Viscount Hethwell

Viscount Hethwell is a character in The Fearsome Encounter.

Race:
They're vaguely person-sized clouds of sentient mist whose strength is directly proportional to the thickness of the smoke. Generally, they vary in colour; the Viscount is about the same as his text colour.

Biography:
The Viscount was born in the usual smoke-race way, whatever that may be, and instead of fading quickly away, he turned and ate his parents' memories of him. This garnered him the local equivalent of fame, and every smoke-person who had heard of his actions was suddenly a meal waiting to happen. He managed to live for several years before he was picked up by the Controller, who put him to work doing things that a smoke-being was good at. In exchange, he was fed, and the Controller would occasionally even reward the paranoid little freak with some sort of fakey, made-up "failsafe" that would somehow keep the smoke-guy's nonexistent plans safe. He came to admire the Controller, who in turn allowed him to believe that he was somehow important to him and not just an occasionally-useful pawn.

Description:
The Viscount is two things above all others: paranoid and hungry. To a lesser extent, he's also loyal to the Controller and jealous of those he sees as competition.

Items/Abilities:
The Viscount, as with all of his people, is capable of consuming a limited subset of memories- only those pertaining to him. He only ever removes the part about him- even if what's left doesn't make much sense (though the brain usually does what it can to cover up the holes), the victim won't remember the Viscount in those events. Trouble is, he can only remove memories that are over a few seconds old, so he cannot logically remove the actual act of removing memories (which usually involves swirling around the target's head a bit). He tries not to eat when he doesn't need to (as then they'd remember him doing so and would be liable to be suspicious of him, which could get them to figure out all those carefully-laid plans he definitely has). He does get oh so hungry sometimes, though.