The Tall Man has appeared in Horror RPG Series 3, Season 1
| The Tall Man | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Tall Man is a character and villain from the Phantasm film series (parts 1-4).
Character History[]
"You think that when you die you go to Heaven? You come to us!" - The Tall Man
Origin[]
Very little is known about The Tall Man's background. He seems to be some kind of alien lifeform, and likely a hostile one too, given his destructive intentions and capabilities. He comes from another planet or dimension that's said to be a place worse than Hell, where a dangerously arid climate dominates the landscape.
The Tall Man's alien species isn't known and doesn't appear to have ever been documented. The Tall Man first surfaced on Earth when Jedediah Morningside, a mortician who also served as a medic with the Union Army during the Civil War, tried to create an interdimensional gateway of sorts to try to uncover the secrets of life and death, to create immortality.
Jedediah Morningside, who became the unwilling host for The Tall Man's human disguise after an experiment that went wrong.
After putting together a gateway of sorts, Morningside was able to create an entryway into another dimension, and he stepped through it. After he did so, he found himself at The Tall Man's facility on his planet, where he was held captive for hundreds of years (he never aged due to atmospheric conditions) and the alien lifeform he encountered assumed his physical appearance.
The alien, which would go by the nickname of "The Tall Man" due to his extremely tall height, then entered Earth through Morningside's gateway. Seeing that Morningside was a mortician, and seeing that Earth had many rich resources that he could use to his advantage, The Tall Man and his army went under the guise of things relating to mortuaries and cemeteries to disguise themselves and slowly allow The Tall Man to dominate Earth.
Path To Domination[]
The Tall Man in his lair.
Perfecting Morningside's interdimensional forks and using them as the basis for his spacegates, The Tall Man jumped ahead to time in the late 1970s, where he prepared to overtake Earth to expand his race. He first started out by setting up his mortuary at Morningside, named after Morningside himself who was a renowned mortician in his time.
The Tall Man started exhuming the graves and tombs of the large Morningside Cemetery and using his own alien technology, crushed down the corpses to half their original size and made them into dwarf creatures to use as slave workers and minions. He would do this with many of his victims, and The Tall Man would occasionally even use his mental control powers to gain human minions to assist him.
Everything seemed to be going well for The Tall Man, until Michael Pearson entered the picture. Pearson, a thirteen-year old boy who lost his parents and lived with his older brother, Jody, had eavesdropped on a friend's funeral and witnessed The Tall Man loaded a casket into the back of a hearse all by himself after the funeral's attendees had all left. Mike, alarmed by what he had seen, investigated the mortuary a couple of nights later, when he encountered one of The Tall Man's Sentinels, a flying sphere with a life and killer instinct of it's own.
The Tall Man pursued Mike after Mike witnessed a Sentinel kill a caretaker on the premises, only for The Tall Man to have several of his fingers severed off (they would later regrow thanks to his regeneration abilities). The Tall Man sent some of his dwarf minions out to intercept Mike and the Pearson's family friend, Reggie Bannister. The Tall Man himself abducted Mike from his home and was about to drive him over back to Morningside, when Mike, using a Colt Army Issue .45 handgun, shot out a tire on the hearse and escaped from the vehicle before The Tall Man could take him any further.
The hearse crashed and The Tall Man seemingly died, until a clone surfaced from the Red Planet to resume the work of his precursor. Using his mind manipulation, The Tall Man altered Mike's perception of reality, making him see Reggie die and his brother still alive (who died in a car wreck shortly after the friend's funeral). The Tall Man followed Mike to his home and chased him, but he fell into an open mine shaft and was buried underneath by several tons of boulders. This was far from the last of The Tall Man though, as another clone surfaced from the Red Planet and set out to continue the plans for world domination.
"It's Only a Dream... No! It's Not!"[]
The Tall Man paid a visit to Mike and Reggie, at Reggie's house. He had plans to kill them and then re-animate them as slaves, and brought along several dwarf minions. The Tall Man snuck inside the house and the dwarves attacked Mike and Reggie, but the two got away and left a gas line open, causing an explosion to completely implode the house, but not before The Tall Man left and resumed his duties.
The Tall Man left a sort of mental imprint on Mike, and from there, was able to share a sort of psychic link with him, and thus, prepare in advance for his next move. Things went quiet for nine years, with The Tall Man able to pillage numerous cemeteries and small towns, and largely build up his undead army to help him dominate the world. At the end of those nine years, Mike was released from the Morningside Psychiatric Clinic where he spent nearly a whole decade following his first encounter with The Tall Man, and from there, The Tall Man laid a trap for Mike and Reggie, causing the Bannister home to implode with Reggie's family inside it.
Mike and Reggie, hungry for revenge against The Tall Man and determined to stop him, armed themselves with homemade weaponry and pursued The Tall Man, and over the course of six months eventually traced him to Perigord, Oregon, a town he had pillaged and by then, his army was becoming much bigger and stronger. Mike and Reggie had come to Perigord to try to destroy The Tall Man and rescue Elizabeth Reynolds, a girl of Mike's age who somehow shared a psychic link with Mike, and also knew of The Tall Man.
The Tall Man was ready, with his usual array of minions to help. The Tall Man had a Sentinel murder the town priest, Franklin Meyers, and he nearly had Liz herself, after claiming her grandparents before and making them his servants. Liz escaped, but it wasn't long before The Tall Man traced her to an abandoned bed and breakfast where Mike and Reggie were hiding out at, along with Liz and a hitchhiker named Alchemy.
The Tall Man kidnapped Liz and from there, lured out Mike and Reggie, leading them on a road chase that resulted in their Hemicuda crashing and exploding, but not before they escaped from the wreckage alive and with their weapons. After several deadly run-ins with some of The Tall Man's minions including the Sentinels, dwarves, Gravers and morticians, Mike and Reggie rescued Liz and found their way to the spacegate chamber that was hidden in the embalming room of Perigord Mortuary.
A worm-like creature wriggling out of a wound in The Tall Man's forehead after a Drone Sentinel drilled into it.
Using a Silver Sentinel that caused a mortician to lose his hand, they gained access to the spacegate chamber, but The Tall Man found them in time. He threw Mike and Reggie into the spacegate portal and grabbed ahold of Liz, ready to embalm her alive to make her one of his servants, when Mike, having freed himself from the spacegate portal along with Reggie, intervened. Using the Sentinel that was used to unlock the door to the spacegate chamber, Mike took The Tall Man off-guard, long enough for Liz to free herself. The Tall Man then grabbed ahold of Mike, but before he could do much more, Liz stabbed him in the back with an embalming needle connected to an embalming machine, which unknown to him, was filled with embalming fluid tainted with hydrochloric acid.
The Tall Man melting and dissolving to death after being injected with hydrochloric acid.
Reggie activated the embalming machine and The Tall Man was injected with the acid, melting and dissolving to death. Using Mike's flamethrower, Reggie incinerated the embalming room and mortuary, but another Tall Man clone stepped through the spacegates, ready to continue the mission. Disposing of the dead Tall Man through the gates, the plans for world domination were still in full effect.
The Tall Man emerging from the spacegate inside Perigord Mortuary, replacing the clone before him.
"It's Never Over!"[]
The Tall Man was prepared for Mike and Reggie's plan of action, when Alchemy was revealed to Reggie to be an agent of The Tall Man in disguise. The Tall Man made his way over to the site of the crashed and destroyed hearse, where Liz was killed by some dwarves, Mike was unconscious and Reggie was wounded. Using his trademark Quadruple-Barreled Shotgun, Reggie killed some dwarves, and The Tall Man moved in to collect Mike, wanting to use him as an experimental test subject, but after Reggie threatened him with a grenade, The Tall Man backed off for the time being. Not without another plan though.
With more Sentinels and agents dispatched to intercept Mike and Reggie, The Tall Man eventually got ahold of Mike at Reggie's home, using his mind powers to keep Reggie at bay, and also keeping Jody away from Mike, Jody having been re-animated a part human/part Sentinel being. The Tall Man took Mike with him and from there, held him captive for use in his experiments. A few days later, after trekking through Holtsville, a town The Tall Man had pillaged, Reggie was visited by Jody and taken to The Tall Man's interdimensional bunker, where Mike was freed.
The Tall Man impaled into a freezer, but he has a back-up plan ready for action.
The Tall Man dispatched more of his minions to intercept Mike and Reggie, along with their new allies, Tim Connors and Rocky. Re-animating the corpses of three thugs who were slain by Tim, The Tall Man sent his new zombie minions to handle them, but they were defeated for the time being. The Tall Man was eventually traced to his new hideout at the Bolton Mausoleum, where his zombie minions were to handle his rivals. The zombie minions were defeated, but not before The Tall Man had been able to perform a surgery of sorts on Mike, implanting a Golden Sentinel inside his cranium. The Tall Man was impressed with Mike's resilience, and instead of him being his rival, he wanted Mike to be his successor of sorts.
The Tall Man was taken down by Rocky after impaling him with a long fireplace poker that was dipped in liquid nitrogen, causing his skin to freeze off, and when Reggie helped Rocky to push him inside a meat locker, causing him to freeze. A Golden Sentinel implanted in his head however pursued them, before it was taken down by being submersed in liquid nitrogen. Another Tall Man clone would resurface from the spacegates, using Sentinels to pin Reggie to a wall and a dwarf pulled Tim through a window.
Oblivion[]
The Tall Man let Reggie go, impressed with his resistance and seeing him as a worthy adversary and deserving of respect. Reggie fled in search of Mike, who himself had fled after The Tall Man's experiment on him. The Tall Man by this point had devastated the majority of the United States and global assimilation was nearing. The Tall Man still kept contact with Mike, trying to sway him over to the darkside. He also shed some insight into Morningside's past for Mike for him to see, during a failed attempt by Mike to take his own life.
The Tall Man sent more minions to handle Reggie, trying to keep him away from reaching Mike, but the attempt failed and the attempt to sway Mike over was a failure as well. The Tall Man even resorted to using Jody (later revealed to have been re-animated as a pawn for The Tall Man to lure Mike) to reveal the secrets of Jebediah Morningside to Mike. Nothing swayed Mike over, and The Tall Man went to collect the Golden Sentinel that had been implanted in his cranium.
Reggie put up some resistance against The Tall Man, as did Mike, who used a homemade Sentinel rigged to a hearse's engine to explode and kill The Tall Man, but it was all for nothing, when a Tall Man clone appeared and went for Mike, ripping out the Golden Sentinel implanted in his cranium. The Tall Man, with the Sentinel, went back through the spacegate, with Reggie in pursuit while the dying Mike was reluctantly left behind by his friend.
Role in Horror RPG Series 3, Season One[]
Settling Into Town[]
After leaving Mike behind to die, The Tall Man still had unfinished business with Reggie, who followed The Tall Man through the spacegate portal to his facility on the Red Planet. Commanding a swarm of his Drone Sentinels to intercept the problem with Mike and Reggie, the duo managed to flee from The Tall Man's minions at the Red Planet facility, along with two captives in The Tall Man's holding facilities, Timothy Connors and Jebediah Morningside, the latter having been The Tall Man's unwilling avatar.
Mike and Reggie along with the two freed captives escaped the facility using one of the spacegates, which led them to another dimension of Earth's in the year 2008, in the town of Bridgton, Maine. Coincidentally, there was also an invasion of creatures that spawned from an organic mist of sorts that originated on a moon that orbited the Red Planet.
The Tall Man, chasing his enemies into the mist-ravaged town, saw that he had a perfect base of operations to set, having to conquer this particular dimension to gain full control of the planet. Setting up base at a funeral parlor, he commanded his legions of minions to plunder the remnants of Bridgton and gather more minions from the victims. He met a fair amount of resistance from Mike, Reggie and Tim, who later had help from Ash Williams and the Ghostbusters when they came to town to assist with the mist problem.
Confrontation[]
The Tall Man would have a final stand with his enemies once they breached entry into his facility on the Red Planet, despite heavy resistance from The Tall Man's forces including The Tall Man, himself. They uncovered his cloning facilities where The Tall Man's clones were manufactured. The Tall Man fought the group, by now transforming into his true alien form. He killed Morningside and Reggie before it was just him and Mike standing off. Mike urged Tim, Ash and the Ghostbusters to escape, but not before three of the Ghostbusters set their Proton Packs to overload and explode, guaranteeing the destruction of the facility.
The Ghostbusters, Ash and Tim escaped in time from The Tall Man's facilities just as their Proton Packs exploded, destroying the facilities and The Tall Man with the ensuing nuclear explosions, causing massive destruction all over. The Tall Man had finally been defeated.
Regular Appearance[]
The Tall Man is extremely tall, hence his namesake. While Jedediah Morningside stood six feet four inches in his prime, The Tall Man stands anywhere between six feet eight inches to seven feet two inches at the very least. He is very thin and lean, but also very physically strong, weighing anywhere between at least five-hundred pounds to a ton. He's able to lift a casket by himself with ease and lift two human bodies at once without difficulty.
The Tall Man always dresses in black mortician's tuxedoes, and has shoulder-length grey/white hair with brown eyes. His skin complexion is dead-pale, and he usually has a grim facial expression. His blood is yellow and appears to be a slightly gooey substance.
In his alien form (which is his true form), he is an extremely large creature that somewhat resembles Cthulhu, and features purplish skin with tentacles and large mandibles lined with deadly teeth. The Tall Man is even deadlier in his alien form and is extremely hostile.
Trademark Gear[]
A Dwarf creature emerging from it's holding barrel.
A Dwarf creature doing it's routine duties of scouting out for The Tall Man.
The Tall Man has his minions to do his bidding and physical labor. His minions consist of his dwarf slaves, the corpses he's exhumed that he's surgically crushed down to half their original size and altered their minds to become his always obedient slaves. The dwarves wear brown hooded cloaks and typically are his lackeys or lookouts.
One of The Tall Man's brainwashed human helpers or Gravers.
One of The Tall Man's zombie servants.
He also has Gravers, humans that he's brainwashed and manipulated into helping him. The Gravers exhume the corpses from the cemeteries and tombs for him, and are very strong and often fight intruders and other enemies of The Tall Man. They usually wear gas masks and coveralls.
The Demon Trooper enforcing The Tall Man's laws.
There are also the Demon Troopers, alien cops who patrol the highways and streets of towns The Tall Man has pillaged and out to capture or kill any human targets. The Tall Man's other minions include zombies, various alien creatures and morticians who are regular humans, and like the Gravers, have been brainwashed and manipulated into serving The Tall Man.
The Sentinels[]
The Tall Man with his Drone Sentinels by his side for protection and defense.
The Tall Man's signature minions however are his Sentinels, flying spheres with minds of their own that have been harvested from dwarf corpses to become killers and enforcers. The Drone Sentinel is silver and serves as a drone, it's primary purpose being to drill into the skull of it's prey and extract the brain matter for The Tall Man to use to create more slaves, while spraying out the prey's blood through the back like a geyser. The Drone Sentinels also serve as more high-tech lookouts with their Eyeball Periscopes, scanning from intruders and recording the data to show The Tall Man.
A Drone Sentinel killing a victim and drilling into his skull for brain matter.
The Drone Sentinels are equipped with weapons for defense, including the twin blades and cranium drill used for extracting brain matter, a member saw that's primarily used to sever off ears to weaken prey, and a buzzsaw to inflict more lethal damage. The Drone Sentinels also appear to be equipped with a blue-colored positron laser beam that can also scan for targets. The Drones are deadly, but can be destroyed with a few well-aimed gunshots or extremely blunt force.
The Battle Sentinels[]
The Golden Sentinel with it's deadly positron laser, doing a scan for intruders.
The Battle Sentinels, which are golden, are even deadlier than the Drone Sentinels and much more difficult to outrun and destroy. The Battle Sentinels exist solely to seek and destroy, and they are employed whenever The Tall Man has major threats to be eliminated as soon as possible. The Battle Sentinels are equipped with tri-blades, two saw-equipped sweeper devices from the sides, an acidic power drill, a saw-type device designed for burrowing inside prey, and a red-colored positron laser beam that's much more powerful and devastating than the Drone Sentinel's laser, and is better at scanning targets.
Powers[]
The Tall Man has numerous powers and abilities at his disposal. He has a telepathy ability of sorts, able to mentally control a living being or inanimate object, and mentally command his Sentinels or other minions. He can also use his telepathy for offense, and he often does, using them to back his enemies away and leave them in a vulnerable position. The Tall Man also appears to have the ability to not only manipulate a person's mind, but even manufacture nightmares and hallucinations for them. He's also very skilled in embalming and dissecting techniques, and can run surprisingly fast, though most of the time he chooses to walk at a slightly brisk pace.
The Tall Man also seems to have creatures inside his body, or at least has the ability to biologically produce them; when his fingers were severed by Mike, one of them transformed into a fly-type creature; when his forehead was drilled into by a Drone Sentinel, a worm-like creature slithered out of the drill hole; and when his hands were sliced off following his hands sticking through a spacegate that's interdimensional signal was cut off, his hands transformed into little alien insects of sorts. He has also occasionally implanted Battle Sentinels inside his cranial cavity, as a final attack plan in the events that he's defeated.
The Tall Man also has the ability to manipulate time and space with the signals produced for his interdimensional spacegates, able to travel interdimensionally and interplanetary with his spacegate portals, and he can even travel through time with the help of his spacegates. While The Tall Man can be killed, he always has clones at the ready back in his fortress' cloning facilities and making him quasi-immortal, as the clones are always ready to continue where the last Tall Man left off. Killing him for good has proven to be extremely difficult and at times borderline impossible, due to the clones and his spacegates from which they enter.
Weakness[]
The Tall Man is very susceptible to cold temperatures.
The Tall Man appears to have several weaknesses. Notably, he is very vulnerable to cold temperatures and can easily be frozen, and ultra-cold liquid such as nitrogen can even melt his skin off. He also has a great disliking of soundwaves produced by tuning forks, the soundwaves appearing to distract him from his tasks.