Masque ref. sheet

Milieu: Has traveled around the world and lived in many big cities, including Paris, London, Kyoto and New York.
Languages: Numerous. Mostly speaks English and French, but also knows dozens of European and Asian languages, including Russian, Spanish, Italian, Finnish, German, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Uses Received Pronunciation. The voice is usually quite soft, almost gentle. Has a wide vocal range.

Appearance:
Overall:
Elegant, lean and slender. Good posture and effortless, catlike movements. Great suppleness and fast running speed enabled by flexible backbone. Chest is deep, back is arched and waist is narrow. Long, thin legs and small paws. The tail is equal to body in length, and ears are equal to skull in length. Ears are usually pulled back.
Fur:
Short, smooth and sleek. Tail is feathered and silky.
Markings:
Black markings on clean white base. Orange nose, mouth and paw pads. Heterochromic eyes, one icy blue and one yellowish orange.
Clothing:
Everything classy from 19th and early 20th century. Long cloaks, top hats, laces, vests, evening suits and so on. Style varies throughout time, but his clothing preference is always a bit outdated (for example, likes to wear clothes that were in fashion about 5-10 years ago). Masque is an occasional smoker, he uses long cigarette holders.

Personality:
Suave / elegant / arrogant / narcissistic / sadistic / excellent liar / unpredictable / violent / psychopathic.
Masque is a man of thousand identities. He shuffles between aliases, sneaks into circles, merges into crowds, playing all their games, winning everyone’s confidence and adoration before betraying them. Most of his acquaintances only get to know one side of him, and very few have seen all the aspects of his complicated personality.
Masque likes to identify himself as a noble, cultured, well-mannered and highly intelligent gentleman. He’s silver-tongued and fast thinker, and absolutely loves to outsmart people. However, he’s a bit pedantic and easily offended.
Because of the pleasing first impression he gives, many seem to be willing to put their trust on him. His natural elegance and charisma often ensures the ladies’ attention as well.
Sadly, most of his praised sophistication is superficial. The psychopathic tendencies include pathological lying, narcissism and lack of genuine empathy and remorse. He’s manipulative and cunning. Bending others to his will possesses no difficulty.

Sanity:
Masque’s personality is overshadowed by several mental disorders. Majority of them have occurred post mortem, and lack of treatment has allowed them to pile up over the decades.
He’s narcissistic and full of unhealthy self-adoration. He considers himself superior to others, but constantly needs their support and admiration. He can't stand being ignored.
Masque is highly unstable. The mood swings he gets are swift and unpredictable; one moment he’s gentle and civilized, and next he’s cold and sadistic.
His psychopathic features include complete lack of remorse or pity. He lies a lot and hardly ever gets caught. He enjoys anarchy and being against society, it gives him a certain feel of predominance and supremacy. He’s violent and murderous, and his twisted immortality allows him to be as suicidal as he wants without causing permanent physical damage.
Every once a while a total breakdown occurs; he may turn into hysteric, giggling and dangerously erratic beast or pathetic, panicky, paranoid and tearful wreck. Between the emotions he may collapse into catatonia, which shows as stagnated movements, hollow stare in eyes and general apathy.
Regardless the mental mayhem roaring in his mind, Masque is generally surprisingly good at holding it all inside. Like said, he’s supreme at hiding his dark side and bringing out his intellectual, pleasant features, which is the base of his charm.

Immortality:
Overall Masque is in rather good physical condition, if not taking consideration that he’s pretty much dead, at least in theory. He was killed by poisoning in the age of 4 (29 in anthro) with a new kind of venom. But he came back, and has been roaming around as a very lifelike undead for over two centuries.
His body functions relatively normally, and from outside one wouldn't even guess his exceptionality. Eating and sleeping aren't vital for him, but he prefers to do both. After all, keeping going on would be quite flavorless without those small joys of life.
There’s one thing that keeps bothering him though. Due the effect of toxins ingested, his blood is corrupted. It’s pitch black, inky, sticky and a bit thicker than normal blood. Apparently the same liquid influenced the internal organs (which are also black), causing them to constantly break down and bleed massively (especially in brain, lungs and stomach). Again, this doesn't kill him, but it sure is quite annoying and painful.
Masque’s abnormal state repels other living organisms. He never gets sick. Bacteria, viruses and such just can’t deal with the corrupted presence of his. For the same reasons, he’s unable to reproduce. Decomposers wouldn’t touch his remains.
Being unable to die, Masque has an ability to heal nearly any physical injuries, even those lethal for normal living things. If enough time given, he can heal wounds, grow back limbs or recreate his whole viscera. But he’s not immune for pain. Intense pain may cause shock or make him to pass out until the resurgence process is complete enough for him to continue. In general, he stays in the condition where he originally died. Years don’t change his appearance in any way.

Interactions with other characters:
Masque’s deceptive nature has lead to a quite impressive number of enemies. Many underground organizations and past allies are trying to hunt him down to get his head. Masque usually responses intimidation by fleeing the threat and popping up again in a different country.
Due to his physically and mentally abusive behavior towards his loved ones, he’s unable to form long-term relationships and ends up having dozens of short affairs and one-night stands.
This far he has had two genuine relationships.
The first true love interest was Katsumiyo, or “Sumi”, an elite oiran whom he met at his travel in Japan in late 19th century. The relationship which started like so many previous ones developed into deep understanding and passionate romance between those two. Clever and sharp lipped Sumi provided the perfect counterpart to Masque’s brilliant intellect. For the first time he felt equal to someone. Their secret affair lasted for over a decade, but eventually Masque was forced to leave the country. He still misses her.
The other big relationship began when Radon, a canine-reptile hybrid synthetically build for obscure purposes, joined him in the 1890. Radon, like Masque, is pretty much impossible to kill due his adjusted genetics, and because of this, Masque feels sympathy for him. They’re both unnatural misfits with little respect for society, so they decided to join their forces. Since that they've been partners in crime, Masque with his wits and Radon with his strength. Together they form an unstoppable pair, often feared and respected among the criminal circles. But there’s more than that. One could say Radon is Masque’s rock. When he gets all emotional and spins out of control, there’s always at least one person to keep him at his senses. Because of Radon’s absence of feeling any pain, Masque has a habit to terminate all his frustration and anger to him. Radon takes it all, because he has learnt to read his unstable actions and knows that it’s the best thing to do. Radon also keeps Masque company and prevents the psychosis at bay, for they tend to lurk in when he’s alone. Overall they seem to have sort of a love-hate relationship, neither willing to admit that they need each other.

Hobbies:
Masque’s interests include classical music and bowel string instruments. He’s specialized at viola.
Learning new languages has always been his thing also. He likes to travel and is a fast learner.
For third, strategy games. He occasionally plays chess with Radon.

Weapons of choice:
Prefers small handguns, such as pistols and revolvers.

artwork, character ©CanisAlbus