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[isolophobia]

Name: Angel
Contact Info: angelcide or journal PM
Other Characters Played: None
Preferred Apartment: None

Character Name: Pitch Black
Canon: Rise of the Guardians
Canon Point: Using movie canon, but will likely draw on “The Guardians of Childhood” book series and supplementary media to fill in some gaps.

Background/History: Pitch Black started life as Kozmotis Pitchiner. A general in Tsar Lunanoff's army, and a very capable warrior who volunteered to take on the responsibility of guarding the then-imprisoned Living Shadows. But the fearlings and the nightmare men would whisper, plead, threaten and cajole their captor constantly. The only thing that kept Kozmotis from losing his mind were thoughts of his daughter, Seraphina, who's picture he kept in a locket around his neck. But, the Living Shadows sensed the weakness in him and one day imitated the voice of Seraphina. Kozmotis was hypnotized, and became convinced that Seraphina had somehow been imprisoned with the fearlings and nightmare men. Frantic to release her, he opened the doors - and ten thousand shadows rushed out to meet him. Though he fought against the possession, the fearlings and nightmare men took control of Kozmotis, and made him forget all about Seraphina, and the life he had before.

Thus Kozmotis Pitchiner became Pitch Black.

Twisted by the shadows, Pitch sought to destroy everything that Kozmotis had sworn to uphold and protect. He led his army of shadows across the stars, and consumed the dreams of entire planets, leaving fear and misery behind him. Pitch then hatched a plan to turn the infant Lunanoff Prince into his Prince of Nightmares. To flee him, the Lunanoff family set sail for Earth but Pitch pursued. The resulting confrontation ended in a huge explosion that simultaneously killed the Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff and stranded a severely weakened Pitch on earth.

Over the centuries, Pitch slowly recovered, but being stranded on earth changed him. He found a purpose in actually fulfilling a vital role to the growing planet, could inspire fear and respect far and wide, and therefore had an endless supply of dreams to consume.

He walked battlefields, dropped in on asylums, haunted witch trials and everywhere his name was known in whispers or nightmares. Thus, giving rise to his title of The Boogeyman.

But, the Dark Ages came to an end when the Man in the Moon chose four spirits to become the Guardians of dreams, hope, memory, and wonder respectively. At first, the idea had been to balance out fear, and thus the Guardians initially asked Pitch to join them. But once Nicholas St. North explained that the Guardian's purpose was to protect the belief of children, Pitch stated that his purpose would not be dictated by children, and he therefore wanted no part of the Guardians.

Fear gained strength after that, turning to hysteria and leaving great misery in it’s wake. Too much fear makes people act stupid, and Pitch Black is no exception; he gloried in his own power, selfish in the pursuit of enhancing his own ego. Hope, wonder, memory and dreams pushed back against the tide of fear for many years, and as Pitch watched his power being challenged, he grew angry and vindictive.
The last great battle between Pitch Black and the Guardians was staged in the skies above Basel in 1566, and at the time Pitch was sure that he was battling for his own survival. The Nightmare King lost that battle pretty spectacularly and Pitch was severely weakened, having committed too much of his shadows at once. He was, therefore, forced underground.

For centuries, Pitch was forced to hide from the Guardians, lurking under beds and in closets in order to feed off the fear of the dwindling numbers of children who did believe in him. Utterly alone, and mostly powerless, Pitch watched the world of spirits and humans equally, and soon came to long for the power he once had. More than that, he longed for an end to his solitude, his loneliness - he longed for a family that would accept him as he was; shadows, bad attitude and all. But the epiphany was late, the Nightmare King too weak, and so that longing turned into bitter jealousy instead.

Pitch did eventually figure out how to fight back, as well. It was mostly by accident, but one night while dream gathering, Pitch accidentally ran into some of the Sandman's dreamsand delivering good dreams to children. Panicked by the light, Pitch tried to push it away...and discovered that he could turn the golden sand black. The black sand became infused with a fearling and thus Pitch created his very first physical Nightmare.

So Pitch laid his plans, and slowly gathered more corrupted dreamsand, and more Nightmares. For years Pitch waited, and gathered his strength, until he had an army of dreamsand-created Nightmares, and was able to launch another attack on the Guardians specifically. He came close to success this time, even “killing” the Sandmand and absorbing the rest of the dreamsand for a little while. But, even after all those centuries, the cycle still ended in Pitch being defeated and stripped of the fearful belief he’d gained.

ROTG wiki link for Pitch.


Personality: Pitch Black is exactly what he says he is; the embodiment of fear. He not only inspires it in others through nightmares, but thrives on fear, especially the purity of fear in children. Pitch takes his work very seriously, though it’s more that Pitch is his job, and the job is Pitch. Being the Boogeyman isn’t easy, and when the power that sustains you is fading because belief that the Boogeyman is real is dwindling, it gets really tough.
When surrounded by fear, Pitch is strong, smug and at the top of his game. He may be a bit prone to gloating, but when Pitch feels believed in, he’s happy. When deprived of belief and denied his powers, he gets desperate. He will overreact to the slightest provocation - real or imagined - and try to lash out at anyone who he even thinks is opposing him.

After centuries of isolation, Pitch now tries to keep to himself. He pretends that he does it because he doesn’t like the company of others – spirits or otherwise – but the truth is that he just doesn’t know how to act around people anymore. He is desperately lonely, but after so many centuries of rejection, he’s become very bitter, cynical, and vindictive. Being suspicious and paranoid by nature doesn’t help either, since anytime others have made an attempt at extending sympathy toward Pitch, he’s taken it to be some form of pity and resented the implication that he’s weak enough to need it. So he has no problem telling anyone who will listen that he’s tired of being cast off, and forced to live on the edge of shadows, but doesn’t actually know what to do with someone being honestly friendly toward him.

Being able to read the deepest, darkest fears of anyone he meets also means Pitch tends to see the worst parts of other people before anything else. It affects his view of others, and Pitch is definitely not above using what he knows to manipulate others should he feel that it would further his goals. Pitch tends to think of most morality as a human construct, and therefore insignificant, but he does have a pretty staggering double standard when it comes to betrayal. If Pitch uses what he knows against someone else, he thinks of it as ‘necessary’, but if others attempt to do the same to Pitch? He sees it as an unforgivable offense.

Pitch is about as prickly as it gets, but he’s not without his own sense of humor, or even fun. It’s just that Pitch’s ideas on “fun” tend to be pretty different from the norm. He’s the sort to appreciate gallows humor, or to laugh at a little boy being chased down by wild dogs. It’s not that he particularly sees death as funny, but rather sees the fear of death as entertaining. He has no need to kill children, and actually thinks it's counter productive to his goals since a dead child doesn't feel fear anymore. He does enjoy talking with writers, though. Especially authors of horror stories because they can create whole worlds of fear with nothing but their imaginations.

Being seen as weak is another reason why Pitch often gets a little carried away when he does get involved in battle. In the movie; Pitch sent all of his Nightmares in a massive wave to attack first the Tooth Palace, then later on to attack a single Guardian. Pitch Black may be the Boogeyman, but he still feels fear, maybe even more intensely because of who he is. It’s just that Pitch’s fears all have to do with being weakened, not believed in, and forgotten. No surprise, then, that Pitch prefers to go one on one, especially when he’s surrounded by his army of Nightmares. It makes him feel powerful and in control, but he will drop into a handy shadow when he feels he's cornered or outmatched. He has the same habit outside of combat, preferring to keep his Nightmares close at hand as much as possible so he can try to hide from his own fears of being forgotten again by telling himself that he isn't completely powerless. Likewise he will teleport in and out of shadows while just in conversation in order to feel strong, and keep himself out of immediate physical contact.

Pitch Black is essentially caught in the vicious cycle of believing that being feared and hated is the "natural order", but so lonely that he keeps attempting to have contact with others. It almost always ends in frightened children, and angry Guardians chasing him off, but he still secretly hopes that one day he will find someone that accepts him as he is. Though, Pitch still hasn't quite figured out that it's not being an embodiment of fear that causes most of his problems, but rather his own insecurity leading to abrasive or just downright mean behavior.

Abilities/Powers:

Nightmares; These are dreams that Pitch has since added “a touch of fear” to in order to create creatures made from swirling Black Sand. They appear to be almost skeletal, horse-like creatures with bright glowing eyes and swirling manes that both fly and can shadow-step. Similarly, he can dissolve the Nightmare back into component dreamsand in order to use it for other things. In the movie it’s implied that Pitch’s power to create Nightmares is only limited by the amount of children’s fear he has access to.

Black Sand; This stuff is what Pitch makes almost everything he needs out of. In the movie, it’s predominantly used to make weapons or amorphous, thick swirls to block Jack’s frost lightening. Pitch is also seen to make a scythe from black dreamsand, and later an arrow.

Obtenebration ( Shadow step ); Pitch can teleport through shadows, though they do have to be thick enough for him to hide in. The brighter the light, the less dense the shadows, so if Pitch is caught out in a flat area during daylight, he will be unable to use this ability. Similarly at night, when there’s deep shadows cast by streetlights, or even the moon, Pitch can move great distances through the shadows with relative ease. Generally any shadow he is “occupying” also changes shape to resemble Pitch.

Fear Reading; As he states in the movie “It’s the one thing I always know; people’s greatest fears”. It’s an almost telepathic ability, but Pitch can sense the deepest, darkest fears in others. Even fears that people don’t even want to admit to themselves. For gameplay purposes, this ability will be okayed by the other player before put into practice.

Touch of Fear; Pitch can “feed” off the fear of children the most, because their hearts are the most pure. But he can also inspire fear through direct physical contact. The level of fear he can inspire depends on the person, and the situation, but it can range from a mildly startled tingle to full blown terror. Again, this is something that would be okayed with other players on a case by case basis before ever being used in gameplay.

Items/Weapons: Just his own shadowy “clothes”.

Sample Entry: dear_mun post

Sample Entry Two: Butterflies. Small, fluttering, golden butterflies were still finding their way into his lair every night.

At first, Pitch thought it must have been some personal taunt. The Sandman's constant reminder that Pitch had failed, that his army was defeated, and the Nightmare King imprisoned within his own lair - as if Pitch could ever forget. He would simply glare daggers at the gold dreamsand-created insects, and swat at them until their butter-golden wings curled into sharp black wasp shapes, or they dissolved back into inert sand.

But they kept coming. And over time they started to flutter their way through the shadowy passages of Pitch's lair, and scare away the fearlings in their path. Until, eventually, Pitch stopped swatting them away immediate. Over time, he even managed to learn how to ignore them since their arrival was as regular as clockwork.

And then during the early pre-dawn hours of a seemingly random night, a golden butterfly found Pitch asleep in the broken slabs of granite that made up his throne.

Most spirits did not need to sleep in the same way that humans did, and when they did sleep they ignored any form of normal Circadian rhythm. Silent, and still, Pitch Black slept while the golden butterfly fluttered down to rest lightly on his shoulder.

For the first time in hundreds of years, Pitch dreamed. Not a dream of fear and darkness, either. A real dream, a good dream...and maybe more to do with memory than Pitch realized?

A girl with sparkling eyes and clouds of black ringlets ran ahead. Her dress was of soft silks, the palest shade of summer green, but she chased after the quick luna moths with a delighted giggle. Twirling in place, she raised her hands until the moths were too charmed, and drifted down to rest on the tips of her fingers.

"They made the sash for your dress."

She turned at the sound of the voice, black curls framing doll-like features. Her smile was bright enough to rival all the stars in the sky. Just seeing it was proof enough that home was wherever she went.

"Father!"

With a soft flutter of her fingers the moths took flight again, and the swish of green skirts swirled around her legs. Her feet barely touched the ground as she came closer, and raised her arms to offer a hug.

"I've missed you, father."

Pitch woke with a start, tensing up as his arms tried to raise and return the phantom feeling of a hug. The hot, sandpaper muzzle of a Nightmare bent toward him, golden butterfly wings curling away into black wisps at the corners of it's mouth where the Nightmare had snapped it up a moment before. The view wavered strangely, and the Nightmare's ears pricked forward at him. Pitch blinked...and was surprised by the damp feeling on his cheeks.

Raising a shaking hand, he wiped away tears but could only regard them with utter confusion. He felt a prickle of uneasy fear, and quickly pushed it aside. What was that? Sandy's idea of some obtuse message? A taunt? A threat?

Pitch's expression darkened, eyes turning cold and hard as the gemstones they mimicked, and pushed himself out of his throne with a hiss.

"How dare Sandy try to push me like this. It's bad enough that I am back to scraping what fear I can from under beds and in closets!"

Pitch balled his hands into fists and started to pace as he spoke to the shadows creeping their way across the floor. Some were writhing in his wake, disturbed by his anger. Pitch stopped abruptly, and glanced at the multiplying number of Nightmares with only a flicker of apprehension visible on his features.

"...they can't get rid of me. Not forever. And certainly not with a few silly dreams."

But whether he was trying to placate the fearlings, or telling himself a comfortable fiction to soothe his own fear? That was up for debate.