Zachariah Gall

Zachariah Gall is the Phœnix's resident Stranger avatar, and a bit of a peculiarity. He joined the ship prior to his avatar transformation, and spent a few weeks on board the Phœnix as a normal human tailor. Before long, an unfortunate incident ended in him becoming a gruesome fusion between human and training mannequin. This, however, was not enough to dissuade him from staying about.

Gall is usually differentiated between the stages of his life by name; when referring to the character before his transformation, he is referred to as Zachariah or Zach, while the character he is known as after his transformation is called Gall.

Before transformation
Prior to his avatar transformation, Zachariah was a relatively young man with wavy auburn hair and freckly, pale skin. His eyes were light blue and usually wide with surprise or nervousness. He had a narrow face and long, thin nose, which he admitted to being somewhat self-conscious of. His hands were scarred from working with fabrics and sharp implements for years of his life.

In regards to clothes, Zachariah usually wore period clothing, three-piece suits and cravats in a variety of muted and socially acceptable colours. He owned a small bronze pocketwatch, currently lost somewhere in a dusty corner on the floor of the storage room within which he transformed.

After transformation
After fusing with the mannequin, Gall's skin became entirely replaced with canvas fabric, complete with seams down the side of his face, around his neck, and around his shoulders (the final from which stray straw protrudes). His sclera are still composed of biological matter, but instead of irises or pupils, small thread cross-stitches act as the centers of his eyes. His eyebrows are small and round. He now wholly lacks a nose, and the only outwards indication that he had ever had one is a slight peak to the center of his face. His hair is a mixture of reddish human hair and brown acrylic yarn, the former woven into the latter. His teeth and the inside of his mouth are still biological.

Instead of a midriff, Gall now has a short wooden post where his stomach would be. He has a large, bright red target painted permanently on the center of his chest.

Gall retains his love of sewing and dressing up, and continues to do so with more creative freedom than previously, experimenting with brighter colours. He also enjoys a variety of footwear.

Before transformation
Zach was a timid man, polite, meek, and friendly. Although he was willing to step up and speak angrily for himself or for others when needed, he preferred to avoid conflict, and only involved himself in it when it was impossible to ignore. He spoke eloquently, but with a great deal of restraint in a constant effort to be as polite as possible.

After transformation
Gall is Zachariah without a filter. Consistently hyperenthusiastic and with every movement comically exaggerated, Gall spends a great deal of time talking at full volume and accidentally walking straight into doors after forgetting one is supposed to open them beforehand. (Being unable to feel pain, Gall experiences no negative side effects from this.) The smile on his face is perpetual, even when wearing the faces of others, and has only exhibited true anger once, for a brief time during the "Eyepocalypse".

Gall speaks in the same upbeat way whether he is enjoying time with other crewmembers or cutting off innocent civilians' faces. He appreciates the beauty of every face he takes, cheerfully telling the deaf and blind shells of his victims about how gorgeous their faces are and how much he'll love wearing them.

Despite his cartoonish excitement and friendliness to crewmembers, Gall retains his former intelligence, and is keenly aware of how the other crewmembers feel about him. However, he usually ignores these feelings while talking to them.

Before transformation
It is known that Zachariah was attracted (in some degree) to various members of the crew before his change, but did not pursue them out of worry that he would not be desired back (and knowledge that most of the crew were already in relationships). In particular, he wished to know Joshua and Micah better, and was warily interested in Augustin.

After transformation
Gall is interested in everyone at all times, and confesses to liking almost everyone currently on the ship, to the point where listing those members to whom he has no attraction would be easier than listing those he does. The only person Gall currently has no romantic feelings for is Kai, who he considers like a family member.

His relationship with Augustin is complex; the Beholding avatar used to be staunchly opposed to Gall, distrusting him and spending a good deal of time trying to stay as far away from him as possible despite Gall's eagerness to be around him. As time passed, however, Augustin grew to trust him, and the two began a relationship.

He retains a friendly siblings-in-crime relationship with Miriam, to whom he sends letters (and receives in exchange drawings). She occasionally gives him terrible relationship advice, which he tries anyway.

Powers
Zachariah bore no unusual powers before becoming an avatar save Dreaming of Darker Days, in which he experienced a series of increasingly traumatic and grim nightmares about the Fears, culminating in episodes of sleepwalking (and eventually one instance where he sleepwalked into the storage room and began his own transformation). Its status as a "power" is debatable.

Afterwards, he gained the following:


 * Save Face: Simply by using any sharp object (although he prefers scissors), Gall is able to remove the faces of human beings and some avatars. The removed faces retain all their features, including nose and cheekbone shape; in reality this effect is less like removing facial skin and more like removing the front quarter of the head. Nevertheless, Gall refers to them as faces. The faces rot at a delayed rate, over the course of approximately two weeks.
 * The place where the victim's face used to be is replaced by a smooth wall of featureless flesh. His victims do not die immediately after this removal; instead, they suffocate to death over four to eight minutes of oxygen deprivation.
 * Who Are You, Really?: Gall can "wear" the faces he strips from others, laying the taken faces over his own and becoming an identical physical copy of the original owner. This effect works flawlessly no matter how damaged the face has become until well over two weeks have passed, and when the features of the face have become entirely too rotted to recognize.
 * I'm You (Da Ba Dee): Gall has an uncanny ability to mimic others' mannerisms and voices without physically taking their faces. Augustin in particular reviles this mimicry, and out of respect for him, Gall generally refrains from doing so.
 * Ow, F—k: Gall usually cannot feel pain, making him a very useful swordfighting mannequin. However, when sharply shocked in an unusual way (e. g. being suddenly thrown into the ocean, being electrocuted, or being forced to Know things), Gall's original personality shines through for a matter of seconds. He remembers everything that happens in this state, and it is evident that it is no more than a personality change, rather than his old self "trapped" inside him.
 * The Circus Has Never Liked Your Kind, Augustin: Peculiarly, the entity of The Stranger infrequently manifests itself through Gall's body to speak with his mouth. Gall does not remember anything that happens in this state (unlike in his "lucid" state), and it has only happened once, upon Gall seeing Augustin's glass Stranger eyes that he had taken from the replaced medic from his old ship. It is unknown if it would happen again.

In other AUs
Zachariah is a major character in many AUs, and a minor character in several others. Gall is featured far less, usually because in the AUs where the Entities do not exist, there exists no catalyst for the change from Zachariah to Gall. The AUs featuring him most prominently are:


 * TTT
 * Prince
 * Random Entityswap
 * Alien
 * SCP
 * Vampire + Hunter

Trivia

 * In the Modern AU, Zachariah's drag persona bears Gall's personality.
 * Gall patches himself up with newer and softer cloth whenever he notices his skin wearing down, which fuses seamlessly with his preexisting flesh. He undergoes a complete change of skin approximately once every three years.
 * When Gall blushes, his cloth cheeks become soaked through with blood, which is drained back out again after the feeling fades. The method through which this effect occurs is unknown.
 * Gall's domain in the "Eyepocalypse" is a massive big-top circus, similar to the site of the Unknowing, of which he is the ringmaster.
 * Some readers may have noticed that avatars never become fully fledged unless they make the active decision to do so, and Gall does not appear to have had such a moment. However, for an unknown reason (he may have wanted the nightmares to stop, or he simply may have wanted to fit in with the crew), Zach agreed in a dream one night to let himself be claimed by the entities. This also reflects itself when Gall is "lucid"—Zach does not consider himself trapped against his will as an avatar, and actively chose that lifestyle, albeit not knowing what he was getting into at the time. Whether or not he regrets his decision is unknown.
 * Zach's favourite colour is a deep, saturated violet, but he refuses to wear garments of this hue, saying it clashes with his hair.
 * Both Zachariah and Gall are terrible liars; the former's stammering acts as a dead giveaway, while Gall doesn't even try to make himself convincing, although it is suspected that he would be able to lie very well should he want to.
 * He once suggested to Dorian that they go fencing for a little while, and that Dorian leave his office unlocked and the door open so that he could find his way back and not get lost (obviously the real reason being that other crewmembers wanted to sneak into and steal letters from his office).