Ian

Ian is a regular young man who can turn into a man-eating eel with legs. He doesn't have a stable job and has no desire to find one, as he prefers for as few entities to know of his existence as possible. He picks up whatever underground-paid-in-cash odd jobs he can get.

He's as unpleasant as he looks. He typically keeps to himself, but when he must speak, he is not a fun person to talk to; he has no interest in cultivating relationships, so he's often flippant and rude and says things with no regard to the damage they may do to his reputation. Despite this, he'll cooperate with people as long as they don't give him a reason not to. If he's given a reason not to, he has no problems being (more of) a pain in the ass to deal with.

For as bad as his attitude is, he isn't terrible when he's not actively scaring people away. He will do the right thing for you if you haven’t done anything to wrong him, though he claims this is purely transactional and not an indication of friendship. If you can get him to talk about books, he can even sound thoughtful and sensitive from time to time. (If you tell him that, consider yourself banned from further interactions.)

He will only engage in violence if it's in self-defense, although what justifies self-defense is subject to change depending on how cranky he is. Once he's on the defensive he generally won't stop until the problem is dealt with (i.e. dead). He can and will eat people in his eel form, but he can't turn back into a person until digestion has run its course, so for practical reasons he can't just eat anyone who pisses him off. It happens sometimes anyways. It is a large inconvenience.

• He has a digestive system of steel and will eat basically anything, even if he doesn't know what it is (especially if he doesn't know what it is).
• Although his usual range of emotions consists of various levels of anger, you have to push his buttons quite a bit to enrage him for real. In that case, run!
• He's extremely wary of anyone in the medical and biological sciences (sometimes to the point of uncharacteristic hostility) for reasons that he won't disclose.
• His preferred methods for terminating someone's life while in his human form are drowning (if he just wants to get it over with) or beating to a pulp (if he has a grudge). In his eel form, chomp. He tries to maim people without eating them, but sometimes he gets carried away.
• He's faster in the water (in both forms), but agile enough on land that running onto dry ground won't buy enough time to get away from him if he's determined to get you.

• I am way too lazy to formalize his scars outside of the one on his mouth. For the ones on the rest of his body, uh, he has them. They're there.
• His pupils dilate and contract depending on light, and they'll also contract further if he's mad.
• He freckles instead of tanning evenly.
• His teeth are arranged the same way as regular human teeth, just big and pointy.
• He could look more like a normal human if he wanted to (no gills, eyes that aren't uncomfortable to look at) but it takes effort and he doesn't want to.

• I used ferrets as a guide for attaching his legs. If you're confused about how he works, go look at a ferret. His coloring (and teeth situation) is based off of fangtooth morays.
• He's got a lot of teeth (2 rows minimum) with absolutely no logic to how they're arranged. They're visible even with his jaw closed.
• His pharyngeal jaw can extend farther out than it can in an actual moray and just straight up grab stuff (great for annoying smaller things that might be too fast for his actual jaws).
• He can have pupils. I just generally don't draw them in because I think it's cuter scarier that way.