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Creoda Cromwell was born into a poor family that made a living on building bridges. He died from smoke inhalation when his house caught fire while his father was forging some new tools. Due to their poor financial status, his family was only able to give him the Death Rite of the Imp, the lowliest of the beings in the afterlife. The Death Rite of the Imp was simple. He was to be dressed in copper-dusted clothes, then pulled in a unmanned carriage over a bridge by a brown horse with a black mane in the dead of night. However, the night the ritual was to be completed, there was a thunderstorm. A lightning strike hit and cracked off a large branch that was overhanging the ridge. It caught fire, then fell and crashed through the bridge, sending the carriage and horse plummeting to the valley forest below. The flaming branch started a forest fire, and burnt his corpse to an unrecognizable state. That same night, a young nobleman had been separated from the group of men he was hunting with, and also perished in the blaze. The men found Creoda's body, and, assuming it was the young nobleman's, took it back to the town where they lived. There, the nobleman's family put him through the Death Rite of the Reaper, a high class being in the afterlife, as well as the only being with a Death Rite that such a burnt body could fulfill. First, the body was to be set ablaze until it was blackened, and then put out. Then, it was dressed in clothes of woven golden fiber, and placed on the ground, in a garden, on top of soil that has no plant life of any kind in it. Then, the body must be left for a week, to be feasted upon by insects. A glass box is placed over the body, so no fowl could feed on it. Then the body's remains are to be completely cremated, mixed with slat, and thrown into the sea from a cliff. After this ritual, the soul would become a Reaper, and would have the job of gathering the souls that never went through a Death Rite. However, Creoda had started a different Death Rite, and, as such, had completed one and a half Death Rites. Instead of becoming a demon or being of the afterlife, he became stuck in between being a free reigning spirit, and a Reaper. His is a Ghost of Death, and is only capable of going where he had already tread in life. Seeing as he rarely traveled, he is now mostly confined to the small town from which he hails, and a few neighboring towns, as well as a trail that leads to the nearest port city. He now haunts and terrorizes the people of his hometown, having no recollection of his time among the living. He is very blunt about what he does, and is also very sarcastic. He doesn't have much presence, and when he speaks, it will barely be a whisper. He can choose whether or not he wants to be visible, and, most of the time, chooses a state in between visible and invisible. He very rarely uses his scythe. He has the ability to collect the souls of the living, and uses his hands to pull the soul out of the body. When he has direct contact with a soul, he can absorb their memories.
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