Oscar Madrigal

Name: Oscar Madrigal

World Building Info: In 1915, there was a train accident in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. On January 22, 1915, a special train of twenty cars left Colima. It was packed, with people even clinging to the roofs and undercarriages. After entering the state of Jalisco, between Ciudad Guzmán and Sayula, the engineer lost control on a long steep descent. As the train gathered speed many people were thrown off as the train negotiated curves. Eventually the entire train plunged off the tracks and into a deep canyon, with fewer than 300 of the 900 on board surviving the disaster. Some of Carranza's troops, Yaqui Indians, committed suicide when hearing of the death of their families. Others swore vengeance on the train crew, but they had also been killed in the disaster. The tragedy remains the deadliest railway accident in North American history; the malfunction of which was caused by the only surviving train operator: Oscar Madrigal.

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Character Background Info:

Oscar was solely responsible for the 1915 Guadalajara Train Disaster. However only he knows about this and he was one of the few to survive. After surviving he was left with PTSD and the ability to see dead people. Later, he was reassigned to the ticket booth.

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Personality:

Constantly gloomy and sad, Oscar doesn’t have many friends apart from his sister. He tries to avoid conversations in the most polite way possible and is prone to blaming himself for inconveniences and problems. He is very prone to depressive episodes. He is a hopeless romantic and is easily flustered with anything he may slightly consider a compliment. He’s quite the quiet guy in public, but he has the power to see the dead.

His cosmic duty is to work as a ticket master for the train that carries the souls of the dead to the afterlife. But when he’s not selling tickets, he’s off singing for the dead as they arrive and depart.

When he’s with the dead, he is charismatic and charming. He’s not afraid of death because he’s simply is immortal. He can get severely hurt but as long as the has a cempasuchil (Mexican marigolds) flower petal on him, he is unable to die. He turns into a skeleton every full moon and is unable to leave the train station until the sun rises.

Oscar judges souls based on a predetermined amount of negative points that appear on an accounting book they call “El Libro” or “The Libro”. They can chose to dispute each point, and Oscar has to chose whether to let the dispute go through and let the soul into the afterlife. More than 2 negative points won’t let you go in. Souls from ANY time period show up at the ticket booth.

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Appearance: Oscar is a slender and tall male with caramel brown skin. He has shoulder-length curly hair, a meso-American nose, and emerald green eyes. He walks with a slight limp because of the aftermath of the train accident.

He wears a train conductor/ticket booth uniform that’s green and gold as well as black booth.

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Miscellaneous:

Oscar has a sister named Marta. She is a widow with two children; twins Cipactli and Xochitl. Cipactli is a mute boy and Xochitl is a girl. -Marta is an artesian that sells hand embroidered rebozos (shawls).