Appearance

Merrick is a dapper young man, his posture is upright and overall his appearance is confident and neat. He is 176 cm tall (5 ft 9 in), he has a lean body and he is more of a slim type than muscular. He has dark blonde hair and slightly slanted, amber eyes. He has an angular face and a chin cleft. He often wears a polite smile on his face and even in the direst situations he can keep his calm.
Merrick's suits are always well-fitting and it's obvious he spends a lot of money on his clothes. He has suits and hats for every occasion, and his shoes are always shiny.

Personality

A rich father has made life easy for Merrick. He has a hedonistic nature and he aims to get as much pleasure with the slightest amount of work as possible. He is extremely confident and thinks he can get anything he wants, and his opportunism and desire to try out new ideas leads him to take a chance on plans others might think are a lost cause. Merrick's main influence is money, and he is constantly looking for new ways to make it - and he is not worried if the ways are not always legal. He is not very patient man and if things are starting to take too much of his time and efforts, he will walk away from them.

Merrick is a pleasant person to talk to. He is polite and feels at ease with people. His manner of speech is eloquent and measured and he seems like a harmless, well-mannered young man. Most of it just an act: he knows he can get more if he is able to manipulate people feel they can trust him. His loyalty is always on sale, as he has no remorse on hurting people if necessary. He lacks empathy towards others, even though he chooses his words and facial expressions carefully to assure otherwise - he really doesn't care for others if there's nothing they can provide to help his own causes. Merrick is an egoist to the core and making friends seems like a waste of time to him, but the few people he cares for have noticed how considerate and devoted he can be; still, he doesn't do anything for free and he is waiting for something in return.

Merrick tends to do things on his own and if he has to do some scheming, he does the brainstorming by himself. He is quite smart, and even though he sometimes loses his temper, he rarely makes rash decisions as he can snap out of anger and think rationally. He is usually confident enough to not take things personally, but when he does, he is extremely rancorous and will look forward to destroy the person's life. Merrick doesn't believe solidly in anything, though, so his mind can be changed and he is able to give people second chances - but only if they can show their usefulness to him.

Backstory

The Rostarlain family is well-know in the city of Oran. Merrick's father Jaskuno Rostarlain is the CEO of a successful company selling home appliances. Merrick's older brother Tremmirk was supposed to be the next in line to run the company: he was definitely a better choice than Merrick, who didn't like to take responsibility and started to act out when he felt his parents saw him as a disappointment compared to Tremmirk. Even though Merrick still holds a grudge against his big brother, he never had problems with his little sister Mireile, and they still come along very well.

Tremmirk went overseas to fight in the great war, but he never came back. Merrick's mother died by sorrow shortly after, and Jaskuno had to take care of his underaged daughter and good-for-nothing son, who was constantly looking for troubles. Jaskuno forced Merrick to go to a university and get himself a sensible academic degree. After that Jaskuno made him a board member of the family business in order to run the company someday. Merrick soon noticed that running a huge company was the last thing he wanted to do, as he got more pleasure from his own investing businesses. Jaskuno wasn't happy about it, and especially when Merrick made some lousy, unprofitable deals he pointed out how Merrick was only wasting the family money for inane nonsense and he should start to learn to take some responsibility on his actions. Merrick fed up with his father's ranting and knew he wanted Merrick to become his successor only because Tremmirk wasn't alive anymore. Merrick decided to find a subtle way to avoid his fate and to shut his father up for good.

Extra info

• Merrick invests mostly on stock markets, but he has a broad range of interest. All Merrick's businesses are not quite conventional or even legal, but he doesn't care as long as he gets the money out of them and his staff can get him out of troubles.
• He smokes occasionally and likes to drink some good whiskey. He likes to party as well and socialize with people, but he also has a slight bit of a workaholic nature in him: when he can do things he finds important, he will not slack.
• Merrick's alignment is chaotic evil. He also definitely has some psychopathic traits as well, but I don't think he actually falls under that definition. Still something to consider: when Merrick's business partner asked him to hire some lowlifes to commit a murder, Merrick took the chance with no hesitation. After the work was done, Merrick went back to his partner and asked who was the target anyway. Turned out it was the man's brother, and Merrick was just confused and knew that he himself would have never hired some nameless scumbags to kill his own family members. He would have done it himself.
  • Speaking of which: Merrick has not (yet) killed anybody. He hasn't been in serious fights, either. He sometimes dreams about killing his father and dead brother, though.
  • And about Merrick's hatred for his brother: when the war was over and their side won, Merrick wasn't happy about it at all: he was angry and frustrated because he knew his big brother, who died in war, would be celebrated as a hero. He was hoping that the war would last forever and people would eventually forget what was it all about and whose lives it took, and how the name of Tremmirk Rostarlain would be forgotten forever.

Trivia

• Merrick was created in 2020. I played him in Kaupunki nimeltä Oran (inactive, in Finnish only). It was a text-based rpg taking place in an urban fantasy world with 1920's vibes.
• I absolutely love his character, he is so twisted in so many ways and he can do basically anything because he is filthy rich and wants to stay that way. Still, he is young, impatient and tries to look good in public, so it's unlikely he will become a criminal mastermind boss, but I'm thrilled to see what will happen. He is already gathering some chimeras (who are shunned and have no rights in the society) to back him up and do some dirty works for him.
• It's easy and always enjoyable to write what he does and thinks, but drawing him is super hard for me. He has those small distinguishing features that don't work easily with my drawing style, so it's very frustrating. Like how am I supposed to display a young calm fellow, pleasant to look at but not too handsome, with slanted but not shifty eyes, smiling slightly and and still point out he's an egocentric psycho but you can't really tell it by his looks. I mean... it's hard...