Aɴᴜɴɢ ᴜɴ Rᴀᴍᴀ ♕ Hᴇʟʟʙᴏʏ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
histruename) wrote2000-09-06 10:03 pm
histruename) wrote2000-09-06 10:03 pm
Application
Player Information:
Name: Ash
Age: 25
Contact: Plurk: willowslament || AIM: willowslament1
Game Cast: Raphael (meanandgreen)
Most Recent AC: [1], [2]
Character Information:
Name: Anung Un Rama aka Hellboy
Canon: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Comics)
Canon Point: The end of Hellboy: Volume 8, Darkness Calls, after escaping the Baba Yaga, but before traveling to Italy to slay Igor Bromhead.
Age: 62 (actual age: 389)
Reference: Hellboy Wiki
Setting:
In the beginning of canon, the Hellboy continuity mainly takes place somewhere that greatly resembles modern-day Earth. On its surface, not much is out of the ordinary. History, technology, geography, and politics greatly resemble that of the world we live in. What lingers below the surface is what greatly sets it apart.
In Hellboy’s world, you can assume that every myth, legend, oral tradition, religious text and ghost story contains a heavy grain of truth, and much of history has roots in supernatural causes. Unfortunately, most of these supernatural elements have a negative connotation for human kind. Vampires and werewolves massacre thousands. Faeries rob infants from their cradles. Mad scientists, psychics and sorcerers tap into dark energy that unleashes waves of evil into the world, and demonic possession and exorcisms are a fact of life. In every corner of the Earth, the paranormal is a threat to the world of man, and the B.P.R.D. is there to stop it.
The B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) is a government organization founded in 1944 by Hellboy’s adoptive father, the late Professor Trevor Bruttenholm. It operates primarily under the radar from its base in Fairfield, Connecticut and deploys agents all over the globe to help investigate, research, and defend humanity from the paranormal.
Though they are a government agency, the media isn’t entirely blind to what the Bureau does. In America, the B.P.R.D. is a household name, and often sends its agents to investigate complaints direct from civilians. And over the years, most of the “enhanced talent” agents (agents with supernatural abilities) have become public icons. Hellboy himself is something of a household name. Around the globe he’s lesser known, but in the U.S. his fame has led him to grace the cover of Life Magazine, earned him the reputation of the “World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator” and allowed him to be granted status as an “Honorary Human” by the United Nations.
Though paranormal entities exist, the general population rarely sees anything more out of the ordinary than Hellboy’s picture on TV. Occurrences are rare enough to leave people skeptical, and the B.P.R.D. covers up enough of their work to keep the everyday citizen on a need-to-know basis.
And while most of the supernatural entities that make their presence known to humans are malevolent, there has been some evidence of a benign presence. Supernatural forces of good are extremely rare in the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. canon, but they do exist, usually working in far vaguer means than those of the forces of evil.
Most supernatural entities come to Earth from other worlds, parallel dimensions and hidden places that exist alongside reality. Many demons and elder gods are seemingly able to travel back and forth through the gates of Hell. Ghosts and spirits are able to journey from the ethereal plane, or contact people from the other side through many different means. Faeries (A blanket term for not only the winged, sprite-like creatures, but other types of goblins, elves, trolls, etc.) have entire kingdoms that exist mostly unbeknownst to human kind. Even the tree of life, Yggdrasil, exists on a plane different from our own, but is easily traveled by the likes of the Baba Yaga and the Fae Queen Mab. Humans tend to enter these worlds often by accident, whether it be through death, dreams, magic, psychic ability or the use of ancient relics, though the physicality of these worlds is questionable. Other creatures still live within the physical world, but in places so dark and remote few venture into their domain. Aliens and the Seven-that-is-One, the Dragon Ogdru Jahad, an ancient evil that has great influence on happenings on Earth dwells sealed in its crystal tomb somewhere in deep space. Creatures such as mermaids and sea witches like the Bog Roosh live deep below the sea, and below ground dwells a variety of creatures that have lived in wait since before the time of man.
Throughout Hellboy continuity, the forces of evil in the world have become stronger and increasingly common as the threat of the Apocalypse approaches. In B.P.R.D. continuity, frog monsters run rampant through middle America, killing hundreds of thousands. During the chaos, Hellboy himself has spent two years lost at sea, then spent a large chunk of time trapped in the realm of the Baba Yaga, keeping him completely unaware of current events.
So far in canon, the key players in the coming of the Apocalypse include:
• Ogdru Jahad—The Dragon of Revelation, The Seven-That-Is-One, Ogdru Jahad is a creation of the Watchers, the first sentient beings on Earth. They are said to have taken their power from the night itself, and are pitiless, chaotic, evil god-like creatures. They were banished into space trapped in crystal cocoons due of their malevolence, but still have heavy influence on the Earth and those who worship them. It is believed that their release will mark the dawning of a new age and the fall of mankind.
• Ogdru Hem—The 369 children of Ogdru Jahad, the first creatures of the Earth who lay dormant in the air and in the ground, waiting to be resurrected. A handful of sorcerers and witches have been able to awaken these beasts of destruction and channel their power through them.
• The Right Hand of Doom—Hellboy’s massive stone right hand which once belonged to a Watcher, a type of angelic sentient being that populated the Earth long before mankind. This Watcher is responsible for raising that hand and snatching fire out of the sky, creating the Ogdru Jahad. But once the Watcher saw its evil and its horrifying children, Ogdru Jahad was sealed in crystal by the very hand that created it and was cast into the abyss. Because of his sins, the Watcher was destroyed, all save for his right hand. The Watcher’s hand was known to possess a huge amount of power, so it was kept and passed down among generations until it fell into the hands of Hellboy’s demon father, Azzael, who severed his arm and grafted the hand in its place at the time of his birth in Hell.
• Project Ragna Rok—A group of Nazi scientists and occultists appointed by Henrich Himmler in the final stages of WWII to explore occult methods of ensuring the victory of the Third Reich.
• Grigori Rasputin— An immortal evil sorcerer who draws his power from Ogdru Jahad using Sadu-Hem, one of the 369 Ogdru Hem as a conduit. He is also the head of Ragna Rok and is responsible for summoning Hellboy to Earth. Even after his interests with the Nazi cause expire, Rasputin serves as a harbinger of prophecy and makes several attempts at forcing Hellboy to accept his true destiny.
• Frog Monsters--Known as the “final race of man”, these quasi-sentient frog creatures are tied directly to the Ogdru Jahad, who has systematically been turning humans into these beasts, using them as a tool to raise the Ogdru Hem from their slumber. Hellboy’s adoptive father was killed by one of the first of these creatures. Later, the B.P.R.D. struggles to contain the epidemic that has transformed most of middle America.
• Guragach of Lough Leane—Once a changeling and noble warrior, Guragach is trapped in the body of a dwarfed boar demon by Hellboy. His hatred for Hellboy and yearning to return to his former glory drives him to awaken Nimue, the Queen of Blood.
• Nimue—Feared witch, seductress, and merciless Queen of Blood, Nimue takes the throne as queen of the witches and of war, and prepares to lead an ancient army to destroy the world of man. She is a worshipper of Ogdru Jahad and gains her power from them, later becoming their vessel on Earth.
Personality:
Hellboy was born a demon, summoned from the abyss by an evil mystic and birthed onto Earth in a ball of fire to help the Nazis win WWII. Though he knows nothing can change the horrors of his birth, nothing will stop him from fighting to prove his humanity both to himself and the world around him. In his heart, he knows that he can fight his so called “destiny”, though he constantly fears his own dark potential. Ever since he can remember, he’s wanted to be nothing but human, to be a kind, respectable person, to be a hero, and to make a difference in the world. But that doesn’t stop him from being plagued by constant nightmares of the monster he’s been promised he’d become. He is always at war with himself, but does his best to smother the negative thoughts inside his head, determined to do whatever he can to keep the dark prophecies from coming true.
Since the day he was summoned to the ruins of a church in East Bromwich, England at the end of WWII, Hellboy has lived a fulfilling, albeit very dangerous life. This is mostly thanks to Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, the young paranormal scholar who first discovered the infant Hellboy after his arrival on Earth and became his adoptive father. Bruttenholm constantly advocated for Hellboy, encouraging others to accept him and treat him kindly. And when he grew old enough to doubt himself, Bruttenholm was the first to reassure him, to tell him he is not a monster, and to feed the boy’s dreams of becoming a hero. He raised Hellboy with all the values and beliefs of a decent human being, and was the loudest voice of protest against the people who wanted to see him destroyed.
Hellboy spent most of his childhood living with Bruttenholm on an Air Force base in New Mexico, surrounded by military men and scientists who both feared and saw him as a novelty. In the very beginning, his existence was kept under wraps by the government, and the infant Hellboy was subject to a large battery of tests that attempted to identify his true nature. But once the initial shock wore off, and Bruttenholm put an end to the scientists’ experimentation, Hellboy was allowed something of a normal childhood.
As a kid, Hellboy was nothing but trouble. With no other children on the base and only his own imagination to keep him company, he was constantly getting underfoot during important government business. So from a very early age, he was exposed to the goings-on of secret government operation. He often played in warehouses that kept paranormal objects away from the public eye, and was constantly witness to Bruttenholm’s string of strange company.
Otherwise, Hellboy was mostly isolated from the rest of the world, and wasn’t given the chance to be much of a kid. Bruttenholm was usually too busy with his work for games, and many of the older military men that were forced to babysit him had no patience for his antics.
Most of the attention Hellboy received was from the young soldiers living at the base who saw him as a novelty. They constantly played and joked around with the boy, feeding him ideas and fueling his overactive imagination. Hellboy came to idolize them, mimicking their surly, lewd behavior. Because of them, along with the adventures of his favorite radio and comic book hero Lobster Johnson, young Hellboy became obsessed with fighting bad guys and the forces of evil. All of his games of pretend surrounded epic battles fighting Nazis, monsters, and evil scientists.
But Hellboy’s isolation from the world was quickly ended once the media caught wind of his existence. Mostly because of his appearance, Hellboy became something of a celebrity. Everyone suddenly wanted to meet him, including extremely famous public figures like Einstein, Babe Ruth, Oppenheimer, and several other famous people who were quickly dumbstruck by how pleasant, bright, and charming a child who resembled the spawn of Satan could be.
Hellboy’s childhood was astonishingly short. By the age of eight he was physically full-grown, and because of his mature appearance, people began treating him like an adult. He was still naïve and impressionable, but did well to mimic the stern nature and morals of his father along with the lewd and sarcastic ways of the young soldiers that constantly surrounded him. It was then he had decided to follow in his father’s footsteps; joining the organization he had founded several years prior, the B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), as a field officer.
Hellboy became the Bureau’s primary force on the battlefront against the occult, attaining his dreams of fighting in his heroes’ footsteps. For decades, he fought on the front lines in the war against paranormal threat, battling everything from ghosts to elder gods and demons. But fighting evil wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. In a very short time, Hellboy came to realize that for him, fighting monsters would never be like it was in the comic books. Looking like a demon, despite his human nature, lead to a massive identity crisis that was constantly being forced down his throat no matter how much he denied it. He was a monster fighting monsters, and as much as he could fool himself into thinking he was simply the hero, he could never ignore the irony.
But it was because of his less-than-human appearance and origin, and Bruttenholm’s willingness to fight for him regardless, that Hellboy came to prove that he was one of the most human members of the agency. He knew what it was like to be treated like a monster. He’d endured the tests of the so-called “researchers” the Bureau employed who had effectively tortured him for the first two years of his life. He had been electrocuted, jabbed with needles, underwent several “studies” that tested his healing ability, and had suffered countless failed attempted to take samples of his indestructible stone right hand. He knew first-hand that the higher ups in the organization had little compassion for anything that could be classified as paranormal, even if it was a living creature.
In 1979, this is what drove him to destroy the experimentation of a humanoid fish creature that had been excavated from the basement of a Washington hospital one year prior. Though Hellboy had no reason to trust the creature, or even believe that it wasn’t evil, he had no second thoughts when he stormed into the research facility and broke the tank that housed it, putting an end to their experiments.
If Bruttenholm hadn’t spoken out for him when he was a child, Hellboy knows he would have been a very different person. It’s because of this that Hellboy had made it his mission to show compassion for those people fear for no reason other than a fear of the unknown, and believe that they too can be capable of good.
From that day on, Hellboy fought for the just treatment of the fish-man Abraham Sapien, along with the young firestarter Liz Sherman, taking them both under his wing and later allowing them to become agents for the B.P.R.D. On top of that, the trio have become extremely close friends, sharing a bond that few could truly understand. Hellboy has felt a little less alone in the world ever since.
Though his confusion and self-doubt never ceased, Hellboy’s search for his place in the world went dormant during those years working with the Bureau. They allowed him to completely bury himself in his work and drown out all those conflicting thoughts and emotions, taking strength from his friends and family when he needed it. So he kept himself busy to the point of exhaustion, working himself to the bone and taking on extra jobs whenever there was a stretch of idle time. For Hellboy, idle time meant thinking, and thinking meant facing some things he just wasn’t ready to accept about himself. So he earned himself the reputation of the Bureau’s workhorse, taking assignments until he was literally forced into downtime. Even his free time was spent traveling the world and doing as much good as he possibly could.
Internally, Hellboy likes to believe that he is very much human, and it’s hard to make him admit otherwise. Upon various encounters with gods, fellow demons, and other creatures of the dark and mythos, many ancient beings chastise him for denying his true purpose, and rant for ages about the prophecies surrounding his existence. To them, his right hand holds the key to not merely the Apocalypse of the human world, but to the doorway of a new Eden, the rebirth of the world where the creatures of old can reclaim what is rightfully theirs, beginning with the elimination of mankind.
When these creatures see how human Hellboy has become, they’re struck with blind rage at the injustice, and will do whatever they can to persuade him, or physically control him into executing rituals which may fulfill their dark prophecies. But by now, Hellboy’s heard it all. For the longest time he claimed to live his life with his head stuck in a hole, stating that “I’m better off not knowing. I sleep good not knowing.” But after enough lectures, warnings, and omens bombarding him from all directions, he starts to get a pretty damn good picture of the real reason he was put on Earth. And eventually, he reaches a point in his life where he just can’t hide from it anymore.
Hellboy loses a healthy portion of his self-confidence shortly after Brutteholm passes away in ‘94. Though his friends back at the Bureau have an amazing amount of faith, respect, and admiration for him, without his father, Hellboy has lost his guiding light and much of his strength to resist the temptation of knowing what he refuses to believe. From his youngest memories Bruttenholm has been the strongest voice of protest in his life against all who would call him a monster. He was the one who rescued him from the horrible scientific experiments they were performing in New Mexico, even when the scientists told him Hellboy was just a creature who had no reason to be shown any compassion. He was the first person Hellboy ran to when he had nightmares of monsters, or when people treated him like the devil when he was still too young to understand. And though Hellboy had grown to accept that people would always be afraid of him, Bruttenholm was always there to lean on when his confidence had been shaken.
Though Hellboy still had friends at the Bureau who knew and admired who he was as a person, without his father he didn’t have a leg to stand on. So after a falling out with the Bureau’s director, Thomas Manning, over some questionable choices regarding the treatment of non-human agents, Hellboy quits the B.P.R.D. and ends his fifty odd years of living in self-imposed darkness, striking out on his own in search of the one thing he fears most – the truth. He leaves the Bureau for Africa, and then, as he puts it, “Wherever the wind blows.”
Africa was mostly a reprieve into the past, and a way of trying to dig up some good old memories of when he traveled there with Bruttenholm as a boy. He tries to find some comfort there, possibly a vestige of happiness. But he doesn’t find the peace he’d been looking for. As always, questions only led to more questions, and all these loose ends only add to his confusion. Often Hellboy feels guilty leaving the Bureau and his friends in the hands of idiots like Manning and the B.P.R.D.’s so-called researchers, but he knows exploring his origin is inevitable. It was about damn time he asked some questions instead of getting it shoved down his throat by some demon in the middle of a fight.
It’s a decision he regretted almost immediately. After waking from a dream at the African medicine man Molhomi’s camp, Hellboy was lead to the edge of the ocean where the water had supposedly been “calling his name”. There, he gets swallowed by a giant wave, attacked by a band of mermaids, and had a nail hammered into his head. He comes to as a prisoner of the sea witch Bog Roosh, bound in chains made of the bones of a man who once hated him. With the help of one of the same mermaids that had captured him, he manages to escape and kill the Bog Roosh, only to find himself washed up on the shore of an island full of ghosts.
There, Hellboy runs into an old enemy, the goddess Hecate, who spews the usual destiny crap at him. He then gets stabbed straight through the chest by a giant fish monster and has all the blood drained from his body, somehow escapes death with the aid of Molhomi’s medicine, and awakens to a sorcerer wearing his blood like a skin, ranting about the origins of the Earth, Ogdru Jahad, and the Right Hand of Doom.
This is how Hellboy discovers that he is deathless, and that his stone right hand is directly connected to the Dragon, Ogdru Jahad, the most evil entity in the universe. It was like a slap in the face. Everything he refused to believe was being shoved at him with no way to deny it. He should have died, did die, but came back again, then watched his blood turn that crazy sorcerer into the creature that has always haunted his dreams; the thing he was told he is destined to become. For the first time in his life he actually believed what he was being told and it scared the crap out of him.
Since the day he came to Earth he had lived a human life, convinced himself he was a man. But with his death, he came to realize that all those years he had only lived in denial. He had never felt less human. The burden of his stone right hand had never been so heavy.
After his time on the island, Hellboy began to unravel. His self-identity had been completely shattered, and Anung Un Rama, the beast of the Apocalypse, the monster he knew deep down in his soul he could become, plagued his every dream. But instead of facing it, he did what he does best; ran from it. Smothered it. Drowned it with alcohol and escaped reality in the company of ghosts. He could feel his mind slipping, making it hard to tell the difference between dreams and reality.
It’s in this state of mind he washes onto the shores of England by the house of his old friend Harry Middleton. There he stays with Harry, wallowing in confusion and self-pity, and seemingly unaware that his present company had been dead for twenty years.
Hellboy stayed with Harry’s ghost for a few months before he’s abducted by witches in the woods outside the house. They fly him off to the Sabbath where hundreds of England’s witches have the gall to ask him to become their king due to his bloodright as son of the demon Azzael who was once king of the witches at Leicester, and his lover, the witch Sarah Hughes. There Hellboy declines their offer with all the predictable rudeness, causing the witches to declare war against him. This lands him beyond the Thrice-Nine Lands of the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom, land of the Baba Yaga.
In her wintry realm, the Baba Yaga stops at nothing to exact her revenge on Hellboy for putting out her eye in an encounter forty years prior. There Hellboy battles the hoards of her skeleton army and a soulless warrior named Koshchei the Deathless. With the help of enemies of the Baba Yaga, and the spirit of a little girl named Vasilisa, Hellboy is able to defeat Koshchei in battle and escape, but not before Vasilisa is shot by one of Koshchei’s arrows and dies in his arms.
The victory is bittersweet, and opens Hellboy’s eyes to what it really means to be deathless. He sees enough of himself in Koshchei’s suffering—under the Baba Yaga’s control, forced to kill and unable to die—that he even pities the man during battle.
Hellboy is a very solemn man, outwardly quiet, but internally an extremely elegant thinker. He tends to be bluntly honest to the point of rudeness, though he doesn’t always intend to be. He’s loyal to a fault to those he cares about, quick to trust and hard to persuade otherwise. He has a soft spot for the underdog, the so-called “freaks” he identifies with, likes children and animals, and can be gentle and kind despite his strength and outward appearance. He likes telling colorful stories, smoking cigarettes, and indulging his incurable wanderlust and curiosity. He’s drawn to everything and anything out of the ordinary, and is thus a magnet for trouble. He hates witches and dark magic, drinks too much when given the chance, and regularly files his horns down to nubs in an attempt to look more human.
Now that he's back in the land of life, death, and dreaming, Hellboy will be pretty damn confused. Things have gotten so bad in such an imperceptible period of time, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. Helboy will want to dive head-first into trying to figure out what the hell happened since he's been gone, learning about Malicant and how to defeat him, and continue his efforts to get everyone home. I have plans for him to join the Foreigner branch of the police force so that he can better utilize his skills to help both Foreigner and kedan alike.
Appearance:
Hellboy’s skin is bright red, the color of dried blood. He stands seven feet tall and has two nubs of horns protruding from his head. These are commonly confused with goggles. He generally keeps his horns filed, and they seem to grow very slowly. Only when Hellboy taps into his latent dark power do the horns grow at an alarming rate. The horns are curved and add another foot to his height. When this happens, he is also known to “speak like a dragon”, billowing fire and smoke from his mouth.
His eyes are uniform, golden orbs with no irises or pupils. In the dark they’ve been shown to produce a faint golden glow. His tail is thick and about five feet in length. His hair is coarse and black. On his head, his hair is worn in knot tied at the base of his neck, reminiscent of a samurai top knot. The top of his head is otherwise bald. He has thick sideburns and a thin goatee. The rest of him is thinly covered in black, bristly hair.
His legs and feet resemble a hybrid between human and goat. The upper portion is well muscled and human, while his feet are comprised of two cloven hooves. Because of this he’s unable to wear shoes, and often is shown wearing leather boot-like leggings that allow his hooves to protrude from the toes.
His right hand and forearm are massive, and are made of an unbreakable type of ancient stone-like material. His right upper arm is heavily muscled to compensate for the weight, and his shoulders are hunched. He often walks leaning slightly to the right, the right shoulder hunched lower than the left. This hunch, paired with the enormous right hand, his heavy musculature, tail, lantern jaw and heavy brow often earns him the title of “big red ape” or “circus gorilla” by people who really feel the need to piss him off.
Abilities:
Being a demon born from the fiery pits of Hell has its perks. HB is mostly fireproof, and his stone hand cannot be damaged short of someone trying to hack it off his arm. Though Hellboy is tough, he isn’t completely untouchable. He’s vulnerable to bullets and blades everywhere but his right hand. And though he can’t be killed by fire, it can burn him enough to leave painful patches on his skin if he is exposed to large amounts. He can and has been grievously injured in battle more times than he can count, but it takes a lot more to bring him down than your average human, and he has a superhuman healing ability. He’s been thrown through buildings, bombarded with arrows, and has even been skewered straight through the abdomen with a lance the size of a telephone pole and survived, even after all the blood was drained from his body. Because of his strength and healing ability, he’s a supernaturally tenacious fighter. Though he can be injured, it’s ridiculously hard to get him to stay down. Even if he’s bleeding and mangled, he’ll just keep on coming until the job is done.
His right hand is made of a type of indestructible stone, and is incredibly heavy. During battle he often uses it to bludgeon his enemies to death. Its true name is The Right Hand of Doom, and is the key to unlocking the seven-headed dragon Ogdru Jahad from its slumber in order to bring about the Apocalypse that will come to end mankind. It’s an incredibly powerful weapon, but Hellboy has no idea how to unlock its supernatural abilities, and doesn’t want to find out. Its use as a sledgehammer works just fine for him.
Hellboy is also shown to be extremely lethal with a sword, though using one in battle tends to invoke a deep, primal rage that he tries his best to avoid. Instead, if he finds himself without a gun, he is often seen using pieces of rebar, rocks, wood splinters, and other things he might find lying around during battle.
Though he has very little in the way of formal combat training, Hellboy’s “Beat the crap out of it ‘til it’s dead” approach works pretty well for him. He’s a lousy aim and technology hates him, so he often ditches his gun and whatever other high-tech weaponry he has on hand for some good ‘ole hand-to-hand combat. His combined size, strength, and invulnerability is usually way more effective than whatever gadget the Bureau may try to force on him.
But during his time with the Bureau he wasn’t merely the hired muscle. Though he’s a simple speaker, he’s a very eloquent thinker. In short: Hellboy knows his stuff. In fact, his memory is downright uncanny. He has ability to recall occurrences that happened decades ago in great detail, going as far back as happenings shortly after he reached his “adulthood” at eight years of age, over fifty years ago. So if you’ve got an issue with the occult, he’s a walking library. Not only does he spend a lot of time studying old legends, charms, and incantations, he’s traveled all over the world to use them, study them, and experience them first hand. He’d be the first to admit he’s not into the bookwork aspect of the job, but over the years, he’s been forced to do a lot of homework and managed to absorb a good chunk of useful knowledge. HB’s also very introspective, though he tries not to be, and often muses about his place in the world and the people around him.
Hellboy is also incredibly perceptive to supernatural activity. Whether it’s seeing an apparition no one else can, sensing the true identity of a shape-shifter, understanding a possessed person speaking in tongues, or drawing in psychic disturbances, it’s obvious his senses reach far beyond that of an average human. This isn’t always a good thing, however. Sometimes he just can’t get rid of the damn things, and this makes him extremely vulnerable to psychic manipulation and attack. Luckily he’s generally too stubborn to let them take control of him for long.
Lastly, he is extremely talented with languages. For some odd reason they just make sense to him. Though he is a native English speaker, he is known to speak Spanish, German, and French without ever putting any effort into formal studies. He is also capable of understanding ancient and infernal tongues without ever seeing or hearing them before. It’s not a fluent understanding, but most of the time he can quickly get the gist of what’s being said.
Suitability:
Considering Hellboy comes from a very dark canon centered around the coming Apocalypse, there's no question he'll be right at home with the current turn of events. Even the year-long memory gap won't phase him much. He's pretty used to getting shifted through space and time, so his re-arrival will hardly throw him off his game.
Currently, I'm planning for him to lend his help to the police despite his colorful history with Evandau. It's the best way he can make himself useful.
Inventory:
• One tattered canvas trench coat
• One heavy, black utility belt containing an assortment of charms that can be used to heal, exorcise demons, and protect people from evil entities. Hellboy himself doesn’t know exactly what is in his belt, but throughout canon it’s shown to contain:
o One Catholic rosary
o Agnus Dei candle – lights in the presence of black luck.
o Charm acquired at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem – Sumerian phrases etched in silver nitrate – casts out dark magic and glamours.
o A blood-soaked splinter taken from the wheel that broke the back of St. Catherine – slows down demons, djinn, and any other members of the infernal order
o Matches
o Cigarettes
o Flashlight (broken due to seawater)
• One ’41 U.S. Army .45 pistol in a left-handed holster and the necessary bullets, given to him by Harry Middleton
• One pair of black shorts
• One pair of custom-made toeless leather boots
Suite: I'd like to keep him in the Earth Sector, please. He's not one for glitz and glamor, and Earth is definitely more his element.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Hellboy’s trench coat billowed in the warm breeze as he headed toward the Tanzanian sunrise, his hooves digging deep into the sandy Earth. Tanzania. Africa. He had a lot of memories there, but he still wasn’t sure which one he was chasing. Anastasia, her freckled skin dirt-caked from a day of digging, red hair swept up under a baseball cap. Smiling. Hazy memories of his father, still able-bodied and sound of mind, exploring the mysteries of the world, still able to do the job he loved. Then, the spirit of Africa filling the sky, knowing him, calling out his name.
Above him, the sunrise was painted red and lions roared in the distance.
Thunder. The crack of it startled him awake as the storm’s first drops pattered wetly on his face. He ran his tongue over his teeth, cracked lips parched from the salty air. Instead of sand, the little wooden boat rocked beneath him in the great expanse of the open ocean, stretching for miles in all directions without any hint of land.
The ocean. Africa was only a dream, now. One of the better dreams he’s had since he left that island. Over two years he’d been lost at sea, held in chains, stabbed, tortured, drained of his blood. Died. Died and lived to tell the tale. Thinking about it was the last thing he wanted to do, but spending days adrift with nothing but a wooden dingy leaves you with nothing much else to do.
So he thought, the image of the creature made of his blood flashing through his head, piercing eyes that watched him from his dreams without a trace of humanity in their gaze.
He sighed, running his normal hand over his face, and tried to push it from his mind again. Instead he turned his focus on rigging the empty rum bottle he’d been using to collect rain water, readying it for the coming storm. Above him, veins of lightning split the sky and dark waves tossed the boat sickeningly over the swells.
He’d been drifting for days, and he wondered how much longer it’d be until he could get off that damn floating piece of crap. Part of him dreaded what would be waiting for him once he did.
He knew the storm had only just begun.
Network:
[After his short trip through the city, there was no denying things have changed. There’s a palpable darkness hanging over Keeliai, a new wariness in the eyes of its people, a shadow cast by the blackened palace looming on the horizon. Cultists hiss and scream with their signs and weapons on street corners. Others scurry past like scared animals, head down, looking at no one.
Less than a year ago, when Keeliai was a different place, Evandau had warned him of the ancient force of evil they’d been brought here to fight. And back then, Hellboy had offered to go find it, to do everything he could to stop it. But things are rarely that easy.
Evandau had said that the thing had to come to them, that they had to sit here and wait like sitting ducks before they could even think to fight it. It pissed him off then, and it pisses him off even more now. Because now the thing is here, and innocent people are paying for it in blood.
He’s lost too much time. It’s time to get back to work.
Soon as he gets his bearings, Hellboy takes off into the city, wanders back to the old noodle shop in the Metal Sector he used to frequent. The shop’s still there, and so is the old man who runs it. Business is bad, and most of the kedan have been relocated to the old Foreigner housing, but things like this just never change.
After a few quick drinks, he ventures to the nearest console cafe. He’s never trusted the network, even before he heard the rumors about the corruption. But for now, it’s all he can do to get a hold of some Foreigners and hear their side of things.
On the screen, his features are as unreadable as always, but his tone is business-like and determined.]
This is Hellboy. I need to meet with someone who can fill me in about what’s happened over the last year. If you respond I can give you an address. I’d appreciate it.
Name: Ash
Age: 25
Contact: Plurk: willowslament || AIM: willowslament1
Game Cast: Raphael (
meanandgreen)Most Recent AC: [1], [2]
Character Information:
Name: Anung Un Rama aka Hellboy
Canon: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Comics)
Canon Point: The end of Hellboy: Volume 8, Darkness Calls, after escaping the Baba Yaga, but before traveling to Italy to slay Igor Bromhead.
Age: 62 (actual age: 389)
Reference: Hellboy Wiki
Setting:
In the beginning of canon, the Hellboy continuity mainly takes place somewhere that greatly resembles modern-day Earth. On its surface, not much is out of the ordinary. History, technology, geography, and politics greatly resemble that of the world we live in. What lingers below the surface is what greatly sets it apart.
In Hellboy’s world, you can assume that every myth, legend, oral tradition, religious text and ghost story contains a heavy grain of truth, and much of history has roots in supernatural causes. Unfortunately, most of these supernatural elements have a negative connotation for human kind. Vampires and werewolves massacre thousands. Faeries rob infants from their cradles. Mad scientists, psychics and sorcerers tap into dark energy that unleashes waves of evil into the world, and demonic possession and exorcisms are a fact of life. In every corner of the Earth, the paranormal is a threat to the world of man, and the B.P.R.D. is there to stop it.
The B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) is a government organization founded in 1944 by Hellboy’s adoptive father, the late Professor Trevor Bruttenholm. It operates primarily under the radar from its base in Fairfield, Connecticut and deploys agents all over the globe to help investigate, research, and defend humanity from the paranormal.
Though they are a government agency, the media isn’t entirely blind to what the Bureau does. In America, the B.P.R.D. is a household name, and often sends its agents to investigate complaints direct from civilians. And over the years, most of the “enhanced talent” agents (agents with supernatural abilities) have become public icons. Hellboy himself is something of a household name. Around the globe he’s lesser known, but in the U.S. his fame has led him to grace the cover of Life Magazine, earned him the reputation of the “World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator” and allowed him to be granted status as an “Honorary Human” by the United Nations.
Though paranormal entities exist, the general population rarely sees anything more out of the ordinary than Hellboy’s picture on TV. Occurrences are rare enough to leave people skeptical, and the B.P.R.D. covers up enough of their work to keep the everyday citizen on a need-to-know basis.
And while most of the supernatural entities that make their presence known to humans are malevolent, there has been some evidence of a benign presence. Supernatural forces of good are extremely rare in the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. canon, but they do exist, usually working in far vaguer means than those of the forces of evil.
Most supernatural entities come to Earth from other worlds, parallel dimensions and hidden places that exist alongside reality. Many demons and elder gods are seemingly able to travel back and forth through the gates of Hell. Ghosts and spirits are able to journey from the ethereal plane, or contact people from the other side through many different means. Faeries (A blanket term for not only the winged, sprite-like creatures, but other types of goblins, elves, trolls, etc.) have entire kingdoms that exist mostly unbeknownst to human kind. Even the tree of life, Yggdrasil, exists on a plane different from our own, but is easily traveled by the likes of the Baba Yaga and the Fae Queen Mab. Humans tend to enter these worlds often by accident, whether it be through death, dreams, magic, psychic ability or the use of ancient relics, though the physicality of these worlds is questionable. Other creatures still live within the physical world, but in places so dark and remote few venture into their domain. Aliens and the Seven-that-is-One, the Dragon Ogdru Jahad, an ancient evil that has great influence on happenings on Earth dwells sealed in its crystal tomb somewhere in deep space. Creatures such as mermaids and sea witches like the Bog Roosh live deep below the sea, and below ground dwells a variety of creatures that have lived in wait since before the time of man.
Throughout Hellboy continuity, the forces of evil in the world have become stronger and increasingly common as the threat of the Apocalypse approaches. In B.P.R.D. continuity, frog monsters run rampant through middle America, killing hundreds of thousands. During the chaos, Hellboy himself has spent two years lost at sea, then spent a large chunk of time trapped in the realm of the Baba Yaga, keeping him completely unaware of current events.
So far in canon, the key players in the coming of the Apocalypse include:
• Ogdru Jahad—The Dragon of Revelation, The Seven-That-Is-One, Ogdru Jahad is a creation of the Watchers, the first sentient beings on Earth. They are said to have taken their power from the night itself, and are pitiless, chaotic, evil god-like creatures. They were banished into space trapped in crystal cocoons due of their malevolence, but still have heavy influence on the Earth and those who worship them. It is believed that their release will mark the dawning of a new age and the fall of mankind.
• Ogdru Hem—The 369 children of Ogdru Jahad, the first creatures of the Earth who lay dormant in the air and in the ground, waiting to be resurrected. A handful of sorcerers and witches have been able to awaken these beasts of destruction and channel their power through them.
• The Right Hand of Doom—Hellboy’s massive stone right hand which once belonged to a Watcher, a type of angelic sentient being that populated the Earth long before mankind. This Watcher is responsible for raising that hand and snatching fire out of the sky, creating the Ogdru Jahad. But once the Watcher saw its evil and its horrifying children, Ogdru Jahad was sealed in crystal by the very hand that created it and was cast into the abyss. Because of his sins, the Watcher was destroyed, all save for his right hand. The Watcher’s hand was known to possess a huge amount of power, so it was kept and passed down among generations until it fell into the hands of Hellboy’s demon father, Azzael, who severed his arm and grafted the hand in its place at the time of his birth in Hell.
• Project Ragna Rok—A group of Nazi scientists and occultists appointed by Henrich Himmler in the final stages of WWII to explore occult methods of ensuring the victory of the Third Reich.
• Grigori Rasputin— An immortal evil sorcerer who draws his power from Ogdru Jahad using Sadu-Hem, one of the 369 Ogdru Hem as a conduit. He is also the head of Ragna Rok and is responsible for summoning Hellboy to Earth. Even after his interests with the Nazi cause expire, Rasputin serves as a harbinger of prophecy and makes several attempts at forcing Hellboy to accept his true destiny.
• Frog Monsters--Known as the “final race of man”, these quasi-sentient frog creatures are tied directly to the Ogdru Jahad, who has systematically been turning humans into these beasts, using them as a tool to raise the Ogdru Hem from their slumber. Hellboy’s adoptive father was killed by one of the first of these creatures. Later, the B.P.R.D. struggles to contain the epidemic that has transformed most of middle America.
• Guragach of Lough Leane—Once a changeling and noble warrior, Guragach is trapped in the body of a dwarfed boar demon by Hellboy. His hatred for Hellboy and yearning to return to his former glory drives him to awaken Nimue, the Queen of Blood.
• Nimue—Feared witch, seductress, and merciless Queen of Blood, Nimue takes the throne as queen of the witches and of war, and prepares to lead an ancient army to destroy the world of man. She is a worshipper of Ogdru Jahad and gains her power from them, later becoming their vessel on Earth.
Personality:
Hellboy was born a demon, summoned from the abyss by an evil mystic and birthed onto Earth in a ball of fire to help the Nazis win WWII. Though he knows nothing can change the horrors of his birth, nothing will stop him from fighting to prove his humanity both to himself and the world around him. In his heart, he knows that he can fight his so called “destiny”, though he constantly fears his own dark potential. Ever since he can remember, he’s wanted to be nothing but human, to be a kind, respectable person, to be a hero, and to make a difference in the world. But that doesn’t stop him from being plagued by constant nightmares of the monster he’s been promised he’d become. He is always at war with himself, but does his best to smother the negative thoughts inside his head, determined to do whatever he can to keep the dark prophecies from coming true.
Since the day he was summoned to the ruins of a church in East Bromwich, England at the end of WWII, Hellboy has lived a fulfilling, albeit very dangerous life. This is mostly thanks to Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, the young paranormal scholar who first discovered the infant Hellboy after his arrival on Earth and became his adoptive father. Bruttenholm constantly advocated for Hellboy, encouraging others to accept him and treat him kindly. And when he grew old enough to doubt himself, Bruttenholm was the first to reassure him, to tell him he is not a monster, and to feed the boy’s dreams of becoming a hero. He raised Hellboy with all the values and beliefs of a decent human being, and was the loudest voice of protest against the people who wanted to see him destroyed.
Hellboy spent most of his childhood living with Bruttenholm on an Air Force base in New Mexico, surrounded by military men and scientists who both feared and saw him as a novelty. In the very beginning, his existence was kept under wraps by the government, and the infant Hellboy was subject to a large battery of tests that attempted to identify his true nature. But once the initial shock wore off, and Bruttenholm put an end to the scientists’ experimentation, Hellboy was allowed something of a normal childhood.
As a kid, Hellboy was nothing but trouble. With no other children on the base and only his own imagination to keep him company, he was constantly getting underfoot during important government business. So from a very early age, he was exposed to the goings-on of secret government operation. He often played in warehouses that kept paranormal objects away from the public eye, and was constantly witness to Bruttenholm’s string of strange company.
Otherwise, Hellboy was mostly isolated from the rest of the world, and wasn’t given the chance to be much of a kid. Bruttenholm was usually too busy with his work for games, and many of the older military men that were forced to babysit him had no patience for his antics.
Most of the attention Hellboy received was from the young soldiers living at the base who saw him as a novelty. They constantly played and joked around with the boy, feeding him ideas and fueling his overactive imagination. Hellboy came to idolize them, mimicking their surly, lewd behavior. Because of them, along with the adventures of his favorite radio and comic book hero Lobster Johnson, young Hellboy became obsessed with fighting bad guys and the forces of evil. All of his games of pretend surrounded epic battles fighting Nazis, monsters, and evil scientists.
But Hellboy’s isolation from the world was quickly ended once the media caught wind of his existence. Mostly because of his appearance, Hellboy became something of a celebrity. Everyone suddenly wanted to meet him, including extremely famous public figures like Einstein, Babe Ruth, Oppenheimer, and several other famous people who were quickly dumbstruck by how pleasant, bright, and charming a child who resembled the spawn of Satan could be.
Hellboy’s childhood was astonishingly short. By the age of eight he was physically full-grown, and because of his mature appearance, people began treating him like an adult. He was still naïve and impressionable, but did well to mimic the stern nature and morals of his father along with the lewd and sarcastic ways of the young soldiers that constantly surrounded him. It was then he had decided to follow in his father’s footsteps; joining the organization he had founded several years prior, the B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), as a field officer.
Hellboy became the Bureau’s primary force on the battlefront against the occult, attaining his dreams of fighting in his heroes’ footsteps. For decades, he fought on the front lines in the war against paranormal threat, battling everything from ghosts to elder gods and demons. But fighting evil wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. In a very short time, Hellboy came to realize that for him, fighting monsters would never be like it was in the comic books. Looking like a demon, despite his human nature, lead to a massive identity crisis that was constantly being forced down his throat no matter how much he denied it. He was a monster fighting monsters, and as much as he could fool himself into thinking he was simply the hero, he could never ignore the irony.
But it was because of his less-than-human appearance and origin, and Bruttenholm’s willingness to fight for him regardless, that Hellboy came to prove that he was one of the most human members of the agency. He knew what it was like to be treated like a monster. He’d endured the tests of the so-called “researchers” the Bureau employed who had effectively tortured him for the first two years of his life. He had been electrocuted, jabbed with needles, underwent several “studies” that tested his healing ability, and had suffered countless failed attempted to take samples of his indestructible stone right hand. He knew first-hand that the higher ups in the organization had little compassion for anything that could be classified as paranormal, even if it was a living creature.
In 1979, this is what drove him to destroy the experimentation of a humanoid fish creature that had been excavated from the basement of a Washington hospital one year prior. Though Hellboy had no reason to trust the creature, or even believe that it wasn’t evil, he had no second thoughts when he stormed into the research facility and broke the tank that housed it, putting an end to their experiments.
If Bruttenholm hadn’t spoken out for him when he was a child, Hellboy knows he would have been a very different person. It’s because of this that Hellboy had made it his mission to show compassion for those people fear for no reason other than a fear of the unknown, and believe that they too can be capable of good.
From that day on, Hellboy fought for the just treatment of the fish-man Abraham Sapien, along with the young firestarter Liz Sherman, taking them both under his wing and later allowing them to become agents for the B.P.R.D. On top of that, the trio have become extremely close friends, sharing a bond that few could truly understand. Hellboy has felt a little less alone in the world ever since.
Though his confusion and self-doubt never ceased, Hellboy’s search for his place in the world went dormant during those years working with the Bureau. They allowed him to completely bury himself in his work and drown out all those conflicting thoughts and emotions, taking strength from his friends and family when he needed it. So he kept himself busy to the point of exhaustion, working himself to the bone and taking on extra jobs whenever there was a stretch of idle time. For Hellboy, idle time meant thinking, and thinking meant facing some things he just wasn’t ready to accept about himself. So he earned himself the reputation of the Bureau’s workhorse, taking assignments until he was literally forced into downtime. Even his free time was spent traveling the world and doing as much good as he possibly could.
Internally, Hellboy likes to believe that he is very much human, and it’s hard to make him admit otherwise. Upon various encounters with gods, fellow demons, and other creatures of the dark and mythos, many ancient beings chastise him for denying his true purpose, and rant for ages about the prophecies surrounding his existence. To them, his right hand holds the key to not merely the Apocalypse of the human world, but to the doorway of a new Eden, the rebirth of the world where the creatures of old can reclaim what is rightfully theirs, beginning with the elimination of mankind.
When these creatures see how human Hellboy has become, they’re struck with blind rage at the injustice, and will do whatever they can to persuade him, or physically control him into executing rituals which may fulfill their dark prophecies. But by now, Hellboy’s heard it all. For the longest time he claimed to live his life with his head stuck in a hole, stating that “I’m better off not knowing. I sleep good not knowing.” But after enough lectures, warnings, and omens bombarding him from all directions, he starts to get a pretty damn good picture of the real reason he was put on Earth. And eventually, he reaches a point in his life where he just can’t hide from it anymore.
Hellboy loses a healthy portion of his self-confidence shortly after Brutteholm passes away in ‘94. Though his friends back at the Bureau have an amazing amount of faith, respect, and admiration for him, without his father, Hellboy has lost his guiding light and much of his strength to resist the temptation of knowing what he refuses to believe. From his youngest memories Bruttenholm has been the strongest voice of protest in his life against all who would call him a monster. He was the one who rescued him from the horrible scientific experiments they were performing in New Mexico, even when the scientists told him Hellboy was just a creature who had no reason to be shown any compassion. He was the first person Hellboy ran to when he had nightmares of monsters, or when people treated him like the devil when he was still too young to understand. And though Hellboy had grown to accept that people would always be afraid of him, Bruttenholm was always there to lean on when his confidence had been shaken.
Though Hellboy still had friends at the Bureau who knew and admired who he was as a person, without his father he didn’t have a leg to stand on. So after a falling out with the Bureau’s director, Thomas Manning, over some questionable choices regarding the treatment of non-human agents, Hellboy quits the B.P.R.D. and ends his fifty odd years of living in self-imposed darkness, striking out on his own in search of the one thing he fears most – the truth. He leaves the Bureau for Africa, and then, as he puts it, “Wherever the wind blows.”
Africa was mostly a reprieve into the past, and a way of trying to dig up some good old memories of when he traveled there with Bruttenholm as a boy. He tries to find some comfort there, possibly a vestige of happiness. But he doesn’t find the peace he’d been looking for. As always, questions only led to more questions, and all these loose ends only add to his confusion. Often Hellboy feels guilty leaving the Bureau and his friends in the hands of idiots like Manning and the B.P.R.D.’s so-called researchers, but he knows exploring his origin is inevitable. It was about damn time he asked some questions instead of getting it shoved down his throat by some demon in the middle of a fight.
It’s a decision he regretted almost immediately. After waking from a dream at the African medicine man Molhomi’s camp, Hellboy was lead to the edge of the ocean where the water had supposedly been “calling his name”. There, he gets swallowed by a giant wave, attacked by a band of mermaids, and had a nail hammered into his head. He comes to as a prisoner of the sea witch Bog Roosh, bound in chains made of the bones of a man who once hated him. With the help of one of the same mermaids that had captured him, he manages to escape and kill the Bog Roosh, only to find himself washed up on the shore of an island full of ghosts.
There, Hellboy runs into an old enemy, the goddess Hecate, who spews the usual destiny crap at him. He then gets stabbed straight through the chest by a giant fish monster and has all the blood drained from his body, somehow escapes death with the aid of Molhomi’s medicine, and awakens to a sorcerer wearing his blood like a skin, ranting about the origins of the Earth, Ogdru Jahad, and the Right Hand of Doom.
This is how Hellboy discovers that he is deathless, and that his stone right hand is directly connected to the Dragon, Ogdru Jahad, the most evil entity in the universe. It was like a slap in the face. Everything he refused to believe was being shoved at him with no way to deny it. He should have died, did die, but came back again, then watched his blood turn that crazy sorcerer into the creature that has always haunted his dreams; the thing he was told he is destined to become. For the first time in his life he actually believed what he was being told and it scared the crap out of him.
Since the day he came to Earth he had lived a human life, convinced himself he was a man. But with his death, he came to realize that all those years he had only lived in denial. He had never felt less human. The burden of his stone right hand had never been so heavy.
After his time on the island, Hellboy began to unravel. His self-identity had been completely shattered, and Anung Un Rama, the beast of the Apocalypse, the monster he knew deep down in his soul he could become, plagued his every dream. But instead of facing it, he did what he does best; ran from it. Smothered it. Drowned it with alcohol and escaped reality in the company of ghosts. He could feel his mind slipping, making it hard to tell the difference between dreams and reality.
It’s in this state of mind he washes onto the shores of England by the house of his old friend Harry Middleton. There he stays with Harry, wallowing in confusion and self-pity, and seemingly unaware that his present company had been dead for twenty years.
Hellboy stayed with Harry’s ghost for a few months before he’s abducted by witches in the woods outside the house. They fly him off to the Sabbath where hundreds of England’s witches have the gall to ask him to become their king due to his bloodright as son of the demon Azzael who was once king of the witches at Leicester, and his lover, the witch Sarah Hughes. There Hellboy declines their offer with all the predictable rudeness, causing the witches to declare war against him. This lands him beyond the Thrice-Nine Lands of the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom, land of the Baba Yaga.
In her wintry realm, the Baba Yaga stops at nothing to exact her revenge on Hellboy for putting out her eye in an encounter forty years prior. There Hellboy battles the hoards of her skeleton army and a soulless warrior named Koshchei the Deathless. With the help of enemies of the Baba Yaga, and the spirit of a little girl named Vasilisa, Hellboy is able to defeat Koshchei in battle and escape, but not before Vasilisa is shot by one of Koshchei’s arrows and dies in his arms.
The victory is bittersweet, and opens Hellboy’s eyes to what it really means to be deathless. He sees enough of himself in Koshchei’s suffering—under the Baba Yaga’s control, forced to kill and unable to die—that he even pities the man during battle.
Hellboy is a very solemn man, outwardly quiet, but internally an extremely elegant thinker. He tends to be bluntly honest to the point of rudeness, though he doesn’t always intend to be. He’s loyal to a fault to those he cares about, quick to trust and hard to persuade otherwise. He has a soft spot for the underdog, the so-called “freaks” he identifies with, likes children and animals, and can be gentle and kind despite his strength and outward appearance. He likes telling colorful stories, smoking cigarettes, and indulging his incurable wanderlust and curiosity. He’s drawn to everything and anything out of the ordinary, and is thus a magnet for trouble. He hates witches and dark magic, drinks too much when given the chance, and regularly files his horns down to nubs in an attempt to look more human.
Now that he's back in the land of life, death, and dreaming, Hellboy will be pretty damn confused. Things have gotten so bad in such an imperceptible period of time, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. Helboy will want to dive head-first into trying to figure out what the hell happened since he's been gone, learning about Malicant and how to defeat him, and continue his efforts to get everyone home. I have plans for him to join the Foreigner branch of the police force so that he can better utilize his skills to help both Foreigner and kedan alike.
Appearance:
Hellboy’s skin is bright red, the color of dried blood. He stands seven feet tall and has two nubs of horns protruding from his head. These are commonly confused with goggles. He generally keeps his horns filed, and they seem to grow very slowly. Only when Hellboy taps into his latent dark power do the horns grow at an alarming rate. The horns are curved and add another foot to his height. When this happens, he is also known to “speak like a dragon”, billowing fire and smoke from his mouth.
His eyes are uniform, golden orbs with no irises or pupils. In the dark they’ve been shown to produce a faint golden glow. His tail is thick and about five feet in length. His hair is coarse and black. On his head, his hair is worn in knot tied at the base of his neck, reminiscent of a samurai top knot. The top of his head is otherwise bald. He has thick sideburns and a thin goatee. The rest of him is thinly covered in black, bristly hair.
His legs and feet resemble a hybrid between human and goat. The upper portion is well muscled and human, while his feet are comprised of two cloven hooves. Because of this he’s unable to wear shoes, and often is shown wearing leather boot-like leggings that allow his hooves to protrude from the toes.
His right hand and forearm are massive, and are made of an unbreakable type of ancient stone-like material. His right upper arm is heavily muscled to compensate for the weight, and his shoulders are hunched. He often walks leaning slightly to the right, the right shoulder hunched lower than the left. This hunch, paired with the enormous right hand, his heavy musculature, tail, lantern jaw and heavy brow often earns him the title of “big red ape” or “circus gorilla” by people who really feel the need to piss him off.
Abilities:
Being a demon born from the fiery pits of Hell has its perks. HB is mostly fireproof, and his stone hand cannot be damaged short of someone trying to hack it off his arm. Though Hellboy is tough, he isn’t completely untouchable. He’s vulnerable to bullets and blades everywhere but his right hand. And though he can’t be killed by fire, it can burn him enough to leave painful patches on his skin if he is exposed to large amounts. He can and has been grievously injured in battle more times than he can count, but it takes a lot more to bring him down than your average human, and he has a superhuman healing ability. He’s been thrown through buildings, bombarded with arrows, and has even been skewered straight through the abdomen with a lance the size of a telephone pole and survived, even after all the blood was drained from his body. Because of his strength and healing ability, he’s a supernaturally tenacious fighter. Though he can be injured, it’s ridiculously hard to get him to stay down. Even if he’s bleeding and mangled, he’ll just keep on coming until the job is done.
His right hand is made of a type of indestructible stone, and is incredibly heavy. During battle he often uses it to bludgeon his enemies to death. Its true name is The Right Hand of Doom, and is the key to unlocking the seven-headed dragon Ogdru Jahad from its slumber in order to bring about the Apocalypse that will come to end mankind. It’s an incredibly powerful weapon, but Hellboy has no idea how to unlock its supernatural abilities, and doesn’t want to find out. Its use as a sledgehammer works just fine for him.
Hellboy is also shown to be extremely lethal with a sword, though using one in battle tends to invoke a deep, primal rage that he tries his best to avoid. Instead, if he finds himself without a gun, he is often seen using pieces of rebar, rocks, wood splinters, and other things he might find lying around during battle.
Though he has very little in the way of formal combat training, Hellboy’s “Beat the crap out of it ‘til it’s dead” approach works pretty well for him. He’s a lousy aim and technology hates him, so he often ditches his gun and whatever other high-tech weaponry he has on hand for some good ‘ole hand-to-hand combat. His combined size, strength, and invulnerability is usually way more effective than whatever gadget the Bureau may try to force on him.
But during his time with the Bureau he wasn’t merely the hired muscle. Though he’s a simple speaker, he’s a very eloquent thinker. In short: Hellboy knows his stuff. In fact, his memory is downright uncanny. He has ability to recall occurrences that happened decades ago in great detail, going as far back as happenings shortly after he reached his “adulthood” at eight years of age, over fifty years ago. So if you’ve got an issue with the occult, he’s a walking library. Not only does he spend a lot of time studying old legends, charms, and incantations, he’s traveled all over the world to use them, study them, and experience them first hand. He’d be the first to admit he’s not into the bookwork aspect of the job, but over the years, he’s been forced to do a lot of homework and managed to absorb a good chunk of useful knowledge. HB’s also very introspective, though he tries not to be, and often muses about his place in the world and the people around him.
Hellboy is also incredibly perceptive to supernatural activity. Whether it’s seeing an apparition no one else can, sensing the true identity of a shape-shifter, understanding a possessed person speaking in tongues, or drawing in psychic disturbances, it’s obvious his senses reach far beyond that of an average human. This isn’t always a good thing, however. Sometimes he just can’t get rid of the damn things, and this makes him extremely vulnerable to psychic manipulation and attack. Luckily he’s generally too stubborn to let them take control of him for long.
Lastly, he is extremely talented with languages. For some odd reason they just make sense to him. Though he is a native English speaker, he is known to speak Spanish, German, and French without ever putting any effort into formal studies. He is also capable of understanding ancient and infernal tongues without ever seeing or hearing them before. It’s not a fluent understanding, but most of the time he can quickly get the gist of what’s being said.
Suitability:
Considering Hellboy comes from a very dark canon centered around the coming Apocalypse, there's no question he'll be right at home with the current turn of events. Even the year-long memory gap won't phase him much. He's pretty used to getting shifted through space and time, so his re-arrival will hardly throw him off his game.
Currently, I'm planning for him to lend his help to the police despite his colorful history with Evandau. It's the best way he can make himself useful.
Inventory:
• One tattered canvas trench coat
• One heavy, black utility belt containing an assortment of charms that can be used to heal, exorcise demons, and protect people from evil entities. Hellboy himself doesn’t know exactly what is in his belt, but throughout canon it’s shown to contain:
o One Catholic rosary
o Agnus Dei candle – lights in the presence of black luck.
o Charm acquired at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem – Sumerian phrases etched in silver nitrate – casts out dark magic and glamours.
o A blood-soaked splinter taken from the wheel that broke the back of St. Catherine – slows down demons, djinn, and any other members of the infernal order
o Matches
o Cigarettes
o Flashlight (broken due to seawater)
• One ’41 U.S. Army .45 pistol in a left-handed holster and the necessary bullets, given to him by Harry Middleton
• One pair of black shorts
• One pair of custom-made toeless leather boots
Suite: I'd like to keep him in the Earth Sector, please. He's not one for glitz and glamor, and Earth is definitely more his element.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Hellboy’s trench coat billowed in the warm breeze as he headed toward the Tanzanian sunrise, his hooves digging deep into the sandy Earth. Tanzania. Africa. He had a lot of memories there, but he still wasn’t sure which one he was chasing. Anastasia, her freckled skin dirt-caked from a day of digging, red hair swept up under a baseball cap. Smiling. Hazy memories of his father, still able-bodied and sound of mind, exploring the mysteries of the world, still able to do the job he loved. Then, the spirit of Africa filling the sky, knowing him, calling out his name.
Above him, the sunrise was painted red and lions roared in the distance.
Thunder. The crack of it startled him awake as the storm’s first drops pattered wetly on his face. He ran his tongue over his teeth, cracked lips parched from the salty air. Instead of sand, the little wooden boat rocked beneath him in the great expanse of the open ocean, stretching for miles in all directions without any hint of land.
The ocean. Africa was only a dream, now. One of the better dreams he’s had since he left that island. Over two years he’d been lost at sea, held in chains, stabbed, tortured, drained of his blood. Died. Died and lived to tell the tale. Thinking about it was the last thing he wanted to do, but spending days adrift with nothing but a wooden dingy leaves you with nothing much else to do.
So he thought, the image of the creature made of his blood flashing through his head, piercing eyes that watched him from his dreams without a trace of humanity in their gaze.
He sighed, running his normal hand over his face, and tried to push it from his mind again. Instead he turned his focus on rigging the empty rum bottle he’d been using to collect rain water, readying it for the coming storm. Above him, veins of lightning split the sky and dark waves tossed the boat sickeningly over the swells.
He’d been drifting for days, and he wondered how much longer it’d be until he could get off that damn floating piece of crap. Part of him dreaded what would be waiting for him once he did.
He knew the storm had only just begun.
Network:
[After his short trip through the city, there was no denying things have changed. There’s a palpable darkness hanging over Keeliai, a new wariness in the eyes of its people, a shadow cast by the blackened palace looming on the horizon. Cultists hiss and scream with their signs and weapons on street corners. Others scurry past like scared animals, head down, looking at no one.
Less than a year ago, when Keeliai was a different place, Evandau had warned him of the ancient force of evil they’d been brought here to fight. And back then, Hellboy had offered to go find it, to do everything he could to stop it. But things are rarely that easy.
Evandau had said that the thing had to come to them, that they had to sit here and wait like sitting ducks before they could even think to fight it. It pissed him off then, and it pisses him off even more now. Because now the thing is here, and innocent people are paying for it in blood.
He’s lost too much time. It’s time to get back to work.
Soon as he gets his bearings, Hellboy takes off into the city, wanders back to the old noodle shop in the Metal Sector he used to frequent. The shop’s still there, and so is the old man who runs it. Business is bad, and most of the kedan have been relocated to the old Foreigner housing, but things like this just never change.
After a few quick drinks, he ventures to the nearest console cafe. He’s never trusted the network, even before he heard the rumors about the corruption. But for now, it’s all he can do to get a hold of some Foreigners and hear their side of things.
On the screen, his features are as unreadable as always, but his tone is business-like and determined.]
This is Hellboy. I need to meet with someone who can fill me in about what’s happened over the last year. If you respond I can give you an address. I’d appreciate it.