Name: Leofwine Rakes
Terror Radius: 32 Meters
Movement Speed: 110%
Description:
The Headhunter is a sly killer that uses his power, Hunter's Prowess, to hinder and maim survivors in his hunting snares and injure them from a distance with a Spear Shot. His personal perks, Predatory Dominance, Cruel Incentive, and Cunning Pursuit, diminish survivors' ability to escape the initial chase, strategize after hooking a survivor, and hunt more efficiently.
Backstory:
It was a cold January day of 1687 In the wood enclosed village of Dalton; Leofwine Rakes was born in a freshly built cottage just within the tree line of the forest; home of the woodsman Randolph and his wife Annice Rakes.
Upon his birth, he cried and secreted copious amounts of mucus to the worry of his parents. The Village Doctor, A charming man named Ecclestone, became a daily visitor. Ecclestone always treated and tenderly cared for the infant as though he were Leofwin's third parent with more than a doctor's oath.
Leofwine miraculously survived his malady and started to grow into a healthy young boy. But at the tender age of 8, his mother developed an odd rash.
Small red bumps that spread across her body before blooming into blood and pus-filled blisters; marring Annice's sun-tanned skin and transforming it into a repulsive landscape of virulent red seepage, crusted brown scabs, and hideous pink scar tissue.
Syphilis; an abhorrent condition that was poorly understood and viewed as a potential punishment for sins. Randolph stood by his wife as the village shunned and leered at the family; Leofwine was tormented for having a Pig's Whore of a mother, and he the bastard Pig son. After a daily harassment from the "pristine" villagers, he would return to his family's cottage and stare into his mother's speckled vanity mirror; staring back at him, he'd see a boy with a pig's face, just as they said; a stubby little nose under wet, rheumy eyes. A mouth with somehow too little lip yet too much jowl. He was ugly. The son of a Pig and its disease-ridden whore. He desperately tried to forget what was told to him daily; what made making friends impossible with the even crueler children of the village.
All he saw were faces twisted by the judgement and self-righteous prejudice.
This abuse wasn't Leofwine's curse alone; Randolph was forced to take long treks to neighboring villages to sell his lumber to less knowing folks, as it was nearly impossible to separate the Woodsman from the forsaken disease that plagued his bedeviled wife.
The only respite from the misery was Dr. Ecclestone's continued visits as he helped treat Annice, whose joints soon became too swollen and stiff to properly help with the work, and began to experience spells of severe fatigue, nausea and even paralysis.
It wasn't long before Randolph began to show signs of the dreaded rash himself. Another pox from god, the villagers were appalled by his apparent depravity and he was forced to wear thick hoods on his journey out every day.
Annice passed away from the illness when Leofwine was just 10 years old, something had grown within her and caused a blood clot. Dr. Ecclestone had made sure no one came near the body for fear that the disease would spread, but Leofwine had looked upon his mother's rashy, mishappen and blistered face before her passing, filled with an odd combination of sorrow and disgust. As a corpse, she didn't look any better, but at least she was free of the flaring pain. Of the scorn of being a Pig's whore.
Yet, there was an odd sensation. Leofwine couldn't place it, but his heart seemed to be lighter.
Randolph's condition soon started to worsen and with it, his mind faltered. In response, Leofwine was taken under the wing of the very Doctor who treated his mother out of charity.
Doctor Chadwick Ecclestone, an exemplary man of social status and marked compassion; he welcomed Leofwine into his home like he was family and had Randolph interred in a personal sickroom for aggressive treatments of mercury and Guaiacum resin; despite Randolph's denial of pain, he was always bleeding from the sores, and he was beginning to show the same odd lumps in his face.
Under Dr. Ecclestone's roof, Leofwine hardly saw his father, and preferred it that way; the sight of his wretched, medically induced spewing and his pox-ridden viscera filled him with instinctive revulsion. Instead, he'd busy his mornings with his new playmate, Gleda Ecclestone, the intelligent and naturally charming daughter of the doctor.
Leofwine was already smitten, and his affections only grew as he reached his teens.
When he wasn't reading or playing with Gleda, he would join Dr. Ecclestone any chance they could spare an evening in the woods; Dr. Ecclestone was an avid hunter, something usually only permitted for nobility or tradesmen, but as a high-class member of the Village, he was always with a trusty spear and his sturdy snare traps.
Almost every other Evening and certainly every weekend he would bring Leofwine along for the spoils of the woodlands.
There were many lives to snuff out in the wood, but The Doctor was especially keen to share the joy of hunting wild boars with Leofwine.
Dr. Ecclestone taught Leofwine the perfect arch to toss a spear at the various wildlife they caught and the best placements for snares to capture and injure even the slyest of critters and strongest beasts.
Soon, the mighty and terrible boars of Dalton's woods began to fall to Leofwine's snares and a single, well-thrown spear.
Despite the villages initial rancor, they applauded the Doctor's "Saintly Charity" for the miserable, god forsaken wretches, and their admiration started to shine in their eyes when they spoke to Leofwine as well. No longer faces of revulsion; the people were becoming friendly, even kind.
And despite having an oddly oblong, admittedly craggy quality to his face, Leofwine was even the target of sneaking flirtations from the young girls of the village. But his heart was already set on Gleda. The only thing killing a proper confession was the pig that stared at him in the mirror every day. Despite everyone else changing their faces, his remained a woeful facade.
Over the years, Dr. Ecclestone had become more a father to Leofwine than the babbling, moaning invalid hidden away in what was now his permanent cell rather than just a sickroom. Leofwine still felt sadness and pity, watching the once proud and vigorous woodsman grow feeble and mad as the disease ate away his flesh and mind, but the support of Dr. Ecclestone and growing allure of Gleda quickly brought him peace of to his own mind when his father mercifully died.
Leofwine looked upon his father's corpse; his eyes were wide and yellow, blisters the size of groats threatened to reveal his bile-covered teeth, and the many, many red blisters transformed the remains of his face into a large, cobbled lump.
Leofwine didn't feel sad after he saw the pitiful, scab-infested ghoul lifeless on the table. He felt somehow... better. Almost happy.
His father was dead. Yet he was not sad.
Looking into the silver mirror adorning the wall, Leofwine saw his own face; It was gorgeous in comparison despite his stubby nose, his jutting brow, and his jowl-like mouth; he was beautiful. Most beautiful were his shimmering blue eyes. Not like his father's yellow pus-colored ones; they were clear and filled with a bright future.
The death of his father was the last strand tying him to that damned lineage. He had a new family. One that promised that bright future smiling back at him.
That day he asked Gleda for a day out, and the two spent all evening talking as they strolled through the village; dressed in refined clothes, arm in arm, the two were like young lovebirds.
As they walked to the ends of the village, Leofwine saw the trail that led just beyond the tree line to his former home... it had to be in quite a state... no one had bothered to go down since he and his father came to live with the Ecclestones.
"Shall we take a peek?" Gleda asked with a hint of what could have been flirtation. But Leofwine wanted nothing to do with that ramshackle hut, and the two continued on their way back home for a lovely dinner. The confession still waiting to leave Leofwine's breath, despite his newfound charisma.
It was just after his fifteenth birthday, when Leofwine woke to find a curious and ominous sight; his bed sheet, it was covered in odd brown splotches. Some perfectly circular... others smeared from his nocturnal movements...
A sudden chill broke down over his body that brough with it the grinding of his misaligned jaw. He ran to the Dresser mirror and ripped off his nightgown; terrible brown spots dotted it as well, some still had a hint of ruddy, mocking red. He turned around and looked over his shoulder to see his back covered in a fresh crop of red, weeping bumps.
Horror, dread, revulsion and utter panic ripped through him. Those spots were like graves, empty holes of nothing, round, moaning mouths that would swallow up any and all chance at a happy life.
Leofwine threw on his Nightgown and snuck into Dr. Ecclestone's medical stations. A fresh container of Mercury ointment was snatched in desperation and he began slathering any portion of his back in his reach. He stared back into the mirror, his pale face momentarily porcine with wretched horror before he shut his eyes, counting silently.
Moments became agonizing as the solution seemingly seeped traceless into his back, and he got dressed.
He carried on with his Hunting, not once daring to tell the Doctor of the flesh-rotting curse he had inherited from his bespoiled former family.
At first, the Mercury seemed to work... the bumps didn't go away, but they didn't spread either... a constant threat waiting to surge over his body and transform him into an abomination.
Leofwine turned seventeen, and just after… he began to notice Gleda's attention seemed elsewhere; no longer did her glances linger on his features, and shorter still were their conversations. His attempts to reach her seemed weak, pointless, and with that pointlessness, pinpricks started to appear from the bumps on his rashy back; like little mouths, thick with bloodied saliva, practically spitting to whisper their paranoid ramblings to his already feverish mind.
Those little graves, mouths, holes... burrowing deep into his body and tunneling into his mind; why was she ignoring him? He was beautiful... he wasn't dead. He wasn't a pus ball like that Pig and His whore. He was... he was...
That sudden thought brought with it a sudden contradiction; he was so beautiful, yet so ugly. So so ugly. It just wasn't out yet. It was waiting... soon he'd be like them. The Wretched Rakes, all in a row, all in their little holes.
He laughed at the utter absurdity. He was better than that. He was.
He doubled his efforts, every day insisting to take Gleda on a stroll, always the charmer to her and to all he came across, even to the lowly peasants that took up a majority of the trough called Dalton. He began to grow cocksure, laying odd and sometimes nonsensical snares to one-up Dr. Ecclestone in the hunt for game, yet somehow showing his methods to be exacting and even superior.
He would be the best. He would be beautiful and utterly perfect.
He didn't even realize the state of his brain. Those little holes weren't just on his back... they were in his brain. Eating little tunnels through his mind and filling it with madness. A madness that lusted for more and more. Each kill in the hunt seemed to make another little hole, another grave in that maddening, lusting, network in his withering brain that. And those holes, those mouths, they ate and killed his rationality, killed his inhibitions, killed his former self and instead filled him with a brimming, pestilent need to fill all those dead qualities.
He didn't even see that his own face was starting to grow lumpy. The bones seemed to swell and dimple, marring his skin, and bringing great concern to Gleda and The Watchful Doctor.
It all came to a head when Dr. Ecclestone introduced a third hunter to their evening game; Royce Harlan; a man that had a face like a roman statue, a man that stood with charisma that was born of natural instinct and good breeding, a man that was not the son of a pig.
Rage quickly boiled a deep red like the blisters that seeped through the ointment on Leofwine's back; a rage that blindly brought strange untoward utterances and curses to his lips despite Dr. Ecclestone and Harlan's company.
Gleda already had met Royce. She met him when Leofwine had been preoccupied for so long with stopping his perdition; they were already planning to be wed. A fact all except Leofwine seemed to be aware of.
But now it stared him in the face, mocking him. Royce, the statue of a man snatching away his rightful wife; the girl he grew with. The woman he accompanied and had every single right to court…
The holes spit like drowning cats, they sputtered and argued and screamed and filled the tunnels in his brain with blood, blood and more blood.
It was very easy for him to preemptively set up a snare the night before their next outing; Royce, despite reservations with Leofwine's ugly snarls and grueling face, wouldn't miss out on a hunting trip with his soon-to-be father-in-law. All he had to do was imply the presence of a potential trophy, just beyond the foliage with a hidden gift.
Leofwine could hardly contain the smile that threatened to reveal his weathered teeth as Royce's leg was severed nearly to the bone. Hardly contain the absolute joy and sense of freedom at watching Dr. Ecclestone try to save the man from bleeding to death. It was too deep; too deep and filled with spurting, red, liquid rage that flowed from his death and into Leofwine's Swiss-cheese brain.
'Killed Royce, Killed the pig, killed the son of a pig'.
Leofwine couldn't understand why Gleda was so upset when he attempted to interrupt her mourning. Why she screamed and told him to leave her alone. Why she refused to open her bedroom door despite his burrowing knocks and thudding kicks.
The little mouths suddenly crooned up his spine and lovingly into his ears;
'She just has to look at him... see how ugly death suits him and how beautiful life is in your face!'
"Just look at his face! It's dead, it's UGLY." He screamed, paying no heed to the maid and a furious Dr. Ecclestone. Unknown to even his own utter malicious, unyielding lust.
"The only ugliness is your utter depravity, you cretinous wretch!" Gleda shrieked in rage through the thick wooden barrier.
Leofwine didn't even notice Dr. Ecclestone and two other servants attempting to rip him from the door, until the back of his petticoat tore from the effort, and all the little round mouths mirrored that gasps of the onlooking Dr. Ecclestone and his servants.
The rotting, bloody, spitting ugliness, it finally was at the surface for all to see.
Leofwine was thrown from the premises, and he was now, for the first time, without anyone in his life. No one that loved him, at least.
His head surged, feeling as though his frothing stomach had somehow made its way to his skull; a strange sensation of utter none-self took root and grew from the faces around him.
In a muddled, crazed daze, he wandered to the woods, his bloody mouths spitting and shrieking at all who watched him in disgust. He could hear the insults; he didn't listen though. They were nothing like the shame-filled agonies of his mind.
He slowly made his way to the filthy, rotting cabin that once was his family's home... well... his former family. Now he had two former families. His head swam again, threatening to spill bile and rage as the graves began their boiled spitting again.
A ripple of hateful shame seemed to uncoil like a great serpent within his stomach before suddenly biting its own tail.
He laughed in an oddly charming, robust manner at that thought of that great black serpent eating itself, before he caught his face in his mother's dust-smeared vanity. Hideous; The pig was back and worse than ever. The nose that was once just a stub was now a lumpy knot, the mouth like a swollen, rot-filled cave entrance, and his eyes... his eyes were still so blue. So full of clarity despite the ugliness; like two windows pointed skyward in a mausoleum. He was beautiful. He can be beautiful again. The Pig doesn't get to just come back. He'll kill it like any boar he'd maimed and slaughtered so often in the past...
He needed to see Harlan's face. To kill Harlan all over again. Needed to see death take it's hold and throttle it the way the Syphilis had his mother, father, and verily his own face.
Several weeks passed; with his pestilent curse exposed, Leofwine couldn't risk being seen in public too soon... a funeral for a noble... for the King of Pigs, "Sir Royce Harlan", wouldn't be delayed, but he also needed to let the waste of death take hold of Harlan's Roman countenance.
On a night that held no witness, Leofwine crept to the Harlan crypt, and after long hours of determined desecration, uncovered Sir Royce Harlan's body. He gasped in wonder at the sight before him, and felt the bloody holes, which now had spread surreptitiously across his entire body, begin to bicker and spit in rage.
A smile. A smile on a face that was not waxy white or rotted yellow, but a smooth, cool grey.
The pig... the ghoul... it was beautiful... it was... was still a roman statue!
Harlan's face had a stone death mask places over it; a likeness so close, it was simulacrum; it was perfection... it was wrong.
Harlan defied Leofwine's promised rewards; first Gleda's hand, now his beauty...
Except that face was special. It wasn't stuck to a rotting body; it was just placed over it.
It was too easy, like the night Leofwine first stole the Mercury Ointment, his hands snatched the surprisingly light stone visage with ease. Hardly any resistance, really... and he saw Harlan's sunken grey face, the sagging lids of his eyes, the shriveled lips... it was perfect in its absolute imperfection.
"Rot." spat Leofwine, carefully placing the mask in his hunting satchel before making certain all evidence of his visit was undone.
That morning, having not slept, Leofwine dug through his family's old belongings, scrapped together all the sturdy leather straps he could, and fashioned a mask of sorts using his hunting satchel as a base; carefully threading the leather together, coarsely but caringly using thread from his mother's sewing kit, and using the studs from old boots; he fit the Death Mask to the leather, secure and snug, and lowered it over his head; ignoring the protest of his rashy cheeks.
Gazing into his mother's mirror, piercing blue eyes behind a perfect face stared back with a smile. A smile that promised everything; that promised to never rot, never grow old, never blister, and never be hated again.
But that was the perfect face that took away the hate. Leofwine needed to look at the faces... the faces like his mother, father and even Royce... he needed to see the death face, and then, and only then, can his true face be truly looked upon without hate.
Overtime, the villagers claimed to see the ghost of Royce Harlan watching from the woods; his deathly-grey face smiling with sinister reproach to all who drew near.
Around this time, people started going missing. First a few of the louder, more crass peasants. "Good riddance". But then Traders started turning going missing, and a dark paranoia took hold.
Weeks later, a nobleman gathering hunting boar also went missing. Seemingly vanished with the morning mist.
A young woman returned from a visit to the neighboring village that morning, claiming a nobleman with an unmoving, grey smile, accosted her from the tree line, before retreating after she heard what seemed to be a cry of pain from an unseen person further into the wood. She stated he held a very odd-looking Axe, unlike any she'd ever seen before.
That evening, Gleda Ecclestone never returned home after she was due back from a visit to a prospective courting; her horses were discovered roaming the trail and the carriage soon after abandoned in the center of the road.
Doctor Chadwick Ecclestone had search parties combing the woods; frantic in his search but refusing to believe Royce Harlan had returned for his fiancé...
The villagers came across the Rakes' cottage... it looked utterly abandoned, but the ground was oddly soft, as though all the surrounding earth was toiled and overturned.
And then, Ecclestone in a moment of anxiety for Leofwine's potential hand in his daughter's disappearance; demanded they search the cottage.
Disturbed and giving into their prejudice, the villagers stormed the ramshackle, cursing the "leprous pig son" and demanding he come before them with any information he had to offer before making a horrific discovery; the back of the cottage had been converted into one large bedroom; along all four corners of the log walls were shelves packed with human heads in various states of decay, all turned so their sightless gazes fixed to one point; the bed. Some were people from the village, others seemed to be strangers or wanderers, none of them were Gleda.
A cold, numbing fog seemed to cling to the ceiling as the villagers and Dr. Ecclestone looked on in utter horror.
The grounds were searched, and at least 31 headless bodies were dug up from the tainted soil.
There was no sign of Leofwine Rakes, or the heartbroken doctor's beloved daughter.
Power: Hunter's Prowess
The Headhunter has honed a craft that is unmatched in maiming and slaughtering unwary prey. He starts out with 10 Hunting Snares he can set up in doorways and between objects that are at least 2 meters apart or 8 Meters at the most.
While stuck in a Hunting Snare, Survivors become injured, start gaining Maim progress and must succeed slightly to moderately difficult skill checks in quick succession to remove the snare without injuring and hindering themself.
Alternatively, survivors can immediately Break the Snare by running.
Breaking a Snare causes the Survivor to gain an additional 40% Maim progress and remain Snared, but mobile with a -7% Hindered Status while the Snare is still attached.
Survivors can remove the Snare but failing a skill check or getting interrupted will fully Maim the Survivor.
The Headhunter must manually recollect his Hunting Snares. If he puts a Snared survivor in the Dying State, he automatically recovers it.
Special Status: Maimed
While Maimed, Survivors will have a Maim Gauge that steadily fills when stuck in a Hunting Snare, removing a Snare, or running with a broken snare attached. While Maimed, a Survivor cannot be fully healed until all Maim progress is healed.
A survivor cannot be healed until they are fully free of a Hunting Snare.
Special Attack: Spear Shot
The Headhunter always brings his trusty Spear on a hunt. He is able to throw it at a moderate to great length; charging it gives a further throwing range. Hitting a Survivor with a Spear Shot will injure them by a health state and force them to be staggered greatly in the direction of the Spear's trajectory, potentially knocking them away from vital safe spots.
Missing a Spear Shot results in the Spear becoming lodged into an obstacle. The Headhunter has 6 seconds to remove it before the Entity consumes it. The Headhunter regains his spear after 10 seconds.
Special State: Speared
If a Survivor is successfully Speared, they lose a health state, the Spear will stick out from their body, and they become broken.
The Survivor must remove the Spear manually or get another survivor to remove it in order to be healed. Removing the Spear causes it to be destroyed by the Entity and the Headhunter regains it after 8 seconds.
Broken does not prevent Survivors from removing Maim Progress.
Special State: Pinned
If a Survivor is close to a wall or obstacle when they get hit by a Spear Shot, they will become pinned to the obstacle and have to rapidly attempt to break free.
Breaking free causes The Spear to reappear on The Headhunter after 8 seconds.
If the headhunter attacks a pinned survivor, they are immediately put in the dying state and he instantly regains his Spear.
Another survivor can help free a pinned survivor at a faster rate.
Special Interaction: Yank
If a Survivor that has been Speared is close enough, the Headhunter can grab the spear and yank the Survivor into his grasp. A Survivor that has been speared can be pulled through windows and over vault locations.
Pray for god's mercy because thou shan't get any from me, mine own dearest. -The Headhunter
Unique Perks:
Predatory Dominance
You have a natural ability to overwhelm weaker prey.
When injuring a survivor that has not been hooked the speed boost they receive from being injured has a 30/40/50% shorter duration.
"'Tis not evil... 'tis the way it ought to be." - Leofwine
Cruel Incentive
You have been frowned upon all your life, but still you smile in grisly anticipation.
While carrying a survivor, your terror radius is reduced by 20 meters.
After hooking a survivor your terror radius remains reduced and the generator with the most progress suffers a - 100% repair speed penalty for 30 seconds.
If the generator effected by this perk is fully repaired, the survivor who completed the generator will become exhausted for 40 seconds.
"All o' thee, watching and sneering like toads; ugly and venomous at me. Come back to me!" - Leofwine
Cunning Pursuit
The heat of the chase insights a surge of obsessive effort.
When you chase a survivor that has the lowest accumulative chase time, they become the Obsession and this perk's secondary effects activate.
- The nearest pallet or vault location to the Obsession becomes blocked by the entity for 5 seconds.
- You gain a 3% Haste after 5 seconds of accumulative chase.
- You keep the 3% Haste status after the chase ends for 12 seconds.
"On mine own shelf, or haply the bedside. We shan't sleep a wink tonight, mine own dear." - Leofwine
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