expiation app
Dec. 24th, 2024 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eternalcutiePlayer: mono
Contact: citizenmono @ discord
Age: 34
Current Characters: kakashi hatake
Character Name: Czeslaw Meyer
Character Canon: Baccano!
Canon Point: part way through Children of the Bottle
Age: literally 300 years old, physically appears to be around ten years old
Crime: cannibalism
Background:
Czeslaw lives in a world analogous to ours, with one major difference: alchemy is real, and is achievable by the most dedicated alchemists. Baccano! is a sort of convoluted canon, but I'm going to give it to you in chronological order as best as I can.
The story begins in the year 1711. A group of about 30 alchemists set sail from Europe seeking the New World (that is, what would eventually be known as the United States of America); among them was an alchemist named Fermet and his young charge, Czeslaw. When they had made it about halfway across the ocean, an alchemist named Maiza Avaro successfully managed to summon a "demon" (who turned out later to simply be an ancient alchemist who had gotten a little too enthusiastic about his trade) who bestowed upon him the knowledge of how to create an elixir of immortality. Everyone on the ship drank the elixir, including Czeslaw, and the demon taught them the rules of immortality, warning them that the only way they could die was to be consumed by another immortal. So naturally, one of the newly-created immortal named Szilard Quates immediately tried to consume Maiza in order to gain his knowledge of how to create the elixir. When he couldn't catch Maiza alone he consumed Maiza's younger brother instead, hoping that Maiza had shared the secret with his closest friend. He hadn't, and Szilard went on a killing spree on the ship in frustration. The other immortals eventually managed to restrain him and throw him overboard, thus ridding them of him--for the time being. Once they arrived at their destination the remaining immortals scattered to the wind, each fearing discovery by Szilard. Fermet had raised Czeslaw ever since his parents died when he was barely five years old, and by all appearances loved him as a son. So it was that none of the other immortals, most of whom had grown quite fond of Czeslaw over the course of the voyage, thought to protest when Fermet took Czeslaw and disappeared.
From 1711 to the early 1900s, Fermet proved this to have been a pretty big mistake by restraining Czeslaw and using him as a test subject on the limits of immortality. Day after day he subjected Czeslaw to various tortuous experiments, from pushing hot pokers into his eyes to dipping him in acid to throwing him into a fireplace. Fermet often assured the suffering Czeslaw that he didn't enjoy hurting him, but that it was necessary in the name of science. Unfortunately, when Czeslaw finally managed to break free from his restraints and consume Fermet, he looked through the man's memories and discovered that Fermet had never loved him at all and in fact enjoyed Czeslaw's pain more than he had ever enjoyed caring for Czeslaw himself. In Czeslaw's words: "The only affection he had was for my pain".
Once Czeslaw freed himself from Fermet's grasp, he started attempting to make contact with the other immortals from the ship, intending to consume them. His centuries with Fermet had made him paranoid and barely capable of trust. The first immortal he made contact with was a man called Begg--he had served as a secondary guardian for Czeslaw before they set sail for America, and Czeslaw thought that he at least held a little more affection for him than Fermet had. Through correspondence with Begg he decided to tentatively trust him, and began transporting goods for the mafia family that Begg worked for in New York. That was how Czeslaw's life intersected with the rest of canon.
In late 1931, Czeslaw agreed to transport a shipment of explosives from Chicago to New York for Begg, knowing that the trip would also give him the opportunity to meet up with Maiza Avaro, who agreed to meet him at the train station. To do this, he boarded the famous train the Flying Pussyfoot. Unbeknownst to him, the train would also be populated by:
-Claire Stanfield, a.k.a. Vino, a.k.a. the Rail Tracer, a.k.a. a generally terrifying assassin;
-Ladd Russo, a mafioso assassin who boarded the train to kill some people for the fun of it;
-the Lemures, a group of terrorists devoted to one of the original immortals, Huey Laforet;
-Jacuzzi Splot, a small time gangleader who intended to steal the explosives Czeslaw was transporting;
-Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent, a couple of thieves who were traveling to meet with their New York friends, Ennis and Firo.
While on the train, Czeslaw fell in with a famous senator's wife who happened to be a passenger on the train along with her daughter, who was physically similar in age to Czeslaw. Since Czeslaw was pretending to be a child, he willingly let the woman take him under her wing. While he was enjoying a meal with them in the dining car, he found himself forced to admit his real name while introducing himself to a group of people and realized that there must be another immortal in the room, because of the rules of immortality that forbade him from lying about his identity to another immortal. Unnerved, Czeslaw seemed grateful for the interruption that came in the form of some of Ladd Russo's gang doing an armed takeover of the dining car. Czeslaw took Mary, the senator's daughter, and helped her sneak out of the dining car. He then deposited Mary in a closet, instructing her to stay quiet, and left to find someone who would be more useful.
He ran into Ladd Russo himself as the man had just killed someone in a storage car, and Czeslaw put on an innocent adoring act to try to con Ladd into killing everyone in the dining car so he would know who the unknown immortal was. Ladd was understandably confused by this supposed kid acting so ruthlessly, but in the end instead of being impressed he was just pissed off that Czeslaw acted like he wasn't afraid of dying, so he shot Czeslaw in the head and left. Czeslaw regenerated soon after, grumbled about how much of a useless thug Ladd was, and left to think of another plan.
Unfortunately for Czeslaw, Claire Stanfield had watched the whole scene from behind a crate, and since his "thing" was killing people who did bad things, he decided that A. Czeslaw wasn't actually a child, and B. trying to murder everyone in a passenger car definitely constituted "badness". So he caught up to Czeslaw while the immortal was considering his next move in an empty passenger car, and quickly put an end to Czeslaw's innocent act by revealing that he knew Czeslaw wasn't really a kid and strangling him to death.
Czeslaw regenerated and tried to play it tough, claiming that there was nothing Claire could do to him that Fermet hadn't already done. Claire cheerfully went about proving him wrong by biting several of Czeslaw's fingers off, then using the rapidly-speeding-by train tracks to grind one of Czeslaw's arms to the shoulder and leaving him tied to the bottom of the train in such a manner that when his arm grew back again it would be torn off again.
Meanwhile, Isaac and Miria (whom Czeslaw had met in the dining car) went looking for Czeslaw to make sure he was all right. They somehow managed to spot him hanging from the bottom of the train and Isaac quickly fetched a rope and climbed down to the undercarriage to try and save him. He was delighted to find that Czeslaw was alive, but as he reached for Czeslaw to pull him free Czeslaw noticed that a scratch on Isaac's wrist was undoing itself--he was the immortal in the dining car. Czeslaw panicked and tried to push Isaac away, thinking he was about to be devoured, causing himself, Isaac, and Miria to all lose their grips on the train and go flying into the air. Isaac managed to catch Czeslaw in an embrace, Miria somehow managed to wrap her arms around both of them, and Isaac threw one end of the rope toward the train in a desperate attempt to catch it on something. He missed the train but a passenger named Rachel, who had escaped the massacre going on inside the train by climbing out of a window, managed to catch the rope with one hand.
It soon slipped out of her grip, but was caught again by Claire, who handed it off to a hulking gang member of Jacuzzi's named Donnie and told him to pull as hard as he could because "aside from the kid, there's a couple of real good people hangin' on to the other end of that rope". Donnie looked out of the car he was standing in, saw Isaac and Miria (who he recognized from the dining car) and frantically reeled them in. Once safely inside the train, Isaac and Miria gushingly enthused to Czeslaw about how glad they were that he was safe, and how he must be the best boy in the whole world because of how his wounded arm healed--to them, that proved that the "Rail Tracer" couldn't digest Czeslaw's arm, because he only "ate" bad people. Czeslaw tried to protest that they were wrong about him, thinking of all the morally questionable things he had done, but Isaac and Miria wouldn't have any of it and assured Czeslaw that from then on they would be like an aunt and uncle to him, and offered to introduce him to a friend of theirs who had asked them for a younger sibling.
Once the train arrived, several things happened. Most importantly to this application, Czeslaw got off the train with Isaac and Miria after discovering that the explosives he had been transporting had disappeared, stolen by Jacuzzi and his gang. It turned out that Isaac and Miria were also very good friends with Maiza, who was present to meet Czeslaw, and that Maiza was actually Firo's mentor. Czeslaw had intended to devour Maiza before the other man had a chance to touch him, but seeing the man who had been so kind to him on the voyage from Europe made Czeslaw hesitate and before he could devour Maiza or run away Maiza was already patting his head and drawing him into an embrace. Once Czeslaw was done having a little cry over being not eaten, he was introduced to Ennis, who was sort of Firo's girlfriend and had somehow given Isaac and Miria the impression that she wanted a younger sibling. Isaac and Miria enthusiastically explained that they had brought Czeslaw to her because he didn't have a family but needed one, and Czeslaw ended up living with Ennis as her younger brother because, as it turned out, practically the entirety of the mafia group that Maiza worked for had been accidentally turned into immortals, along with Isaac and Miria, the year before.
Finally, Czeslaw met up with Begg, who wasn't terribly upset about the lost explosives and admitted that he was mostly just glad to finally see Czeslaw in person again, thus giving Czeslaw a full set of reasons to think over his previous vow to never trust anyone again after Fermet's betrayal. That is the end of the first major story arc of Baccano!, and the last major influence Czeslaw has on events in the series for many years.
Up until the late 1960s Czeslaw lived with Ennis and Firo as their younger brother, ignoring the fact that he was actually older than both of them put together. Even though Czeslaw still had many issues with trust, Firo and Ennis truly cared for him so he was able to tolerate living with them, and even loved them in return; for that matter, he felt the same for many of his friends in New York. However Czeslaw didn't feel like he was able to care for them in the same way that they loved him, and because of his guilt over that matter when Maiza came to him and said he was preparing to travel the world and find the immortal alchemists who were still hiding from Szilard, Czeslaw immediately offered to go with him. The two of them set out and, following tips garnered from information brokers, they successfully found their old acquaintances Sylvie and Nile, who joined them in their travels while they searched for their other former companions. In 2001, after thirty years of traveling the world hunting clues, they received a solid lead on the location of an immortal named Elmer.
Their search for Elmer led them to a village hidden away in a forest on private property, where the villagers lived as though they were from a time long before the 21st century without realizing there was anything strange about their lifestyle. The villagers were immediately hostile when Czeslaw and company arrived; they attacked Maiza and as a result saw his wound reverse itself. This spurred them to name the immortals "allies of the demon", and they moved to kill the entire group, an action that would have been successful if not for the intervention of a girl on horseback who scared the villagers away. She turned out to be a servant of Elmer, who was living in a nearby castle.
To make a long story short, Czeslaw and his friends thereafter spent about two months living in Elmer's castle, trying to weasel out of him what the hell was up with the village and the strange girls who worked for him in the castle. Through a series of increasingly ridiculous shenanigans, Elmer revealed to Maiza and Nile that the village was actually part of an experiment in growing homunculi, and the strange girls were actually a single homunculus named Fil that shared a personality through multiple bodies. The village was supposed to be a controlled setting to expose the homunculi to human society, but one homunculus had escaped and the other, Fil, was terribly abused by the villagers who had discovered that she wasn't human.
At the same time those three were plotting to remove the homunculus from the village, Czeslaw and another of Fil's bodies were rendered unconscious and captured by the villagers. It is at this point that I will pull Czeslaw to Expiation.
Personality:
Czeslaw is a complicated character. In a way, there are two facets of his personality; his childish side and his adult side. Czeslaw drank the elixer of immortality when he was about ten years old, and almost immediately afterward found himself a test subject, spending day after day for over two hundred years being tortured by a man he thought he could trust. That didn't leave him a lot of room to mature mentally. However, once he broke free of Fermet's authority he was forced to mature very quickly and many decades of freedom he is definitely capable of being a mature adult.
In ways, Czeslaw can be extremely childish. He enjoys being around people (and being cared for by people) if he thinks the situation is non-threatening. For example, even though he knew there was an immortal in the dining car on the Flying Pussyfoot he still enjoyed the company of Isaac, Miria and the other passengers. He enjoys what might be considered the "simple pleasures" of childhood; playing games, going to the movies, eating ice cream with a friend. Once he fell in with Maiza, Ennis and Firo he started to really be able to develop as a person, and that included learning to enjoy being in a child's body. He embraces new things and technology as they occur; in the modern era he enjoys things like video games and messing about with computers.
Czeslaw is also definitely a "grown-up". He conducts business with varying levels of success and is a more-than-decent strategist when he puts his mind to it. He enjoys the challenge involved in fooling people into believing he's a kid, and he is very good at manipulating people using a childish attitude. At the same time, he has a genuine soft spot for children and for the most part doesn't mind spending time with them. He makes easy emotional connections with kids, since it is usually easier for him to read their intentions. He has what he refers to as a "weakness" regarding children, feeling obligated to look after them. Czeslaw definitely considers himself an adult, and if he trusts someone he will show them his self-proclaimed "true self", that is, his normal attitude without the childish tones and body language. Other characters in the series note that seeing him switch from "kid mode" to "adult mode" is jarring due to his tone and body language changing so dramatically.
Aside from the aforementioned "kiddy activities", Czeslaw does have other hobbies too. He is a voracious reader who speaks several languages. He is also one of the few of the original immortal alchemists who continues to dabble in alchemy into the modern day. He has a very curious mind and doesn't mind researching various topics. Being immortal, Czeslaw also has a somewhat skewed sense of time. He and Maiza larked off for thirty years to look for other immortals without batting an eye, and at one point Czeslaw muses to himself that it would be okay if he were thrown into the ocean, because eventually his friends would come rescue him. Time doesn't really mean the same thing when you already know that nothing can truly kill you and you will never age.
One thing that's very important to Czeslaw is his friends. Czeslaw's ordeal with Fermet, who at one time was like an older brother or even a father to him, left him with severe trust issues that may never heal completely. While Czeslaw is more than capable of making friends, once he's done so he tends to worry about how long he'll be able to keep them (or keep them happy) once he has them. He also struggles with the belief that he is a bad person, due to revelations he had after devouring Fermet and consequently being burdened with all of the man's knowledge and emotions, and often feels guilt, shame, frustration and even anger that people can treat him with kindness. Since he began living around and making friends with other immortals those concerns have eased a little, but he still struggles to trust new people moving forward.
Overall, Czeslaw is an intelligent person who for the most part enjoys being around people. While he is prone to worrying and anxiety, he also has a logical enough mind to work through those things and live his life.
Abilities: Czeslaw is immortal, which normally means he can't die. However, in the game his immortality will be reduced to mere regenerative ability - when he is injured, the blood/viscera/etc flows back into him as though time were being reversed. But if he is injured too severely he will die just like any other person according to the rules of the game. Also worth stating, as a condition of his immortality, Czeslaw cannot conceal his true identity in the presence of other immortals. Due to this Czeslaw sometimes gives a fake name at first to suss out if the person he's talking to is immortal or not. Also, he cannot conceal his true identity in paperwork. So, for example, while he could fudge his date of birth on a passport, he would have to use his real name.
Inventory: a plain handkerchief and a small silver scalpel.
Samples: TDM top level
Questions: n/a
Contact: citizenmono @ discord
Age: 34
Current Characters: kakashi hatake
Character Name: Czeslaw Meyer
Character Canon: Baccano!
Canon Point: part way through Children of the Bottle
Age: literally 300 years old, physically appears to be around ten years old
Crime: cannibalism
Background:
Czeslaw lives in a world analogous to ours, with one major difference: alchemy is real, and is achievable by the most dedicated alchemists. Baccano! is a sort of convoluted canon, but I'm going to give it to you in chronological order as best as I can.
The story begins in the year 1711. A group of about 30 alchemists set sail from Europe seeking the New World (that is, what would eventually be known as the United States of America); among them was an alchemist named Fermet and his young charge, Czeslaw. When they had made it about halfway across the ocean, an alchemist named Maiza Avaro successfully managed to summon a "demon" (who turned out later to simply be an ancient alchemist who had gotten a little too enthusiastic about his trade) who bestowed upon him the knowledge of how to create an elixir of immortality. Everyone on the ship drank the elixir, including Czeslaw, and the demon taught them the rules of immortality, warning them that the only way they could die was to be consumed by another immortal. So naturally, one of the newly-created immortal named Szilard Quates immediately tried to consume Maiza in order to gain his knowledge of how to create the elixir. When he couldn't catch Maiza alone he consumed Maiza's younger brother instead, hoping that Maiza had shared the secret with his closest friend. He hadn't, and Szilard went on a killing spree on the ship in frustration. The other immortals eventually managed to restrain him and throw him overboard, thus ridding them of him--for the time being. Once they arrived at their destination the remaining immortals scattered to the wind, each fearing discovery by Szilard. Fermet had raised Czeslaw ever since his parents died when he was barely five years old, and by all appearances loved him as a son. So it was that none of the other immortals, most of whom had grown quite fond of Czeslaw over the course of the voyage, thought to protest when Fermet took Czeslaw and disappeared.
From 1711 to the early 1900s, Fermet proved this to have been a pretty big mistake by restraining Czeslaw and using him as a test subject on the limits of immortality. Day after day he subjected Czeslaw to various tortuous experiments, from pushing hot pokers into his eyes to dipping him in acid to throwing him into a fireplace. Fermet often assured the suffering Czeslaw that he didn't enjoy hurting him, but that it was necessary in the name of science. Unfortunately, when Czeslaw finally managed to break free from his restraints and consume Fermet, he looked through the man's memories and discovered that Fermet had never loved him at all and in fact enjoyed Czeslaw's pain more than he had ever enjoyed caring for Czeslaw himself. In Czeslaw's words: "The only affection he had was for my pain".
Once Czeslaw freed himself from Fermet's grasp, he started attempting to make contact with the other immortals from the ship, intending to consume them. His centuries with Fermet had made him paranoid and barely capable of trust. The first immortal he made contact with was a man called Begg--he had served as a secondary guardian for Czeslaw before they set sail for America, and Czeslaw thought that he at least held a little more affection for him than Fermet had. Through correspondence with Begg he decided to tentatively trust him, and began transporting goods for the mafia family that Begg worked for in New York. That was how Czeslaw's life intersected with the rest of canon.
In late 1931, Czeslaw agreed to transport a shipment of explosives from Chicago to New York for Begg, knowing that the trip would also give him the opportunity to meet up with Maiza Avaro, who agreed to meet him at the train station. To do this, he boarded the famous train the Flying Pussyfoot. Unbeknownst to him, the train would also be populated by:
-Claire Stanfield, a.k.a. Vino, a.k.a. the Rail Tracer, a.k.a. a generally terrifying assassin;
-Ladd Russo, a mafioso assassin who boarded the train to kill some people for the fun of it;
-the Lemures, a group of terrorists devoted to one of the original immortals, Huey Laforet;
-Jacuzzi Splot, a small time gangleader who intended to steal the explosives Czeslaw was transporting;
-Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent, a couple of thieves who were traveling to meet with their New York friends, Ennis and Firo.
While on the train, Czeslaw fell in with a famous senator's wife who happened to be a passenger on the train along with her daughter, who was physically similar in age to Czeslaw. Since Czeslaw was pretending to be a child, he willingly let the woman take him under her wing. While he was enjoying a meal with them in the dining car, he found himself forced to admit his real name while introducing himself to a group of people and realized that there must be another immortal in the room, because of the rules of immortality that forbade him from lying about his identity to another immortal. Unnerved, Czeslaw seemed grateful for the interruption that came in the form of some of Ladd Russo's gang doing an armed takeover of the dining car. Czeslaw took Mary, the senator's daughter, and helped her sneak out of the dining car. He then deposited Mary in a closet, instructing her to stay quiet, and left to find someone who would be more useful.
He ran into Ladd Russo himself as the man had just killed someone in a storage car, and Czeslaw put on an innocent adoring act to try to con Ladd into killing everyone in the dining car so he would know who the unknown immortal was. Ladd was understandably confused by this supposed kid acting so ruthlessly, but in the end instead of being impressed he was just pissed off that Czeslaw acted like he wasn't afraid of dying, so he shot Czeslaw in the head and left. Czeslaw regenerated soon after, grumbled about how much of a useless thug Ladd was, and left to think of another plan.
Unfortunately for Czeslaw, Claire Stanfield had watched the whole scene from behind a crate, and since his "thing" was killing people who did bad things, he decided that A. Czeslaw wasn't actually a child, and B. trying to murder everyone in a passenger car definitely constituted "badness". So he caught up to Czeslaw while the immortal was considering his next move in an empty passenger car, and quickly put an end to Czeslaw's innocent act by revealing that he knew Czeslaw wasn't really a kid and strangling him to death.
Czeslaw regenerated and tried to play it tough, claiming that there was nothing Claire could do to him that Fermet hadn't already done. Claire cheerfully went about proving him wrong by biting several of Czeslaw's fingers off, then using the rapidly-speeding-by train tracks to grind one of Czeslaw's arms to the shoulder and leaving him tied to the bottom of the train in such a manner that when his arm grew back again it would be torn off again.
Meanwhile, Isaac and Miria (whom Czeslaw had met in the dining car) went looking for Czeslaw to make sure he was all right. They somehow managed to spot him hanging from the bottom of the train and Isaac quickly fetched a rope and climbed down to the undercarriage to try and save him. He was delighted to find that Czeslaw was alive, but as he reached for Czeslaw to pull him free Czeslaw noticed that a scratch on Isaac's wrist was undoing itself--he was the immortal in the dining car. Czeslaw panicked and tried to push Isaac away, thinking he was about to be devoured, causing himself, Isaac, and Miria to all lose their grips on the train and go flying into the air. Isaac managed to catch Czeslaw in an embrace, Miria somehow managed to wrap her arms around both of them, and Isaac threw one end of the rope toward the train in a desperate attempt to catch it on something. He missed the train but a passenger named Rachel, who had escaped the massacre going on inside the train by climbing out of a window, managed to catch the rope with one hand.
It soon slipped out of her grip, but was caught again by Claire, who handed it off to a hulking gang member of Jacuzzi's named Donnie and told him to pull as hard as he could because "aside from the kid, there's a couple of real good people hangin' on to the other end of that rope". Donnie looked out of the car he was standing in, saw Isaac and Miria (who he recognized from the dining car) and frantically reeled them in. Once safely inside the train, Isaac and Miria gushingly enthused to Czeslaw about how glad they were that he was safe, and how he must be the best boy in the whole world because of how his wounded arm healed--to them, that proved that the "Rail Tracer" couldn't digest Czeslaw's arm, because he only "ate" bad people. Czeslaw tried to protest that they were wrong about him, thinking of all the morally questionable things he had done, but Isaac and Miria wouldn't have any of it and assured Czeslaw that from then on they would be like an aunt and uncle to him, and offered to introduce him to a friend of theirs who had asked them for a younger sibling.
Once the train arrived, several things happened. Most importantly to this application, Czeslaw got off the train with Isaac and Miria after discovering that the explosives he had been transporting had disappeared, stolen by Jacuzzi and his gang. It turned out that Isaac and Miria were also very good friends with Maiza, who was present to meet Czeslaw, and that Maiza was actually Firo's mentor. Czeslaw had intended to devour Maiza before the other man had a chance to touch him, but seeing the man who had been so kind to him on the voyage from Europe made Czeslaw hesitate and before he could devour Maiza or run away Maiza was already patting his head and drawing him into an embrace. Once Czeslaw was done having a little cry over being not eaten, he was introduced to Ennis, who was sort of Firo's girlfriend and had somehow given Isaac and Miria the impression that she wanted a younger sibling. Isaac and Miria enthusiastically explained that they had brought Czeslaw to her because he didn't have a family but needed one, and Czeslaw ended up living with Ennis as her younger brother because, as it turned out, practically the entirety of the mafia group that Maiza worked for had been accidentally turned into immortals, along with Isaac and Miria, the year before.
Finally, Czeslaw met up with Begg, who wasn't terribly upset about the lost explosives and admitted that he was mostly just glad to finally see Czeslaw in person again, thus giving Czeslaw a full set of reasons to think over his previous vow to never trust anyone again after Fermet's betrayal. That is the end of the first major story arc of Baccano!, and the last major influence Czeslaw has on events in the series for many years.
Up until the late 1960s Czeslaw lived with Ennis and Firo as their younger brother, ignoring the fact that he was actually older than both of them put together. Even though Czeslaw still had many issues with trust, Firo and Ennis truly cared for him so he was able to tolerate living with them, and even loved them in return; for that matter, he felt the same for many of his friends in New York. However Czeslaw didn't feel like he was able to care for them in the same way that they loved him, and because of his guilt over that matter when Maiza came to him and said he was preparing to travel the world and find the immortal alchemists who were still hiding from Szilard, Czeslaw immediately offered to go with him. The two of them set out and, following tips garnered from information brokers, they successfully found their old acquaintances Sylvie and Nile, who joined them in their travels while they searched for their other former companions. In 2001, after thirty years of traveling the world hunting clues, they received a solid lead on the location of an immortal named Elmer.
Their search for Elmer led them to a village hidden away in a forest on private property, where the villagers lived as though they were from a time long before the 21st century without realizing there was anything strange about their lifestyle. The villagers were immediately hostile when Czeslaw and company arrived; they attacked Maiza and as a result saw his wound reverse itself. This spurred them to name the immortals "allies of the demon", and they moved to kill the entire group, an action that would have been successful if not for the intervention of a girl on horseback who scared the villagers away. She turned out to be a servant of Elmer, who was living in a nearby castle.
To make a long story short, Czeslaw and his friends thereafter spent about two months living in Elmer's castle, trying to weasel out of him what the hell was up with the village and the strange girls who worked for him in the castle. Through a series of increasingly ridiculous shenanigans, Elmer revealed to Maiza and Nile that the village was actually part of an experiment in growing homunculi, and the strange girls were actually a single homunculus named Fil that shared a personality through multiple bodies. The village was supposed to be a controlled setting to expose the homunculi to human society, but one homunculus had escaped and the other, Fil, was terribly abused by the villagers who had discovered that she wasn't human.
At the same time those three were plotting to remove the homunculus from the village, Czeslaw and another of Fil's bodies were rendered unconscious and captured by the villagers. It is at this point that I will pull Czeslaw to Expiation.
Personality:
Czeslaw is a complicated character. In a way, there are two facets of his personality; his childish side and his adult side. Czeslaw drank the elixer of immortality when he was about ten years old, and almost immediately afterward found himself a test subject, spending day after day for over two hundred years being tortured by a man he thought he could trust. That didn't leave him a lot of room to mature mentally. However, once he broke free of Fermet's authority he was forced to mature very quickly and many decades of freedom he is definitely capable of being a mature adult.
In ways, Czeslaw can be extremely childish. He enjoys being around people (and being cared for by people) if he thinks the situation is non-threatening. For example, even though he knew there was an immortal in the dining car on the Flying Pussyfoot he still enjoyed the company of Isaac, Miria and the other passengers. He enjoys what might be considered the "simple pleasures" of childhood; playing games, going to the movies, eating ice cream with a friend. Once he fell in with Maiza, Ennis and Firo he started to really be able to develop as a person, and that included learning to enjoy being in a child's body. He embraces new things and technology as they occur; in the modern era he enjoys things like video games and messing about with computers.
Czeslaw is also definitely a "grown-up". He conducts business with varying levels of success and is a more-than-decent strategist when he puts his mind to it. He enjoys the challenge involved in fooling people into believing he's a kid, and he is very good at manipulating people using a childish attitude. At the same time, he has a genuine soft spot for children and for the most part doesn't mind spending time with them. He makes easy emotional connections with kids, since it is usually easier for him to read their intentions. He has what he refers to as a "weakness" regarding children, feeling obligated to look after them. Czeslaw definitely considers himself an adult, and if he trusts someone he will show them his self-proclaimed "true self", that is, his normal attitude without the childish tones and body language. Other characters in the series note that seeing him switch from "kid mode" to "adult mode" is jarring due to his tone and body language changing so dramatically.
Aside from the aforementioned "kiddy activities", Czeslaw does have other hobbies too. He is a voracious reader who speaks several languages. He is also one of the few of the original immortal alchemists who continues to dabble in alchemy into the modern day. He has a very curious mind and doesn't mind researching various topics. Being immortal, Czeslaw also has a somewhat skewed sense of time. He and Maiza larked off for thirty years to look for other immortals without batting an eye, and at one point Czeslaw muses to himself that it would be okay if he were thrown into the ocean, because eventually his friends would come rescue him. Time doesn't really mean the same thing when you already know that nothing can truly kill you and you will never age.
One thing that's very important to Czeslaw is his friends. Czeslaw's ordeal with Fermet, who at one time was like an older brother or even a father to him, left him with severe trust issues that may never heal completely. While Czeslaw is more than capable of making friends, once he's done so he tends to worry about how long he'll be able to keep them (or keep them happy) once he has them. He also struggles with the belief that he is a bad person, due to revelations he had after devouring Fermet and consequently being burdened with all of the man's knowledge and emotions, and often feels guilt, shame, frustration and even anger that people can treat him with kindness. Since he began living around and making friends with other immortals those concerns have eased a little, but he still struggles to trust new people moving forward.
Overall, Czeslaw is an intelligent person who for the most part enjoys being around people. While he is prone to worrying and anxiety, he also has a logical enough mind to work through those things and live his life.
Abilities: Czeslaw is immortal, which normally means he can't die. However, in the game his immortality will be reduced to mere regenerative ability - when he is injured, the blood/viscera/etc flows back into him as though time were being reversed. But if he is injured too severely he will die just like any other person according to the rules of the game. Also worth stating, as a condition of his immortality, Czeslaw cannot conceal his true identity in the presence of other immortals. Due to this Czeslaw sometimes gives a fake name at first to suss out if the person he's talking to is immortal or not. Also, he cannot conceal his true identity in paperwork. So, for example, while he could fudge his date of birth on a passport, he would have to use his real name.
Inventory: a plain handkerchief and a small silver scalpel.
Samples: TDM top level
Questions: n/a
