Morbidly, Digby was interested in the human rituals of putting away the dead from a very young age. It started after his grandmother died when he was six, Digby loved her very much and while trying to console him his mother had explained that grandma would never be very far away. That she would, in fact, live on inside of him as long as he remembered her. The next day at school he got in a fight with another student over the veracity of this belief and was suspended for knocking out one of the other boy’s teeth. Nonetheless the seed had been planted.
Digby voraciously consumed any information about the afterlife he could get his hands on, much to the dismay of his parents and teachers. What they took for a fascination with death was him looking for verification, Digby wanted to find out whether what his mother or what the other boy had said (or something else entirely) was true. He read about the Egyptian Duat, the Norse Valhalla, the Chinese Diyu and a host of others. Ancestor worship and retainer sacrifice both tickled something like what he was trying to wrap his young brain around, but without further information Digby felt like he was barking up the wrong tree. When nothing terrible happened his family and teachers resigned themselves to the fact that Digby was just odd and there wasn’t anything to be done except remind him that certain subjects were off-limits at the dinner table.
Digby remained in this fog for eight years. It faded over time as other concerns came to the fore; school, friends, hobbies, girls, but it never left his mind. It was ninth grade biology class that provided the final puzzle piece he needed for the epiphany that would dictate the rest of his life.
In the 1950s and 60s experiments were conducted on planarian flatworms: worms trained to react to a bright light with electric shocks were ground and fed to untrained worms, who then came to associate the bright light with the electric shock much faster than those who were not. The proposed argument was that biochemically, memory, learned behaviour, all the things that made up the mind of the original worm could be passed on and reconstituted in a new host if they were digested by them. That the experiments couldn’t be replicated and were ultimately discounted fell on deaf ears, Digby had his revelation.
Today he works as the town mortician (something everyone would’ve guessed if there’d been a “most likely to...” category for it) at Ganderson & Sons, Undertakers. His former employer Old Man Ganderson left him the place in his will, having never had children of his own to pass it on to. Digby does an impeccable job of it too, everything just so and not a hair out of place. It’s easy when someone with a lifetime of experience is looking over your shoulder.
Digby has been eating the dead since he started his job, specifically just he eats the brains, and this lets him talk to them. There are 34 other people inside his head and every one of them has laid on his embalming table. Some don’t like it but most of them understand what he’s done, by listening to them he’s been able to anonymously provide closure to dozens of people and fulfil ambitions that went unrealised in life. That he lives in solitude doesn’t bother Digby, he’s never really alone.
Uninterrupted he would continue this way forever: accruing more people for the choir inside his head until he is caught, dies or finds someone else to carry on his work. Unfortunately a problem that’s come up threatens to bring one of these conclusions around sooner than he anticipated. Three nights ago someone broke into the undertaker’s, sneaked upstairs and attacked him in his bed. Digby killed her (actually one of the choir did the honours). So now he has the corpse of an unknown woman, who was toting some very odd and concerning personal effects, chilling in one of the downstairs freezers.
Digby doesn’t know what to do with her, he’s never killed anyone before. Who was she? Why did she break in and attack him? Will there be others? He could quite easily dispose of her corpse in the crematorium. No one has come snooping around or asking any questions, yet. He could also use his particular talent to find out exactly what is going on. Digby’s not sure he wants that, the consensus among the choir is split too.
He wishes grandma were here to tell him what to do.
STATS
Personality: Bookish and a bit wooden when caught off-guard. Digby looks much younger than his 38 years and uses his boyish appearance to appear earnestly sympathetic with his clientele. It's not entirely untrue, he just secretly laments that no one else would understand the second lease on life he has given his choir.
Rage: Disrespecting places of burial. There are people who will never get the chance to be anymore, giving their passing the respect it deserves is paramount.
Noble: Let people have their beliefs. Digby understands how comforting lies can be more important than uncomfortable truths and won’t push anyone to abandon theirs unless they are hurting someone.
Fear: That when he dies no one will be there to take on him and his people (Unnatural).
Obsession: Let others live on inside of him.
Wound Threshold: 50.
Cannibal 55% (Substitutes for Lie, Substitutes for Secrecy, Protects Self).
Planarian Recall 50%* (Versatility: Eaten Minds, Casts Rituals, Use Gutter Magick).
Undertaker 55% (Substitutes for Connect, Medical, Protects Violence).
Shock Gauges
Notches
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Violence
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Unnatural
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Helplessness
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Isolation
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Self
|
Hardened
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5
|
3
|
1
|
1
|
5
|
Failed
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
2
|
2
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