Neil Ashworth's Questionnaire

Neil currently lives in his dorm at the University of Harvard, where he studies biology. His room is somewhat messy, a system of organisation known only to him leaving things left lying in odd places, except for a series of tape recorders he has stored in his desk, under lock and key. He keeps his curtains closed most of the time, and prefers dark colours for his curtains and bed covers, mostly black and dark shades of blue or purple, though the walls are the same cream colour from when he moved in. He has attempted to cover this up with a series of notes and diagrams stuck to the wall with blue tack, though the contents are mostly nonsense without context.

Neil currently earns his money through his contract with Gen-Wyld. Serving as a poster boy following his treatment of Ghoul Fever, Neil’s fame has brought in many a pretty penny for the company. In addition, Neil works as an intern for the company, learning from some of the best in the field of genetic science.

Neil's financial expenses mostly tend to be in tools for his Contract work, as well as items for his research into necromancy and to record his notes. His personal preference is for tape recorders, as his eidetic memory makes writing down his findings pointless, and he finds it easier to think while talking out loud.

Neil has died once before. He only remembers it in flashes, but he sees a vast, dark world, filled Sith lost souls, and everything about it just screams one thing to him: potential. His precious self tapped into the powers of hell itself, but the afterlife he find himself in was an in between place, where none of the souls had yet been claimed. Neil knows, deep inside, that if he can get back there, he can tap the souls for their knowledge, and accrue limitless power, and more importantly, never go back.

Neil fears, deep inside, being stranded and once more in that sea of souls, unable to control himself, unable to draw in his powers and forced to rely on bargains with those in a position of power over him, and there is little he wouldn’t do to escape such a fate, including kill. When given a choice between victory and guaranteed survival, Neil will be torn, but ultimately would pick to further his goals.

When Neil was a child, he began getting flashes of memories not his own. He was already considered intelligent, with his Eidetic memory letting him easily pass tests at school, but this seemed to make him more so, giving him knowledge he couldn’t possibly have studied. The many hours of studying demonology he saw in these memories gave him a deep curiosity towards the occult, while the final memories, those of dying painfully followed by a sea of infinite blackness and lost souls, instilled in him a desperate fear of death. He also has a dislike of thorny plants, not a fear, but he doesn’t like then one bit

Neil has a normal family, a father, a mother, and a younger sister, who are probably his closest relationships outside of his life as a Contractor, but ever since the memories came back, he has become withdrawn, distant, plagued by nightmares for a time and recently overtaken by an almost unnatural air of calm and authority. This has, naturally, resulted in something of a rift between Neil and his family.

Although Neil provides financial support to his family to improve their living conditions, now that he’s rich and famous, he isn’t truly close beyond what most people consider familial obligations, occasionally calling or visiting home during breaks in his studies, but little beyond the bare minimum. Any other friends he had of his own age are simple surface-level acquaintances, the memories of his past life causing him to struggle to relate to them as someone of their own age normally would.

Neil’s childhood was fairly normal. The memories of his past life flaring up isolated him, but he wasn’t particularly social in the first place, mostly seen as the quiet nerdy kid. His parents are average people, and did their best to raise Neil, but weren’t really prepared for the way he turned out. Neil attended a normal school in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was born, but didn’t really fit in. At first this was just due to his abnormal intelligence, causing him to stand out, but following the appearance of the memories of his previous life he began to actively avoid associating too closely with kids his own age.

He made several friendships with the nerdier kids in high school, but never closer than surface level bonds, most of whom he lost contact with between moving for university and the outbreak of ghoul fever sweeping the nation, infecting several of them.

Between his abnormal maturity and a general lack of interest in romance, Neil has never been involved in a romantic relationship, indeed, his only true love could be said to be his research into the supernatural, for which he has dedicated many quiet hours with whatever books he could get his hands on, as well as briefly flirted with meditation, to try to better understand and view the memories of his previous life, and all the arcane knowledge contained within. Despite his previous selfs interest in demons, Neil finds himself more drawn to study of the undead and their ability to evade death itself.

Neil's greatest fears are his own death, and the powerlessness that follows in the realm beyond. Even after his reincarnation, he remembers vividly having everything he earned stripped away from him, the sheer powerlessness allowing the souls of mortal men to overpower him. He considers the experience unpleasant, to say the least.

Another residual trait from his death and reincarnation, Neil hates breaking promises, memories of the power of words coming back to him whenever he thinks of his experiences in the afterlife, a binding chain around his very essence, compelling him to act according to his vows. His rebirth may have washed away the danger, but even so, Neil will never forget what a promise can mean to a being that is reduced to a soul.

More minor, though still significant, Neil is afraid of the underground. A bad experience early on in his career has left him leery of what lays beneath the earth, and he'd much rather have one of his undead servants do all the work for him if he ever needs to go down. Currently, he uses a zombie badger with a camera strapped to it in order to deal with situations that may arise.

Neil prizes above all his other possessions his notes. They are a record of everything he remembers and finds important or interesting from his Contracting experience, including his understanding and inferences on his fellow Contractors. While dangerous if they ever get into the wrong hands, Neil is a firm believer in the value of knowledge, and would much rather someone discover his recordings after his death and preserve them than for all the knowledge he has accumulated as a Contractor and Necromancer be lost to the world. He also keeps a collection of occult tomes and notes, which, although not as important as his personal notes, are things he is very fond of studying, both for enjoyment and for the opportunity to discover hidden or lost secrets of the occult arts, and to advance his own magics further. He is also somewhat fond of the dead animals he collects to reanimate, mostly as he has discovered little personality quirks in each zombie.

Neil may have, accidentally, stolen a magical tome from one of the scariest individual Contractors he has so far encountered. He did intend to give it to him after getting his own uses out of it, but the item proceeded to destroy itself, scouring every trace of the knowledge contained within not just from itself, but also from Neil's own enhanced mind, an event which infuriates and frightens him in equal measure. After all, Neil's mind is the last resting place of many of his greatest secrets, if it isn't safe, then where is?

Neil's plan at the moment is to craft an artifact to use as payment for the incident. The skills acquired in learning to create such an item are certainly beneficial, but not being skinned and turned into a suit is its own reward. And, if it came down to it, Neil would hate to throw away such a useful ally.

Neil gets out of bed at 6:00 AM sharp. After that, he takes a brisk shower, brushes his teeth, towels himself off, and picks one of several sets of nearly identical clothes out of his wardrobe (He doesn't want to use the brainpower picking what to wear when he has important research to do). Following this, he eats breakfast (Porridge, with a single teaspoon of honey mixed in) and has a cup of tea (not coffee, the caffeine at that hour makes his head hurt). He then takes one of the recording devices contained within his drawer, records his morning notes, and slips it into his shirt pocket, ready to record whenever he has notes to take. Following this, he packs his bag, and it's time to head out the door and start his day.

On weekends, he will usually allow himself an indulgence of something sweet with his porridge, usually a peach or an apple, to start the day.

Neil has a preference for dark clothes, and as such, prefers to wear suits in shades of black, with either a red or white undershirt to accentuate the colouration. For preparation, Neil prefers to thoroughly research whatever event, gathering, or function he is attending beforehand, committing the names of important guests to memory, as well as other details he thinks will be important, at least a couple of days in advance. For actually dressing himself, he has a tendency to take over an hour to pick from several almost identical suits, fussing over the style until he gets it just right or, more likely, runs out of time and has to decide. He also ties his fairly long hair back, to keep it out of his face, and does his best to straighten out his natural curls with a comb, though his hair still ends up invariably a bit of a mess.

For his next birthday, Neil is planning on a gathering of his friends and family, to maintain the appearance of a normal, if intellectually gifted, teen, however, he also plans on arranging a gathering of those Contractors he has met with who he has built positive relations, both to firm up the bonds they have formed and, on a more personal level, to study their strange abilities and characteristics up close, and use whatever knowledge he garners to further his own craft. He plans on having a regular sponge cake decorated with his favourite sweet, black liquorice, as his birthday cake.

Upon death, most peoples souls pass on into the great beyond, drifting through an endless black sea until they are deposited in the appropriate afterlife, or, in some cases, until they are reincarnated, born again as a new person with no memories of their previous life. Neil is the exception to prove the rule. Born with an Eidetic memory, Neil remembers his previous life with just enough clarity to traumatise him throughout his childhood, he remembers being a Contractor, he remembers dying, and he even remembers why he remembers, a perk of his previous selfs career. And he regrets his failure. His previous self had been on the path to immense power, his knowledge of the Occult growing rapidly, and had begun forming alliances with others of similar interests to himself, only for it all to be wiped away in a haze of blood and pain. Neil remembers Victors end, and he will be sure to never repeat it.

Neil's gifts are a manifestation of his connection to the afterlife, a remnant of when his soul passed through it and emerged without his previous life being completely cleaned away, with each victory at the Harbingers tasks, he can draw more and more on his connection with the afterlife to sense and manipulate the very energies of death itself, allowing him to accelerate the decay of that which he touches with his power, or to forcibly reanimate the dead. Through careful application of his Occult knowledge, he has also devised rituals through which he can channel his power, his Miasma, in specific ways to achieve a variety of magical effects, from a ghostly steed bound to a necklace, to a pocket dimension bound to his soul, within which he can store the corpses he animates with his magic for future use. Nobody expects a badger to the face, after all.

Neil is a deeply spiritual individual, his very power itself confirms the existence of an afterlife, after all. As far as religion goes, he believes that the Gods of various faiths exist as entities, but he doubts they are as almighty and powerful as they are often styled by their followers, and he is quite certain that they can't all have created the world. For his personal beliefs, Neil knows that there is an afterlife, and that he can call spirits from it to him, and furthermore that each perceive it differently from other spirits. It is his personal theory that there actually are different afterlives, and that you simply get sorted into the one most appropriate for your beliefs after you die, though he is open to the possibility of it all being a matter of perception, rather than anything solid. He believes the soul exists, but is quite certain it is not as eternal as most other people think it is.

Neil's world view is, in part, informed by the existence of Contracts. Due to his reincarnation, he has always been aware that Contracts and Contractors exist, at least to an extent, and as such has developed a strong lack of faith in any of the more common belief systems, being able to remember personally seeing events which countermand those beliefs very existence. This has caused his social skills to be weaker than those of most people his age, as well as given him a disturbing disregard for human life, one only further amplified by his knowledge that death is not the end, but rather, something of a break between lives. Despite this, he is aware enough of the consequences of his actions to not try to push things too far, and has a fairly firm understanding that, even with all the power he has accumulated so far, he is nowhere near the top of the food chain, at least, not yet.

Neil has not encountered a consistent party of Contractors, the only two he has encountered repeatedly being Chip and Polamedes, and them only twice each, but he has begun to mentally divide the Contractors he meets into categories, based on his impressions of them. The first category are the incompetents, the people who tend to put their foot in their mouth or spout some drivel about "morals" that endangers the entire rest of the team. They seem to have mostly died off by this point in his career, though some have managed to cling stubbornly to life. The second category are the moralists, similar to some of the more annoying incompetents, but with the capabilities to actually back up their principles. Neil finds them a nuisance at times, but appreciates their ability to pull their own weight. The third category Neil uses is the Competent, those who are generally useful, don't hinder the group too seriously when operating outside their specialty, but are not overwhelming in their benefits. They can generally be relied on to get their jobs done, and fill minor but useful roles, but aren't going to be pulling off miracles any time soon. Finally, there are the monsters. Those who, through ruthless competency, will consistently succeed, but who also have a tendency to cut off any they perceive to be dragging them down. More than one Contractor has been left to die for being a drain on the group and, while Neil agrees with the sentiment, he cannot help but be careful of these individuals, lest they decide he be the next to go. Obviously, Neil is too smart to mention his categorisation system to any of their faces, as most Contractors would take offence at being put under such broad categories, rather than being valued for their unique skills.

For Neil, the perfect room is covered wall to wall with bookshelves, a small library, one with a desk at the centre with all the writing utensils he could ever need for his studies. The topics run the gamut from Occult lore, to old myths and legends, to the beliefs and philosophies of various death cults through the ages, all he could ever need to further his mastery of the necromantic arts. The bookshelves have a thin layer of dust, just enough to look old, and the occasional dead insect or rodent can be found in the far corners, the perfect subject for him to test his latest theories and ideas on. There are no windows, only enough lights for him to read by, and to check for a new book once he has finished his current one, and all is quiet as the grave, nothing to disturb him from his research.

Neil excels in areas of intellectual challenge. When faced with a mystery, a secret, or simply a long-winded textbook, he is never content until he has deciphered its contents, organised them in comparison to what he already knows, and masters what new knowledge he has attained. He is a perfectionist, not being content with simply having a passing degree of knowledge in a subject but needing to excel.

A side effect of his approach to intellectualism is that Neil has a tendency to become overcurious, pushing inquiry to the point that it often irritates or disturbs those around him, such as in the examination of a body, or seeking Occult lore that others would deem to dangerous to handle, or even (accidentally!) stealing a book of dark secrets from a mysterious individual of unknown means who had just repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be lethally competent, all in order to sate his curiosity.

Neil's past and present experiences have granted him a more personal understanding of the Afterlife than most, and a side effect of that knowledge is that Neil fears to die again, and lose his connection to the mortal plane. Another thing that he has developed is a strong compulsion to fulfil any bargains he makes, the act of failing to do so triggering memories not his own, of deals with infernal creatures and lingering spirits, and the consequences of breaking those. While, when faced with the prospect of death, he could be pushed into violating an Oath, it would take very dire circumstances indeed for Neil to begin considering it.

Neil also has a normal humans aversion to torture, not possessing the training or experiences necessary to withstand agonising pain for prolonged periods of time, and is generally loathe to subject himself to such without knowledge of some tangible benefit, and a limit to the amount of pain inflicted.