Stories Lost -Percival Bennett

Name: Percival Bennett

Age: Late 20's

Species: Anthro Field Mouse

Occupation: Ghost, formerly storywright

Physical Appearance: Percival, also known as Percy, is an anthropomorphic field mouse with a lanky build. His body is covered in short reddish-brown fur with a white underside. His face is pointed and sharp, somewhat gaunt due to sickness in his final days, and his dark brown eyes are perpetually sunken and tired. His hair is a bundle of wavy and messy chestnut locks that refuse to be styled properly, again reflecting how he appeared in the days leading up to his passing. He wears a Victorian-era suit, his finest, which he was buried in. Due to his ghostly nature, while at first glance he appears to be a normal, corporeal being, the edges of his form are somewhat blurry and translucent, almost as if he's slowly fading into the air.

Personality: Percy is a gloomy ghost residing at the Twisted Willow Cemetery near a small village in Germany. He's been around since the mid-1800s and doesn't remember many specifics of his life or the people in it. He carries an aura of bitterness about his fate, believing he had his life snuffed before realizing his potential, fully confident he would have "made it big" if he'd just survived his sickness. While not outright hostile or rude to others, Percival is jaded, torn between his innate desire to share stories and his need to wallow in his misery and unfair circumstances. This results in a somewhat temperamental and unpredictable specter; you can never be certain which mood Percy is going to be in, be it melancholic, petulant, or lonely and seeking connection. Despite his capriciousness, Percival has a soft spot for children, having never forgotten that his journey hundreds of years ago started because he wanted to entertain and amaze young minds with his stories. He seems to be better at controlling his emotions when children are around, the gentle storytelling entertainer in him resurfacing from deep inside his soul.

Percival Bennett was an English writer in the 1800s, dedicating his early life to writing children's stories and poems. While productive, none of Percy's stories seemed to stick with the audience (due to a sheltered and somewhat privileged upbringing, he failed to realize how many of his countrymen were illiterate). Instead of realizing this, he determined that the cause of his lack of popularity was his lack of genuine inspiration, and that embarking on a journey to "go out and see the world" would bring him the inspiration and success he desired.

Percy said his goodbyes to this family and ventured out into the world to gather stories and experiences for his work, but his journey was cut tragically short when his travels took him to the Black Forest, where he failed to realize his "bad humors" he'd been feeling recently was actually a part of the deadly cholera pandemic sweeping across the world at the time. He perished soon after arriving in a small village near the Twisted Willow Cemetery and was buried in an unmarked grave in a foreign country without anyone knowing his fate. Now, he roams the cemetery, frozen in time, never having found the closure of finishing his story and sharing it with the world. His last story remains an unfinished manuscript, last seen in his home back in London. Even when he's not appearing to visitors, the winds themselves carry his poems along, morose and glum stanzas reverberating between the gravestones.

Ghostly properties: Percy, despite appearing dispassionate and apathetic at first glance, is one of the more "powerful" apparitions of Twisted Willow, meant in the sense that he usually manifests himself fully, even corporeal at most times. In addition to his ability to become corporeal, Percy can do normal ghost stuff, such as floating, passing through objects, and affecting electronic devices, making them malfunction if he wants to. His manifestation is normally very stable, and at first glance, he'd be indistinguishable from a living person, but his manifestation is affected by his state of mind. For example, if he's feeling overwhelmed or scared, he'd become more ghostly and wispy, or when angered, his eyes would become darker and more hollowed, looking more monstrous and twisted. It's unclear whether Percy's manifestation and emotions are affected by the weather or if his mental state somehow influences the weather, but there seems to be a connection between the two in some capacity. Since he was buried in Twisted Willow, Percy's unable to leave the cemetery grounds, his soul bound to the burial grounds.

Mannerisms/Tone: Despite having died almost 300 years ago, Percy's vocabulary and mannerisms are surprisingly modern. Due to his natural interest in language and literature, he's kept up with both English and German vocabulary and expressions' evolutions over the ages by chatting with more recently deceased ghosts at the cemetery. This results in Percival speaking mostly "normally", with a select few sayings or words that would come across as dated and old-fashioned. Being a proud Englishman, however, he's hung on to his London accent tightly, never forgetting where he came from, even if he no longer recalls his friends and family from back then.

Quirks: Despite his general apathetic disposition, Percy is notably curious about the goings on in the modern world and will express interest in any major events or developments due to being effectively cut off from the rest of society, stuck in Twisted Willow. An eternal brooder at heart, Percy often manifests during heavy rain to sit on his gravestone and feel the rain wash over him. While he's forgotten his family's faces and voices, he clings to their names -Father Amos, Mother Danica, and Sister Emilia- and comes up with small poems about them to whisper into the rain.