think about. Some children play with wooden knights or maybe even a ball-in-a-cup instead of dead rats and bits of trash from the pile outside the family shanty. Some children have friends whose parents are still alive, that don't beat them, that make sure there's food on the table. Some children have friends that don't stab each other over who will get the larger share of their food stall heist.

Still, for most of his early life Dennis was a perfectly happy young child. His mother may have spent long hours whoring to get them by, but she was not stupid and she did her best to give her child all the knowledge he would need to survive and thrive. Dennis may have even been one of the lucky ones who escape their station, make enough legitimate money to move out of the slums. Yet life is fickle, one minute you're on top and the next....

A week before Dennis' ninth birthday, a man came to the front curtain of their shanty. He was tall, with a thin face and long black hair. The boy answered his knock, and for a moment the two just stood there, staring at one another. Dennis could never explain it to you now, but the man's eyes held a strange power over him, like they could suck all the color and light and love out of the world. He was powerless, unable to look away, unable to move and without a word the man reached out to him with a thin, cold hand. The whole thing seemed to stretch on infinitely, the man's hand moving in slow motion as it's long slender fingers wrapped tightly about his wrist. Suddenly the moment was shattered with a scream as pain ripped through his entire body, radiating out from the stranger's iron grip upon him. In an instant his mother was there screaming, trying to pull him away from the man with all her strength, yelling and pleading, kicking, crying.

Dennis could not help but beg, to cry for her, beg her to save him through the waves of pain choking out his ability to even think. He can still remember her face contorted in desperation and fear, soaked with tears rolling away. He's always told people that's the last thing he can remember, but as the moment stretched out, his mind fighting desperately to process all that was happening through the agony, his eyes found themselves wandering back to the face of that man. Unable to look anywhere else, Dennis studied closely every detail of the stranger's face. His eyebrows... for some reason he couldn't stop looking at his eyebrows, specifically the single grey hair protruding at an angle from the shaggy line of black. The pearly white teeth and thin curling lips which made up his sadistic smile, the hard line of his tight jaw, the sheer length of his long hooked nose, the almost electric blue of his eyes.... of all these things Dennis best remembers that single grey hair.

When he woke up, Dennis couldn't remember exactly when he had passed out. He searched for his mother everywhere, he even searched for the man, but they were both gone without a trace. He asked everyone he saw, begged them for help, but his mother was not well liked by their neighbors, whether it was because of her whoring or because of how well she had done for herself from it is inconsequential. It's not uncommon for mothers to abandon their children in the piss-hole. It might even be possible that the orphan population outnumbers those with anything close to a parent. A grimy boy whose whore of a mother has abandoned him is nothing special, just another mouth to feed, and those who can barely afford to fill their own bellies are not keen to start handing out charity. Dennis tried to remain in the shanty, but when word of his mother's absence began to spread he was forced out by thugs looking for a new squat. In his first month alone Dennis was beaten bloody eight times. He nearly starved, caught chill, developed a cough no nine year old should have and snagged his eye on a nail while hunting rats through the tight spaces of a collapsed shack on the outskirts of the slums. It never healed properly and to this day his left eye is hidden beneath a thick milky film.

In the beginning, Dennis swore revenge. He thought of that face every night before he went to sleep, promised his mother that one day he would find her and make the man who tore their lives apart pay. The child grew distant and dangerous. Always ready to stick a man like a pig if he felt threatened. He grew hardened, and the streets formed him into something he had never been. As he grew, Dennis soon became strong enough to do more than just survive. He double-crossed, cheated, stole, extorted and murdered his way up from the very bottom to near the top of the pecking order, always keeping his ears open for any scrap of news about his mother or the stranger.

Years passed, and slowly his hope and thirst for vengeance faded away. His mother was gone forever, and eventually he stopped thinking about her every day. His life was busy enough without searching in vain for something he could never find. Dennis had gained some scars, but he had also gained the closest thing to wealth that anyone in the piss hole might hope for. He gorged himself on wine, ate away those ribs which had always been visible, and worked his way through near every whore in the slums, fathering many sons that would never know his name.

But success in a world of shit breeds more jealousy than admiration and respect is only earned through strength. One night as he strolled amongst the stalls and piss pots of the ramshackle market, they came for him. Hoods younger and hungrier than he had become. Perhaps they were motivated only by bishani, or maybe they were friends with someone he'd roughed up back when. In either case, they came upon him comfortable and unaware, with his belly full of booze and his prick in a whore who sold him out for a share of the take. There was no fight, they near split his skull before Dennis ever knew they were there. He gave them what he had, but it wasn't enough, they dragged him through the streets to the shack he'd made his home and broke each of his fingers in turn between savage blows to the face until he managed to spit “The loose board!” through a spray of blood and the splinters of a tooth. They unceremoniously tore through his stash, taking everything of value and breaking anything else. When they were done, they spit on him, and stomped his already broken form until he could no longer move even an inch.

It probably would have been easier just to die.

Dennis woke up three days later, his clothes stiff and his hair clotted into mattes from all of his blood which had dried in the interim. It was months before he healed, and how he survived during that time is mainly a mystery, but despite his heroic feat of survival the man would never be all of what he was again. His leg had been nearly shattered in several places, his ankle twisted out of it's natural place and an especially vicious stomp had shifted the whole structure of his face, transforming the once battered but not ugly man into a foul creature unwelcome in any civilized place.

Life is fickle.

Since then Dennis has been getting by as best he can, but a broken man who can't even run has little recourse in a world that couldn't care less. Mostly he scavenges, digging through vast piles of trash looking for the best bits that he might be able to sell or trade. Other times he ventures as close to downtown as the guards will allow and begs for change. Finding enough food to eat is hard, and finding a safe place to lay his head has become progressively more difficult. After the beating addled his brain, Dennis sleeps like a corpse and in the piss-hole there are any number of people who'd gladly slit your throat where you lay and ask questions later. As such, the bum hardly sleeps and can often be found shambling around empty streets on the outskirts of the historic district muttering out his waking dreams.

Many men of forty can still be considered in their prime, but Dennis appears to be much older, some would guess upwards of sixty. The bum may have had a hard life, but his steep downward decline did not truly begin until after his disfigurement. For some reason his body has begun to waste away, sprouting lesions and pock marks, his teeth rotting out of his face, his hair falling out and the gradual but sure growth of the hideous tumor which hangs from his neck. Several years ago a healer examined him in the street while he was begging, but nothing the man tried had any effect. Yet for all his struggle, Dennis still manages to find joy and happiness in the simple things, something he'd never been able to do when he had it all.

[Katona]

Approved.

As a reminder, any powers that Dennis later develops will have to be approved by a moderator. That can be done by requesting to have this thread unlocked so that you can edit it and have it re-approved, or you can also PM a moderator to work out the details privately. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, but for now, have fun!

Plot Discussion
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[Metarie]

Medical care in Marn is free and Metarie makes regular trips to the Shanty town to offer care to those who can't or won't go to the Hospital.

In talking with Dennis in chat, we've come to the conclusion he revels in his ick and is a sort of pride on his part. Gross, but true.