Yo! So Thedrial’s been under the knife a fair bit this year. Visually speaking, wanted to

Yo! So Thedrial’s been under the knife a fair bit this year. Visually speaking, wanted to make him more obviously a monster and bring in themes of immoderation and demonssss to suit his updated story. If you haven’t met Eric, he’s a 395 year-old aristocrat who basically got targeted during a class war and cursed with demonic possession. The idea was he’d publicly rip apart his own family and friends and it would inspire commoners to rise against their beastly, filigreed oppressors. The revolution fell flat, but the scheme did succeed in deeply changing the tune of at least one nobleman. Lord Frederick Thedrial lost his future, his family, his humanity, and his free will all in one go. The thing he used to turn into was much, much scarier than this fluffy idiot, a giant drooling hydra controlled entirely by the demon in his head. He got chased through the countryside by mobs and murdered several times, occasionally by people he used to know. Nobody knew the monster was him. They thought he was dead. Well, everyone but the revolutionary ringleaders, and two witches.Aiden and Jessabelle were the great-great-great granddaughters of a powerful regional witch. The same witch the proletariat had commissioned to curse the hell out of Eric. (Into, as the case may be.) They helped her prep the spell, and Aiden was the one who personally snuck it into his wine. The plan was, on the witches’ side, to let these peasants pay them to curse this spoiled young lord, watch as he rampages across the countryside, and then get paid again by the peasants to uncurse him when they realize the demon doesn’t stay dead when you kill it. Hell, maybe even get a handsome sum from the lord himself in gratitude for freeing him from his terrible curse. But it all went awry. Firstly, the denizens of Nimisia turned out to be more stubborn, or cheap, than expected, and after quite a few weeks of clashing with the monster still hadn’t approached the witches for a countercurse. Wouldn’t have mattered. ‘Gran,’ chose that month to finally end her very long life, leaving her brewing house and inn in the hands of Jess and Aiden. Their struggle to assume command of the business was complicated by a total lack of clientele, as the local rampaging monster had put a damper on travel. The beast had purportedly taken up lurking in the very forest the inn bordered, so the sisters set out to catch the mad lord and end his suffering, one way or another. Eric turned out to be easy to bait and catch. They zapped him into human form and dragged him to the inn. A very upsetting week was had by all when the sisters realized either Gran hadn’t written down the countercurse or they had lost it. Eric, who had just started getting used to not being a giant hungry monster all the time and was feeling the first glimmers of hope, was crushed. They let him live in their barn for a while and kept his demon fed in exchange for him helping out around the inn. It became apparent that reversing his curse was going to take some serious doing and Eric began to settle into his new life. The further he got from his old ways the more control he had over his monster self and how often he became it. Using his cursed form he built himself a clumsy cabin in the forest nearby and started growing his own food.  As his aristocratic snobbery and dandy daintiness and raw resentment of his cursing melted away through days of labor, Eric revealed himself to be a very friendly, funny, talented young man whom Aiden completely loathed and Jess actually fell in love with. Did they ever uncurse him? Well, it’s 2021 and he’s still around so… —–‘Gluttony’ the ‘demon’ is actually just Eric’s animal-brain weakness for over-indulging sliced apart from him and granted its own consciousness and form. It IS properly a demon in a sense. Because what is a demon but a scapegoat invented to excuse ourselves from a part of our natures. THEY tempt and THEY mislead, THEY bubbled up from HELL, certainly not from our own brains. This is why Tony is cryptic when asked about demons, hell, and the universe. It doesn’t know anything that Eric doesn’t know. And funnily enough, it never refers to itself as a demon, that’s all on other people. Eric doesn’t remember why he started calling it Gluttony except that’s clearly what it is. Tony takes readily to things impressed on it, just accepted its name and that it ‘is a demon’ and never refutes or disputes anything. It is a one-dimensional slice of Eric’s nature. It only cares about consuming. It takes a long time for Eric to realize and accept that what he thought was a predatory parasitic monster come to torture him is just his own bad habit given a voice. In a lot of ways the former would have been easier to swallow. It’s harder to feel like the victim when it’s just you versus you, and you are kinda an ugly thing, and kicking your own ass. Any classically-demonic traits the pair exhibit in monster form are rooted in the cultural understanding of what a demon was in the 1650s when Eric was cursed. Their monster form reflects what’s going on inside Eric, which at the beginning was an overwhelming and wholly unchecked drive to consume and total rejection that he was guilty of anything, hence the giant hungry hydra with heads he had no control over. As he accepted he had- or should have had- control all along, the rampant extra jaws came under his command. As he began to suspect the truth that Tony IS him and not some foreign being, go figure the heads started to go away until it was just two, and then one. Probably this beautiful moment of enlightenment and wholeness of self was the moment he was to be miraculously relieved of his curse… but the person who knew the countercurse had died. Oopsie. Fast forward to the modern day, and annoyingly, while Eric has loooong since moved on, Tony has not. So while most of their present monster shape reflects Eric’s warm and fuzzy spirit, they still appear with horns and cloven hooves. More annoyingly, the WORLD has not moved on, the belief in hell and its inhabitants continues, and Eric’s monster form would raise a lot of eyebrows in public. One of many reasons he keeps its existence private. —–You can’t really get mad at Tony, it’s just a dumb animal doing what dumb animals do. Eric quickly came to see it as a small child or an aloof cat more than a demonic entity. It is simple and shallow, and, while it has borrowed an eloquent tongue from its host, it is only apeing whatever wit it demonstrates. Modern-day Eric treats his infernal passenger very much like a dependent partner, understands it as a part of his life, albeit an annoying and sometimes very unfortunate part. He tries to enjoy his transformations and even celebrate them a bit because there’s no point being down about this quite literally permanent part of his existence.For its part, Tony has never hated Eric, although the opposite has often been true. It doesn’t seem to hold grudges or take anything personal, so the only ‘fights’ they’ve ever had have been contests of will over control. Tony will say it likes Thedrial well enough but will always be confused why he fights his nature, why any human fights their nature. To eat is to live. To live, is to eat. There is literally no higher purpose than to consume and no greater punishment than that which awaits those who fail in this. Anything sundry tacked onto a life is frippery and frills. Don’t ask it about moderation, it will launch into grandiose arcs about how you would not ask a flame to be moderate, you would not ask this of joy or of love or gratitude or any other lesser impulse, and EATING being as it is of the upmost importance in thy own survival- you astoundingly confused mortal creatures- should CERTAINLY never be burdened with the insufferable and insulting bonds of bitter and pale temperance and for that matte– And this is where Eric cuts it off and swallows a pie for it to go focus on. Friends are often disappointed they can’t have a basic conversation let alone a relationship with Tony. Eric just reminds people Tony is more like an animal companion than anything. Like a pet tiger. To be respected for its power and never to be fully trusted, but will mostly be friendly and lazy if you keep it fed.Eric vaguely dislikes being talked to in the plural, finds it demeaning. Tony is very rarely listening anyway. He allows this from girlfriend Penny who means it well. It makes him blush. He’s conflicted on her reaching out to Tony and attempting to have a relationship with and love this other part of him. She often brings Tony snacks. Who is easily bought with food and loves her very much. They’ve never EVER had anyone respond this way to them before. —–Modern-day Eric is extremely kind-hearted and generous. But, while usually the master of the pair, is still subject to occasional forced shapeshifts.Tony is a constant presence in his head, continually mumbling and muttering about their next meal, becoming especially obnoxious at restaurants and grocery stores. If Eric is tired, stressed, sick, or such things, Tony is always standing by to overpower him and instigate a snack attack. They play a balancing game, where Eric intentionally surrenders to Tony- in the safety of their home, with their stockpiles of food- once or twice a month. If he doesn’t, the pent-up demon eventually becomes a maddening pressure in his skull and will explode out of his face the next time they see a cupcake. Not fun. Their demonic form, once a disgusting, nightmarish force of nature, now reflects Eric’s kindly heart and inner peace far more than it does his hellish parasite. They are waaaaay cuter and fluffier than any self-respecting demon should have to tolerate, but those tables turned on Tony a long time ago. You still get a taste of the horror when they first transform, though, Eric’s skin splitting open as his body grows long and lanky, a boney muzzle pushing out of his face, glowing orange eyes sinking deep in their sockets, becoming for a moment the famished, skeletal form of the demon starved. Give them half an hour and about six hundred pounds of food, though, and they fluff up into the big orange idiot we know and love.Eric is essentially tipsy while transformed: clumsy, impulsive, giggly. Not out of control by any means, just a bit fuzzy and impaired by Tony’s parasitic claws in his brain. He has to concentrate extra to focus on anything. Between this brain fog and his giant clawed paws these episodes disrupt his work and that’s as annoying to him as anything.Eric can’t directly control when he turns back human. It can be hours, it can be days. While transformed, Tony has some advantage on him, its usual mumblings becoming vastly more seductive. Tony’s influence isn’t strong enough to cause him to hurt anyone, but definitely strong enough it’s hard to stop snacking constantly. He can, if he’s fed Tony recently, start to transform and then pull himself back as a spooky parlor trick or scare tactic– if he’s feeling confident he’ll be able to stop himself. —–K, you made it all the way down here, let’s do the fun stuff! Notes on the above-pictured monster, affectionately dubbed 'Fluffers’ by his friends. - Even in his most approachable form, Fluffers quietly sports an unhingable jaw and prehensile tongue. His tongue is hollow, somewhere between a trunk and a leech, and he can drink through it like a straw. - Despite having four ears, his hearing is nothing special. - All his brain power goes to his ludicrously powerful nose. Eric can practically see with his snout, navigating a room and knowing exactly where everyone is and who they are and probably a great number of other things about them they would be uncomfortable about. He can also literally smell certain emotions like fear and relief, and can detect disease and malignancy. These things are occasionally useful and one of the few reasons to ever take this form voluntarily. The redundant nostrils halfway up his muzzle are similar to a vulture’s, super-sensitive and constantly reading the air around him. - Eric’s normally pale blue eyes flicker orange whenever he’s tempted by or drooling over something. They become pupil-less, glowing orange orbs when Tony is in control. Certain friends enjoy teasing him to try to get his eyes to turn. - Goes without saying his sense of taste is out of this world. Even mildly decent food blows his mind. Sometimes he breaks down sobbing. Very gratifying to cook for, he will LOVE THE SHIT out of anything you serve him and lick the plate and often eat the plate (sorry). Fluffers is kind of intense around food. He can be a lot.- They can digest anything in monster form- sticks, stones, steel, rotten and poisonous food. The rule is if Eric can choke it down his throat, the black hole that is Tony will make short work of it. That said, Tony runs this show, and Tony likes nice things. It isn’t satisfied by eating clutter and will aggressively hold Eric hostage in monster form until he shapes up and gets them real food. - When a transformation goes well, Eric actually honestly enjoys a few things about his other body. It’s relaxing to not be low-key mentally fighting off Tony all the time, this form is extremely comfy and he loves being a soft fluffy thing especially for naps, and he REALLY enjoys the bonus arms, misses them a lot as a human. - Fluffers starts out only a bit taller than Eric, not even 6’. Usually around the time Tony is satisfied enough that Eric can slow them down, he winds up around 9’. But their appetite in monster form is bottomless and this form is capable of growing INDEFINITELY. - Literally if Eric teamed up with his demon instead of suppressing it, they could blow well past their dinosaurian hydra form of old into an all-consuming plague on the world, threatening the existence of the planet itself. But this wouldn’t happen, because they would definitely get murdered early on and more importantly Eric would never allow it. - One of the side effects of housing a demon in your body seems to be permanently constricted pupils- miosis- which is more commonly associated with drug abuse or brain damage… HMMM. Eric doesn’t like to discuss it. His colorful glasses were chosen to distract people from his slightly arresting eyes. If you push it, he will tell you he’s just addicted to opioids.- It’s hard to make the call, but Eric’s favorite foods may possibly be beignets, chouquettes with chantilly cream, and cheetos. Not usually at the same time. - Tony’s favorite food is everything. -- source link

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