Player Name: Des
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deathdesu Name: Eric
Canon: Zero Time Dilemma
True Canon Point: End of R1 + some handwaved details based on things that I know to have happened in 15S since R1 (such as the pyramid disappearing from their world and interactions with Linkara)
History: wiki. In 15 Strangers, he was in Round 1 as the Fabricator, and had closer bonds with the NPCs than the PCs as he attempted to keep his emotional distance from the people he was trying to get massmurdered. Most notably, Babette taught him to be somewhat decent at potion-making. Aside from his antagonistic relationship with half of the cast, he had a lot of funny moments like having to pretend to be infected with radical-6 and getting harassed by moths. He also had many traumatic experiences from messing with the bodies, which almost got him fingered as the culprit in case two - as well as being forced by Elenwen to frame Maglor after Farkas' suicide. After the riot instigated by Jr, Eric cut out the hearts of their enemies to create potions. When he was called out as the Fabricator by Elenwen in the final stand against her, the group banded together with him because of the lie he believed that Mira taken hostage, and he was able to form a closer camaraderie with everyone despite currently being on a grief-propelled berserk killing spree.
In the end, the universe was destroyed and rebuilt by the strangers who had ascended to godhood and achieved the power of creation. Eric mostly used this power to revive the Skyrim friends from the dead and break his wife out of prison and give her a new home on Nirn, where they have a big manor in the forest with magical nonsense electricity. The woods are full of predator animals that Mira insisted be recreated. As one of the few who remained in Mundus, he has also kept in contact with the Simulcast R1s such as Linkara and Camilla - at some point Camilla badgered him into reviving the other known dead from the Simulcasts. Besides that, he's mostly kept out of their business, being more interested in his new domestic life with Mira and the terrorist situation in his home world than in gallivanting through space. Still, it's hard not to notice when an entire pyramid goes missing from your universe, so he's been fairly on edge about the state of things.
That One Place: His childhood home.
Personality: Eric is honestly a mess. In his day to day life, he is the classic stepford, always smiling to cover up inner sadness and pain. A nice enough guy, a bit dopey, likes ice cream, and is completely and genuinely head over heels in love with Mira.
But that is not the Eric we first meet in Zero Time Dilemma. Locked in a cell with others, his panic immediately causes him to lash out and blame the first strange thing in the room, a kid with a sphere over his head. Eric spooks easily and his ugly side comes out: violent, blind rage. Though he is a bit like a child and stops immediately if Mira scolds him. It's rare for anyone else to talk him down.
Still, if he's relatively comfortable, he can get along with others, and if they're someone he's lashed out at then he usually feels bad and apologizes for it. He talks and laughs with them and shares stories. According to one teammate, it's like he's an entirely different person.
He's also just gag-worthy sweet toward Mira - there is a room where they keep finding parts for an object they're building and they're labeled by letters. The dialogue goes like, "A...because you're adorable!" "D... because you're my darling!" just this complete sap the whole puzzle. He calls her an angel and means it.
He's still kind of a jerk to work with though, because he's super dumb and tends to leave the puzzles to the kid and then attempt to take credit for it. He also gets positively giddy any time the answer to a puzzle is smashing things or blowing them up (likely because that's literally the only thing he's good for) and he'll often try that even when it's not the answer.
And... if anything happens to Mira... he goes utterly berserk. Suffice to say that she means more to him than his or anyone else's life.
(( ZTD Spoilers from here on ))
When Eric was small, he had a happy family and his loving mother taught him and his brother Chris about the power of smiles to bring happiness in times of anger or sorrow. After she died, their alcoholic father twisted this "always smile" lesson to make his sons submissive to him as he physically and mentally abused them. As a result, Eric tried to smile constantly throughout his daily life, even though from his perspective it was utterly bleak and devoid of happiness. This is something that continued even into adulthood after his father had passed away from illness. He just stagnates working in this ice cream shop job, which he thinks is nice but it clearly seems to be very unfulfilling. So the reason he is willing to kill for Mira is certainly because he doesn't want to lose another loved one, but she's really the only thing he feels he has to hold onto to make his future bright, or even his life worth living. This is most heavily punctuated by the fact that, in timelines where reasoning with him fails and he goes on homicidal rampages to avenge her, they inevitably end in Eric's suicide. He literally destroys the door to escape in anticipation of this conclusion. He can't go back to those gray days - he does not want to live in a world without Mira. Period.
On the other hand when he's given the opportunity to kill so he can escape the horrible murder game and achieve that bright future with Mira, he fires a grenade launcher at a small child and a blind, deaf, mute old man in a wheelchair!! Grabs her hand and skips out the door!! He doesn't even act like he thought twice about he did, as long as it was for her. However as we know, Eric plasters a smile on firmly through troubled times and this is almost certainly a heightened version of that state. Contrast the Decontamination Room timeline, where the situation is all the teams are trapped in a shower room with a button, and the first person to push the button rains deadly acid on all of the other teams. Eric immediately rushes the button and is knocked out. If he revives to see that Sean has instead pushed the button, he immediately starts freaking out in a triggered panic state and blaming him. So while he is capable of doing these awful things in the heat of the moment, they definitely break him down. He also acknowledges that his angry and violent side is learned behavior from his abuser and a fear reaction. About his triggers, any murder that can involve showers, drowning, choking/strangulation etc. would put him in this extreme regressive state where he falls to his knees, hugging himself and muttering about Chris and his father. It appears he may go into flashbacks such as those experienced by people with PTSD.
So obviously, Eric deals with stress Incredibly Badly. I think it is worth noting though, that despite how he acts in desperate times such as the Decision Game (effectively his canon is a murder game of a different kind) Eric normally does have morals, and quite admirable ones at that. He eventually learns that his beloved Mira is a serial killer, and not at all what he thought she was like. This does not stop him from still loving her, but instead of becoming her accomplice, he convinces Mira to turn herself in to prison, so that they can get married. This is really doing well by her, because it shows her real unconditional love and kindness as opposed to the weird infatuation he mostly showed before, and he is able to help her atone with the help of Sean. This is basically the high point of the "nice Eric" that we see in the game. At his best and in the end, Eric takes after his mother, who was gentle and comforting.
(( 15 Strangers Development ))
Post 15 Strangers, Eric is still mostly the same, only now he has EVEN MORE guilt weighing on him from the stuff he pulled in his round (and like.... the inherent trauma of knowing he may have helped destroy a universe?) Yet at the same time, he's happier from getting to have something of a domestic life with his wife that does not involve prison. He also has a bit more confidence and
competence due to being the living god of a fantasy world and just kind of picking up a few skills in R1 like said potion making. Speaking of which, a LITTLE more open mindedness came with it, early game Eric did not believe in magic whatsoever and would fight you on it, but now he just has to admit that he became a god dam wizard. Of course, he's still kind of freaked out about the whole matter and getting dragged back out of his paradise into another murdergame is likely to make him fall back into old tendencies.
Possessions:1. Shotgun - Perfect for escalating already bad situations.
2. Crossbow with potioned bolts - For when it's time for revenge with nothing left to lose. Comes in frenzy and damage health pots.
3. R1 Potion-making supplies - Lab stuff, mortar and pestle, weird ingredients - is that a human heart??
4. Sewing machine - at first glance it looks and functions like a completely normal sewing machine, except it doesn't require any electricity because it's secretly a magic one Eric willed into existence for his house in Nirn.
5. Gab - A very old and sweet dog who deserves the world.
6. Invincibility Amulet - Supposedly this was an incredible artifact that would protect the wearer from all harm, but at the moment it just looks like an ornate locket containing a picture of an intelligent lady with an impressive rack.
7. Uniform - A uniform for a 1950s-style ice cream shop, with a candy-striped shirt, a straw boater hat, a bow-tie and a vest. Too bad any ice cream here would taste like dirt.
8. Warhammer - For bashing heads and forging evidence.
9. Giant Mallet - Yelling "WACHAA!" while you hit things is not mandatory but you should do it anyway.
10. Cosplays - A variety of well known nerdy costumes featuring male characters from Luke Skywalker to Edward Elric. (can this be his renewable? if so you can just pick random characters from star wars, lotr, superheroes and anime to give out)
Physiology: I mean apparently he is still fused with a lightsword whatever that counts for, otherwise he normie.
Motives: Given his canon killing sprees over the death of Mira, Eric is really undeniably the kind of guy for whom a hostage motive makes the most sense. As you know, I try to do whatever I can to avoid a hostage motive, so since I know the majority of the twists anyway I'd probably want a culprit Eric to just get straight-up possessed to do a murder in like the third case and open up the path to final trial via the characters deducing this, a concept like that lol. This would also be pretty thematic for his canon because the mastermind of ZTD mind controls him into shooting people on a couple of different occasions.
Failing that though? Maybe I'd just pull a Mondo and have him kill someone in a burst of PTSD fear/rage triggers. It be like that sometimes. (Honestly, since his light power is super-effective against undead, I would love for him to just laser the fuck out of Ambro and then be like "whoops")
Or he can just have little a hostage motive, as a treat. Who am I to knock a classic motive?
RP Sample: here's his thread tracker from R1, take your pick
Case Sample:Let's just say that whether possessed or not, Eric is a big coward so he would be trying to make a case that both does not engage anyone directly and could look like an accident so hopefully he can shift the culpability away from himself.
Eric takes some grease or butter from the Crab-O-Licious and coats the bottom of the shower stalls with them, hoping someone will just slip and die. Then he'll put aluminum foil over the light bulbs in the shower room so their filament will burn out / lights won't come on so people won't see the grease. Throw away the aluminum foil in the furnace and call it done!
For bonus steps, he could convert some of the radios into a transmitter and put it in the shower room so he can hear when someone falls. Then come over and turn the shower on to wash out the grease at full blast. Leaving the evidence something like this:
1) Body in shower with cracked head. Surprising lack of blood. Slippery floor but with most obvious traces gone, hard to tell if it's grease or regular slipperiness.
2) Let's say there's still a very light trail of grease leading from COL to the shower room because the bucket was heavy for a twink like him and a bit dribbled out. Sunk into hall carpet, not immediately visible.
3) Bucket in the shower room but with a few things thrown into it to look natural, and the transmitter hidden in the bottom.
4) A missing radio. Let's say this isn't the first case and he stole it from a dead person's room. Could be signs of a break-in if said dead rooms aren't automatically unlocked for all to plunder.
5) Eric could have wet or greasy shoes from messing with all of this.
Of course a fall doesn't guarantee instant death, so we could also craft a situation where Eric has to help them along. In that case, after hearing the fall, Eric can come in and finish them off with the laser bat. Because
someone has to use it. He'll put a big hole in them, then turn the body over so it looks like they were just ambushed in the shower by someone - maybe he could add some touches to make it look like they got hit with one of Kurama's bullets or something. I'd have whether or not he has to return to finish them off depend on how hardy the person he got rolled against seems.
In the trial, Eric would probably be pretty jumpy and accusatory. He's NOT good with guilt and really eager to pass it on to someone else. He'd try pretty hard not to confess but may crack under pressure since he is a weak minded dude
Killer or Victim Consideration: everyone in this cast could kick his ass so by all rights he should be a victim but I'm fine being culprit rolled anyway, as you can see I have a pretty hands off plan here fufufu
Special Role Consideration: you already told me this is a fake out so I guess I won't take it lol
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