Ichabod Ness's Questionnaire

Originally from [small village in England, really any would do, say Horndon on the Hill], Ichabod moved to London to shake himself off both his past and the nosy nature of village life, and also to make a living for himself as an occult consultant, an increasingly popular field in the Illuminated age. He’s managed to make himself known in enough circles so as to secure a more or less steady income, but not so much as to attract unwarranted attention to matters which are best left in the dark.

An average-to-low income combined with a lack of interest in most things material amount to a decrepit apartment in a sparsely populated neighborhood. A small bedroom which contains not much more than bed and mattress, a scarcely furnished kitchen and a study whose door is always locked. Clients are attended in the living room, which is really just an expansion of the kitchen with an old couch and a funny-smelling rug.

There’s hardly a profession so simultaneously all-encompassing and narrow-fielded as occult consulting. Ranging from protection from evil spirits to contributions in academic treatises about forgotten mythologies, an occult consultant is a sort of everyman for all information in matters which any upstanding member of society (until fairly recently) would find abhorrent, upsetting nonsense.

It’s always been a field ripe for con-men and charlatans, and in this day and age they thrive like worms festering on the corpse of good sense. Though in Ichabod’s opinion, that’s not all bad. The myriad of cheats and fake mystics serves as a filter of sorts, occupying most of the most common cast of clients: gullible souls who’ve gotten caught up in their own delusions and ignorance. And the precious few who truly do require professional aid? Well, in this business the consultant tends to find the client, rather than the opposite.

For Ichabod, the money is the means for knowledge, not the knowledge the means for money. Every bit of profit goes to buy more books, more knowledge, more ways to sate his insatiable curiosity.

If Ichabod could, he’d know everything that most others know nothing about. His curiosity is a starving beast, a bottomless pit that cannot be filled. His mother used to berate him for his interminable and disturbing enquiries which were a constant in his childhood. Mother’s gone, but the hunger remains strong as ever.

But although Ichabod has always been, by all rights, a freak, he’s no monster. His mind is a fiendish thing, but in his heart he has buried a shame. An old crime that haunts his days, oftentimes literally. He never meant for Alaine to die. He was sure that it’d work, that he’d bring her back… a foolish boy. A foolishness that cost her life.

For some time after Ichabod tried to drown the hunger with his guilt, seal it away so it’d never hurt anyone again. Be a normal kid, a normal teenager, a normal man. It wouldn’t last, of course. Instead Ichabod doubled down, and returned to his pursuit with a new vigor; he’d bring her back, no matter the cost. This time, for sure.

For some reason Ichabod had never really fathomed, his twin sister liked him. Perhaps it was because they were both united in their fear of Father’s drunken bellowing, or their hatred for Mother’s sharp stares and snide comments. Perhaps it was because Alaine had been the only one who lived with Ichabod long enough to know his other, more tender sides. Perhaps it was just because she was his sister after all, and kinship invited fraternity, though this was not a lesson learned from their own kin.

Be it as it may, Alaine was Ichabod’s only and therefore best friend, and happily played the assistant in his macabre experiments. It was rarely harmless and not once one sibling or both came home with fresh injuries, though one day it went too far. A poisonous herb, a failed revival ritual, and Ichabod’s desperate whispers that turned hysterical screams when he realized his sister wasn’t waking up.

It was then that he realized the hunger was his enemy. He had thought of his curiosity as an engine, a weapon with which to tackle this strange world. Now he saw it for what it really was: a disease. Mother always said it, Father always said it, his teachers, his classmates, but only then he understood.

Ichabod *would* revive his sister. He wouldn’t stop until he did. But he also knew he wouldn’t stop even after he did, and he hated himself for it.