Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Username: Schazmander the third, esquire
Name: Benjamin Jetsam
Gender: Male
Font color: #4B647D
Race: NA/Shapeshifter?
Weapon: He’s learnt to use a wide variety in his travels, but he’s no soldier – though he’s not liable to get himself hurt using a weapon, it’s often so long ago that he’s lost any proficiency. Not to mention muscle memory. As for what he carries, none.

Abilities: Benjamin is a man who has spent more natural lifetimes than he cares to recall being dragged from universe to universe, at the whim of a sadistic oppressor. The trauma of a corporeal being launched into an incorporeal universe (what we might refer to as a “spirit plane”), multiple times in fact, left enough psychological scarring that he can no longer maintain his form between worlds. Upon departure, his form disintegrates, only to reform itself from the matter present in the next universe he’s tossed in. One aspect of this local rebuilding is that the matter can guide his new shape, more often than not so it resembles the local sentient species. He's not a ghost or a spirit or anything even vaguely tangible before he reforms, he's just... there.
Other than this quirk, he's got a quick mind and is a fast thinker. His forms tend toward atheltic for whatever race whose shape he assumes, but even then he aims for conformity - otherwise he'd just be jumping through dimensions with a human form.

Description: Benjamin's outward appearance changes from world to world (although there are the two constants of being male, and his hair (when black) being flecked with grey), but within, he's reasonably consistent. Through his journey, he goes through a near-predictable cycle of ferocious determination to find an escape, to going at it more covertly (in the hopes of catching his tormentor unawares), to just getting plain miserable about his predicament and giving up. On first impressions, he's curt, courteous, and never asks for trouble. On occasion, he'll get reckless knowing his personal overlord demon has never let him die, but generally tends toward not making a big impression. Unless he's feeling particularly destructive.
He's lost count of how long he's been travelling, and his memory isn't anything that excellent either - but he's seen a lot, lived more lives than any man could or should, and can recall quite a few moments when he acted rashly or unscrupulously. He knows he's never going back to those places, and that rationale can, if he's got it forefront, let him do things he'd otherwise regret.
The sheer number of people he's had to meet as a matter of course means Benjamin certainly couldn't remember them all by name or face, and it's also left him rather detached. He'll be polite to you whether you help him or harm him, he'll even risk his life for you if you've shown him significant kindness, but he won't ever get attached.

Biography: This guy's got a backstory, and I solemnly swear to share it with you over the course of the battle. In the interim, though, I'd like to lfill this gap with this excerpt someone found in an archive somewhere:

Show Content

SpoilerExtracting “Jetsam Engima” file 02023…

Processing translation…

File 02023 successfully translated.

Porter, S. (1213, approx. 1000 s.y.a). The Journeyman. Unexplained Mysteries of Katreporu, (2245, approx 60 s.y.a)

The demon was identical, in all superficial appearance, to Reilen on the day of his disappearance, yet it was nothing like the smirking, unscrupulous predators of the wood folk stories had warned me of. When it first arrived, my brother wrapped around its apologetic husk of a soul, I could not believe what I was seeing.

I believed it even less, after having heard the demon’s fantastical tales. I never truly did accept the man’s stories, until the otherwise unremarkable day he vanished without a trace. Just as he had warned me.

We met the evening he staggered onto the property, trembling, smoking at the edges, and doing his utmost to hide his terror at the latter fact; close to five days after my brother disappeared on one of his numerous hunting trips. Seeing only a doppelganger coiled in my brother’s visage, I was, understandably, horrified. The demon, grimacing with obvious discomfort, repeated the word stuttering repeatedly from my mouth:

“Reilen?”

Before exploding in a burst of flame. It occurs to me only later, that unused to our repeated regeneration, that he fought the impulse for five painful days. His screams lessened as the process reached completion, until he rose from the ash, older than my brother, black hair flecked with steel mined from his eyes.

The demon gave me one wary glance from his crouched position on the ground, before standing and lowering his gaze.

“I’m deeply sorry, sir-Serral. Your brother is dead.”

The words were handled awkwardly, as though he struggled to place the unwieldy things where they belonged. I looked him up and down, grappling with the wrongness of this creature, his quiet honesty that forced me to believe his words. I considered accepting the loss of my brother, and sending the demon that had borrowed his form to carry the message on its way.

I let him in. He said his thanks, followed me to my brother’s room, and collapsed on the bed without a further word. I did not hear him again until dawn, when I awoke to begin the day’s work. The demon said nothing as he watched me wander the house, but nodded when I told him to get ready. He was a capable worker, his inexperience atoned for by his ability to learn. Exceptionally fast. Other than a tacit request for clarification, and replying to every order of mine with a quiet “understood,” he said little else. He never asked anything of me, save to borrow my few books, but never a request to spare him my inevitable questions. I sensed given time enough, he’d tell me, so I waited.

Despite the fact he caused no harm to anyone, the demon was strange indeed. Most unnerving was the way, new life to new life, within, he was the same, silent, steely-eyed man. I never saw him different, and sensing he’d understand even less than I would, did not press him.

Fall came, the cart was loaded with the summer’s produce, and we embarked on the annual three-day trip to Tanika. Reilen would’ve joked about this being the year he’d bring a nice lady back to the farm, like he always did. If the demon was apprehensive about meeting others, he did not show it. The first night was spent in our usual silence, but on the second I offered him a leather pouch full of his wages. He shook his head (that day, he had green eyes and softer features, though his hair was flecked with silver like it always did when it burnt black) and told me to keep it. I have noted what he said, as clearly as I can remember.

“I won’t be staying long,” he said. There was a long silence, during which he watched me from the corner of his eye. “I’ve appreciated the last few months… they’ve been peaceful. Just… please let me stay for however much longer – there’s no need to pay me if you simply give me a place to sleep.”

It was the most I’d ever heard him say at once, and it must have been obvious how I wanted, but did not expect more; because he nodded, sighed, and stared into the darkened woods while he gathered his thoughts.

“You thought of me as some demon, when your brother reappeared?”

“I-“

“No, it was understandable. I shouldn’t have done that – I didn’t understand regeneration then.

As you probably guessed, Serral, I’m not from here. I’m not even from this world.” The demon was silent for another while, and continued when I had nothing to say.

“A long… very long time ago, Serral, I angered an- I angered a demon. It punished me by tearing me from my home, and casting me in another world. And another, and another, and another after that. Some worlds, he would wait until I had almost forgotten my tormentor, before he-” here, the demon paused, teeth gritted in anger “-plucked me out of that life and moved me on. In others, I grew so dispirited I thought I’d end it, but he watched over me and carried me off again.”

He stops again, this time to raise his gaze to meet mine.

“Even now, more than anything, I still want to return home – if only so I can die there.” He quells my protest at this defeatism with a wave of a hand, a tired expression. “I’m waiting for the demon to make a mistake, send me somewhere with the magic or technology to escape him.” The demon smirked. “Before this began, I didn’t believe the former was real. But I’ve been proven wrong. So many times.”

“Perhaps the Elder in Tanika-“

“No, Serral. I doubt she could help me at all – and if she could, I’d be gone before I stepped through her door. Like I said, this world’s nice. I needed the break.” The demon smiled for the first time, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I appreciate your concern though, Serral. Thank you.”

Something occurred to me in that moment. “But… if you weren’t Telpori-Han, why do you… you-“

“look like one? My body didn’t last long getting dragged through time and-“ he seemed to search for a word here, and settled for “-across worlds. A little scrap of a ghost is all that’s left, but I can draw from the world I’m dropped in and rebuild myself each time. I… I appeared near your brother, and I suppose I took his form. Until I regenerated.”

The demon appeared to be considering continuing, but on seeing the look of disbelief on my face, shrugged a little. “I’ll just vanish, one of these days. I’ll look back fondly on this time, though. Good night, Serral.”

After that one night, the demon retreated into his usual tacit ways again, until the midwinter night when I returned to a deserted homestead. True to his word, the demon was gone – and the only thing on my mind was the realisation I had never asked for a name.