Name: The Malignant // Ricarda/Richie
Age: You are what you eat.
Gender: "Transgender" Male (He/Him/They/She/Her)
Sexuality: ???
Species: Unseelie Fairy // Leshy
Likes:
Guarding the forest; Reaping flesh; Eating, he's very foodie; Thriving on vengeance; Fairy gardens and rings; Animals; Warm temperatures; Being outdoors; Setting traps for humans and creatures alike; Hunting & fishing; Mauling and devouring threats.
Dislikes:
Deforestation & pollution; Blatant disrespect; Challenging him in a deal; Gender-based violence; Iron tools & objects; Wooden stakes; Religious items; Open, uncontrolled fire.
Personality:
The Malignant is a creature from the forests surrounding the Town of Dimehurst, having protected the area well before the town came to be constructed, and looking after the area thereafter. He used to be a more actively influential force in nurturing the settlement, but had been forgotten to time as a woodland folktale. This only becomes a problem when it leads to the townsfolk trespassing and disrespecting the forests which he has continued to promise the growth of around and through the place, but those are problems that Mali is eager to solve himself with equal or more malicious compliance.
It can be difficult to define Mali as being a malevolent or benevolent woodsman, with him being more willing to act on whims or for his own entertainment. He has a vile and opportunistic mindset, taking petty matters and resolving them with fateful extremes while having pleasure in the process and "the hunt". Plenty times is he the cause of missing persons cases, though it uniquely appears that he targets insufferable, belligerent, or violent men.
He has a crude, snarky attitude when he feels bothered, becoming sarcastic, threatening and boastful to test others into becoming irrational or startled before he may go forward with a sadistic verdict.
The Malignant tends to escalate situations and raise stakes quite rapidly to disorientate and manipulate outcomes to always be with his own benefit in mind, declaring that that's the mercilessness of nature and survival of the fittest. His justifications tend to be rooted in misanthropic bitterness, but to some degree he does tend to play fair if negotiated with.
Mali can be summed up as a strategic trickster of the woods with an agenda that falls into a grey zone at best, but he is also open about his values and what he protects. He honours himself as a protector of the wild and demands freedom for the marginalised, so his hatred towards mankind's hierarchies and pecking orders that lack the logic of food chains is evident. He is honest towards those who he feels are deserving of it from him, but his definition of that narrows unbendingly in the favour of women and children alike.
Depending on the company, The Malignant can behave bestial or human-eqsue; being bound to instinct-driven behaviours like a prey drive and zoomies, to acting exactly like a Dimehurst resident. That's a given, though, with him being a shapeshifter fuelled by flesh.
Backstory:
The Malignant is the product of a young woman who had been murdered by the outskirts of Dimehurst, recklessly discarded on a fairy ring. Her body was claimed as a vessel by the Unseelie Fae, and The Malignant assumed her energy and flesh to become a manifestation of what she was while embodying the forest. Mali's early life involves many tales of revenge, feasting on wrongdoers to ensure that no innocent blood would be fed to his forest again. He used to be known as "The Woman with Dog Teeth" in his early times of existing.
Naturally, he has become quite addicted to the hunt and has carried on with this simple tradition of his ever since. He also began to assume a more masculine form over time, given that it offered him an opportunity to become strikingly more intimidating for other men. Commonly, he shapeshifts to look like the woman who had died within his ring and uses the form to lure perpetrators when he, quite dismayingly, discovered that it seemed like the easiest method to target what he regards as a "woman's natural predator."
Extra Info:
The Malignant is at odds with The Puppeteer, but they have a silent decree to protect Dimehurst from the unruly that they have to share under order of The Executioner.
It could be accurate to describe The Malignant to act on mechanisms that are similar to The Thing and some descriptions of the Wendigo; being able to assume the forms of animals and people that he has devoured, but also needing to eat his weight in servings to maintain his size. "Eating" can also be defined as him merging his flesh around someone else like he is some sort of living suit.
He always needs to restore his flesh by means of eating organic matter; animal, plant or human. He's unable to stomach synthetic materials.,
He oftentimes wears a brown cloak and wields a scythe, he makes jokes that he might be the Grim Reaper if prodded about the resemblances.
