User:Zann

Zann

Zann, aka Arkham Zann. Winner of the Nobel Hate Prize 2008.
Director of the Emma General Hospital[[1]], Old Arkham.
Specialist in neocortex sutures and electro-cauterization of the brain stem.

Origins

Zann... is a complex individual. He is the great-grandson of the now infamous Eric "Lovecraft" Zann, a notable pioneer in neurosugery who lost his mind late in life and surfaced in poor lodgings in the Rue d’Auseil, 1921 as an itinerant, mute violinist. Growing up in the shadow of the Emma General Hospital, his great-grandfather's name carved into the very stone above the main entrance, Arkham Zann's childhood was troubled. The family legacy, the constant pressure to achieve great things scientifically, long night-eyed hours spent reading from musty books on psychotherapeutic medicine, pharmacology and synapse architecture lent this somewhat pale, quiet child a menacing air-- which did nothing to help his poor social interactions with the world at large. An outcast from the beginning, it is perhaps this early social misadjustment which began his lifelong obsession with the hardwiring of other people's grey matter.

Nonetheless, his dedication served him well-- an exemplary student, he graduated from a world of old libraries and antispetic laboratories at the prestigious Miskatonic University [[2]] to become the youngest director of Emma General Hospital on record. At the trifling age of 28, Zann took up the mantle of his ancestor-- Neuro-Surgeon General.

Genius and a flair for the dramatic overshadowed his creeping descent into absolute madness-- the obsession with psychopathology, the brains of murderers, his desperate search to find a cure for his own sadistic urges, his chronic insomnia... Much of his "work" has been documented for posterity in the archive rooms of Emma General Hospital. It has been suggested that he has to date lobotomized, electro-cauterized, trepanned and otherwise mutilated the brains of approximately 190 Arkham residents, tourists and drifters. Oddly -conversely- while within the walls of Emma General, Zann will heal, care for and protect any wounded soul as a dedicated surgeon might. But come midnight the excursions begin- the graverobbing, the random kills, the bodies dragged kicking and screaming down stairwells, the sound of drills and the screaming behind the closed laboratory doors...

	Hell
	This user is going to Hell.

Exile

In August 2007 Zann was driven from his hospital by a mob of phillistines, who destroyed his laboratories and set fire to him while he slept. He woke in agony, burnt and scarred beyond recognition, without memory, and wandered in exile for many moons, learning new skills, remembering himself slowly in fragmented nightmares, all the while deepening his understanding of human psychology. He has referred to this period as his Siddharta months-- it is understood that on these travels he took active roles in Shearbank and Barrville where he operated first a freelance emergency amputation clinic, and later a mobile euthanasia clinic- mercy-killing traumatized low-level survivors lost on the streets and locked out of barricaded buildings. But this benign, almost holy, phase ended abruptly when he encountered the Philosophe Knights[[3]] and became entranced by their perfect blend of erudition, apocryphal knowledge and murder. Renouncing all knowledge but that of the tome, tomb and scalpel, he traveled the northern suburbs and became acquainted with Masonic texts buried deep in the underchambers of the Pitman Mansion libraries. It was in this happy time that he uncovered ancient books on Death Cultism[[4]], and conducted the ritual which lead to the unfortunate creation of the uber-gothic half-doll Agatha Hex, whose plasticity is matched only by her cold need to feed on the souls of the traumatized. It is said that the Hex doll is the only animate thing of which Zann lives in fear. But we digress... One night, caught offguard while deep in meditation upon things Cthuloid and blasphemous, Zann was bitten and infected in a zed ambush. He staggered from the study of the Pitman ruins, but his reputation preceded him and none would heal him. He collapsed and woke chewing on the skull of a Quarlesbank drifter. He stayed this way for many weeks, wandering, killing, eating, swaying slightly when he grew tired.

The Nobel Hate Prize and The Vow of Rot

On April the 20th 2008, an emissary was sent to Yagoton with needle and the news that he had been awarded the greatest accolade of his life-- the Nobel Hate Prize, for Crimes Against Science. With the pneumatic hiss of the revivification syringe still bubbling in his waxy ears, Zann walked home to Arkham, pausing only to settle an old score in Stickling Mall. With cold will and black heart, he returned to Emma General, gaining access by an unlocked kitchen window-- and over the next three days killed everyone within. With the hospital once again under his control, Zann began the final phase in his masterwork, injecting his own hypothalamus with a deadly strain of Brain Rot. Now guinea pig in his own experiment, the stakes are high. With a growing near-psychopathic hunger for cerebral mutilation and a particularly gruesome set of 19th century surgical instruments, he considers the suburbs of Old and New Arkham as his bloodstained operating table. He is particularly interested now in isolating the synaptic architecture of what he dubs the stupid, believing this to be the blueprint/key to an understanding of brain rot sickness. To this end, illiterates, degenerates, people wearing mirrored sunglasses and any overly macho survivors are all priority test subjects for his scalpel.

Zann's tools of surgical investigation-- a full set of instruments made from unplated polished steel. Around the central trepanning brace there are two fixed hand-held trephines, two detachable handles and trephines attachments, a scalpel, hey saw, elevator, brush, scissor handled spreaders, a starter trephine and two raspatories. Just under the handle of the trepanning brace is a small instrument with detachable screws which connect to the handle by means of an oblong shaped loop. The small screw is turned into a section of cranium and then left in place, allowing it to be easily removed with the handle.