Name: Jester, also known as 'number four'
Species: Norway rat, Dalmatian variety
Age: 5 months
Weight: 604 grams
Birthplace: University of Iowa
Eye colour: green to hazel

Markings:
Jester is white with black spots, or patches. These spots are located on each upper arm, and his haunches. They are in groups of four in each case, as demonstrated above. As well as these, he also has one blotch of colour on the right hand side of his lower belly and one at the back of his neck but this is usually obscured by his hair. He has a large patch of black on his back which is formed into a kind of tilted '4' shape, surrounded by four black dots, one at each 'corner'. His tail is black to just under half its length.
His left ear is black and always dropped down, and his right is white and always held up. Both have small golden bells attached. He has red diamonds around each eye.

Extras: Black painted nails on his forepaws and four black bands on each wrist. He has a scar of a number 4 in a circle on his upper left arm, and numerous burns on the soles of his hands and feet from his laboratory days. He has one small circular notch in his lower left ear from where his laboratory ear-tag was removed.
He is an unusually large rat, but is also very thin. He has longer legs than your average rat which gives him an ungainly look. He's fairly awkward and inelegant, and can be clumsy. Like a lot of male rats, he has problems with his hind legs (in his case, early onset spinal nerve degeneration), so they're weak and give him an almost German Shepherd like appearance when he stands on all fours. His hind feet turn inwards very slightly. He's far too young to be getting these issues and its doubtless due to poor breeding.

General: Jester is an ex laboratory rat, his allocated number was four. He was used in hyperthermia tests in which he was subject to extreme levels of heat. As such, he now dislikes the heat and has a phobia of fire. He suffers from intense nightmares, many of which involve fire in some capacity. He is not a good sleeper. On the surface, he appears to be fairly well adjusted, but he suffers from regular hallucinations of a rat called 'Grudge', who is thought to be Jester's fears, anger, resentment and hatred personified. The other rats know about Grudge, but Jester will not speak about it with anyone, and tries to laugh it off as ridiculous if anyone presses him on the subject .

Jester is a good story teller and likes to make people laugh, but he's shy so it's his way of covering that up. He lends himself rather well to being bullied and influenced by others, and he dislikes confrontation so will do whatever he can to avoid it. If forced, he is actually a relatively good fighter; he'd just rather not have to do it because he has little faith in his own abilities. His best friends are Faith and Kyuss, though he is bullied somewhat by the latter. He is Beta rat to the group.

He's quite a picky eater, which is another reason he's so underweight. He likes to eat little and often, and though he likes meat he has an intolerance to the sight of blood so will only eat it if someone else kills it. He's generally pretty over sensitive to everything from the cold to physical contact and he suffers from several allergies, and seems to be constantly itchy, though this could be a nervous affliction. His coat is fairly patchy and in poor condition.
Part of the act he puts on is making people believe he's a ladies man, but in reality, he's pretty shy and awkward with the opposite sex.

He has an addictive personality and a history of alcoholism, which would probably kill him if he had easy access to drink. Though it brings him out of himself, it tends to turn him violent so everyone tries to keep him off it. He is partial to a cigarette.

A note about the mask: Back in the day when I first came up with these characters, they were all supposed to wear masks. I soon dropped the idea, but just kept drawing Jester in the same way. As such, he still has black straps over his head where his mask would have been. I may remove them one day in the future, but for now I keep them for old time's sake. This means there is also a certain way it joins at the back of his head. This shouldn't be important unless anyone draws him from behind.