Wesley "Wess" Wendigo

Whispers of Insanity: When someone is in an isolated, lonely place and within a mile of him, Wess can channel a series of violent, gruesome visions, subconscious thoughts, and feelings to them. These things serve to make a person believe that they're starving and need to eat and make them not pay close attention to where they're going or what time it is. Individuals with great willpower can suppress these feelings and thoughts.

Wess can only do this to someone when they're alone and only one person at a time. He has to focus on keeping them close in distance and channeling the constant stream of emotions, visions, and thoughts. There is no guarantee to how someone might act to these, and if they see him (before or after he begins channeling), he can no longer channel the magic.

This magic is both based on the unknown and the fear of isolation and is what originally got Wess turned into a Wendigo. People under this magic may feel the need to eat, something, anything and if they cannibalize, they too may become a Wendigo. Of course, those who are not human will not become a Wendigo and this magic won't be as effective, if effective at all, on them.

Mimicry: After consuming someone's heart, Wess receives their memories and their voice. Eating a heart is the closest Wess gets to feeling alive and human. He is capable of using these voices at any time he so chooses, but the memories fade in the manner of two hours (at the most). He must consume their entire heart for this to take effect and he is unable to talk using someone's mannerisms, though he will have their dialect.

Of course, there is an oddness to the way Wess speaks when he's using someone's voice. It's not easy to pinpoint because it's not always the same. The closest that could be said is that using someone else's voice sounds artificial. Like whatever he's saying was recorded and on some loop. Not everyone notices it, and it's most easily realized when he speaks a lot, but the emotional investment in whatever he's saying using this power is always just a little off, enough to put it in the creepy valley.

Wendigo Fever: When someone survives one of Wess' attacks but blood or saliva transmits to them, they get what is known as Wendigo Fever. Their body will burn, they'll have terrible nightmares and hallucinations. Their fever will last a week along with the nightmares, but the hallucinations only last a day.

When the fever is over, there are no aftereffects. Wess does not control what nightmares or hallucinations they get from this. This is not generally lethal; it's more like having a bad flu. The Wendigo Fever doesn't set in immediately after it is contracted. It can take anywhere from three to six hours until the fever sets in.

Glutton's Stomach: Being a Wendigo changes the body in unusual ways. Over the course of his new life, Wess has found out some useful and some not-so-useful things about his new body. Without getting into the obvious malnourished appearance and constant hunger Wendigos are so known for, Wess can eat nearly anything without it hurting his stomach. That is to say, anything he can bite and chew (sorry, buildings and metal are out of the question. No way). Natural poisons and toxins don't affect him and altered poisons used by assassins have irregular effects on his body, such as making him spit up blood and ichor, making him drunk, or screwing up his depth perception.

Odd Body Functions: His body functions more as if it were dead than alive. While he cannot become sick by natural means, he also can't warm himself up during the cold seasons, leaving him in a half-hibernation. He can walk around, but he's not all there. He doesn't respond to things in even half the amount of time he would normally and he's in basic survival mode, meaning he doesn't think things through with the intelligence of a man. In the times of winter, he's more animal than he is a man if he's around at all.

His body doesn't function completely dead, though, he can still drown and starve to death. He can hold his breath much longer than is normal (12 minutes), but he also starves much quicker than any living thing. While a normal person might last 30-40 days without food, Wess can't last a full week before he's dying.

Wess' body functions don't make sense from a logical viewpoint. He is extremely lightweight and easily thrown around, and his strength is no different than when he was a human, but he has increased speed and agility. His speed is his most valued asset of these two; he is capable of reaching up to speeds of 100 mph (160.934 kph) -- that's twenty miles less than the average car at max acceleration -- in four to six seconds.

Unfortunately, his agility isn't up to snuff with his speed, meaning if he hopes to change course, make even wide turns, or react to anything in front of him, he should only run at speeds of 75 mph (120.701 kph), which is about as fast as a cheetah. He doesn't have an endless supply of stamina so much as his stamina replenishes swiftly when he's stopped moving. He can do short bursts of high speed for a few hundred yards and rest for a few seconds (anywhere from ten to fifteen) and be prepared to run another short burst.

Silent Steps: While Wess' footsteps are completely silent, he hisses loudly with every breath. The sound is similar to a snake if a snake were having an asthma attack.

Strange Senses: Wess' senses are as odd as his body functionality. He is capable of smelling blood as well as the average animal, but people's scents and things like perfume, body wash, or body odor are almost lost on him. He smells things at a much lighter rate than the average person. His nose is extremely selective; he can hone in on one source of food and smell that well, but everything else is lost on him. Overall, his sense of smell is worse than a human's; which is incredibly lucky for him, as Wess himself smells like rotting flesh. It's bad enough to make a person want to gag. And no, there is no way for him to disguise that smell, it follows him, no matter how often he was to bathe, it would remain just as strong.

As for taste, well have you ever felt so hungry you gobbled food down and only afterward realized that you hadn't tasted even a little of it? That's how Wess is all the time. He pretty much has no taste. Every once in awhile, he has a brief, slight aftertaste, but that's it.

Extreme Durability: Wess is not capable of enhanced healing; he heals at a normal rate, but his body is extremely durable. He can take a lot of damage before he's taken down and it can take quite a bit to break his skin. Think of him as someone with armor; punching and stabbing him hurt, but they don't keep him down. Bullets knock him back and they hurt, but he can keep fighting through them. Now, say, being smashed by a tree or boulder? Yeah, he'd be dead. Durability only gets you so far.

Functional Immortality: Wess doesn't seem to age, he's not immortal, he can die, but he doesn't age, and Wess' is about 99.9% certain he's infertile now. Not that he's gotten to test the latter.

Perfect Nighteye: Living in total darkness has given Wess perfect night eye, unfortunately, those rare times he is awake in the day, he's completely blind. Ambient light like flashlights also disorients him. He's like one of those deep cave creatures, light is a no no. He tries not to look at fire when he's around it, that hurts his eyes, too.

Predator's Thought Process: By far, however, Wess considers the biggest change to be his new thought process. Emotional attachments and qualms don't tend to color his thinking as much as they once did. He is very much animalistic at his core, and he sees situations in the same critical, cold light that an animal might. This is particularly the case when he's wounded. When hurt, the part of his brain that makes him Wess is dormant and in a fight, he doesn't tend to differentiate ally to enemy, friend to prey.

Fire: Physically speaking, fire is Wess' largest weaknesses by leaps and bounds. He burns quickly, not quite as easy as paper, but much easier than normal skin might.

Getting caught on fire is the end for Wess, there is no rolling on the ground or only minor burns. The simple touch of flame is excruciatingly damaging to him. What might cause an average person to get a first-degree burn would cause Wess third-degree burns. While Wess is durable, he can't put out the fire on his own, and if by some miracle, he was put out, he'd be unable to move and an easy target.

His general tactic to fire is to avoid it as much as possible. Get out. Run and run as fast as he can. He doesn't want to take a chance near that stuff.

Insanity: Wess loses his humanity the longer he remains a Wendigo. Unfortunately for him, there is no cure. There is no going back and he's stuck with this evil hanging over him. It's only a matter of time before he loses himself completely and becomes a mindless killing machine.

Due to this, Wess has long gaps of lost memory when his predatory instinct dominates his humanity, and he goes into hunting mode. Keeping well fed on the flesh of sentient beings (normal animals don't count) slows this process down and helps him control himself better. He will always be hungry, which means his restraint will always be teetering and his insanity will always be growing.

He struggles to remember what made him human, who he used to be, and why he loves certain people. Friendships are hard for Wess; he never knows when he'll snap and attack someone or when he'll be looking through the eyes of a monster.

He is in a constant struggle with himself. Fighting who he's becoming with who he used to be. He's on the losing end of this battle.

Nocturnal: Wess is a monster of the night. When I say he's nocturnal, I don't just mean he comes out at night; he's quite literally passed out during the day. Anything short of stabbing him in the stomach wouldn't wake him. Before the light of day comes, Wess finds places to sleep, usually in his intricate cave of tunnels, where he stores anything he wishes to keep (including food).

The day is his weakest time, so if anyone wanted to hunt him without much trouble, it would be then. Even managing to wake him wouldn't be nearly as dangerous. He has horrible vision in the light (which is why he tries to stay in his caverns) and like anyone else, Wess is terrible groggy when he first wakes. He almost acts drunk (very sluggish) when woken during the day.

Wess is not present at all; he'll be on full instinct mode if something (or someone) manages to wake him. Somehow.

Constant Hunger: Wess is always hungry. Not just for the munchies, he is always starving to the point of pain. Sitting still isn't an option for him. His nights are consumed with his hunting, his need for food.

Despite this state of starvation, like most Wendigo's (or predators in general) Wess likes to hide meat and bodies in his caverns when he can. He has the tendency to keep his prey alive for days, eating small pieces of them at a time, trying to make his food last.

His hunger is not the worst of his weaknesses, but it does strain his already weak control. His hunger rules many of his decisions, and that often leads to trouble or lost gaps in time when his instincts take over, and he can't remember what he's done.