Name: Reyansh Maidaan (Gokhanized to “Rhain”)
Age: 39
Gender/Sex: It matters less and less over time. Originally male and marginally more comfortable as male.
Current appearance:
Ship role: Magical “Fuck You” Stick
Pyxis appearance: A small blue feather with streaks of gold running through it. Usually resting in Rhain's hair.
Pyxis strength: Lightning Elemental Magic
Pyxis skill list:
1.
Thunder: Ability to generate sounds, in essence. Over time this has of course grown in scale, but more importantly precision, with a preference for generating deafening explosions directly into one’s ear.
2.
Flash: Ability to generate light. Like the above, enhanced precision has been the focus of the ability as its user has grown in power. Disorienting, but the light only lasts for an instant, causing no long term damage even at its brightest.
3.
Static: If two objects are able to hold a charge, then enhanced static cling can make them almost impossible to remove from each other. Works best with objects that naturally generate large amounts of static electricity, and worst on those that don’t.
4.
Magnetism: Similar to the above, but distinct. The ability to generate magnetic fields either centered on, or away from the user. Only affects magnetic objects.
5.
Shock Immunity: The user is unaffected by electricity. More powerful users can more or less keep this ability on indefinitely.
6.
Discharge: The user is able to pump electricity into any object they are touching, organic or otherwise. Scale naturally involves the voltage of the discharge.
7.
Arc Lightning: Discharge can be extended away from the user, arcing between their body and any unobstructed target within a certain distance.
8.
Call Lightning: Generates a lightning strike at the desired location, regardless of atmospheric conditions. This includes the accompanying thunder clap and all other implications of a natural lightning bolt. (Rhain’s preferred method of dealing with serious threat, though even now its use is still taxing. A dozen bolts is the farthest she’s push herself under normal circumstances, so the crew had better be prepared to pick up the slack afterwards. Range seems to be “Anywhere visible under open sky”.)
9.
Plasma Ball: Contains all of the energy of a lightning strike within the palm of the user’s hand. In this condensed form the sphere is almost unrivaled in destructive capability where it strikes, and the user can direct its movements at will. (Naturally this is incredibly taxing, to the point that even longtime crew members can count on one hand the number of times they've seen it used. Rhain
will be dead weight for some days after this ability is used, so it’s a good thing anything it touches will be very very dead. Maximum distance unknown, but it’s unlikely Rhain would waste it on anything that was not in very close range.)
10.
Flashstep: Becoming one with lightning itself, the user is able to transform and travel at incredible speed across vast distances. Effective teleportation between two points that the user can see. (Range of 20-25 miles. This is not simply moving quickly, the user
becomes a bolt of lightning and then returns to their normal self where it strikes. However, they never reform completely the same, and while Rhain was able to maintain something resembling his natural form at first, with every use the changes became more drastic. Now she seems to become an entirely different person each time it’s used, with rare exceptions. The user, as a note, feels the strain of having moved that distance with their own two legs, though this can be mitigated somewhat with endurance training.)
Some background: Rhain’s origins are a mystery outside of the few close friends made aboard the Fornacis. He was born Reyansh Maidaan, to the Thunder Tribe on the steppe-island of Ghar. This tribe was unusual in that almost everyone was adept at magic to a small degree, and anyone who acquired a Pyxis acquired one adept in the lightning element. While curious, none ever acquired a Pyxis of significant strength, and this tribe remained an obscure curiosity.
Until Reyansh.
The details of his life since obtaining his Pyxis (The feather of a Demi-Roc, a bird his tribe held sacred above all other things) are many and rarely told. He left his tribe soon after becoming a man, and became an “adventurer”, although “mercenary” is likely more accurate. His wealth was used to apprentice himself to a more knowledgeable wizard, and his powers rapidly grew from there.
Eventually word reached him of a ship looking to retain a wizard for a good sum, and he gladly joined up. What was intended to be a temporary contract ended up consuming a decade of his life. His strength on this journey grew more rapidly still, until he finally unlocked the mysteries of Flashstep. Unexpectedly, this too became one of the pivotal moments of his life, as Rhain’s appearance and identity began to change rapidly.
At first he fought these changes, and sought the services of one of the Sky’s few bodysculpters to change his appearance back.
And though the wizard still keeps a photo of (currently her) original self, she has stopped longing for who she used to be.
Since the breakup of the crew, word has circulated around the Skies of a figure who comes and goes in a flash of lightning, but stories of what this person looks like are never consistent. Man, woman, old, young. Rhain has built a bit of a personal legend over the last four years, though one that could never compare to the time she spent as part of the Sky’s most legendary crew.
