The Old Man of the Marshmallow

The Old Man of the Marshmallow
Character Information
Species	Ghost
Gender	Male
Residence	Reality B-89 54-Z
Occupation	Witch
Behind the Scenes
First seen in	PROSE: The Apocryphal Journeys of Jenny Everywhere
Copyright	Aristide Twain

The “Old Man of the Marshmallow” was an “ancient evil” from Reality B-89 54-Z. He was a witch. He had another name, but wished for it never to be spoken until such a time as he became “the last mortal soul in the universe”.

Description

Physical appearance

As a ghost, the Old Man spoke in a “deep, hollow voice”. His body had a wispy, smoke-like appearance beneath the black, hooded robes in which he usually cloaked himself. He had the ability to alter his shape into a huge, monstrous one more suited to battle, with a long worm-like body and a large bat head whose mouth was lined with curving fangs. (PROSE: The Apocryphal Journeys of Jenny Everywhere)

Personality

The Old Man of the Marshmallow was arrogant and power-hungry, apparently having as his ultimate goal to wipe out all mortal life other than himself from the universe. He apparently liked to shroud himself in mystery, withholding his name from any other living being. (PROSE: The Apocryphal Journeys of Jenny Everywhere)

Powers & abilities

In life, the Old Man acquired powers greater than any other witch in Sucria at the cost of a reduced lifespan. After he was killed, his ghost retained most of this power, but could only sustain himself by draining the life-force of other witches. However, he was almost impossible to truly destroy. When he was trapped inside a cursed marshmallow by the allied witches of Sucria, it was with a full expectation that he would return one day, although the twenty years it took him were shorter than they had hoped. He did so by learning a new spell even from within his imprisonment, called All You Can Eat. (PROSE: The Apocryphal Journeys of Jenny Everywhere)

Biography

The man who would later become the “Old Man” was trained as a witch in Sucria “centuries” prior to the birth of the Sucrian Jenny Everywhere. He showed great promise at the time, but it became corrupted when a “terrible curse” was placed on him. It boosted his magical abilities “beyond all imagination” but also made him mortal, and he ended up dying in his prime, being killed in the Marsh Mallow. His ghost haunted the Marsh for hundreds of years, retaining the powers he had wielded in life and yearning to live again so he could make use of them. He began surviving as a parasite, absorbing the life-force of other witches (bit by bit, “like sucking on a piece of candy”) and becoming known as the Old Man of the Marshmallow.

Ultimately, all the witches in Sucria banded together to defeat this “ancient evil” once and for all, sparking the Great Marsh Mallow War. This culminated in a final battle where multiple brave witches were killed including Spicefinger, Sister Pond, Bat Hex and Mr Hex. Grandmother Ginger and Old Mother Westwind also participated in the War. The Old Man was defeated, his vengeful soul bound to a single marshmallow which was buried beneath the Marsh. However, the Old Man was not bound as securely as the witches believed. Throughout her childhood, he haunted the dreams of Ginger's niece Jenny, who had been born a few weeks before the end of the War and orphaned in the interim, hence being raised by Ginger herself.

Eventually, by means of a spell he'd learned during his captivity called ‘All You Can Eat’, the Old Man managed to free himself from the marshmallow. He found and killed Jenny and hid out in the Candy Forest. Meanwhile, Jenny's disappearance sparked a feud between Ginger and Westwind which drove Ginger to hide out in the Candy Forest herself. Westwind followed her a few days later, accompanied by an interdimensional adventurer who was none other than another incarnation of Jenny Everywhere who'd been directed to this world by the memories of the Jenny the Old Man had killed. The Old Man attacked Westwind in monster-form while she ventured further in by herself in search of something to hunt, and managed to stab her in the chest, though non-fatally. However, Ginger arrived on the scene and fought him off in the form of a giant spider before he could deal Westwind more permanent damage.

After Jenny arrived on the scene, Ginger shifted to Black Nettle form and resumed fighting the Old Man, backed up by Westwind who had regained enough strength to use her wind powers. Fearing that Ginger was about to be killed, Jenny used her shifting powers to abruptly zap her to the other side of the forest, before trying to convince the Old Man that this was Ginger's own doing, the unveiling of one of many new powers she had acquired while he'd been imprisoned in the marshmallow. As he argued back and forth with her, he began to shift back to his weaker humanoid shape. At the opportune time, Jenny summoned Ginger back; the witch had slipped into the form of a fearsome giant scorpion. At Jenny's suggestion, she simply let herself from overhead where Jenny had summoned her, crushing the Old Man, whose last words were simply: “Oh. …Oh, no”.

When Ginger turned back to human form and stepped aside, it was found that nothing remained of the Old Man but a crushed marshmallow and a magical key he'd been carrying in his pocket. (PROSE: The Apocryphal Journeys of Jenny Everywhere)