Marzwhatti Lurriqui (Eccentriaverse)

Marzwhatti Lurriqui, the Lirquinwur, is the titular antagonist of the Dozerfleet Studios short film The Blue Face Film Strips. He is part of the same universe as Volkonir and The Bison.

Powers
Marzwhatti has a hideous body as a Lirquinwur that he is ashamed of. He hates all of society for allowing King Gwirmalesh to create the Lirquinwur race in the first place, yet is fond of being able to kill others due to it.

Since he finds his full bodily form hideous, Marzwhatti likes to take advantage of his ability to make himself either fully or partially invisible. He can only maintain full invisibility for a brief period of time, however. He conserves his light-bending energy by sometimes allowing only his face to be visible. This results in him appearing as a disembodied, floating blue head with glowing white eyes. He also is able to create the illusion of being partially telekinetic by keeping his arms invisible - though he has some partial short-range telekinesis if his arms aren't physically long enough. This allows him to strangle his enemies to death - his favorite form of homicide.

He has a very acute memory regarding how many pictures his victims take of him, and taunts them into taking his picture a certain number of times and then calculating what the significance of each taken photo should be for each victim. (In Kelina's case, he decided that each of the three photos she took would be a week.)

Weaknesses
A lucky shot to the forehead can weaken Marzwhatti just long enough to take away his ability to go incorporeal and escape, thus allowing him to be captured in a special dome field and also forcing him to expose his entire body. When exposed, he becomes vulnerable to attacks from Cortascian weaponry - such as Volkonir's sword Selshon.

Early life
Marzwhatti was born during the early years of the Gwirdon nation on Cortascius, which became a nation a few generations earlier after gaining independence from the main Cortascian planet-kingdom. While the young ruler Gwirmalesh had just recently ascended to the throne, an angry Marzwhatti fled home and set out to take vengeance on the Gwirdon nation for turning his entire tribe into monsters.

However, he killed the Royal Captain of the Guards of Cortascius when said captain got in the way of some of Marzwhatti's assaults on the Gwirdons. This made Marzwhatti a fugitive from justice in the lands of King Morlikus.

While Marzwhatti was eventually captured, he escaped before he could be successfully executed. He charged up his power, and then murdered Gwirmalesh's daughter. While Gwirmalesh was already plotting to usurp control away from Morlikus and rule the whole of Cortascius for himself, Gwantina's death compelled a bitter Gwirmalesh to take an even darker path. He blamed all of Morlikus' kingdom for what happened to Gwantina, since it was the jailer that Morlikus put in charge that failed to keep Marzwhatti in his cage.

Marzwhatti eventually fled to exile on Earth, after he began killing Cortascians and Gwirdons indiscriminately. Some time around the year 2001, he broke free from his hibernation and began preying on human targets to feed his desire for mischief and malice.

The Blue Face Film Strips
Main article: The Blue Face Film Strips

In 2003, Marzwhatti discovered a young Kelina Averes, and decided to lure her into a trap. He allowed her to take three pictures of him in her back yard. He began taunting her for three weeks, then murdered her on the eve of her time being up. He also taunted her younger sister Katie Averes, resulting in the latter being traumatized to the point of requiring therapy.

Volkonir Journals: Attempt #43
Main article: Volkonir Journals: Attempt #43

Marzwhatti is given a brief, passing mention in this short film by Volkonir himself - still in toy form. Volkonir tries to explain his predicament to Katie Averes in 2008 - who is now a very damaged high school student. He also explains his past failures to get help from others. However, Katie is enraged by the mention of the monster that killed her sister; and she responds by throwing Volkonir out the window.

A frustrated Volkonir rests in the grass for a bit, then teleports his toy form in search of anyone else willing to help him.

Volkonir: The Series
Marzwhatti relocates to the western United States to continue spreading his mayhem. However, he is driven even further insane by the revelation that Prince Volkonir has been freed from the spell that trapped him in a stuffed toy. The enraged Lirquinwur travels to Montana to disrupt the operations of both Team Volkonir and Gwirmalesh's new evil army. Serratebeard and Volkonir are interrupted while battling each other, as Marzwhatti attempts to kill them both. He succeeds in killing Serratebeard in spite Volkonir and Gwirmalesh agreeing to a temporary truce to take down Marzwhatti.

The Lirquinwur sets back Gwirmalesh's plans for Montana significantly by destroying the machine that allows Gwirdon Leaders to become full-tilt monsters, forcing Gwirmalesh to have a new one constructed by Leaders and Treaders alike. Marzwhatti then turns his attentions to Volkonir, and attempts to kill Kayla and Dr. Hanom as a way to rob Volkonir of his support. However, Volkonir is able to get the upperhand and lure Marzwhatti away from the base. A lucky shot by local law enforcement allows for Marzwhatti to be temporarily disabled, allowing Volkonir to finish him off with Selshon before the Lirquinwur could recover and murder more officers. The site of Volkonir's final battle with Marzwhatti leads to police asking a lot of questions about who Volkonir really is; but he departs without giving them many answers while promising to return if needed.

Personality
Marzwhatti is shown to be mischievous and bearing of a sadistic streak. His compulsion to play games with his victims - or murder them in the first place - appears to be arbitrary and irrational. He does seem to have excellent memory regarding how long each victim's "grace period" should be between kills. The proficiency with which he is able to learn programming (to send the no-return-address e-mail) and English reveals that he is cunning and intelligent, yet is somehow a complete sociopath.

Inspiration
The concept behind Marzwhatti came around the time that the Dozerfleet founder was studying J-horror while attending Lansing Community College. The novella 90 Has No Secant and its canceled sequels were being figured out around this same time. Initial influence for Marzwhatti's mannerisms came as a combination of both Ch'rell from the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and Samara Morgan from The Ring. The challenge was accepted to adopt visual and directorial cues from Gore Verbinski's style, and incorporate them into the way Blue Face was directed. This was at a time when most of the class was making short films that were going to be either adventure or fantasy tales; and Blue Face was the only "psuedo-J-horror" being produced for the same lineup of films.

The china mask being used as a template for creating Marzwhatti was to evoke the same sense of mystical terror and dread as the original design for Matilda Dixon that was initially drafted for Darkness Falls, although that film abandoned that design - also in favor of a reduced production budget.

The use of Marzwhatti as a horror monster in a psuedo-J-horror film in a class that focused primarily around adventure and fantasy was later reversed in 2008, when the Video Production II class at Ferris State wanted to focus on American slasher/zombie horror films and Volkonir was to be the only entry that was a tokusatsu adventure/fantasy film.

Visual appearance
Marzwhatti is envisioned to be a grotesque, muscular being with a slimy gray scaly skin. However, he has a very prominently blue head. He can, with minimal concentration and energy output however, make most of his body invisible for long periods of time - except for his face. Since his face is the only part of him that is seen most often, it was imperative in 2003 development for The Blue Face Film Strips to depict his face - even if none of the rest of him ever got developed.

He was originally envisioned as a CGI character that would be plastered into his appropriate scenes in Blue Face. It was also imagined that a Weta Workshop-type job could be used on him for later representations.

However, time and money ran short on production for his debut film appearance. He was therefore reduced to an animated GIF file that was cut to and from in the final film cut for brief seconds. A studio light with blue gel portrayed his just-off-camera appearing and disappearing to the frightened Averes sisters, who had to stare at a wall just behind the studio light and pretend to be interacting with a monster.

His shape was based on a china mask wrapped in blue plastic wrap, and he was initially going to resemble the china mask more in his appearance. However, edits in Photoshop got out-of-hand; and the smudged creature became more of an abstract being. The Blue Face Film Strips: The Sims 2 Edition attempted to correct some of this, replacing the smudged GIF with an entire floating blue head and varying Marzwhatti's expressions more.