#winterkill works

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Ymir Liones

—requested by @honeyb24

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👻 for male executives Dieterich, Seamus, n Gaware? >:3

👻 for a fear headcanon

Dieterich

There's not a lot that inspires any significant sense of fear in Dieterich... or at least, not much that's real. While pain and suffering, either his own or that of others, hardly faze him, creepy rumors, legends, and so on are a very different story. Disturbing urban legends have a much better chance of genuinely scaring him than anything grounded in immediate reality (not that he'd let such inconvenient feelings show much, either way).

Seamus

Overall, a lot of Seamus's personality and actions are motivated by fear— fear of failure, fear of shame, fear of not measuring up to his peers, and so on. He's obnoxiously arrogant, and seems perfectly self-assured, but the very thought of not being good enough makes him erratic and desperate to claw back his usual sense of smug superiority. Part of why his rivalry with Lisette has gotten so aggressive is that neither of them could bear losing.

Gaware

Gaware's deepest fears all revolve around his family. After seeing his little sister hurt so badly, the threat of his siblings coming to harm always seems to be hovering in the back of his mind. During his ongoing revenge mission, that fear is one of the many factors that contribute to his bad habit of stress-eating— overall, he's been an anxious, anger-fueled mess since he left home. There's little keeping him going by now but that fear and anger.

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Jupiter for letter N?? 👀

N. Negative: What does your OC believe is their worst flaw?

His existence. Jupiter knows that from the start, his birth was enough of a mistake that his family had to keep him locked away. Now, Wisdom's experiments have made him even more of a living impossibility, an incorrect existence given physical form. Even though the primary goal was a success, his immortality is a flawed, miserable thing, hardly functional as anything but a prototype to be improved. He'll be someone's possession and hidden shame until the day he dies— if death is even possible for him, anymore—, and he lacks the willpower or ability to change that fate.

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Let's give the boy a little love. 🧦 For Jupiter?

🧦 for a domestic headcanon

Jupiter has functionally zero concept of domestic life. With the family he was born in, he was treated like an unfortunate, unsightly mistake that needed to be kept thoroughly out of the public eye. He was kept locked inside almost constantly, only allowed to see the outside world or interact with other people in sparse intervals, and always under his family's tight control. With Wisdom, and Winterkill after her, little changed. The truth of Jupiter's existence is still a closely guarded secret. His world still consists of a locked-away cell. He still has no freedom, and no peace from the cruel realities of who and what he is. Wisdom's experiments and their lasting effects on his body were just more in a long series of violations of his autonomy. His life remains not his own.

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👀 for Jupiter, Gaware, and Dieterich pls? :3c

👀 for a personality headcanon

Jupiter

Answered here!

Gaware

Answered here!

Dieterich

While he delights in causing harm to others, in general, Dieterich finds a special thrill in making someone truly need him. Dependency, even when it's reluctant or outright forced, is quite possibly Dieterich's favorite thing to experience. In a way, it's a power trip. He can synthesize substances that force all manner of changes in the mind, but manipulating circumstances to make a person just as addicted to what he has to give is far trickier than arranging some chemical equations. This sadistic fixation on other people's need is exactly why he's grown so fond of Hikura.

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Test Subject: Vulcan

Name: Test Subject Vulcan

Species: Daryan (originally), Dzlethian (attached parts)

Race: Bluescale

Role: A Test Subject of Winterkill Works whose experimental power is among the most disturbing— half of his body has been replaced with someone else’s. A gentle, inoffensive person with a soft heart (that often gets him hurt) who’s struggling not to bend under his circumstances. 

Affiliation: Winterkill Works

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Height: 6’0

Appearance: Vulcan is a tall man with a strong build. The original half of his body has dark, red-hued brown skin, thick, black hair that reaches his neck, a bit of facial hair on his chin, and a dull, teal-colored eye. The half attached to him is lighter skinned, with a burgundy eye, a curved, sharp horn, and ruddy, dark brown hair that’s shorter-cropped than on the other side. 

Personality: Vulcan is a kind, mild-mannered person who prefers to avoid conflicts and keep the peace. He gets attached to things and people easily, and despite all rational arguments to the contrary, ends up caring for them far more than he should. He’s not overly emotional, but he wears what passions he does have on his sleeve, heedless of how often they get him hurt. Though far from bold or brave, he has a calming, steady sort of presence that makes it easy to rely on him, and his sheer sincerity makes him hard to dislike. Since the experiments, he’s had recurring problems with thoughts and impulses that don’t feel like his own, however, and the silent, hidden dread of what (or who) he’s becoming is eating away at him inside.

Positive Traits: Vulcan is earnest, straightforward, and has very little to hide. He’s compassionate, willingly offering aid to those he sees as needing it, without demanding repayment in return. He’s even-tempered and patient, and good at easing others into his pace because of it. Content not to stand out, he’d rather serve as support for someone he loves than seek glory or pleasure for himself, though this can mean he neglects his own needs in favor of others. He loves strongly, and is deeply loyal to anyone he values. 

Negative Traits: Vulcan is prone to worrying, though more about other people than himself. He’s self-sacrificing to a fault, and his freely-given honesty means he’s easy to manipulate by those who are willing to use his kindness against him. He’d rather push his own problems and distress down and out of the way than trouble others with them, but bottling everything up only leaves it to fester. When it comes to conflicts with others, he’s not very strong-willed, usually letting people get their way rather than fight back. 

History: The earlier part of Vulcan’s life involved industrial construction; growing up studying the field, and then working in it. He had a calm, peacefully aimless youth, pursuing mundane goals, but a friend’s misguided money-making scheme eventually (and somewhat accidentally) led to his involvement with Winterkill Works. Vulcan still thinks it’s better that he ended up like this than his former friend (who had far more to lose), but he was painfully ignorant about what he was getting into, back when he joined.

Relationships: Vulcan gets along well enough with most of the people around him, though that’s very much a deliberate choice on his part. He makes an active effort to be agreeable even when not offered the same courtesy in return, and is fairly well-liked as a result. He’s especially fond of Minerva; the two have remained close despite Minerva’s attempts to dissuade him from getting too attached while her time is running out. 

Interests: Vulcan likes architecture and related studies, hands-on craft projects, and being useful to people. He dislikes arguments, medical environments, and uncertainty. Since he’s been away from his career for a while, he’s resorted to various hands-on hobbies to pass the time. 

WW Role: As one of the specially selected Test Subjects, Vulcan was given a particular experimental power. In his case, his body was bisected vertically down the center, and the left half was replaced with a Dzlethian transplant. Vulcan doesn’t know who that other person was, where his body came from, or how much of himself is really “himself” anymore, with it attached.  

Miscellaneous: The experimental modifications done to his body were fairly successful, in the physical sense— Vulcan isn’t in any intense amount of pain from them anymore, and his body, mutilated though it is, remains mostly functional. It’s the mental and emotional consequences that haunt him. He genuinely loves Minerva, and can’t stop himself from hoping for a future with her, no matter how impossible that may be. His memory has also been impacted by the experiments; he especially struggles to remember things from years in the past, even major details about his life and family. 

Connotative Description: A disturbing experimental subject whose body has been partially replaced with a stranger’s. Kind and almost naively earnest, with a deep, romantic attachment to a fellow Test Subject.

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Whumptober Short: "It's not my blood."

Though Mars is plenty used to fights, what’s happening to him now is jarringly different. He’s woken up bruised and aching from a brutal loss the night before more times than he can count, and found dried blood under his nails or matted into his hair just as often— but even those violent, hazy memories don’t compare to the muddled voids he finds now. 

Whatever that crazy bitch of a scientist did to him, it works. It works perhaps a little too well. 

On the days when he’s the unfortunate, unlucky victim of study, they strap him down to the now-familiar cold steel of a surgical table. Then, with no anesthetic, not even a booze-soaked rag between his teeth, the faceless mob of lower-ranked lab techs pick a method of making him hurt. 

Blades are common— or at least that’s what it feels like is slicing into his skin. Scalpels have the same bright, cold chill going in as the shitty blades that get smuggled into a low-life ring; he knows it even when the leather bands pinning him by the forehead and jugular prevent him from actually looking down at the gory mess of his torso to check. And sure, they heal him afterward— in the moment, it still fucking hurts. 

When the hurt gets bad enough, his head starts getting fuzzy. Dizzy. Disoriented like when a blow to the ear leaves the world turning circles. He can feel himself slipping, but he can’t do shit to stop it. 

After that, there’s nothing. 

He wakes up sometime later in the sterile, frigid prison of a white-walled holding room, still disorientingly dizzy, and covered in tacky, half-dried blood.

This time, as usual, Mars sits huddled up against the far wall of the awful little room, staring dazedly at his own blood-coated palms, until someone comes for him. After a hazy span of minutes (or hours, who knows?), the lock on the other side of the reinforced door clicks open, and today’s kind-hearted savior arrives.

The sight of Venus’s worried-sick expression pulls a rough, snorting laugh up Mars’s throat. His fellow test subject’s screwed-up look of sickly sweet concern shifts to dull, disgusted horror, then— something closer to honest.

“That’s... an awful lot of blood,” she says. 

“Eh, it ain’t mine,” Mars replies, trying (and failing) to stifle the nonsensical laughter still bubbling up between his words. “Not most of it, anyway.” 

He’s smiling like he’s high, he can feel it— grin so wide it’s stretched tight at the edges—, but Venus just dutifully peels off her rosy-pink suit jacket, rolls ivory sleeve cuffs up her skinny arms, and crouches next to him with an antiseptic-soaked rag at the ready. His hands are shaking, he realizes distantly. Tremoring like he’s scared shitless, even though all he feels is floaty and hazy-calm.

After poking around at his abdomen for a bit, Venus informs him that the blood is in fact his own. “You’re going to need stitches,” she hisses, voice strained. “The cuts are deep, how the fuck do you not feel it—?”

The same way he never feels what happens during the rampages once he’s out, Mars thinks— not until he comes crashing back down from his pain-fueled high and remembers that all of the mangled flesh is attached to him. The thought sends him laughing again; and this time, he feels the tug of open wounds.

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Test Subject: Bacchus Bio

Name: Test Subject Bacchus

Species: Daryan

Race: Blackscale

Role: A former politician and current Test Subject of Winterkill Works, with a jaded, despair-filled personality and a painful past. She fluctuates between a voice of reason and just one more victim broken down at the hands of Winterkill’s ambitions, yet her apathy far overshadows both of those things.

Affiliation: Winterkill Works

Gender: Female

Age: 43

Height: 5’11

Appearance: Bacchus is a tall woman with a sharp, somewhat lanky build. She has light, ashy blonde, waist-length hair that she usually keeps up in a high ponytail. Her eyes are dark gray and dull, with heavy shadowing beneath them from stress. Her appearance tends to be disheveled, though her expression is near-perpetually one of exhausted neutrality. 

Personality: Bacchus is a hopeless, unhappy person who’s thoroughly tired of the world and living in it. She’s low-energy, quiet, and emotionally reserved, usually coming across as either exhausted, irritated, or just plain miserable. Underneath it all, she has a short temper and strong passions, but because she sees even her own hope as uselessly naive, she deliberately suppresses it. She naturally has a strong sense of duty and morality, valuing the “right thing” over happiness or temporary ease. Justice, fairness, and rightful consequences matter to her, and sacrificing those things has caused her a great amount of pain. She’s duty-oriented, even to her own detriment.

Positive Traits: For better or for worse, Bacchus has remarkable resilience. No matter what horrible things have happened to her, somehow, she’s managed to keep going. She’s generally patient and non-confrontational, though her tolerance for out-of-line behavior is also low. Lying is highly distasteful to her (even at times when the truth hurts), and when she makes a promise, she can be trusted to keep it. Though she doesn’t often show it, she’s quick-witted, organized, and adaptable, even in tense situations. 

Negative Traits: At the current point in her life, Bacchus’s internalized despair dominates her personality and outlook. When she encounters people who feel otherwise, she passes off their idealism and hopes as simple naivety. She’s apathetic and can be cold-hearted; even with things she cares about, her habit is to push those softer sentiments aside. Her self-sacrificing streak is a frequent source of pain, and she struggles to recognize when something isn’t her fault or would be impossible for her to change. 

History: Bacchus spent the early part of her life in an unremarkable town, where she was involved in the local legal system. An unfortunate end to a difficult case turned public opinion against her, though, and she eventually left that town behind. With one of her sons dead and the other resenting her for it, she’d lost any purpose her former life held. When Winterkill Works offered her a role as an experimental subject, she had nothing better to do than accept; at the very least, it was a way to occupy her time. 

Relationships: Bacchus generally goes out of her way to keep an emotional distance from the people around her. Even when she might get along with someone, she’ll avoid any chances of connecting or opening up. Despite this, she’s on surprisingly good terms with staff and her fellow test subjects alike, particularly Venus. However, after bearing personal witness to many of the experiments, she greatly resents those with active roles in the group.

Interests: Bacchus likes herbal teas (the more bitter-tasting, the better), philosophical debates about morality, and legal studies. She dislikes cold weather (her scars ache), recklessness, and people who take advantage of others. She hasn’t pursued any interests since joining Winterkill Works. 

WW Role: As one of the specially selected Test Subjects, Bacchus was given a particular experimental power. In her case, that power is meant to mimic a Combustion-Element Mutation; ash rises from her skin when her emotions spike, leaving lumpy, scarred burns behind. The physical pain bothers her less than the knowledge that someone knowingly chose to inflict it.

Miscellaneous: Bacchus tends to be softer and more patient with young men; though she’d never say it outright, they often remind her of her sons. She’d sort of hoped Winterkill’s experiments would kill her; with nothing left to live for, it would have been easier to end up dead. She has an excellent memory, especially when it comes to laws, regulations, and procedures. She doesn’t particularly dislike the appearance of her scars, but the chronic pain that comes with them hasn’t done her mental state any favors. When she’s in a bad place emotionally, her physical self-care is the first thing to fail. 

Connotative Description: A depressed, apathetic person with a tragic past weighing her down. Dutiful and steadfastly moral even when it hurts her, yet convinced that there’s little true “good” to reach for in the world.