OOC
GAME: Neopolis
DESCRIPTION: Freeze-rays and monsters and magic and superpowers, oh my!
DATE: January 2009
PB: Gary Oldman
JOURNAL: gravitas
IC
NAME: Doctor Zaccheus Barnaby Odd, M.D. (Magicæ Doctor), D.P.M. (Doctor of Practical Magic), Hon. ThD.
AGE/BIRTHDATE: 50 / November 10, 1958 (SCORPIO)
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual
ALIAS/CODENAME: Doctor Odd
CONCEPT: A feared necromancer with some worryingly sublimated daddy issues, Doctor Odd rules his faculty with an iron fist — or at least the terrifyingly real threat of curses and hexes. His life is an exercise in melodrama and booming capslock, since in Oddworld, almost everything is a matter of life and death and your very soul. He possesses undisputed favouritism, but pushes his favourite students harder than the rest, and not-so-subtly tries to sway them towards the Evil League. A (frustrating) annual custom is for the braver school miscreants to sneak into his chaotic office. Their mission: to steal the enchanted crystal ball of Kyz'rkk and return alive.
FACULTY: Magic.
POSITION: Dean of magic, and much to his displeasure, go-to man for room assignment disputes for his faculty. Like the other deans, he also teaches a handful of specialised lectures:
TRIMESTER ONE: Summoning 101: Spirits, Demons, and Familiars
TRIMESTER TWO: Experiments with Ancient Artefacts: Cursed, Forbidden, or Otherwise
TRIMESTER THREE: Nature and Magic: Druidry vs. Going Against the Laws of the Universe Itself
SKILLS: Odd is immensely adept with general types of black magic (pyrokinesis, telekinesis, paralysis, other offensive kinds of -esis…), but with a particular penchant for curses and necromancy. The Mayor's politely asked him not to bring any living dead into the academy, though. Weakness-wise, he's not as good with summoning as he'd like to admit, and can't even keep a single hellhound on leash and collar. Also, poltergeists make him cry like a small child. To give a more detailed rundown of his abilities:
Necromancy: His greatest accomplishment, and a venue of magic he found himself straying to a few years after his mother's disappearance and his father's increasing emotional detachment from the living. Bringing back a zombie? Pffft, piece of cake for Doctor Odd; with proper preparation, he can raise entire legions of the shambling undead, manipulate their movements and behaviour, rein them in to his every whim, and even imbue them with a certain degree of spiritual sentience. And yes, he could conceivably resurrect an actual human being and retain their consciousness intact. He did it once to test his limitations, and then promptly placed the man back in the earth.
Black magic: A veritable arsenal of it, with anything from pyrokinesis to telekinesis and levitation. He can fly; he can lock joints; he can rain torrents of fire upon an enemy. His specialty lies in arcane druidry, however — much like his talent for necromancy, Odd is a capable hand at twisting and perverting what nature wrought. Skeletal ghost trees, plague-ridden land, poisonous flora… if he ever wanted to, he could transform his environment into a hauntingly beautiful blasted landscape. It'd be awfully lonely, but he could do it.
Curses and hexes: Lesser versions consist of lockjaw, boils, sickness, locusts, and anything faintly resembling Egyptian plagues — major versions can be long-term, immensely debilitating and paralysing, and even fatal. He's only done this once.
Summoning: Not his strong suit, but he's particularly fond of invoking small imps to do various chores, pass messages, pester students, &c.
Portals: Like any handy magician with the right materials, Odd can open up airborne portals to other places on this earth and other dimensions (astral, spiritual, dæmonic, winged monkeyed, and so on). It takes preparation, however.</blockquote>
ALLIANCE: Evil League of Evil, though he's just a card-carrying member (and deeply enjoys the library priveliges thereof). However, he's been toeing the line of occult academia rather than supervillainy, and is hoping that his stint at the Academy will start to propel him up the ranks.
PERSONALITY: The general consensus seems to be that Doctor Odd — a tall, dark, and slightly manic man — is completely off his rocker. Or, at least, that's how he'd like to be perceived: his favourite pasttimes include looming down hallways, being cryptic and obtuse, and delivering ominous proclamations. The first thing one realises about the man is that he enjoys a good sense of mystery and theatrics more than anyone else. His arch and intelligent speech often devolves into DRAMATIC SHOUTING, since he constantly gets overexcited and overenthused about anything from new occult developments to, well … the contents of his refrigerator. The man's typically-composed and regal attitude totally collapses whenever he becomes uncharacteristically delighted over things; to be honest, it's what appears to be his own inner child shining through. He takes great delight in schadenfreude, irony, showtunes, punishing his students, comeuppances, academic competence, and musicals — and life is just far more exciting when it's melodramatic, after all! He imbues his entire life with a certain doom-and-gloom flair, and being quite conscious of that reputation, Odd flaunts that dark and brooding demeanour accordingly.
For all that gloomily didactic exterior, though, he's secretly quite paternal of his charges. He genuinely wants his students to succeed, though that might largely be in order to boost his own reputation as a teacher — and it must be noted, however, that Alistair Odd once buried his son alive with a malevolent ghost and the simple instruction "Succeed." So do take that fatherly attitude with a grain of salt; unfortunately for the children of the Academy, this terrifying method of child-rearing lives on in Zaccheus. He is hard and exacting on his favourites and holds extremely high standards for them, often nudging or nagging or outright bullying them towards greatness. He has an almost obsessive desire towards success and to see his infernal mark left on the pages of history, via the futures of his bright young pupils.
Outside of his hysterical theatrics and driven academic obsession (the man can, will, and has murdered for first-edition books), however, he can otherwise be a largely contemplative man. People familiar with his bombastic public persona are sometimes surprised by his withdrawn personal attitude; he is uncomfortable with a close heart-to-heart, instead preferring to spend his time deep in his books or lurking in shadows or nosing his way into others' business. Any time a conversation edges onto some frighteningly personal territory, he'll retreat behind some safe and distancing shells: the Dean, the professor and academic, the black magician, the necromancer, the fierce League hound, the Doctor.
He can put up with public embarrassment (after all, cape flourishes and black leggings are all part of the super-package), but he simply cannot stand critical analysis of his personality and its pile of neuroses and spasmodic weaknesses. He spent far too many years getting psychoanalysed — and consequently psychologically manipulated — by his father, and so Zaccheus B. Odd reacts badly to people getting too close of a glimpse of the man behind the curtain of his magical doctorate. With personal intimacy comes exposing weakness, and with weakness comes an explosive death. He might want a dramatic end for himself, but he wants to make an entire metropolis bend to his whim first, thank you very much.
HISTORY: Zaccheus was raised singlehandedly by his father, Alistair Odd — alias THE PROFESSOR, one of the world's first (and foremost) nefarious sorcerers. He possessed a high public profile in the Evil League's inner sanctum, had a quiet involvement behind the scenes in WWI, and terrorised cities across America before taking up as New York's resident supervillain. Somewhere along the way, he picked up a beleaguered wife, and eventually a sober dark-haired boy started accompanying him to League meetings, usually reading quietly in the corner.
No one quite knows the circumstances behind Mrs. Odd or her disappearance, and speculations run rampant between a) dissolved in a lightning strike, b) accidentally spirited away to alternate dimension, or c) simply grew tired of her partner's mad ravings and neurotic behaviour. Either way, young Z. never learnt the truth, and instead had to accustomise himself to the overnight departure of the only soft coddling influence in his life. The Professor was fierce and uncompromising to his family, and mostly cared only for his newest headlines and the latest academic findings in the magic/gothic realm. He even sent his son as far away from himself as he could, across the Atlantic and to boarding schools in England to get him out of his hair — he would have sent him to an even more distant continent, had the Australian heroic superteams not blacklisted any Odd from ever attending a school there. Academic and familial difficulties aside, Zaccheus Odd desperately wanted to hench for his father while growing up — but Alistair, being the scarily territorial and possessive sort, never let his son near his work. It had nothing to do with keeping the boy safe. Alistair just wanted all the glory without worrying about some two-bit junior Odd killing off his father in order to fill the dead man's pointy shoes.
Despite these roadblocks in his path, however, Zaccheus managed to attend the Insidious Institute after leaving England's Argenteum, then claw his way out of his father's shadow and arise as a powerful magician in his own right. His reputation only soared after The Professor was eventually killed by his arch-nemesis (well, it had to happen), and Doctor Odd was then free to pursue his own path in necromancy. He spent some time getting accredited with the League, teaching at Insidious, occasionally babysitting other supervillains' errant children, but as time wore on and he spent more time teaching than terrorising, his public image stagnated. Being genial, intelligent, and not megalomaniacal enough to be a threat to his peers, he grew immensely popular with other villains — but the public just didn't care about him anymore.
In an attempt to learn even greater magic, Zaccheus once summoned his father's spirit for help, guidance, and the vague hope of weepybondy times. What better time to reconcile with your estranged son than from beyond the grave, right?
But no. Instead, The Professor immediately criticised his son's spellcasting technique and forbade him from using his books ever, ever again. Enraged by this, Zaccheus disregarded the warning and started using them anyway. His library is now even more impressive, and contains many stunning examples of first-edition occult academia.
On the other hand, Zaccheus Odd is now being haunted-slash-stalked by a malevolent poltergeist force, which incessantly tries to kill him. No amount of spellwork has gotten rid of it. It's led to Odd being especially paranoid in his older age — watching over his shoulder, being prepared for attempted stangulations in the night — as he effectively continues dodging the incorporeal force of his father's Rage.
It's not a restful existence, to tell you the truth.
When he made the transition from Insidious to the newly-formed Academy, he fought — literally — his other competitors for the spot. One materialised as a toad for a day. Another was inexplicably hexed and went blind. Yet another suddenly disappeared, then reappeared in the Caribbean on the very day of her academy interview. One was quietly murdered, then covered up by a useful collaboration with a mutinous henchman. There's no doubt that Odd will fight dirty in a heartbeat; what matters is the result, after all, and he's a League man through and through.
There's also been a few off-and-on rumours over the years about his involvement with Deadly Girl, but those largely went silent after the Band of Heroic Heroes finally recruited her.
PLAYED-BY: Gary Oldman
fun questions!
Aspirations: To have Neopolis Academy's first valedictorian be from the magic faculty. To win the Aleister Crowley Award for Outstanding Achievements in Magic. And to get rid of that damn poltergeist. To soar higher in the Evil League. And to get a couple students interning with the biggest supervillains of today.
What would be the title of the comic book starring your character? How Odd! The Life and Times of a Necromancer
SOUNDTRACK
manic street preachers, "the intense humming of evil"
the pierces, "secret"
florence and the machine, "blinding"
laura marling, "ghosts"
laura marling, "cross your fingers"
sufjan stevens, "they are night zombies!! they are neighbors!! they have come back from the dead!! ahhhhh!"(?)
the deadly syndrome, "friends who don't go out at night"
