Name: Cazzio Amastael
Race: Human
Magic and Abilities
The Astral Promise
Cazzio dedicated himself to understanding the world beyond after a chance encounter with a spirit at a young age. Unable to identify its true identity and only being offered a word in explanation was enough to convince him to tread down the path of understanding the spirit. While his research usually involved gravedigging and reading through more nefarious texts, Cazzio has managed to harness astral power as his own.
When he begins to call upon the powers he’s harnessed, blue lines ignite and trace up from his palms, around his arms, and even crossing his face. The more magic he uses, the more these bars start to lose their glow (starting from the top, going downwards)
The First Rite – Astral Flame: Cazzio calls on the bonds he’s formed with the hidden beings of shadow to create ghastly fire meant to burn through material and cause serious damage. The fire cannot pass through consecrated iron or holy symbols, but the white-blue flames become his main method of attack in most combat scenarios. The fire can be shaped or used as desired (be it defense or a number of methods of offense) and is rumored to even burn away at the soul if it consumes all else.
The flames are also significantly stronger the darker it is, and weaker in direct sunlight.
The burns sustained from his fire are rumored to never heal, but they eventually fade in a few weeks or with magical intervention.
The Second Rite – Unfinished Business: – Cazzio calls on the spirits to reach outwards with their regrets and woes. This manifests as a powerful scream that causes serious discomfort and sometimes pure fear in the eyes of his opponents as they see the images of the beyond. If the enemy is close enough, then the spirit force will repel the opponent away from him and give a little space to continue use of his other powers.
The Third Rite – Astral Baptism: – Taking the Astral Flame to the next level, Cazzio bathes himself in flame and takes on a stronger, more hellish form. His face takes on the form of a skull and his whole body starts to burn with the astral fire. While in this form, his magic slowly depletes and use of his other powers deplete his magic much faster in exchange for a boosted power. His body becomes more resilient to physical attacks, though he becomes extreme susceptible to holy symbols, consecrated iron, and magic light used in an offensive stance against him. The fire on his body does burn to the touch, and he does get an extended strength, though normally he can only maintain the form for 3-5 minutes before the fire starts to burn away at his own mortal coil. Superficial burns tend to cover his body if he pushes this form too far.
The Fourth Rite – Astral Projection: – After undergoing the Astral Baptism, Cazzio can release a spirit from himself to reach forward in an astral form either to distract, restrain, or scare. The ghost disappears when subjected to similar weaknesses, but it can hold a person down by the hands or wrists, is indistinguishable from Cazzio’s actual body in the night time, and can only communicate through cold whispers and loud screams.
The Final Rite – Last Testament: – a last-ditch effort in most situations, Cazzio wills the fire surrounding him to spread and burst outwards while allowing spirits to take him over. Cazzio immolates himself in the fire and takes his opponents with him as the astral flame bursts outwards from him and captures everyone in the area. The fire is relentless and eats away even at his own body as the ground cracks beneath his feet and the spirits of those past fly upwards to claim any that cannot resist the fire. In the process, Cazzio expends all his magic, and if he doesn’t have enough he sustains a serious amount of damage both to his body and to his soul.
”No matter how much you try to tell people they ‘can’t ignore history,’ they still try fighting with a pointy stick when a sword exists.”
Cazzio tends to be a bit of a defeatist when it comes to the path of humanity. He will talk your ear off for ages about whatever he’s been reading at the time regardless of subject matter and he’s very bad at reading the room. He’s known to spend whole battles attempting deep conversation with the opponent regardless of the intensity of the battle, and no one has really been able to figure out how to get him to start talking since the beginning of the universe.
Despite his general disappointment in people, he tends to have a deep respect for the members of the academy because of their dedication to a craft, and he isn’t shy when it comes to admitting to that admiration. As such despite how he sounds he can be quite personable and bubbly in the right situations. The fastest way to become friends with Cazzio is to ask interesting questions, especially ones he doesn’t know the answer to.
That being said, Cazzio is terrified of those in charge and those obsessed with power. He’s always expected these sorts of hierarchies to fail him, and his communion with some spirits have done little to dissuade him of this opinion. His attempts to make himself seem stronger tend to falter when faced with vicious adversaries or superiors generally have the opposite effect thanks to his usual earnestness. Even so, he hates people making assumptions about him and his abilities. His power may come with an uncomfortable reputation, but he worked hard to earn it, and those that assume he didn’t, or that it is only because of some pact that he is strong are wrong and he will be sure to let you know that.
Cazzio grew up in a small village to the east of Zauberheim where he, like many young children, spent most of his days assisting with farm work, running errands for friends and family, or generally getting into hijinks. He was a very bored kid, which often got him into all kinds of trouble when he went looking for something to do.
“With all this work to be done, how’re you bored?” was a common line from his father when he was found sneaking out to the barn at night or drawing in places where he wasn’t supposed to be. Eventually, through some odd connections and the nature of a small farming town, Cazzio found his way to Lady Renaile’s doorstep.
Most people stayed away from the elderly lady that lived at the edge of the village, mainly to offer her some privacy, but most also knew her story. Supposedly she was an elven woman who used to be an accomplished sorceress in her day, but had decided in her older age to settle down in a quiet place and take some time just to relax. As such, she was one of the few people in town with a collection of books from her journey of adventures, and many other magical items that would require quite an explanation.
Through Cazzio, the pair struck up a curious relationship. She found a boy desperate for knowledge, for any way of getting out of this boring situation, so she taught him how to read. It started with simple fiction and old textbooks stored away, but eventually she started to gain a bit of intuition on the boy and realized that there was potential there for a magical gift. She put it to the test with an ancient tome that once belonged to quite the powerful mage, and through the boy’s studies of the tome his whole perspective started to change.
He witnessed his first ghost in his own barn one night. He had taken the book home as he normally would to seek through the pages, and through a flash of blue light suddenly he was seeing the world differently. In fact, he witnessed an old spirit appear right in the middle of his barn that night – an old man with a long beard and a bald head. It was what the tome had described as First Contact, and through this contact his powers caught a spark and never faded away. The blue lines traced up his body in spirals and sigils, his eyes changed from a deep brown to an icy blue, and with the help of Renaile and the spirit he trained enough to access his First Rite.
The town started to grow weary of the “cursed boy” as they called him. His parents grew hesitant around him, and he paid them little mind as he continued to pursue his studies. He was only discovered by the Seraph Academy when one of the merchants had travelled through to the big city, bringing with him the rumors of the Haunted Farm Boy.
They came for him first, inviting him to come with them to the academy right away, but Renaile denied them the first time, saying that he would only come to the school when he was ready. And three years later, with her blessing, he left on his own pilgrimage to the walled city, set to acquire more knowledge about not only magic, but society in general.
Other: sample Cazzio took a deep breath as his dirtied boots met cobblestone instead of dirt and he stepped into the capital. Already the boy's eyes were alight with wonder as he tugged at the small bag wrapped around his back and wandered forward. Already he knew that Renaile wasn't lying when she had told him about this place.
The city was huge. Bigger than huge. Even as he dodged a crowd of muttering citizens (many of whom with features he'd never seen on a person) he finally felt a little comfort in letting down his hood. It became clear that the markings that accompanied his magic power would do little to help him stand out, especially when he witnessed a woman grin at a corner as the poles she juggled shimmered and shifted without regret.
Maybe... she would know?
"Uhm, Excuse me, Ma'am," Cazzio called, doing little to hide the commoner's accent that had grown up as his own,
"D'you think you could direct me to the Seraph Academy?" The woman looked down at him for a moment, and without moving her hands the juggling poles hung in the air, the glittering points all pointed in one direction as the small crowd gathering let out a little applause. With a nod, and a drop of the last of his coins into the tin plate at her feet he made his way off in that direction.
With a nose in a book for most of his upbringing, his sense of direction was perhaps not the best. As a straight direction turned into one alley and then the next, he was prepared to turn around and start all over again when a familiar sound rushed by his ear, followed by the cold touch of a unique force.
He snapped his fingers, and in a moment his eyes were alight with his astral fire. Sure enough, floating at the corner of the hallway was an glowing, translucent dog staring back at him with its hollow eyes. Cazzio thought he'd been able to ignore things like this, but perhaps the crowds and the new experience that was the city was enough of a distraction to let his guard down. Other than warn him of its presence, however, the dog did little.
"You wouldn't know how to get to the Academy, would ya?" The dog vanished in a flash of bluish flame, and the bright light forced Cazzio to shield his eyes. Only a moment later did they open, and in doing so he found himself standing in the middle of an intersection, with a large, dominant building hanging over him.
"I hate it when they do that..." he muttered to himself, but the thought was soon lost when he saw the sign.
Seraph Academy, already waiting. And with the letter bunched up in his back pocket, he was ready to get started.
