Appearance: Old N stands, in all his crustacean glory, slightly taller than the average human, and is significantly broader. His carapace is covered in all manner of clinging foulness - moss, lichens, mushrooms, strands of algae, even barnacles - which no known force has ever proved capable of prying off, and is chaotically scattered across the entirety of his body. The only exception to this uncouthness of growth is constituted by two patches of green-yellowish lichen upon his left pincer, whose astonishingly complex forms resemble a multitude of filaments gathering into respectively a spiral and a squat humanoid shape.

Gender: Incubic

Personality: If a single word were to be chosen to describe Old N, it would be "phlegmatic". The fact there is little to be found in Hell which would fail to leave him unfazed is due not so much to a wealth of experience as to the apathy which appears to pervade his being to the last synthetic fibre. Generally, his demeanour is that of someone who has been abruptly awoken from deep slumber and is eager to dismiss anything, be it the collapse of a piece of furniture or the imminent destruction of the universe, with a feeble waving of their hand and some inarticulate muttering before turning over and returning into the embrace of Morpheus. Even those things which most irritate him, namely, urgency in any guise and being disturbed in his rest, fail to elicit a proper response, and that any attempt from his side to remedy to them is doomed to half-heartedness is a foregone conclusion. That said, when he is provoked to a degree sufficient to rouse him from his eternal torpor - a feat which only the luckiest or most determined can achieve - his indifference readily transforms into anger, and he makes it a point of compunction not to stop before anything until the object of his displeasure has been thoroughly removed.

Greatest Sin: Sloth. Despite having been created to, essentially, work, Old N loathes the very name of effort with all the passion he can muster, and only resorts to it when his explicit goal is to avoid it. He has been known to slumber for decades on end when left undisturbed, and, were it up to him to decide, would gladly never make the slightest movement in his indefinitely long life.

Motivation: From his few interactions with damned souls Old N has gleaned that living humans might be easier to intimidate than dead ones and, most importantly, tend to permanently stop moving when dismembered (and make good compost, as well). His current plan is thus to reach the world of the living and kill all the humans he finds there, so that he might finally build himself a truly peaceful resting place.

Biography:

The demon who bears the nigh-unpronounceable name of Ngralarthrekhfehrrothirlakrathakr, almost invariably abbreviated to "Old N" (originally simply "N") came into being some millennia ago, when the denizens of the underworld still bothered with tormenting those who were presumably sent to them for chastisement. He was the handiwork of one particularly enterprising demonic overseer, whose intent it was to find a manner of employing Hell's rich and varied ecosystems as yet another device in the fiendish torturers' arsenal. Enter the Infernal Gardener: a creature with an unnatural aptitude for botanic crafts and abilities, physical and magical alike, enabling it to exploit the surrounding environment for all it could offer to reach its goals. Unfortunately, something went awry in the process, and, while the new crustacean demon was just as capable as he was supposed to be, he was severely lacking as far as motivation was concerned, and preferred sleeping in a warm mire over actually attending to his duties.

N spent the next centuries avoiding work as best as he could. Incidentally, despite his unenthusiastic performance, the results his efforts yielded were astoundingly better than satisfactory. The plants and fungi he sowed about his territory and let grow unchecked painfully entangled, tore and poisoned the souls tossed there; the damned he hastily buried in the ground and then promptly forgot suffered hideously in their entombment; and the screams of those he took to mangling in fits of frustration resounded most pleasingly in the air, drowning out those of his fellow-demons' own victims. Thus, he was assigned more and more "raw materials", and his more and more expedite methods wrung more and more pain from them, which caused the vicious circle to begin anew. N was beginning to seriously consider tunnelling his way to freedom from the elder demons' supervision (but could never quite gather the resolve to proceed with it), when the work-load began to grow lax as increasing numbers of demons grew tired of their routines, and eventually the overseers ruling that section proclaimed themselves kings, emperors, warlords and the likes and began warring with each other for supremacy. N seized, for once, the opportunity to quietly make his escape, and began to wander the infernal lands.

Though his needs were most unassuming - all he required was a comfortable and sufficiently fertile spot where he might lie down and surround himself with his plants, which served as a necessary protection - he encountered no lack of trouble during his subsequent peregrinations through the hellscape. The blame lay, invariably, with the realm's other inhabitants. As soon as N, by that time already Old, would find a secluded spot, a group of settlers would arrive and chase him away from there to build their outrageous houses; or else, his vegetal and fungal guardians would spread too far as he slept and encroach upon some town or the other, leading to armed expeditions evicting him from those spots as well. Amusingly, the other side of this age-spanning conflict hardly ever saw itself as being at fault, and, indeed, Old N became known as a scourge to the most peaceful and sedentary of Hell's inhabitants, even finding his way into folklore as a sort of bogeyman in some regions.

Finally, it came to the point where an exasperated victim of the incursions of Old N's plants told him that if he wanted to sleep, he ought to go into a tavern. Mildly curious, Old N wandered about until he found one; and, while the tavern itself was fairly disappointing, what he heard within it was such as to warrant his struggling curiosity's survival.

Skills: Though not as great as that of a Cambion or a demon designed for such purposes as hand-to-hand combat, Old N's strength is fairly impressive if compared to that of a normal human, though it is significantly offset by his infuriatingly slow movement pace. Additionally, his carapace is robust, rendering him quite durable, and his pincers are frighteningly effective at doubling as weapons (or shovels). His crustacean nature enables him to breathe underwater, though submerging renders him even drowsier than normal, and his training and experience have contributed to his knowledge of infernal flora reaching truly impressive levels. Lastly, Old N is capable of ingesting his own Magic Mixture without ill effects - in fact, it seems to invigorate him, though it renders his breath unacceptable even by demonic standards.



Gear:

• A worn, filthy bag containing, in a number of jars, seeds and spores of Old N's favourite plants and fungi.
• Two large metallic flasks filled with Magic Mixture.

Theme Song: Do not wake the sleeping crab...

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