Post by Jeremiah Arkham on Jul 23, 2010 17:17:37 GMT
Full Name: Dr Jeremiah Amadeus Arkham
Alias: Black Mask II
Birthday: 3rd June 1969
Age: 41
Hometown: Gotham City
Appearance: Tall and muscular, Jeremiah looks more like he should be in some kind of physical profession rather than a doctor. His hair is dark and always sleeked back from his forehead, giving him a professional look. Having travelled a fair bit, his skin is more tanned than it was in his youth when he stuck to Gotham City but Jeremiah’s most striking feature is by far his eyes. Almost jet black, they have a way of drawing people in and are incredibly seductive looking. As his wife stated they’re ‘come to bed’ eyes.
Personality: Jeremiah is a charmer, used to using his looks and wealth to get his way and thus can appear rather arrogant and self-interested. Which he is, really. He likes things to go his way and people to bend to his will. Having started with good enough intentions, Jeremiah is now incredibly bitter and lumps the insane and sane together as the ‘enemy’, making him resentful to almost everyone he meets.
Special Abilities: A trained psychologist, Jeremiah is incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable on issues of mental health. He is also well trained in martial arts and comfortable with firearms.
History: Growing up as an Arkham was not easy for Jeremiah. His father, Wolfgang Arkham, was always distant and often away on business trips or visiting mistresses under this excuse. His mother was a timid woman, whose confidence was completely destroyed by her husband’s various infidelities and though she loved her son, he reminded her of his father so she kept her distance from the young Jeremiah. The rest of the Arkham family was blighted by tragedy, that caused Jeremiah to spend a lot of time in church in his youth, attending various funerals. The first of these was his grandmother’s. Elizabeth Arkham had been battling for her sanity for years under the care of her son Amadeus but when Jeremiah was eight years old, his grandmother was found dead. The official file said that Elizabeth Arkham had slit her own throat but it was later discovered that her son had killed her upon sharing in her delusion and repressed the memory.
The death of Elizabeth Arkham seemed to set the Arkham family into a spiral of madness. Two years after the death of her mother-in-law, Jeremiah’s own mother took her life by taking a large amount of sleeping pills and dragging herself to a bath of scolding water before she could pass out. Jeremiah’s father was on a business trip and it was the young boy that discovered his mother’s body and the message she’d scratched into the wood of the front door: Arkham is doomed. Whether she meant the family, or the newly refurbished Arkham manor, now the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, was uncertain but the tabloids were loving the dark drama surrounding the affluent family and their secretive asylum.
Even after the death of Jeremiah’s mother, his father continued to be distant, leading the young boy to spend more time than was healthy with his uncle’s family, living in the asylum. Spending a lot of time alone, Jeremiah often walked around Gotham, learning every inch of the city, including the dangerous Narrows. It was on one of his explorations of the Narrows that he was to stumble on an armed robbery being executed by an escaped patient of his uncle’s. In front of Jeremiah, the gunman killed the shop owners before turning the gun on the teenage Jeremiah. Practically living within the asylum had given Jeremiah an insight into his uncle’s profession however and Jeremiah was able to talk the gunman out of killing him. However, Jeremiah did not intervene when the man turned the gun on himself and blew his brains out across the counter. The incident, though traumatic, made Jeremiah take an interest in therapy. With this goal in mind, Jeremiah attended Gotham University after high school, majoring in psychology and working at the asylum at weekends. For awhile it seemed that the Arkham family had broken their bad luck and were regaining an image of sanity. That was until the murders. Jeremiah had been out at a party with his girlfriend, Sandra Cavendish, when escaped Arkham patient Martin ‘Mad Dog’ Hawkins broke into the family home and raped and murdered Amadeus’ pregnant wife, Constance, and young daughter, Harriet.
The tragedy rocked Amadeus Arkham to the core and when Hawkins was recaptured, Jeremiah’s uncle saw a chance for revenge. After three years of extensive and exhausting therapy, Amadeus finally murdered Hawkins during an electroshock therapy session witnessed by the now-qualified Jeremiah. Though the incident was explained away as an accident, Amadeus lost all traces of sanity and after discovering that his uncle was nightly carving ancient runes into the floor while wearing his mother’s wedding dress, Jeremiah had him committed to his own asylum. Avoiding his uncle’s cell, Jeremiah was now in charge of the asylum and used his new-found inheritance to marry Sandra and move her from the Narrows to the rooms attached to the asylum. The young couple adored each other, but could not shake the Arkham curse and Sandra suffered several devastating miscarriages that she blamed on the stress of living in Gotham. His failure to produce a child made Jeremiah doubt himself and he blamed himself for Sandra’s unhappiness, throwing himself into his work at the asylum as a self-enforced penance.
As Jeremiah became more and more detached, failing to even tell Sandra when news of his father’s death in a car accident reached him, Sandra decided to take matters into her own hands. Taking some medication used to calm delusional patients, the light-headed Sandra snuck into the cells of the asylum, seducing an inmate in the hopes that she would fall pregnant. Before leaving the cell, Sandra also gave the inmate shoelaces, knowing his instability would drive him to suicide. The next morning the inmate was found dead and nine months later, Sandra gave birth to a daughter: Dorothy Elizabeth Arkham. Jeremiah adored his little daughter but she was a sickly child, spending a lot of time in hospital. As little Dorothy’s condition worsened at the age of five, Sandra was forced to admit that Jeremiah was not her father in the hopes that her real father’s medical information may be able to save the little girl’s life. Jeremiah barely had time to come to terms with this information before Dorothy died, breaking his heart.
Dorothy Arkham was buried in an expensive ceremony, for Jeremiah still adored her as his own, even if he now knew the truth. Having not spoken to Sandra since the night Dorothy died, Jeremiah stood at his wife’s side at the funeral and resolved to make the marriage work despite her deception. Having lost Dorothy, he refused to lose his wife as well as she had only acted in an attempt to make him happy. Barely months later, Jeremiah was called into the asylum where Amadeus was finally dying, having carved runes into the walls and floor of his cell for all the years he’d been there. With his final breath, he told Jeremiah ‘Arkham is doomed. The Bat will get you too.’
Now Jeremiah was the sole heir to the Arkham fortune and the asylum but his love for it had disappeared. He drank heavily in an attempt to ease the pain of living without Dorothy and seeing Sandra existing as a shell of a woman, having driven herself to near insanity with the stress of her deception and losing her daughter. Drunken, he would walk the halls of the asylum, listening to the whispers of the deranged inmates with the weight of his uncle’s dying words on his heart. For two years, this continued, the strain eating away whatever fragments of sanity were left with Jeremiah. He became obsessed with the criminal known as ‘Black Mask’, following his crimes with an unhealthy interest. Eventually Sandra realized she had to try and intervene or her husband was going to lose his mind completely. However, she picked the wrong night to approach him. Having sat through a session with a deranged patient in the afternoon, Jeremiah was steaming drunk my midnight, sat in his office with interview tapes of his uncle’s madness playing on full volume as he described a large bat that stalked the halls of Arkham, turning its inhabitants insane.
Sandra had entered the room without being heard, thanks to the tapes, but in the darkness, Jeremiah had mistaken her shape for that of the bat his uncle spoke about. He had launched at his wife, throttling her even when he saw her face, believing the bat was tricking him. Sandra had scratched out at his hands and face until she had gone limp, the life choked out of her. It was only when sunlight streamed into the room hours later that Jeremiah finally let go of his wife’s neck and he realized what he had done. His sanity returned to him, an unforgiving hand of fate’s, and he was left sat on the floor with his wife’s dead body at his side. Knowing he would not survive as an inmate in the asylum, Jeremiah had no choice but to dispose of his wife in a less than glamorous fashion. Denied the burial her daughter had, Sandra Arkham was taken to the coat and thrown in the sea before Jeremiah declared her missing.
Unable to stay in a city where he had lost everything dear to him, including his sanity, Jeremiah fled, remaining the legal owner of the Arkham Trust but giving over all responsibility of the running and business of the place to other doctors. For nine years, Jeremiah has been travelling the world, rebuilding himself as a charming businessman and trying to escape the Arkham curse. Now however, he has decided to return to his hometown and check on the asylum that caused him so much heartache.
PB: Yannick Bisson
Alias: Black Mask II
Birthday: 3rd June 1969
Age: 41
Hometown: Gotham City
Appearance: Tall and muscular, Jeremiah looks more like he should be in some kind of physical profession rather than a doctor. His hair is dark and always sleeked back from his forehead, giving him a professional look. Having travelled a fair bit, his skin is more tanned than it was in his youth when he stuck to Gotham City but Jeremiah’s most striking feature is by far his eyes. Almost jet black, they have a way of drawing people in and are incredibly seductive looking. As his wife stated they’re ‘come to bed’ eyes.
Personality: Jeremiah is a charmer, used to using his looks and wealth to get his way and thus can appear rather arrogant and self-interested. Which he is, really. He likes things to go his way and people to bend to his will. Having started with good enough intentions, Jeremiah is now incredibly bitter and lumps the insane and sane together as the ‘enemy’, making him resentful to almost everyone he meets.
Special Abilities: A trained psychologist, Jeremiah is incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable on issues of mental health. He is also well trained in martial arts and comfortable with firearms.
History: Growing up as an Arkham was not easy for Jeremiah. His father, Wolfgang Arkham, was always distant and often away on business trips or visiting mistresses under this excuse. His mother was a timid woman, whose confidence was completely destroyed by her husband’s various infidelities and though she loved her son, he reminded her of his father so she kept her distance from the young Jeremiah. The rest of the Arkham family was blighted by tragedy, that caused Jeremiah to spend a lot of time in church in his youth, attending various funerals. The first of these was his grandmother’s. Elizabeth Arkham had been battling for her sanity for years under the care of her son Amadeus but when Jeremiah was eight years old, his grandmother was found dead. The official file said that Elizabeth Arkham had slit her own throat but it was later discovered that her son had killed her upon sharing in her delusion and repressed the memory.
The death of Elizabeth Arkham seemed to set the Arkham family into a spiral of madness. Two years after the death of her mother-in-law, Jeremiah’s own mother took her life by taking a large amount of sleeping pills and dragging herself to a bath of scolding water before she could pass out. Jeremiah’s father was on a business trip and it was the young boy that discovered his mother’s body and the message she’d scratched into the wood of the front door: Arkham is doomed. Whether she meant the family, or the newly refurbished Arkham manor, now the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, was uncertain but the tabloids were loving the dark drama surrounding the affluent family and their secretive asylum.
Even after the death of Jeremiah’s mother, his father continued to be distant, leading the young boy to spend more time than was healthy with his uncle’s family, living in the asylum. Spending a lot of time alone, Jeremiah often walked around Gotham, learning every inch of the city, including the dangerous Narrows. It was on one of his explorations of the Narrows that he was to stumble on an armed robbery being executed by an escaped patient of his uncle’s. In front of Jeremiah, the gunman killed the shop owners before turning the gun on the teenage Jeremiah. Practically living within the asylum had given Jeremiah an insight into his uncle’s profession however and Jeremiah was able to talk the gunman out of killing him. However, Jeremiah did not intervene when the man turned the gun on himself and blew his brains out across the counter. The incident, though traumatic, made Jeremiah take an interest in therapy. With this goal in mind, Jeremiah attended Gotham University after high school, majoring in psychology and working at the asylum at weekends. For awhile it seemed that the Arkham family had broken their bad luck and were regaining an image of sanity. That was until the murders. Jeremiah had been out at a party with his girlfriend, Sandra Cavendish, when escaped Arkham patient Martin ‘Mad Dog’ Hawkins broke into the family home and raped and murdered Amadeus’ pregnant wife, Constance, and young daughter, Harriet.
The tragedy rocked Amadeus Arkham to the core and when Hawkins was recaptured, Jeremiah’s uncle saw a chance for revenge. After three years of extensive and exhausting therapy, Amadeus finally murdered Hawkins during an electroshock therapy session witnessed by the now-qualified Jeremiah. Though the incident was explained away as an accident, Amadeus lost all traces of sanity and after discovering that his uncle was nightly carving ancient runes into the floor while wearing his mother’s wedding dress, Jeremiah had him committed to his own asylum. Avoiding his uncle’s cell, Jeremiah was now in charge of the asylum and used his new-found inheritance to marry Sandra and move her from the Narrows to the rooms attached to the asylum. The young couple adored each other, but could not shake the Arkham curse and Sandra suffered several devastating miscarriages that she blamed on the stress of living in Gotham. His failure to produce a child made Jeremiah doubt himself and he blamed himself for Sandra’s unhappiness, throwing himself into his work at the asylum as a self-enforced penance.
As Jeremiah became more and more detached, failing to even tell Sandra when news of his father’s death in a car accident reached him, Sandra decided to take matters into her own hands. Taking some medication used to calm delusional patients, the light-headed Sandra snuck into the cells of the asylum, seducing an inmate in the hopes that she would fall pregnant. Before leaving the cell, Sandra also gave the inmate shoelaces, knowing his instability would drive him to suicide. The next morning the inmate was found dead and nine months later, Sandra gave birth to a daughter: Dorothy Elizabeth Arkham. Jeremiah adored his little daughter but she was a sickly child, spending a lot of time in hospital. As little Dorothy’s condition worsened at the age of five, Sandra was forced to admit that Jeremiah was not her father in the hopes that her real father’s medical information may be able to save the little girl’s life. Jeremiah barely had time to come to terms with this information before Dorothy died, breaking his heart.
Dorothy Arkham was buried in an expensive ceremony, for Jeremiah still adored her as his own, even if he now knew the truth. Having not spoken to Sandra since the night Dorothy died, Jeremiah stood at his wife’s side at the funeral and resolved to make the marriage work despite her deception. Having lost Dorothy, he refused to lose his wife as well as she had only acted in an attempt to make him happy. Barely months later, Jeremiah was called into the asylum where Amadeus was finally dying, having carved runes into the walls and floor of his cell for all the years he’d been there. With his final breath, he told Jeremiah ‘Arkham is doomed. The Bat will get you too.’
Now Jeremiah was the sole heir to the Arkham fortune and the asylum but his love for it had disappeared. He drank heavily in an attempt to ease the pain of living without Dorothy and seeing Sandra existing as a shell of a woman, having driven herself to near insanity with the stress of her deception and losing her daughter. Drunken, he would walk the halls of the asylum, listening to the whispers of the deranged inmates with the weight of his uncle’s dying words on his heart. For two years, this continued, the strain eating away whatever fragments of sanity were left with Jeremiah. He became obsessed with the criminal known as ‘Black Mask’, following his crimes with an unhealthy interest. Eventually Sandra realized she had to try and intervene or her husband was going to lose his mind completely. However, she picked the wrong night to approach him. Having sat through a session with a deranged patient in the afternoon, Jeremiah was steaming drunk my midnight, sat in his office with interview tapes of his uncle’s madness playing on full volume as he described a large bat that stalked the halls of Arkham, turning its inhabitants insane.
Sandra had entered the room without being heard, thanks to the tapes, but in the darkness, Jeremiah had mistaken her shape for that of the bat his uncle spoke about. He had launched at his wife, throttling her even when he saw her face, believing the bat was tricking him. Sandra had scratched out at his hands and face until she had gone limp, the life choked out of her. It was only when sunlight streamed into the room hours later that Jeremiah finally let go of his wife’s neck and he realized what he had done. His sanity returned to him, an unforgiving hand of fate’s, and he was left sat on the floor with his wife’s dead body at his side. Knowing he would not survive as an inmate in the asylum, Jeremiah had no choice but to dispose of his wife in a less than glamorous fashion. Denied the burial her daughter had, Sandra Arkham was taken to the coat and thrown in the sea before Jeremiah declared her missing.
Unable to stay in a city where he had lost everything dear to him, including his sanity, Jeremiah fled, remaining the legal owner of the Arkham Trust but giving over all responsibility of the running and business of the place to other doctors. For nine years, Jeremiah has been travelling the world, rebuilding himself as a charming businessman and trying to escape the Arkham curse. Now however, he has decided to return to his hometown and check on the asylum that caused him so much heartache.
PB: Yannick Bisson
