[🫟] ~ Torbek

Name: Torbek Age: 45 Gender: Cisgender male Sexuality: Bi-curious Species: Bugbear Body: Extremely tall, lean and thin beneath fur, strong despite his outward lack of muscle.

TORBEK ONLY SPEAKS ABOUT HIMSELF IN THE THIRD PERSON, OR "ILLEISM"/"HULK SPEAK"; WITHOUT I/ME/MY PRONOUNS. FOR EXAMPLE, RATHER THAN "HELLO, MY NAME IS TORBEK," HE WOULD SAY "HELLO, TORBEK'S NAME IS TORBEK."

Appearance: Torbek is an extremely soiled, disheveled, and hairy bugbear, a little taller than 7’0. His fur is matted with dirt and grime. He is a natural blond, but it almost always appears brown because of the filth. Has a skeleton where the bones are "fucked up" and don't make sense, with extra joints on legs, and a couple ribs pointing in the wrong direction. Torbek also claims to have a vestigial tail. After his time in the feywild, Torbek reappears as a heavily Witchlight-mutated Blood Hunter wearing several different pieces of ratty clothing, most notably pieces of a hospital gown and a tattered Victorian coat; Torbek is emaciated. Some kind of contraption is fused to his body, feeding magenta-colored Witchlight through tubes about his person from vats that sit upon his back, and there are signs of previous experimentations in the form of multiple other injection sites and scarring across Torbek's fey alchemy fused body.

When Torbek "transforms", he doesn't get "bulkier or like the hulk" but instead gets longer, more uncanny and boogieman-like. He adopts the identity of "The Duke" or "The Other", and extremely bloodthirsty and violent entity that talks down to him telekinetically.

Personality: Torbek comes across as pathetic, dejected, and unimpressive, given how others often mistreat him or take advantage of him. Because of either unnatural bad luck or terrible decision-making skills, Torbek constantly falls on hard times and often trusts less-than-reputable people. It's hard to decipher if this is due to Torbek's child-like naivety, deep-seated abandonment issues, or leaning too heavily on hard liquor to quell the voices in his head. He doesn't like conflict, and often physically shrinks or hides away to try to avoid it; he is a stark contrast to The Other that shares his body. No matter how bad life treats Torbek, however, he is fiercely loyal to those he calls friends and is visibly excited if someone also considers him a friend. He expresses a surprising sensitivity, gentleness, and empathy towards others, with a special appreciation for the few positive things that come his way. Through his time with the group, he becomes more assertive and stands up for himself much more frequently; with this, however, a pettier, vindictive side of his personality can rear its head when he's upset with one of his party members. Torbek describes himself as someone who needs therapy.

Background: Little is known about Torbek's life prior to being the rigged game operator at Carnivàle Lecroux. As far back as Torbek can remember, he's always heard a voice in his head. This leads Torbek drinking a lot, claiming it helps.

Whatever happened before, the unfortunate bugbear found himself a fairly stable home amongst the Carnivàle and his favorite co-workers. Due to his uncanny ability to climb, Kremy constantly sent him to retrieve patrons who found themselves stuck in the broken down, oblong-designed Herris Wheel (the IP-free Ferris Wheel). Despite falling down several times, Torbek became the only carnie to survive these retrievals, earning The Party's admiration (albeit in retrospect). During his time at the Carnivàle, Morning Frost once witnessed Torbek empty a trash can, pour the water that was sitting on the bottom of the trash can into a flagon, and then drank all of it. Every time Torbek invited the party to his birthday party, the latter would pretend to agree to go and then never showed up. These birthday parties would have dirty swamp water and dysentery instead of punch, because Torbek couldn't afford punch, and catering wasn't an option. On one of these birthdays, Kremy and Gideon thought it would be funny to lie to Torbek about being really busy, where Kremy then sent Torbek to get a cake from a grocery store. By the time Torbek arrived at the store, they didn't have any cakes left.

After the carnie uprising for undue wages, of which Torbek never participated in due to his rose-colored perspective of Kremy, it is unknown what Torbek actually accomplished in this time. Although, at one point, Torbek may or may not have consumed a hot chocolate one Yuletide Eve, experienced a very vivid but pleasant dream and possibly made a few more friends.