Devilfish:Hatman

The Hatman
Woefully without his Hat
Reputation	Notoriety Criminal D / -
Author	/u/Magos_Nashoid (capes)
Pronouns	he/him, they/them
Civilian name	Louis Burnside
Alignment	Villain
Affiliation	None (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Breaker/Changer (sub Mover, Brute), Thinker, Stranger
Status	Active
Other names	The Hat man, Hat man, Louie, The Window Man
Reddit Sheet

/u/Magos_Nashoid

Having been around since at least 2006, he was largely considered a creepypasta or urban myth. Noted for stalking his victims & causing intense paranoia from catching glimpses of him at a distance

In 2016 he was confirmed as real by the PRT, following the maiming of a mugger who attempted to rob his current victim. Who released a statement to contact them if they or anyone they know has reported sightings. Since then, he has been sighted in states including: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota, and most recently Minnesota.

Character Sheet

Appearance

He has been discribed as an extremely tall & human shaped, though this isn't nessicarily always the case, more akin to a meerkat standing up. He wears a large cloth covering, usually a sheet, tarp, or quilt, usually several layers of them, typically patchwork with field repairs

This covering has no clear eye holes, though slits are made in the layers, for him to slip limbs through as needed. When standing at his tallest, his legs can be seen peeking out from under his cloak. The arms and legs that do get seen are insectioid, grasping claws, pincers, scorpion tails, mantid scythes, arachnid spinnerets, antennae, and feelers.

Mentality

Louis was an amateur author, and a literary major. It was a deeply held belief of his that fiction writing is one of the best metrics to judge the things of significance of a culture or a particular era. Louis liked cats, taking care of the strays in his neighborhood growing up. Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, & Isaac Asimov are amongst the biggest influences that literature had on his life.

Thoughtfulness was his defining trait Post-trigger Louis is very much a victim of his own shard, along with removing all physical similarity between him & humanity, it also browbeat his personality into submission.

Many of the unimportant little things that make a person human, has been burnt out by his shard, or suppressed til they are relevant to his digging for secrets, leaving him frequently confused if his power doesn't reveal something, or he can't quite recall the relevance of something. Curiosity is his defining trait now, obsessive curiosity, the need to know, the kind of curiosity that lets you sit still for hours, or stand in the rain til your soaked to the bone because your target's house has no trees nearby.

Skills and Specializations

• Literary Major: In-depth knowledge of tropes, literary analysis, and the classics, buried pretty deep, but scraps of this can come to the surface occasionally, more so if its relevant to a mystery he's unraveling.
• Calligraphy & sketching: One skill that carried over pretty much undamaged, no doubt due to its usefulness for recording notes and physical appearances without a camera.
• Pre-trigger Hand-to-Hand: Karate lessons as a teenager, & later a bit of boxing from his father to better protect his sister. Not the best for his anatomy, mostly knowing where to hit, and how to pull a punch, sweep legs, or do a good grab.
• Post-trigger Hand-to-Hand: Whirring claws, scythes, and stingers like a demented chitinous blender is something of an art, & he's good at it. how to perform grapples with gripping limbs and pincers without maiming is something he's taken great care to learn.
• Climbing & Clinging: Wall crawling is second nature, ceilings can be more annoying if he's too large, & at his biggest sometimes a running skitter is the only way, he knows how to find and feel the best handholds, better yet, how to do it quietly.
• Investigation: He's grown quite experienced at puzzling out mysteries, his power does the heavy lifting, both feeding info, and increasing his baseline intellect, but experience, practice, & genuine passion have made him quite formidable at Investigating what you might prefer to keep hidden.

Equipment and Resources

Wealth Level: 3

• He has a few dufflebags full of supplies.
• Writing Utensils, handwritten journals, multi-tools.
• A pair of Polaroid cameras, extra film, ziplocks of photos.
• Copies of Pet Sematary, Feet of Clay, & a two worn Aismov anthologies.
• Massive mismatched sewing kit, thread, handspun spools of spiderweb.
• Bundles of scavenged cloth, several camping tarps.
• Catfood (for the stray cats)
• Couple of Butane Torches, Matches, Lighters, flint/tinder, firestarter logs.
• Medical sutures, sterile thread & needle, cleaning alcohol & peroxide.

Equipment while out and about:

• some of his medical supplies
• one of his torches & lighters
• couple cans of catfood
• polaroid camera, a journal, and film.

Power

Trigger: Double Trigger (Breaker/Changer sub Thinker/Stranger) Louis has a far deeper connection to his shard than the majority of parahumans. This is largely due to the circumstances of his trigger, being caught in a temporal field with partial awareness, leading his shard to repeatedly reconnect & disconnect, before finally connecting with brute force once the temporal field weakened enough over time.

His personality (much of it) & body left permanently alien and inhuman.

Breaker/Changer Aspect: Louis's body is a large non-euclidean & fractal mass of constantly shifting limbs & sensory organs.

• [Anti-Perception:]The human and parahuman mind cannot entirely comprehend his fractal center-of-mass, leading to painful headaches & nosebleeds, which are even more agonizing for thinkers, he is literally indescribable with the mind recognizing that he is made of limbs & eyes, but unable to assign further detail to it.
• [Feedback:]Louis himself receives some minor unpleasant mental feedback, covering himself, leaving only his outermost limbs unveiled.
• [Limbs:]The limbs that make up his form are all Insectoid (& Arthropod/Arachnid/Crustacean), ranging in true-scale for the insects they are based on, to multiple meter long scything claws, pincers, & gripping claws. (no poison in stingers, but web and silk spinnerets do work).
• [Sensory:]The sensory organs however cover the entire animal kingdom & humanity. with eyes, ears, antennae, taste & scent receptors, & even exotic sensory organs from bats, sharks, & dolphins (echolocation & magneto/electroreception).
• [Shifting:]Louis can 'unfold' his fractal form to access what limbs and sensors he needs for any given moment, and has no real limit to the number of these limbs and sensors he can 'unfold' beyond what can fit on him at one time.

Brute & Mover sub-ratings:

• [Size/Weight:] His size varies based on how much he 'unfolds' of himself at a time, and weighing far far less than his bulk should. Ranging in size between 'large human male' (Approx 50 pounds) to 'Average Sedan' (Approx 300lbs). Takes roughly 6 or 7 seconds to reconfigure himself to a larger size than he was previously, double that if he's going for very specific configuration of limbs & organs.
• [Strength:] Louis's strength allows him to carry roughly triple his own current weight, while his strikes are less impressive,a bit stronger than you'd expect from the average manual laborer in a fistfight, albeit with fists made of hard chitin.
• [Durability:] His chitin is quite tough, like plastic from heavy duty Tupperware at its thinnest, & more like sheet metal at its thickest, he has no real organs to speak of, but his wounds do lightly bleed a strange grey ichor.
• [Breathing/Eating:]Having no mouth, breathing & eating are outside his scope of capabilities, speaking via vibrating his central mass.
• [Healing:] He can 'fold' wounded bits back into himself, but its more difficult/time consuming, not "slotting into place" quite right, major damage/removal of limbs without staunching or cauterizing it, leaves risk of bleeding out before he can fold things away & unfold new limbs.
• (Example for a healing Baseline:) Broken/Maimed Limb = around 1 or 2 turns to fold away, possibly double (3 or 4) if damaged in multiple spots along length. Two identical damaged limbs doesn't double the time, as folding can be done simultaneously within reason, too many damaged needs prioritization. piercing, chopping, & slicing wounds that would bleed can risk excessive bloodloss if he doesn't/can't staunch/stem the bleeding before he can fold them away completely.
• [Climbing:] Louis is excellent at climbing & clinging to walls, at his smallest level of unfolding he can cling to ceilings, at his largest level of 'unfolding' he can only cling if he has particularly good handholds, otherwise he needs to use momentum to help scale a wall.
• [Running:] Running is likewise relatively easy for him, he's not gonna make it to highway speeds, but catching up to a motorist on a moped, or a rider on a horse is very much feasible for him.
• [Jumping:] His long limbs are great at jumping, & he can 'unfold' mid-motion, akin almost to a grasshopper, jumping into a1st story roof easily, & 2nd story with good footing or momentum behind his leap.

Thinker Aspect: Louis's entire body acts as something like a receiver for observation, his shard granting a perfect memory, and a boost to his processing and reasoning. His power allows him to detect what he has come to call 'Insight' 'Insight' takes the form of several types of information:

• The purpose of an object or device. (manifests as direct information)
• The significance of an object or device to a person or group of his choice. (manifests as direct information)
• The significance of a location to a person or group of his choice. (manifests as direct information)
• The familiarity of a person to another person or group of his choice. (manifests as direct information)
• The presence of something physically hidden. (Visible aura, scales with significance of what is hidden to the one who hid it)
• The presence of something being concealed or kept secret. (Visible aura around a person, scales with significance of secret.)

Backstory

Louse had done well for himself, at least that's what he felt after getting his life together, University had been rewarding to finish, his current rough draft was coming along nice for his novel.

What sucked most about being caught in a villain attack, was that he wasn't even the intended target, just a bystander caught in it. He'd never even heard of the villain, hell he might not have had a name yet, the costume certainly seemed scraped together.

Caught in some kind of time field, his awareness was something that came and went, sometimes it felt faster, or slower, or like being drunk, or on some-kind of upper or party-drug. but usually it was just dull. Watching through your own eyes as the world outside of the little plaza moved on. He'd have thought the government would've built some-kind of monitoring station around the field, he wasn't even the only one caught in it.

But it seemed that they hadn't even bothered, the plaza just set up some barriers, & let everything get back to normal.

His favorite activity was to watch people, when he was cognizant enough to think without internal screaming. Make up little stories for the people he saw more than once, imagine what their lives were like, if he got out one day, he might write a book with some of the ideas.

...

He didn't know how long it'd been, but he thought he'd seen christmas decorations at least 10 times. 10 years? had he missed a few during his less lucid periods? not knowing was driving him even more mad than he was already.

...

Something had changed, he could hear things better, less muffled, the PRT was back, with machines. He made up stories about the little heroes with their armor and devices, stories about solving mysteries and saving lives. ... They had celebrated another Christmas, and their were more machines now. His hearing had gotten better overtime. And all at once it was deafening, it was blinding, it was indescribable, two massive forms flashing through his mind, things of such indescribable beauty and horror and intrigue.

Everything was wrong, he could move, but there was so much of him now, folded and folded and folded and folded and folded like a fractal, so many view points, so many smells, and sounds, and fields of indescribable pressure. He wasn't alone there was others near him, monsters, his brain shouting details about them, about the panicked heroes in their armor, about the men in suits with machines.

He ran. with more legs than could be counted, with more eyes and feelers than he could handle. When he stopped running he realized that he didn't feel right, he knew he was Louis, he liked books. he liked watching the little people outside his bubble. he new he wasn't normal, and hadn't been for a long long long time, many Christmas's ago.

BREAKING NEWS: The Rolland Plaza Distortion, left behind following a fight between the now deceased supervillain Superimpose and the Protectorate, has collapsed.

The distortion has been left there, monitored, but untouched for over 15 years, the opaque bubble of shimmering green and blue, had become something of a public monument. It is now believed that it contained victims of Superimpose in a form of stasis.

The protectorate has detained three of the victims, all in various states of mutation and mental distress, and are hoping to rehabilitate them. 3 additional victims have fled, visual descriptions of two of them are made available [here] please call the PRT if sighted, they are disoriented and need help, please keep your distance.

Relevant Lore snippet

[Snippet from a larger article about how capes have affected pop culture, beyond the corporate sphere:]

WHO IS THE HATMAN by BaphometLives

The Twitching Watcher, The Window Man, The Hatman:

Much of his early career is shrouded in mystery.

Several of his earliest confirmed stalking victims have documented their encounters online, some having been watched for days, some for months. Most were believed to be roleplaying, or writing "creepypasta", a form of short story written by certain subsets of the horror-fiction community online.

While never growing to the viral heights of popularity such as figures like 'The Rake' or 'Slender man' both having sparked indie games, web series, and even feature length (albeit indie) films. Hatman none the less had inspired a great number of fictional works, featuring his own dedicated tags on fanart & fanfiction sites, & dedicated discussion threads on horror image/discussion boards.

In 2016, one of the Hatman's stalking victims began documenting & recounting his encounters, which had been going on for a month prior, recording text, audio, video, and live-streaming frequently to try and convince people he wasn't joking around and doing an elaborate ARG. (Links are compiled in the comments)

This eventually culminating in the 17th phone livestream, in an urban area where he is accosted by a mugger, only for the Hatman to reveal himself in defense of his stalking victim, badly maiming the assailant. The footage of the struggle is poor quality, no doubt due to the cameraman's panicked fleeing taking priority over documentation. This went briefly viral, with watchers praising the quality of the acting, and the production value & editing.

The following day an official news report from the PRT about the incident, confirming that he not only exists, but to contact the PRT if he sighted. The reaction to this news is mixed, vindication from former victims of his stalking, genuine horror from many. The #HATMANLIVES stayed trending for 38 hours before being buried by news from the Newest E3 game releases, and a US Senator being indicated in a insider trading scandal.

The existence of so many fabricated stories, detailed roleplay, & dramatized web-series makes going back and documenting genuine encounters from online encounters, for an official rap sheet has been largely unsuccessful. [End of relevant snippet]