Name Anselme

Age Thousands of years

Gender N/A (he/him)

Species Monster

Height 8'0" but changes

Alignment Chaotic Evil

Aesthetic here

Theme this

Strange infatuation seems to grace the evening tide.
 I'll take it by your side.

Anselme is an ancient shapeshifting entity. Upon the advent of mankind, he evolved and grew with them, eventually developing sapience and taking the form of various legends and folklore. He feeds off fear and pain and is your classic monster under the bed.

Being thousands of years old, Anse is beginning to outgrow his only purpose, but can't do much about it since the whole fear thing is what keeps him alive. Mild existential burnout doesn't stop him from being a manipulative scary bastard, though. His favorite people are the ones that have lots of buttons to push and lots of resilience, so he can keep coming back for more.

Personality

Shameless and cruel, Anse intrudes on the lives of proxies and other monsters just to stir up trouble. Stirring up trouble was all he was made for. Sometimes this comes in the form of allying himself with one party against another, but his loyalty is as fickle as his attention span. No matter what face he is wearing from one century to the next, at his core, Anse is simply a trickster.

Anse is incredibly powerful, evil by default, and views humans as prey, but this prey is also responsible for shaping him. It would be impossible to not get a little attached. For all his bragging, he will never mention the fact that he briefly posed as a remote village's protector. It was... a nice change of pace.

His current form is something of his own design, a new experiment borne out of boredom and an itch to be an individual. He's based off of 19th century circuses and took his name from the "first" ringleader, Anselme-Pierre Loyal. He has literally fashioned himself in the image of human beings and given himself a name, but trying to psychoanalyze this for him won't end well for anyone.

He's quite resistant to any suggestion that he cares about people, or himself for that matter. It feels wrong and scary. He's not built that way and nothing could change that, if it were true.

Abilities

• Nightmare creation. Meeting him in a nightmare is meeting him in his "truest" form that can be comprehended in our world.
• Shapeshifting: he cannot change forms willy nilly, it is a long process to adapt to a new character, such as the barghest or Spring-Heeled Jack. When he changes forms, he remains in them for a couple decades until they are no longer relevant or have lost his interest.
• In his current Anse form, he can meld into shadows, transform all or part of his body into black smoke, do weird puppet ragdoll stuff with his limbs, change the appearance of his eyes, change his voice, and other mild shifting
• Teleportation (travels between our realm and the monster realm)
• Mild mind reading. He can sense a person's fears, insecurities, weaknesses, triggers, etc.
• Mild reality bending in the form of creating/throwing sounds and temperature changes
• He is physically extremely strong and can cleave down trees if need be. His body is also a shell, and can be destroyed; it wounds him because he is connected to it, but he recovers by retreating into his nightmare.