Phineas J. Beauregard
Col. Phineas J. Beauregard is an agent of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense and a member of the Enhanced Talents Taskforce.
Background
Scotchmo was a colonel in the Confederate Army during the civil war. After the war, he fled the south to escape from the "justice" of the North and essentially became a desperado; his plantation had been burned during Sherman's March to the sea, his slaves had been freed. He'd lost everything and he was going to be forced to live in a South he didn't recognize anymore and be a sort of pariah within it, if he would be allowed freedom at all. He became a cattle rustler, a train robber, that sort of thing. A cowboy; when that term wasn't used in friendly company. Over time he shed the identity of Colonel Phineas J. Beauredard, scion of the South'uhn aristocracy and adopted the persona of Scotchmo, ust another black-hat bad guy. He eventually got the attention of the Texas Rangers early in the 1870's and they sent a man after him to bring him back dead or alive. Scotchmo knew the Ranger was gearing for the former rather than the latter, so he had a duel to the death with him on the long plains, and survived. The Ranger's spirit has haunted him to this day, hounding him for the Ranger star he took as spoils.
Being wanted all over the West, he had to lay low for a while and strike out for new stomping grounds. This caused him to run afoul of some injuns while searching for some ancient treasure he'd heard about that might have allowed him to exorcise the Ranger's spirit. While fighting the Redskins, who were trying to protect their sacred lands, he managed to stumble across the holy site. Before he could do any pillaging, he inadvertently woke an ancient spirit, Estsanalehi, one of the Navajo divinities, and she laid a curse upon him. She could instantly see what kind of a man he was and crafted a punishment suited just for him. It was not something that would lay him low; instead, her plan was to force him to live, to give him ample time to make amends for his lifetime of evil, cruelty and pain. Hers was a curse that might give him a chance to turn into a better man that can one day die in peace, and offer balance to the world. She laid upon him a curse of eternal life to atone for his greed and his transgressions against the freedom of people and the irreparable harm he'd done to their spirits. Scotchmo found that when he committed acts of evil, his body aged and decayed, but when he obeyed the wishes of good, kind-hearted souls, it repaired some of that decay. It took him a while to get it into his stubborn head that his path in life was quickly turning him into a ghastly, mummified ghost-skeleton, and he needed to find a way to break the curse.
So, for several decades he haunted the southwestern United States, then traveled the world attempting to learn more about the supernatural and how to break his curse. During his travels, many years passed and he saw the aftereffects of the war he'd fought in, and the changes in society all over the world. He witnessed hate and discrimination and racism. Travelling abroad, he saw it in other places, too. Apartheid in South Africa, religious persecutions, and then, the Nazis and their "final solution." His brushes with the Nazis gave him the insight to finally lift his curse and he returned to where it all started to have a showdown and get his life back...
...Except that by the time he faced off with the spirit who had cursed him, armed with what he needed to beat her and lift the curse, he'd seen so much of the world that he hated, and that hate was what he'd always been. He couldn't bring himself to vanquish the spirit just to go back to his old life and his old way of thinking. The spirit's curse had given him a chance to see the world, and himself differently, to become a better person, even if he was still a withering corpse. With that realization, he backed away from the fight and accepted his punishment as a gift and vowed to embrace it for all time, or until some evil is finally able to end him...but not without putting up one helluva fight, first.
Appearance
Scotchmo is tall and gaunt, standing at 6'6" with his boots on, but due to his withered nature, he weighs much less than one would expect. He wears a dark, long-sleeve shirt with a noose of thin rope as a bolo tie, with a shiny Texas Ranger star for a clasp, over which he wears a tattered vest. His outermost layer is a voluminous, dark gray sarape, usually worn like a cloak. His hands are covered in long-cuffed, almost furry riding gloves that, upon closer inspection look like the skin of a tarantula, and he wears black cowboy boots made of same. Covering his shoulder-length, wispy gray hair is a flat-brimmed black cowboy hat with a crow skull on the hat band at the front of the crown. He wears both his pistols on his left side, being a southpaw. One is in a low-slung speed draw holster on his hip and the other in a cross-draw holster under his arm. On his right hip is slung his cavalry saber, along with a coil of dusty rope. His black breeches are unremarkable except for their thread-bareness.
In his vest pocket he carries a bandana that he can use to cover most of his face, and a pair of spectacles with dark lenses. With these, and keeping the brim of his hat low, he can usually withstand casual scrutiny when travelling amongst the public, even if he does look extremely weird; at least he doesn't look like a skeletal, undead gunslinger.
Capabilities and Equipment
First and foremost, Scotchmo is immortal, cursed by Estsanalehi. To ensure his ability to further her will, he also heals quickly. What sort of a pawn would he be if he had to spend weeks or months on the mend after every brush with death? His unseeing eyes allow him to gaze perfectly into the darkness, and since he no longer "sees" through any physical or biological means, he is resistant to mundane attempts to blind him. Additionally he requires little sleep, an added touch that gives him more hours of the day to reflect on the life he once led and the evils that brought him to his current position. He does need to eat and drink, however. This allows him to maintain a connection to his human nature, but he usually attends to this in private if possible. For anyone to encounter his death mask of a visage would be enough. To see that same face bereft of lips and cheeks to hide the masticatory carnage of Scotchmo devouring a hamburger would be, in a word, a horror show that no one really deserves.
During his travels around the world, Scotchmo sought enchanted items that would help him in a duel with Estsanalehi, or enchantments that he could bestow on his equipment. One of these are his vestments, which provide significant protection from harm, and the Ranger star he wears to grant some spiritual defense. He has gloves and boots made of spider hide that allow him to scale sheer surfaces like an arachnid. Probably the most notable entry in his personal arsenal are his Haunted Six-Shooters, a pair of revolvers that convert regular bullets into ghost-blastin' energy bolts. For when a quieter touch is needed or when bullets run low, Scotchmo has his Ghost Blade, a cavalry saber that cuts through the soul of his enemies, but due to the spectral nature of the blade, cannot really harm inanimate objects. Lastly, the coil of rope at his hip is the Ghost Rider's Lariat, and as the legends go, it was used to catch the Devil's herd across the endless skies. He currently uses it to restrain foes who are a little too feisty, or hogtie them to keep them from running away like yella cowards.
From decades of chasing leads and learning the lore of the supernatural world hidden behind the tapestry of the world he'd known all his life, Scotchmo knows a bit about the arcane and history of the hidden world behind the veil of normalcy, and has used this knowledge to trace myths and legends in his pursuit of artefacts to aid him in his cause. His withered nature grants him an unexpected level of toughness, since normal wounds tend not to hit a body like his with the same kind of oomph. That being said, Scotchmo is an expert at playing dead, and there have been times in the past when he has used this ability to pull the wool over the eyes of a less scrupulous opponent and dry-gulch them when they least expected it.
He is a crack shot with his pistols, and can shoot a flea off a dog's behind.
