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Asthylia Elu-Arasté
[ ♦ ] Bio
♦ Name: Asthylia Elu-Arasté.
♦ Age: 27.
♦ Bloodline: Seraph(40%)|Oro(30%)|Nayu(25%)|Sol(5%).
♦ Birthplace: Nero.
♦ Height: 5'3.
♦ Weight: 157 lbs.
♦ Physique: Her features made her challenging to identify such that even were her skin bare, one might never ascertain the essential nature of her ancestry. One might say the blood of Sol was strong in her. After all, her pale flesh possessed a subtle glow, yet it bore a litany of dark ochre markings beset upon by scales. Each mark evoked the harsh lines of some wild beast, all jagged teeth and sinuous movements across her flesh. In the depth of her many-faceted eyes, one might see the influences of the Seraphim, Nayu, or even Lassa, yet none so strong as to distinguish themselves outright. Thus one could only describe her gaze as flawed gold--marred by black-earth brown and all awash with intricately tangled blue-green hues, all aglow with achromatic light. Yet these were not least among her attributes, for her visage was one most fair: angular features curved and smoothed by the gentle hand of femininity. With almond eyes, full lips, and curving, slender brows, which made her most expressive; there was marvel equal to the mystery of her physical persuasion. Bringing this to a close was the fading violet ash of her hair, draped about her countenance, down against her neck, ending before the gentle decline of her narrow shoulders.

Draped about her lithe form rest the exemplar of her freedom: twin wings wrought by the unique artifice of her ancestry. These sky-sworn limbs bear a distinctive likeness--as if avian and draconic features were brought to unity in their making. Where feathers would dominate, scales interlink instead--each writ long and wide--the whole more robust in structure. At her sides, rest hands and forearms marred with an array of vicious scars, oft-hidden by gloves twofold. To protect and complement her visage she wears an ensemble of equal parts fashion and function.

♦ History:
Asthylia was born to an exceedingly poor family of Nomads subsisting off of minor trade and manual labor at the very edge of Nero. While she remembers very little from her years there among those of her blood, what is very clear to her is that they were in hiding and always on the run. Amidst the memories of secretive quests in the dark of night and long stints of hiding and homelessness are those few glimpses of happiness and love shared between Asthylia and her parents. It was a confusing time, and it was made more so when, after finally managing to cross the border, her parents gave her over into the arms of strangers, abandoning her in the process.

In the ensuing years, she was surrounded by things most unfamiliar Asthylia’s only comfort was the familiarity of travel and of her memories. As the months passed her by, she slowly grew used to the presence of those who had taken her from her family, and though a quiet resentment followed her, she came to trust and care for these new people. Eventually, she would come to call them family and thus take on the pride and burden of the Arasté name becoming Asthylia Elu-Arasté. Striving to please her new family, Asthylia did her utmost in all her studies and made sure she trained extra whenever she could. She took up whatever subject she thought she might be good at, and with such dedication, time, and talent, she managed to pick up and keep a lot of those skills. Yet, as time went on it grew tiring to try and keep up the pace, not to mention that she became more independent, rebelling against some of her elders. Soon it came time for her to leave the nest, with her guardians and tutors believing that keeping her any longer would only stifle her progress.

They were right. Let out into the world, she flourished, exploring at her leisure, getting into trouble here and there, and eventually finding things to do. Eventually, though she grew tired of idle amusements and found that she did wish to repay the kindness of her family, so she set out to find a way to benefit them. At first, she tried subterfuge, then intrigue, and though she had some success, she found the latter unfulfilling and the former downright boring. She moved on to other pursuits, trying her hand at various crafts and coming up with nothing. This went on for some time until she happened upon a job, something about retrieving a valuable item from a dangerous place. It caught her eye and she took it almost without a thought. Gearing up, she set out on what she felt was her next adventure.

What she found delighted and surprised her, it was a challenge. Finding the item was easy, mind you, but fighting and killing the monster that made the place its home was something else entirely. She reveled in every moment of it and eventually returned victorious. With a deep feeling of satisfaction, she realized that this was it, this was her calling. So it was that she started going on expeditions, some to brave dangerous environments for resources, and others to clear the way of vicious monsters in pursuit of rare resources or priceless artifacts. A few years passed this way, with her bringing both wealth and prestige back to the family, but nothing good lasts forever.

So it was that at the age of 23 she was considering a hunting expedition to capture a truly terrible beast, known as the Withering Beast. Something of an adrenaline junky at this point, she took the job, despite the many warnings of friends and colleagues both. Gear equipped, she headed out, assured of her success. Once she had located the creature and set traps, she lured it her way, expertly avoiding its deadly assortment of natural--and magical--weapons. Yet, as she prepared the final blow, something unexpected happened, something totally outside her realm of experience.

None of her traps worked and, furthermore, anything she leveled the beast’s way fell short of doing it real harm. She became desperate, and those who had accompanied her realized that things were well out of hand, and fled. Betrayed and at a loss, she hesitated a moment too long and the beast struck her down. She regained consciousness in tremendous and constant pain as her companions returned and, horrified, guiltily helped her back to civilization.

Upon her arrival, the Araste were contacted, as well as doctors and healers, but when all was said and done little could be done for her most grievous injuries. Of these, the worst was the damage done to her hands and arms when she’d tried to fend off the beast’s assault. The damage was so uniquely severe that nothing beyond surface healing could be done. The physickers told her that she would never be quite the same, and despite all her efforts from that day forward...they were right. She tried everything from therapy to rare and dubious medicines, but nothing could restore to her what she’d lost. Furthermore, the damage to her arms meant she couldn’t even do her job properly, denying her release...all because of her recklessness...all because of her failure.

In the ensuing months and years, she grew increasingly withdrawn and agitated until she was confronted by an elder of the Araste, telling her that she must move forward or risk the ire of others less forgiving than those who understood her plight. Swallowing her anger and pride, she did what she should have done with those who had warned her, she listened. Attacking her weakness with all the pent up aggression and personal dissatisfaction, Asthylia sought to find a way to reclaim control of her life and after two years with little success, she made a breakthrough. Having dove deep into the arcane arts with the help of her family’s connections in the Magoi Guild, and assisted by her unique insight into magic, she found a way to enable her to once more pursue her passions. So it was that with diligence and cooperation that she set her life back on track.

Yet, despite this success, the thrill and the pure joy of her profession had been sullied by the trauma of her close-brush with death. Gone was much of her arrogance and naivety, but so too was the boundless happiness, the enticing exhilaration of the hunt. For her, while there were both solace and a measure of fulfillment in her work, she could not banish the shadow of doubt that her tremendous failure had set upon her. Now, the hunt was a cerebral task, incredibly engaging for all her faculties, but no longer fun in the way it had been. Of course, her daily doings were affected just as much by her disability as many things were harder for her now, and to use her magic she had to remove the only thing that stood between her and agonizing pain: her gloves.

To this day she secretly hopes and searches for a way to cure her malady, thinking that with its departure, so too will the shame and doubt in her heart be banished.

[ ♦ ] Personality
♦ Motivation: She seeks the joy and deep contentment she lost to the trauma of her horrific encounter with the Withering Beast. Similarly, she hopes beyond hope that she might find someone to ease the pain she endures daily, and perhaps...that a cure might be possible.

♦ Persona: Asthylia is, outwardly, a confident woman, assured of her place in the world and of her own inherent value. Nonetheless, beneath the surface she is not quite as sure as she might have you believe and though she may be a consummate actress, she is still human--at least as much as any Descendant can be. Specifically the trauma of her childhood separation from her parents has shaped her, cursing her with a deep-set, subconscious, fear of true closeness and emotional intimacy. Though her stride is seldom aimless, the failures of the past few years have bred in her psyche an insidious sense of inadequacy, of weakness. The two together have isolated her from the companionship that might lead her off her current path. All this coupled with constant pain--though muddled--serving as a reminder of her own failings serves to put her in a decidedly negative frame of mind. Where before her actions were measured when not under the thrall of passion, now they are more mechanical as if--even after four years of clawing her way out of depression--she is still barely holding her head above the water. This undercurrent of quiet misery is cut by her efforts to appear normal, to function in her everyday life, and press on in hopes of something better on the morrow. Perhaps, buried beneath the turmoil of her wounded heart there still remains a woman whose inner flame burns with an unkindled conviction, waiting to be stoked.
[ ♦ ] Capabilities
♦ Affinities: Divine|Wind|Earth|Darkness|Light.
♦ Experience: Asthylia has received, and requested, training in any number of areas as a result of her adoption into the Araste Family. Among these things, she has learned how to maneuver in the high courts, the various laws in the kingdoms, hand-to-hand combat, persuasion, seduction, manipulation, spycraft, weapons proficiency, the academics, and the arcane. Of these, she has mostly utilized her social skills--and impeccable acting--in addition to her more combat-oriented gifts. It would be very apt to call her a Jack of All Trades, Master of None. Of her various talents and skills, Asthylia is most adept in the Art of Presence, a discipline whose application is many-fold. Essentially, Presence is a primarily combat discipline that enables someone to train both conscious and subconscious aspects of the mind to work in tandem. Those with sufficient skill are capable of detecting, and reacting to, stimuli faster than the conscious mind on its own would allow. Beyond this ability, Asthylia’s understanding of magecraft is significant, and while her skill with individual elements and aspects is only slightly greater than proficient, she has a mechanical understanding that few possess. Of course, despite all her talents and training, there are a few things that she fails in. Most notably is her lacking ability to maintain connections with people due to past trauma. While Asthylia can handle herself against everyday physical threats, she only truly shines when facing off against fauna, both large and small, magical or mundane. Due to her having chosen a profession as a monster hunter and acquirer of rare materials, she has extensive knowledge when it comes to a wide variety of monsters, plants, and though her disability no longer allows it, she has all the necessary knowledge to make and operate traps effectively.

Note: It is worth noting that though she has learned many things, she is not even close to a master in all but a select few. Thus, everything not stated as relevant can be considered proficient with the sole exception of her skills in monster hunting and item acquisition.

♦ Characteristics: Due to her mixed bloodlines, Asthylia is a woman of diverse talents. As the most substantial aspect of her ancestry, her Seraph bloodline affords her the most physical traits, making her light, agile, very coordinated, dexterous, and preternaturally sharp. Beyond these traits, her Seraph blood allows her to perceive souls--and to a lesser degree--energies of a more arcane sort. The former perceptual ability is something she must focus to see, while the latter is always present though less distinct, forcing her to focus if she desires any depth of detail from it. Last among her Seraph traits are her wings, which, unlike those of most, are actually a result of her second strongest bloodline intermingling with the first. This interaction between Oro and Seraph blood gives her wings somewhere between that of a bird and those of a more draconic variety, resulting in scale-like feathering and durability in the wings that many might kill to acquire. The make-up of her wings is a significant boon, as the scales can regrow very swiftly, though this does mean she has to groom them daily.

Her Oro ancestry also makes her flesh--though not everywhere--somewhat thicker and more durable, as well as reinforcing her physiology to make her stronger than average, though not as much so as someone with much stronger blood. Last, among her Oro traits, Asthylia has gained a unique variety of wind manipulation, that requires activation and movement, to properly utilize. Essentially, this affinity for wind allows her to gather it about her form, as well as release and guide it in her vicinity, with the quantity of wind and the strength of her manipulations growing greater as she continues to use the ability. A distinct downside to this though, is that the ability taxes her both physically and magically, making it unwise for her to keep up for very long in spite of how strong it can get if she does.

While there is significant strength to both her Seraph and Oro ancestry, her latter two bloodlines are drastically weaker, with the first--Nayu--only giving her dark vision, hearing twice as acute as standard, in addition to a strange affinity for darkness. This affinity allows her to blend into places of reduced light. The less light there is, the more like a shifting, indistinct silhouette she becomes until she is challenging to follow or detect with conventional means. While this trait does not require her to activate it consciously, it does require a degree of focus for it to become stronger, in a similar vein to her wind manipulation. Finally, Sol, her last bloodline, lets her eyes adjust to light more swiftly, with that being where the benefits end.

♦ Skills
Presence
-4 Soul | -1 Soul per 2 minutes.
The Art of Prescience is a primarily martial discipline in which practitioners are trained to consciously enter and maintain a sort of Flow State. This unique mental framework uses a small measure of Soul to initiate after which it can be held for long periods of time. Once a practitioner has sunken into this state of mind, their conscious mind cedes a measure of control to the subconscious, allowing the individual to pick up on all the information that the brain typically filters out. Combined with the extensive training regimen, a master of Presence can use their sharpened awareness to improve their overall performance. Their training, in short, teaches them how to use their environment itself as a weapon and how to wield any number of weapons just well enough that they could pick it up to use if they lacked their own.

The true secret of this Art, however, is that its users have trained themselves to recognize and track the movements of Soul. This ability requires that one be able to at least sense the energy on a significant level, and preferably that one can perceive it as clearly as possible. While the perception of Soul is fairly passive--though frequently requiring focus--the form used by Practitioners are Presence is not, forcing the individual to learn how to sink almost all of their awareness into this sense. To do this, a Practitioner must exert a small measure of their own out into the world and control it just enough that they can have it spread thinly and bond to things. The longer it is in use, the more heightened a practitioner’s perception and predictive ability become. Of course, this comes with its own pitfalls, namely that the exerted essence can be disturbed or their senses warped by the use of magic. This is a double-edged sword though, as while on one hand magic will disperse their senses--and thus ability to effectively react with their extra sense--it will also almost immediately notify them of its presence. It is worth noting that it takes either particularly potent magic--or very densely packed soul to disperse their dispersed soul.

The masters of this art can bind most--or all--of their exerted Soul to themselves, allowing it to move with them. However, someone like Asthylia is only able to bind about 3 meters of exerted Soul to her person, giving her an edge, but leaving her quite open to ranged assaults. As a direct result of this, Asthylia is most effective at mid-close range.


Deviation
-2 Soul -5 Stamina per 2 mins
Asthylia, while already naturally swift, is capable of leveraging all of her abilities at once to surpass her normal movements. To do this she will activate her passive wind magics, eliminating air resistance and causing the wind to assist her movements. This constant wind also allows her to better utilize her wings, giving her more maneuverability and control overall. This can be maintained over a longer period of time without much effort, but if she drastically alters her trajectory or increases her speed explosively using her wind magics, she will expend 3-6 soul depending on intensity.

♦ Spellcraft: Generally speaking, Asthylia’s spellcraft focuses on using her strongest elemental affinity--Divine--to create spell matrices she calls Formulae. These spells are useful on their own but can be modified by adding additional soul of another aspect.

Astral Forge
Variable Soul Cost
Divine
Using divine-aspect soul, Asthylia can conjure a variety of spell matrices, which can take on solid form at will. This ability supplies her with weaponry and--to a more limited degree--tools crafted purely from soul but does have other uses. In order to conjure anything, Asthylia must have either a clear image and understanding of it or have time to work out the kinks. All constructs are static in shape once fully conjured and will never exceed the total size of her own body. Base durability of the constructs is roughly that of iron. Elements can be added in order to enhance constructs in various ways, but doing so will always be a trade-off.
Earth increases construct durability to that of steel, but increases apparent weight making them difficult to wield or manipulate.
Wind decreases construct weight and durability but generates shell of wind. The wind shell’s function depends on the object.
Darkness makes constructs opaque and allows them to briefly become partially or wholly intangible.
Light makes constructs almost invisible but decreases durability to roughly that of bronze.


Fortify
5-12 soul
Divine
Initiated faster than most spells Fortify requires that her blood be drawn prior to activation. Once the aforementioned has occurred, energy pours from the wound, sealing minor injuries and spreading a magical facsimile of her own scales over and throughout targets of her choice. Typically this is used on her flesh and clothing, but it can be applied to other items to improve durability drastically. Fortify cannot be used on items bigger than her person--more specifically, things of greater mass than herself and if attempted the spell will only properly reinforce some of the target. Furthermore, she must have contact to initiate the effect and continued focus is required if it is utilized on something other than herself. With additional energy and focus, Asthylia can reorganize the energy of the spell, increasing the durability in some areas at the cost of others. It should be noted that the durability afforded by Fortify is wholesale, affecting the entire target, rather than merely creating a protective shell. 

Adding an additional element will alter the properties of the spell.
Earth will increase durability further, reinforcing every physical aspect of a target, but requires that the spell be used only on primarily solid targets.
Wind will make the target lighter, without reducing base durability. It generates a shell of air on target, repelling attacks.
Darkness makes perceiving the target’s exact shape and location drastically more difficult but affords less defense.
Light combines with the divine aspect, giving the user greater resistance to spells, at the cost of any physical defense.


TripleBlind
3-8
Darkness|Light|Divine
This spell can be described as blindness by isolation, overstimulation, and lack of stimulus, respectively. The dark element completely absorbs all light that would normally reach the eyes--or other relevant organs--then funneling that light into its opposite. Once absorbed, this light is amplified greatly and fed at point-blank range as powerful and continuous flashes to the visual sensory organs. Lastly, the most troublesome aspect of TripleBlind is its Divine aspect, which in addition to facilitating some of the functionality of the spell, also uses both light and shadows cast on the target, imbuing them with a screen of impermeable energy, making it exceedingly difficult to detect magical energies through it. A skilled user such as Asthylia is capable of adjusting the elemental make-up of the spell, enhancing or dampening a given effect to suit a situation. Notably, the most costly aspect of the spell is its divine component. Using all three effects at once is the most expensive usage.

Note: The light aspect of the spell blinds within 10 feet, dazzles within 15, and briefly disorients up to 20 feet away after which it has little to no effect. The Shadow and divine aspects of TripleBlind must to physically strike the eyes or face and their trajectory is controlled/decided by Asthylia. If they don't hit the face the spell doesn't work. The light version of the spell can be used as a projectile in the same manner but will lose its Area of Effect properties, instead, it blinds a single target even with their eyes closed.

[ ♦ ] Equipment
Enchanted Gloves: Made of silk and embroidered artfully, these gloves cover the hands all the way up to the elbows and are snug against the skin. The enchantment on them nullifies pain and helps steady the tremors that Asthylia experiences almost constantly as a result of her disability, though not enough to allow her to do precision tasks like writing. She wears these soft gloves under a much less expensive pair of leather gloves depicted far above.

Armored Garb: Consists of an array of metal segments, cloth, and some leather. Her shoes appear less functional than they truly are, being waterproof and lightly enchanted to resist being pierced or melted too easily. The metal portions of her armor primarily protect her shoulders, knees, shins, back, and chest with most of it being hidden beneath layers of more comfortable baggy cloth. The metal portions of her armor are interwoven with chain-mail links, which are lightly enchanted so as not to fall apart, thus allowing her garb to hold itself together remarkably well. With the use of a small amount of soul (-5) the armor can activate secondary protection that protects the rest of her abdomen with a solid forcefield. This field is about as durable as steel, but will not defend her from magical threats any more than the rest of her armor might.

Hunting Gear: An assortment of miscellaneous supplies that she packs when going out on any kind of expedition, includes rations, a tent, sleeping roll, and other mundane essentials.

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Core Form

ConceptualѺs-fhìreach | Àicheil | Neo-àicheil
The Dreaming God|The Watcher Within|The Eldritch Twin
_______The Domain of Dreams_______

The Domain of Dreams concerns itself with the intuitive, creative aspect of the mind, allowing consciousness to observe and express itself free from the lens of logic, reality, and understanding. It is immaterial, it is a lens of pure experience beyond which dwells an infinite sea of unformed, undirected thought. Beckoning the mind from slumber or idle inactivity or boredom, Dreams exist in the between space where conscious cognition and unconscious observation meet. It is in this place which the Dreaming God dwells and it is from this place that intuition and imagination are born. As the very root of their existence, the Domain of Dreams serves as the staging ground for the divine machinations of this god beyond understanding. It is with the threefold god's dominion over Dreams that ideas are writ like subtle, elusive floaters into the minds of Galbar's lesser creations, for if it dreams, so too can its mind be seeded with the Dreamer's cosmic intent.

Through the power inherent in Dreams, Àicheil may traverse the collective unconscious of Galbar's many inhabitants, enabling them subtle, if significant, influence on the minds of all its denizens. Drawing from this power, the Dreaming god may sow, guide, and prune the ever-expanding stream of consciousness. Though this may not enable Àicheil to outright control the minds of other entities, it gives them both an intimate window into the minds of others and a means through which to interact and manipulate those who earn the enigmatic god's attention. Further, Àicheil may use their domain to bestow or inflict dreams, nightmares, or visions, allowing the Dreaming God to impart understanding without the context necessary to truly grasp the knowledge held therein. With great focus and meticulous care, Ѻs-fhìreach may even warp the mind or craft intricate tapestries of knowledge and experience. Yet, alone, Neo-Àicheil's domain is woefully incomplete, brought to completion only by the presence of their divine twin...Fìrinn.

The Portfolio of Abstraction

The crystallized rumination borne from the endless creative iteration of the great progenitor, Abstraction is the separation of concrete definition from a thing. As a cosmic influence, Abstraction is the process of rendering a thing in the abstract, divorcing a cohesive whole into its constituent parts to the point that it loses solidity and is rendered as--perhaps disparate--ideas. Serving a vital role in birthing the Threefold God, Abstraction enables the Dreamer to interact with the cohesion of a physical structure or thought in order to draw forth insight, create purpose, or divine meaning.

In the cognitive sense, Abstraction might be used to divide an idea into its components, allowing a being to see it more clearly and bridge the gap from ignorance to understanding. In the material sense, this portfolio might be used to alter the world, by reducing a physical phenomenon or structure until it is rendered as an immaterial idea. A house becomes a collection of rooms, the rooms become frameworks of wood enclosing space, the wood becomes living material, the space merely an idea leaving only a vague sense of vitality behind.

However, there is a great limitation in using this power, for it is solely reductive and cannot be used directly to create anything, only reduce it into its component parts or render it as an immaterial concept.

Persona

As a being of boundless understanding, but limited context, the Dreaming God is endlessly curious, intrigued by the minds of all entities, and baffled by the emotions and perspectives of those outside itself. Much like his twin, Àicheil is essentially amoral, as within its mind there exists little in the way of traditional reason to withhold malice. Yet, there are some things which Ѻs-fhìreach values, chiefly among them being open-mindedness and creativity, for it is these traits that give other beings a greater capacity to receive his divine truth. Beyond this, Neo-àicheil is a generous God, willing to give of himself in the pursuit of both external, and personal, enrichment. Still, though much about the Dreaming God is positive, their dwells something truly unknowable beneath the sheen of gracious generosity. For his mind is an endless ocean whose depths are obscured by roiling waves, which crest and churn upon its surface. Beneath its waters, hidden from prying eyes, there dwells a calculating consciousness of intractable intent, its eldritch curiosity unmoored from the far shores of compassion, sanity, and substance.

The Ròineagan

A tapestry woven from the fabric of a remembrance, Ròineagan is the intimately preserved design of the progenitor's boundless mind. It is perhaps Aicheil's most cherished thing, evoking a deep sense of belonging and completeness that few other things could possibly match. Yet, the truth of it is hidden beneath a twisting cosmic veil of consciousness, its purity marred, yet enriched, by the numerous minds that touch the Dreaming God's realm through the subtle threads woven into all sentient beings. To the observer, the Worldweave is sometimes a shifting kaleidoscope of colors, feelings, and sensations whereas others may find their deepest desires, fantasies, and nightmares reflected in the depths of the Sea of Dreams. This realm, from which imagination and intuition were born, spreads itself far and wide, weaving around Galbar and past the numerous realms of the other Gods, waiting to be touched. Further still does its current pull it, splitting it further into thinner and thinner threads until the influence of the Dreaming God is gone, and only the dream remains so that it may reunite with the minds from which the veil draws inspiration.

Though the Worldweave is not natively harmful to any who might desire to tread its currents, the reflection of one's own inner demons can render it a frightening--or dangerous--place indeed. Further, should you be drawn into the Worldweave and forced to behold what is behind the veil, without protection, the mind is sure to shudder and crack for no mortal was ever meant to behold a design of such complexity.

Visage
The Dreaming God

A form of pure expression, Dreams allow Aicheil to become a thing reflecting the ideas and personalities of those who behold him allowing him to blend in or stand out as is needed without a conscious grasp of how to do so. As such, this form is used almost solely when interacting with mortals or seeking to appease--or learn about--other gods by appealing to their expectations of him. Thus this form serves a dual purpose as disguise and information gatherer both, for though it frees the Dreaming God from the necessity of tailoring his form to suit others, it does not divorce him from the awareness of that form's shape.

Faireachan A-staigh

Serving as the avatar of Aicheil's enigmatic will, the Watcher Within is vaguely humanoid and often takes the form of a prismatic aura and a hazy silhouette of an androgynous figure. Upon closer inspection, Faireachan A-staigh is composed of an uncountable number of minuscule threads, each of which is a chain of intertwined droplets of refractive dew. As a result of its body's composition, Faereachan is not structurally sound and though it is exceptionally difficult to destroy, it can easily be dispersed by even the violent swipe from a mortal arm. This ephemeral form lends it a mysterious air, but also serves a distinct purpose, allowing it to express its master's divine form and intent by changing shape or creating elaborate depictions with its aura. Further, despite its seeming frailty, Aicheil's avatar is perfectly capable of interacting with the world--or simply reconstituting itself if dispersed. Its figure, though difficult to discern, is generally seven(7) feet in height, though its aura expands well beyond the silhouette of its unreadable visage, tapering off into nothing as it reaches fifteen(15) feet.

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My̶̨rd҉a  ̴Scio̢ŗ̧͢ȩ͜ņe̴҉

--】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【~
~】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【--
Theme
--】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【~
Life
~】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【--
To tell the story of Myrda is to speak of three tales entwined. The sense and culture of a people--the Taryne; to speak of the mortal--Myr; and to speak of the Sorcerer himself--Myrda Sciorene. So it is that you must know of the Taryne, a people whose only place in the world could be described as desolate. Vast ravines amid a stony wasteland of brittle flora and sparse, hidden fauna. It is in these lands which no other desired that the Taryne made their home, living in deep caves to escape the harsh winds and harsher shifts in temperature. Among these far-flung people carving a niche in the wastelands of Taryn, Myr was born to a pair whose names have long since been forgotten. 

The boy who would become Myrda is said to have been born touched by the spirits and so--soon after he could fend for himself--he was released into the world. It is said that he wandered for eight days eight times over, barely subsisting on the little he could forage or trap. Like many of his people, death was a friend, always walking several steps behind, waiting to catch you when you fell.

Yet, though his prospects were bleak, he never failed to catch himself and carry on. Many times was he run out of settlements, for the sight of his spirit touched eyes--like glowing amber limned with silver--told his people more than he could ever explain away. Still, a fire was in those alien eyes, and a strange droning hum had entered him, pulling him like metal to a lodestone. With time he found a place somewhere near the center of those lands.

Through near-starvation and terrible thirst over craggy hills and deep within ravines, he trudged. Eventually, he became aware again. He knew not how long he had wandered, only that he could go no further than the deep chasm before him. With the last of his flagging strength, he descended.

No one knows how far he went, nor how long he remained in that abandoned place. As no one saw him emerge, it is a mystery whether it truly was the same lad who eventually clawed his way back up from those depths. 

All that is known is that someone did emerge. Someone who resembled the young man who'd once begged at the mouths of many caves, asking only for what he needed for survival.

Yet it was no starving adolescent who passed the threshold of that first cave-home. It was someone else entirely. He was a man with quiet, piercing, haunted eyes, full with a deep knowing unheard of in those lands and a strength of presence utterly unknown to the Tarynean people.

He called himself Myrda Sciorene.

In those days, he was simply a man of great presence and wisdom. He taught. He worked, and he directed. With time he came to know each of the many tribes, and with each his rapport was unmatched. Slowly over a matter of many years, he drew their leaders closer to him, and the youth of those places closer still.

With these would-be outcast children, he built his own place, and therein life grew more abundantly than anywhere else. Yet the earth remained as desolate and unforgiving as before. Nonetheless, many plants came to grow upon his land, spreading slowly. Water too seemed to spill from that place, purer than anywhere else. Its life-nourishing essence pressed out from the city. Wherever the water touched in that desolate land, it brought--with the slow patience of time--new life.

So it was that the Taryne expanded from their former homes, their small hidden settlements becoming towns, and then--in lesser number--cities as trade was established between clans. All the while, Myrda’s power, and renown grew for the people who had been his knew from where the bounty had come, even if they could not understand its nature...or its price. So, as the Taryne grow and expand, remembering age-old grudges of those who had driven them from their ancestral lands, Myrda’s power changes him, with his people none the wiser.
--】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【~
Identity
~】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【--
Dwelling now in the great edifice of Anaryd Vhana, Myrda exerts his influence over the world, remaining in shadows--only his most trusted students and confidantes allowed to enter his presence. To his people, he is Sotyras, Lightbringer, He-Who-From-Nothing-Springs-All, Wiseman, leader, and perhaps sorcerer. However, as sects of his people take up arms, thinking to conquer foreign lands to avenge their long-gone kin--those many who died in the ravaged plains of their home--he comes to be known by others beyond his ilk. Reaver, Devourer, Writhe, and to those few who witness his power directly and live: He-Whose-Shadow-Eats-The-Soul. This reveals Myrda to be a sorcerer of two natures, one who desires the betterment of humanity, his people especially. A man who is not the least bit averse to sacrifice and long arduous work. Compassionate, driven, fierce, and wise. Yet...at once, a person with a hunger behind his kindhearted gaze, a darkness behind his ferocity. A shadow...hiding in plain sight, limned by light, hovering in the center of awareness, unseen. Perhaps the Taryne are wrong to idolize him so, after all, no one knows for sure if Myr and Myrda are one and the same...or if something other wore his skin when he left that long-forgotten place.

Only time will tell.
--】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【~
Potency
~】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【--
Myrda’s power is a force from beyond, pressed out into the world; the echoing consciousness of a dark memory of ages past. It is like a slithering, skittering horde of venomous insects, harmless if left alone, dangerous if disturbed. Infectious, this power impugns upon the sanctity of the world’s natural laws, manifesting a whispering resonance that shifts the nature of things closer to its own. It can change the laws that govern the properties or nature of any substance--living or inanimate--though at a great cost. With each alteration of the world, each manifestation of Chaos’ dying hold, the unseen contagion subsumes its host--or those chosen to hold its dread influence. With every display of sorcerous might, Myrda is subsumed further by this calamitous intelligence, its nature eroding at his humanity in both body and mind. Believing firmly in self-sacrifice, as many of his people are, he accepts this cost so that the Taryne might prosper in truth; so that others might never go hungry as he did...so long ago.

Though this eldritch essence slowly subsumes its host(s), it similarly gives boons of a fashion to them, in the form of additional limbs, augmented physiology, and exceptional longevity. For as they alter the world, those twisted rules warp them in kind, causing mutations to occur even as strange anomalous properties come to inhabit the host’s vessel. In this way, though his body is frail beneath the robes and inhuman viscera, he remains a danger if confronted physically. Beyond this Myrda is an adept survivalist and scholar, studying the world, its histories, and cultures, as well as knowing how to survive in it. He understands his people, both intuitively and on a more rational level, and a good thing too...for if logic had no hold in his mind, he might already be lost.

Myrda’s parasitic power is a constant plague upon his mind, always biting at the edges of his psyche. This can make him distracted, lethargic, or temperamental at times. Additionally, should the Presence ever subsume him entirely, it will become a plague upon the world, corrupting everything in its path. Those who choose to assist Myrda in staving off this likely inevitable fate take a fragment of his power into themselves. Often...it devours them like a slow sickness, hollowing them out until they are no more than a husk of a person. If left alone, these husks will die, leaving only the other to move their vessels. They must be killed before this occurs. While alive, these people gain the barest fraction of Myrda’s power, allowing them to warp the world around them, at the cost of drastically accelerating their own demise. The corruption of Sciorene’s power works much the same on almost any living thing unless he takes on the burden of these maladies himself--or gives them unto another, who will then be doomed to a slow agonizing death bereft of any benefit or solace.
--】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【~
Ambition
~】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【--
The Other claws at the edges of reality, its echo heard only by the mad and dying, its touch only by those who have given themselves to its insidious embrace. Yet, there remains hope amidst the inevitability of consumption, it is for this that Myrda grasps. Every second of every day he pursues the betterment of humanity so that others--if not he--might one day cure the blight that he bore back into the world from a foregone age.

With the sweat of his brow and many sacrifices of both flesh and mind, Myrda is a man seeking redemption in hopes that his life’s works might absolve him of crimes committed in the future. He is a man of fierce passion, tempered by the sobering truth of immortality, his appetite sated by visions of worlds beyond their own, forces neither seen nor understood, terrible things better left in the far reaches--unseen, ignored, unnoticed. Having brought such a thing to the fore, Myrda Sciorene’s greatest desires are to exploit this power for the benefit of man and to understand this thing, so that he might conquer it--if not in this life, then perhaps through those who come after.

The doings of his people are another matter, as while many have accepted peace and wish only to live and love; others remain unsatisfied, carrying grudges, desiring ever more. Myrda’s life is an endless struggle to achieve his goals while sating the needs and wants of his people, his mind ever at war with itself...and perhaps something else as well….

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Theme
He Who Twists and Breaks and Changes
The Primal | The Great Presence | Moniker | The Formless Flesh | The Unbound
The Domain of Form
The primordial ooze from which life once sprung, the Domain of Form is just as one might think: that which presides over all living shapes. It is the domain of flesh, and blood, and bone. It is the flexing of muscles, the products of glands, the vessel for consciousness, and the foundation of all life. Sa'a Malath Kaal is both the quintessential source of primal physicality and the legacy of that which coalesced from the remnants of the decaying cosmos and its forgotten gods. With this power he can mold the shape of all that lives so long as from substance it was wrought. From this primordial ooze a vital essence erupts, which by his will arises as beings of great variance in form, size, or function. However only the forms that living, evolving flesh might take can be rendered from this essence and so is the Deity of Form bound by its own essential nature.

Yet as the Domain of Form--as understood by the deific intellect of the Great Presence--begets shape and function, so too does it dictate evolution and change. It is the shifting of the body from parent to child and the gift of metamorphosis. Similarly, it is the curse of deserved (but oft unwanted) transmutation of limb or spine or fang. Just as from that wellspring did all forms once coalesce, so too may it transform them.

The Domain of Form is concerned, mechanically, with all things biological with a particular focus on the process of metamorphosis and/or evolution. The domain may be used to influence the shape, size, and function of organisms, as well as to outright create such. It is limited by its nature as it cannot create non-biological entities though it has the capacity to interface with them by creating organic structures that can interact with said forces or beings.

Persona

A form in flux, a mind to match, Malath Kaal is an entity engrossed in its own nature, in the endless possibilities of Form, concerned with life (but not worried by it). He is a being interested in balance and imbalance, predation and prey—survival and alteration and change. The Great Presence, the Formless Flesh, the Unbent, the Primal is intrigued by mortalkind, be it their minds, the forms, or even those instinct-driven beasts that live in the wild--or the many florae they devour.

So say his edicts: Living is essential; Metamorphosis divine.

-- Myth --
The Tale of Tsa Merek

A long journey was behind him for it had been an arduous trek from his homeland across rivers, around lakes, and through treacherous plains filled with predators in a world that was not kind to those few left to inhabit it. It had been after months that he'd finally stood before the great mountain that his people revered, the place known as the Black Maw. From afar it had seemed almost normal, though vastly greater in size than its many peers which stretched from east to west to either side of the monolithic peak. Now however, from so close, Tsa Merek beheld the truth.

Before him opened a perfect parabola, an arch, a gateway beyond which light seemed not to pass. Above it was the mountain, its peak stretching past clouds and into the blue skein of the heavens. Unlike its slate grey relatives with their reddened cliffs and white snow-capped peaks, the entirety of this mountain seemed as if it had been wrought from the night sky, but bereft of stars. It was utterly black from base to tip, and had it not been midday Merek might have missed the deeper darkness of its entrance.

To look upon it was to glimpse the threshold between the mortal world and the divine, it was to peer into an unknown beyond which one could not fathom the contents of the world. Merek swallowed hard, feeling bile travel down his throat, going back from where it had risen. The sensation reminded him of the stories their shaman had told him of the Primal's wrath.

"To gain the Ire of the Unbound God is to open oneself to the fullness of its attention. For his gaze to fall upon you is to feel the writhing of your flesh as it is twisted against your will. Malath will change you without care, its intentions beyond any mortal's ability to comprehend. Know this, Tsa Merek, to pass beyond the threshold of the Black Maw is to step into the domain of that god. To stand in the Primal's abode is to invite his judgment. Step lightly and speak with only truth and conviction. Do not lie, Merek. Do not lie, for to do so is to invite the wrath of eons into your body."

They were words he could not have forgotten. Even when his memory had begun to fail him he had repeated them, he had scratched them into stone, then into his flesh. They were engraved upon his chest. Not so he could read them, but so he knew the meaning was writ upon his being.

He took a breath and stepped beyond the threshold of the Maw; what awaited him was silence, stillness, and an impossible abyss. The ground was cold and level, perfectly smooth, but as he continued forwards, reeling in the dark, it warmed beneath his feet. Slowly it seemed almost to come alive as a gentle thrumming pulse beat a soothing rhythm against his soles. He grit his teeth and barely breathed, terrified by the black. He faltered, glancing back only to find that no exit remained behind him. Where before the threshold once had stood, there was only endless black, as with every other direction.

Turning back around, he remained still, unable to move. He was terrified, moreso than he had imagined he would be. In that moment he thought--no, he was certain--that he was going to die. Then the silence broke and the mountain shook as the Black Maw--Se'raa Kelet--spoke.

"Tsa Merek. Seeker, Father, Adherent," the voice said, shaking his bones with its vibration. The darkness changed, but Merek could not decide how, for no light had entered the god's domain. Unsure what else to do, the man moved slowly to his knees, prostrating himself before the force he had come there to entreat.

"Please," Tsa Merek said, his voice feeling tinny and small, his ears still ringing from the thunder of the Maw. For a time there was no response, in fact no sound at all, and then something slipped against him, fluttering across the cloth of his back. He shuddered as--moments later--the sound of something huge dragging lithely across smooth stone emanated from behind him.

Slowly more sounds faded into his awareness, each accompanied by the churning of the air as if something unfathomably vast was moving through the chamber.

"Seeker of protection, O' ye of tested faith," began the low drone of that titanic voice, its sound sonorous and primal. "Mah Lia you have abandoned, left behind in your home of earth. Your people did you depart, seeking out divines with which to consort. Seeking aid, seeking miracles unearned."

Though he could not see, Merek's eyes widened at each utterance of the voice, his heart growing panicked and frantic in its rhythm.

"Begging you kneel before me, your convictions frail as grass or leaves or silt."

Directly before him something struck the stone. It did not crack, but the sheer force of the thing pushed him back as wind blasted from its point of contact. Curling in on himself as he recovered, Tsa Merek peered desperately into the dark, seeking any sign of hope.

"Please," he whimpered, terror in his tone, "...I came only for my people, to save them from famine and from drought."

The sounds stopped and stillness returned.

The shadows unfurled and from them emerged a symbol. Merek gasped.

The Eye of Malath had opened before him and briefly beyond its glowing gaze the man had glimpsed a vessel of monolithic size. It coiled and writhed and twisted through the chamber, its many limbs pressed against the walls and floor. Yet, he had caught only the barest image of the Deity of Form, seen only a silhouette frozen in two moments before the light became a blinding brightness that shook his mind and body both.

"Seeker. Father. Faithful child, protector of the weak," proclaimed the Eye.

Merek did not hear the words, he felt them in his bones. He heard them with his flesh, they tingled across his skin and rippled in waves throughout his mind and every neuron in his form. The light grew and its glow suffused him, filled him, lifted him from the ground. He opened his mouth, but could not scream or speak or cry. His body shook, but not from fear, no; it was like every iota of his being was vibrating with the power of that deific entity before him. Yet, something was wrong, deeply wrong, for his mind--his awareness of himself--faded as the power grew in intensity and size.

'No!' his mind screamed out, but there came no response and soon the man-who-was-not-a-man, who had once been Merek, had forgotten his distress and even why he might have felt it.

For many days after he wandered the land, trekking across the wilderness, through storm and flame and snow, until finally, he came upon a village. Red-leaved trees and buried houses which perhaps once were carved from stone. A sense of familiarity came upon him and with it came the light. Kindled within him, it grew and grew...and grew. No, it was he who changed as the light added to his bulk even moreso than before. Once more he forgot his former shape, becoming sluggish in his expanse. In time, the sweat from his many glands fed the earth around what the man Merek had once known as his home. Plants grew and the people--once his family and his friends--took of his flesh to feed upon.

As they rose from the darkness of their homes and cast aside the misery of starvation a feeling came upon the man who had a beast become; Satisfaction.

Visage
The Primal

Formless, yet possessed of all that flesh might birth, the True Form of Malath Kaal is one both of endless metamorphosis and imperceptible stability. Ever-shrouded by a blanket of midnight fog, attempting to behold the Great Presence in its entirety is an impossibility. Instead, one catches only glimpses, hears only the sounds of claws grinding, flesh slithering, and limbs skittering over surfaces. Eyes and lengths of winding viscera and bone, skin or muscle are seen, but never all at once. Utterly an enigma, the shape of this God of Form is its own contradiction for while it is ever-changing, it too is utterly unchanged, remaining always in a static form whose various aspects cross between the perceptible and the unseen at the slightest whim or provocation--or so one might theorize.

The Eye of Malath

Image courtesy of the amazingly skilled CorrosiveCherri!
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The Primal simplified, the Eye of Malath is a symbol of variable size, color, and luminosity that can appear before those upon which the Great Presence’s attention falls. While not precisely a form in the truest sense, it is instead a non-physical projection of the god’s awareness, appearing only where its awareness is most focused. This state of being is possessed of strange properties, as it is unburdened by the limitations of flesh and of anonymity that the True Form imposes upon the Primal. Thus, the Eye can pass beyond barriers, solid or energetic, or even interpose itself upon the forms of entities less than divine. Though all forms of Malath have the capacity to invoke drastic and incredible changes upon the vessels of living things, it is the Eye that can do so with no more than the faintest touch from the strange illumination it emits.

Hidden 3 yrs ago → 3 yrs ago Post by yoshua171

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𝒞ath  ℳelainea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ᴛ ʜ ᴇ  ᴄ ʀ ᴜ ᴄ ι ʙ ʟ ᴇ
"Hide not thy nature, burn brightly your truth, until nothing else remains."
Theme I ♦ Theme II
C A T H  M E L A I N E A
Kaath  Mel-eye  Neya
Aspect
♦Temper / Temper♦
♦
♦
Temperament, a thing forged in the great tempest of experience, a reflection--an expression perhaps--of consciousness, and in its changing, a thing that might be refined and tempered into an ever greater form. Simply put, Cath Melainea is a confluence of these two ideals. She is emotion and its expression, its manifestations--physical and otherwise--are hers to command. At once, her heart is the forge of these tumultuous powers, changing all it touches. In this way, Melainea is a force of change, whether it be through mastery or circumstance it does not matter.

When pulling upon the power of her most divine essence she might invoke in others emotion, bringing rise to agony, or joy, or awe. At once, through these things she may change things, be it through imbuing them with such things, or through giving those experiences tangible form, and thus causing metamorphosis in all such a thing might touch. With the Crucible's influence, a happy man, might become a shining beacon of joy, a wellspring of euphoric bliss, enrapturing those around him. Yet, so too can her power bring about calamity....

Persona
♦Curious  ♦  Wise Naive  ♦  Callous ♦
♦♦♦
While a wide spectrum of terrifyingly beautiful and endless emotions writhe storm-like beneath her divine flesh, Melainea is--above all else--endlessly curious. This may take many forms of course, sometimes manifesting in an inquisitive nature, whereas in other moments she might briefly take on an almost child-like wonder. However, while this emotion drives much of her behavior, she too is the callous observer, the seemingly uncaring scientist tinkering with the lives and environs of others. However, this is indeed only that, a seeming, as the reality of things is that Melainea simply does not--perhaps cannot--see her treatment of Galbar and its inhabitants as anything but moral. To her, whether a man becomes a plague of woe or a beacon of hope matters little so long as he becomes something that before he was not.

Visage
♦True Form♦
♦
♦"The Truest Guise of Cath Melainea is best understood through an experiential lens as to attempt to describe it in simple terms is a misleading and troublesome thing. Still, despite this, I will try."Cathyri Scholar

She is a flash of violent violet light, shattering perception, yet enrapturing the viewer. This light, it emanates from a churning core of writhing indigo flame in an almost teardrop shape. Its surface seems--somehow, despite lacking true solidity--reflective, and upon perceiving it, the psyche of the beholder is flooded with endless emotion, filling them overfull with the experiences of their lifetime. Beneath her light, annoyance becomes fury, contentment–euphoria–and disappointment: anguish. Yet, she is still more than this Crucible, for superimposed upon this is what might first appear a woman's silhouette, but is in truth an amaranthine tear in the fabric of the world. Within this god-shaped hole are endless fractals of experience, all intertwined like multidimensional crystals. To gaze too long into her visage is to invite it into thyself, and in so doing, render oneself utterly hers. Those few who survive the ordeal of her manifestation find themselves indelibly changed by the experience, and whether for good or for ill they will never know the difference as those who gaze into the Crucible of Emotion, become naught but elementals forged in Melainea's essence.
♦♦♦♦♦♦
Poetic reimaginings created from various accounts of those who survived the manifestation of our Lady Melainea.

"She was a turning mirror, reflecting minds, each consciousness a burning flame, drowning all else, mixing...diffusing. A maiden, a mother, a crone ensconced in effervescent violet flames. A metallic fractal, containing coruscating light, crystalline and pure, yet malignant and destructive." - Thellasi Poet Carian Sarr.
♦
♦
"Two orbs, a pair of shining eyes blossoming before my own, her gaze, it ensorcelled me, wrapped me in its embrace. As we stared, I upon her, and she into my secret self, my hidden soul, a felt a stirring within my brow and beneath my breast. Like a burning flame of terrible bliss, agonizing in its intensity, I was overcome with emotion until at last, I became it!" - A Violet-eyed survivor.
♦
♦
"Soothing warmth, purest duress, I was enlightened. Without her there is only the burning cold of this emotionless world. Men hide their feelings behind a terrible mask we call a face. I call them blasphemy! Ye apostate who would deny expression, deny truth, deny her sorrow and her love! Shame! Shame!" - A scholar of the sciences, driven to feverish madness.Excerpts from "Glimpses of the Goddess"
♦♦♦♦♦♦

♦Facade♦
♦
♦
Though the Goddess may at some times present herself to mortals in her truest shape, more often is it that such a thing is only ever glimpsed in fragments. These fragments are known as Melainea's Facade and simply put, they are other expressions of her Aspect's physical manifestation.

Though she most often appears as a violet-eyed woman with an elaborate set of feathers in her hair, and two curving horns--as depicted far above--below are other depictions of witnessed manifestations.

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Ⱦatasuko, Ⱦeishi. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"

"
Theme I ♦ Theme II
【Personal Info】
♦
♦

【Alias: 
【Age: 350.
【Age Appearance: 35.
【Gender: Male.
【Race: Human-->Plus-->Shinigami.
【Rank: Captain.

【Additional Appearance Info: 

【Biography:

【Capabilities】
♦
♦

【Zanpakuto】
♦
♦

Sealed State
~“I am its host, not its master, it says. Nonetheless, its power moves at my behest.”~

Inner World & Spirit:

Teishi’s inner world is an endless abstract dimension of black and white, devoid of almost any color. Often is it that only he and Hakumei are the sole entities to populate the slowly shifting murk with life or hue. Though the realm can at times take on more distinct shapes, it is always with an unreal bent, every surface bearing the paint-like splotches of ink and untouched parchment. Illuminating it all is a sourceless silver glare, ever-present, and offensive.

The Spirit of Teishi’s blade has always been a mysterious entity, its likeness inhuman–yet still familiar, like some primordial force, a natural aspect of the world given shape and voice. Shifting its shape to suit its needs, Saigo Hakumei is most often a masculine figure with pitch-black hair and flesh, sharp claw-like nails, and three eyes like glimmering starlight. Its movements are starlit silence, its voice carrying the weight of an echoing boom, with the subtlety and control of a whisper. The entity is, beyond its relationship to Teishi, seemingly unrelated to the shinigami or his temperament–a thing that will one day be known as something truly unheard of. However, it does bear some similarities to its would-be master. It is filled with both quiet rage, and a stolid unwavering purpose. Further, it seems to desire always more–be it of the world or the man it calls its host.

Shikai
~"Sunder, Saigo Hakumei(最後薄明 ‘Final Twilight/Twilight’s End’)"~

Ability: The manifestation of Teishi’s shikai could be considered deceptively simple in both appearance and use. In essence, his chipped and battered sword serves as a gateway between this world and the unreachable emptiness that dwells beyond all things. Preceding all things, the properties of this forgotten plane are those of creation and destruction both, for it is from this womb of emptiness that all existence sprung. The precise mechanism through which Saigo Hakumei channels this otherworldly power is through a faintly glowing reiryoku that fills in the cracks of its jagged edge. Through the movement of the blade, and the exertion of his will, Teishi is capable of bringing the very essence of void from the emptiness beyond. The properties of this exotic phenomena are those of pure destruction, taking on the form of a jet black ink-like fluid that erases all it touches, wiping such from existence. In this unrefined state, this primordial quintessence possesses no other unique traits, and given the lacking medium of his incomplete zanpakuto, Teishi holds little to no sway over the precise movements and behaviors of the substance. However, the essence will largely obey some semblance of the world’s physical and spiritual laws, allowing Teishi to influence its movement and manifestation through the skillful utilization of his swordsmanship. Lastly, Teishi is capable of pouring his reiryoku into his blade, allowing him to generate more of the hazy energy that serves as a gateway for Saigo Hakumei's power.

Techniques
Hekikai Kenmaku(劈開剣幕 ‘Cleaving Sword-Curtain’): 

Kamisori Kadō(剃刀渦動 ‘Razor Vortex’): 

:

Bankai
~"Bankai...Saigo Hakumei, Shinkū Hassan(最後薄明, 真空発散 ‘Twilight's End, Empty Emanation’)"~

Ability:

Techniques
( ‘’): 

( ‘’): 

( ‘’): 

( ‘’):

Hidden 3 yrs ago → 3 yrs ago Post by yoshua171

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yoshua171 The Loremaster

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yoshua171

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ℒírha      &      ℒhuré
~“Unified we stand against the forces of Chaos. Never faltering, never waning, moving always towards our goal”~
Theme I ♦ Theme II
【Basic Info】
♦

Titles:
Lírha the Untarnished; Chaos’ Bane; The Great Devourer; The Guardian Shadow; The Merciless Maw
Lhuré the Resplendent; He of Endless Arms; Brilliance Unending; Lifter of the Veil; The Unyielding Tempest

【Age: Couldn’t decide on this. Ages kinda work different in their world (people live longer on account of how their world works, plus like…reincarnation is a standard thing sooo. Should I just put unknown? It’s kind of inconsequential).

【Form:
Lírha
Appearing fundamentally human when at rest, Lírha is a strong, if lithe, woman with a fierce beauty to both her visage and bearing. She moves with a natural grace, every motion filled with finesse and considerable poise. Fair of complexion and features, she is striking to look upon, but perhaps more notable is her garb, which covers the vast majority of her frame, up to and including strips of cloth that hide her eyes from the world. When in her full glory, though her precise anatomy and features can shift due to her prodigious control of her vessel, she can be seen shrouded in a dense miasma of amaranth and pitch. In this state, unlight burns through the crimson wrappings on her eyes, shining with an unnamable prismatic hue that can be described only as perfectly blinding in its radiance. Shrouded in the dark miasma of chaos, Lírha will become wreathed partially in the malaise-inducing storm of intermingled emotional lhuin. In this state, simply looking upon her can inspire equal parts glorious awe and gut-deep revulsion. If one were to ever peer beneath the wrapping ‘pon her eyes, they would bear witness to quite the sight: Startling eyes of gold and black and silver, colors writhing in a hideously beautiful dance.

Lhuré
Always garbed in his regalia, Lhuré’s appearance is truly shrouded beneath the cloth and armor that adorns his form. Nonetheless, he moves with a certain weight to his step and there is a deep sense of serenity that emanates from his person. When in the full sway of his power, his mask shines with divine light and many almost ghostly limbs can occasionally be glimpsed about his form. Often a haze of drifting mist-like light will emanate from his being and at his behest solidify into any number of constructs. If ever he must stoke his fiery core to its most resplendent he becomes less a man and more a shining pillar of divine radiance. Were you to remove that which conceals his form, one would find a thin man writ from the same light as his constructs and bound with an uncountable quantity of silver threads weaving across his form in an endless array of sigils. Truly, he has become the light amidst the darkness, the Order shining resplendent from within the Bed of Chaos.

【World】
♦

Hailing from a particular universe in a multiverse all its own, Lírha and Lhuré were born in an iteration of said world known as Tir na Itheil. Created by a warped Arbiter–beings who preside over each their own universe–Tir na Itheil is a world of twisted laws and hazy limitations. Rather than being bound by law as many iterations are, it is instead subject to the rules of Invocation, better explained as the Emotions of Lhuin–with lhuin being the exotic energy/substance that composes all things. This world is thus divided into several relevant parts, the innermost of which is referred to as the Heart of Starlight. Surrounding this bed of Chaotic lhuin is their equivalent of a material realm, known as Laghrian. This is where all mortal souls are born and die. Ever plagued by the gods unnamed and numberless who exist in the Geil beyond Laghrian, mortals of Itheil struggle even to survive in the harsh world they were born in. Whereas normally mortals would be capable of a magic called Intimation, which concerns itself with imposing the will to interact with and manipulate the physics of their world, the overbearing power of the emotional lhuin of their world–and its frayed worldweave–have rendered them largely incapable of this innate power.

So it is that Itheil is a world where emotion and belief, or Chaos as the mortals call it, serves as the driving arcane power of the realms therein. Beyond mortalkind–who can take a vast variety of forms–there are the Fey, which mortals refer to only as gods. These are beings of Emotion (Chaos) rather than Logic, as mortals are, and as a result of Itheil’s warped nature as an iteration, they rule supreme. However, with the rise of the Twins, and their healing of the Worldweave, some cosmic Logic has been renewed to their fraying world and so the struggle is not so dire as it was before their ascension.

【Race】
♦

Mortal
Greater Mianloinnir.
Perceivers
~“Through Will alone, we conquer Chaos, asserting Order where we can. Still, it is not enough and our world remains fractured and impure. This, we will change. So we swear.”~

Mortals
Unlike worlds most are familiar with, the term human, or mortal, in Tir na Itheil covers a vast quantity of bases. From animal-like, to the mundane biped with which we are so familiar, all of these are mortal. Possessed of the warm Black Flame, and imbued with silver Sparks of divine logic, mortalkind may take many forms but they hold within all of them the same essential nature. Each and every mortal is a being of logic–though obviously capable of emotion as all beings are–allowing them the innate ability of Intimation, a magic that works by allowing the Will, using lhuin as a conduit, to directly interact with the physical laws of the world. Thus, through skillful manipulation, mortals can harness cosmic law itself, bending the world around them to their Will. Though a lesser power of most humans, the mortals of Tir na Itheil are also capable of Invocation, which essentially allows individuals to channel distilled emotion to will lhuin into actions in line with that feeling. Rage might beget a consuming flame, whereas love and lust might cause growth in surrounding flora and fauna both. Similarly, Invocation allows those wielding it to harness the power of those connected to them through Chains of Invocation, which serves as metaphysical bonds between souls. These chains are created through strong belief as the force of one’s emotions connects them to another through the crystallization of ambient lhuin in the world.

Greater Mianloinnir
A title and a class of souls from their multiverse, the Twins are mortals who have cultivated and tempered their divine Sparks to the point of Ascension, pushing them beyond normal limits and into the realm of middling divinity. This class of mortal souls is called as such due to its namesake material, which are essentially confluences of perfectly balanced essences–various specific forms of lhuin–that come together to form what can only be described as universal perfection. Said material is unbreakable and more potent as both a physical and magical tool in essentially every way. This class of being was named as such due to the change in their nature as they ascend, as their souls and mind become utterly unassailable, incapable of being manipulated by Invocation or other magics through direct or indirect means. Despite this, Mianloinnir are still capable of being harmed or killed, though such requires drastically more effort than it would for a lesser being. Due to the ascended nature of their Spark, Mianloinnir are afforded preternaturally long lives, and though they can eventually die, they will typically reincarnate unless their souls are utterly destroyed, retaining all their memories and power when they do so. The last notable aspect of this class of being to which the Twins belong, is the inherent ability granted to those who ascend to this degree. Known simply as a Rulebreak, each Mianloinnir holds the ability to break one distinct cosmic law or smaller intertwined laws.

However, it bears knowing that the Twins are not like typical Mianloinnir who hail from Iterations wherein Order, and Law have some significant sway. As a result, the potency of their capabilities comes from elsewhere, and their Rulebreaks instead take on the form of twin Wills that are largely beyond reproach. This renders their magic particularly potent even for Mianloinnir–though not completely unstoppable–forcing others to engage them knowing that most arcane forces will pale in comparison to their own.

【Origin & Aspiration】
♦

【♦ Legend & Ascent ♦】

Filled with optimism and understanding for others, Lírha–with great confidence–walked into the Darkness of the churning Geil. Harnessing her will and her lhuin, she survived the forces therein, but could not pull herself from such alone. Thus, her brother, a forgiving soul, intent upon unifying others with the clear vision of the world and the joy he hold as a light against it would have to aid her. Having remained in Laghrian amongst the people, Lhuré did not lose hope when his sister fell into the all-corrupting Geil. Knowing her worth, he trained himself, harnessing the lhuin of his vast internal light and stoking it into a beacon of intense and purifying fire given solid form. Pressing forth, to the dismay of many, he pierced the Geil and came to his sister’s aid.

Side-by-side, she who took on darkness and he who had harnessed light, fought against the Geil, seeking to free the mortals trapped in Laghrian. Yet, as they fought the twisted will of the nameless gods made itself known and soon, they were faced with the foremost children of such beings.

Navreden, he who gives and gives, twisting–his gifts taking more than they were worth.

Gnev, ever sleeping, restless…violent, sowing madness in all who touch his dreams.

Mir, never resting such that others may. In her shadow, the dead dream, sated and content.

Tvorec, a shuttered light, blinded, yet blinding. It sleeps, but in its sleep it weeps…and its tears reforge the firmament.

Surrounding them, these titanic forces might inspire in others Dread, but the twins did not falter. Instead, they clasped hands, and with palpable relief that blossomed in a great shield about their forms, they ascended. Erupting from their vessels were waves of intertwined chaos and order, light and darkness. Briefly overtaken by the force of such a sudden display, the four retreated, shielding themselves from the fury of the twins.

Then the world itself tilted on its axis, the shattered heavens and the mirrored lands below were healed. With threads of darkness, and rays of purifying light, they were woven back together and Itheil knew Order for the first time in many eons. Stepping from their home, from the yin and yang of quintessence that had borne them anew into the world, the twins revealed themselves to their fourfold foes.

On the right stood the brother, Lhuré the Resplendent. The very laws of the world draped about his form in the shape of crimson robes, golden chain and mask. Surrounded in an uncountable array of floating crystal blades forged of purest pale gold light, he was brilliant as the sun and stars combined, more blinding than the foremost god.

On the left beside him stood the sister, Lírha the Untarnished, garbed in the Chaos of the gods, yet bereft of its ghastly touch. Writhing at her back was an endless cloak of darkness from which sightless eyes peered out, alien and strange. Wound about her arms were cords of ink-like essence, pulsing with the infernal wrath of her divine power. Raising her chin, a hood fell away, revealing startling eyes of gold and black and silver. They were the image of hunger and control.

So it was that as a pair they faced off against the Four and after a titanic battle, won. However, they were not satisfied with this, for the very laws of their world remained frayed, and the gods unnamed and numberless remained lurking beyond in the Expanse. Thus through sheer will, they pressed on, piercing and subsuming the Chaos all around them to reach their unknown adversaries. Facing those faceless entities was a struggle all its own, one impossible to describe, but in the end they won the battle, but lost the war. Unsatisfied with this result as well, the twins sought out the center of their world, and submerged themselves in the wellspring of chaos at its core. Though they were never seen again, the world restructured itself with their passing, giving the rest of their kind a fighting chance against the many horrors that lay beyond Laghrian.

【♦ Will ♦】
In truth, the two did not die but merely transcended the confines of their world, and so stepped through the Sea of Stars and into the greater cosmos. Intent to change the nature of existence such that mortals such as they would always have a fighting chance, if not a fair one, they pressed on, ever searching for the source of their people’s misery. Be it gods or primordial beings beyond even the ken of the deific, they would fight for their right to change existence to suit the needs of the small, over the will of Chaos and its servants.

【Mastery】
♦
~“From Chaos and Despair, to Order and Prosperity. This is the promise we must uphold, no matter the obstacles before us, the foes upon are path, or the costs such might incur. We will see it done.”~

Chaos Subsumed:
By conquering the chaos of emotional lhuin, and mastering her own psyche as well, Lírha has become an endless font of emotional lhuin. Through this power, she can manifest a wide variety of constructs with varied properties by channeling specific emotions through her essence internal, and then releasing it into the world, ordered by the power of her Will. However, there are some limitations to her beyond considerable potency, and that is essentially a matter of range and manifestation. While most mages can utilize their magic at a wide variety of distances–moreso for most Mianloinnir–Lírha’s power is constrained to her vessel and the area around it relative to her size. To make up for this, however, she is capable of drastically altering the shape, size, appearance, and composition of her body. Nonetheless, her maximum range is never greater than her own height twice over in any direction starting from the surface of the nearest part of her body, going outwards. Notably, this mastery of her vessel and Invocation as well allows Lírha to more easily recover from, or conceal damage that she does take. Further, since her vessel is composed of the Worldweave–the nature of which was to preserve the physical and arcane laws of Itheil and all other Iterations–she is innately much more durable than one might expect of a being composed of what at least appears to be flesh and blood.

Piercing Order:
Having distilled his essence internal into an all-consuming, ever-piercing luminance, Lhuré’s power largely takes on the form of brightly shining, or pale, golden light. This light is, in actuality, lhuin with the imbued properties of strict and unrelenting Order. Thus, when it comes into contact with other magics or substances, Lhuré’s power will attempt to reorient them to his will, either destroying their initial formation in the process, returning them from whence they came, or converting them into more of his distinctive golden essence. Unlike his sister, Lhuré is capable of manifesting his golden essence at essentially any range, but this reveals that much of his magic is external in nature. Reflecting this, despite the fact that his vessel is composed of the Worldweave, just as Lírha’s, his is not nearly so resilient or transmutable as hers. As a result, he keeps himself shrouded in crystallized golden light, which has over time taken on the form of his garments, protecting him from the outside world.

Notably, though his magic is far more narrow in manifestation than his sister’s, Lhuré’s piercing light is not to be underestimated, as he is capable of creating any construct he can imagine, at any distance, he can perceive, as well as moving them with incredible speed and force with his mind alone.

Twinbound:
Having ascended together, and further, having done so in an Iteration of twisted laws where Invocation rules, Lírha and Lhuré’s souls have been inextricably bound to one another. Their fates are forever intertwined and truly they are at eachother’s mercy. This has both benefits and limitations of course, the latter of which is most prominently represented by the fact that they cannot stray from one another’s senses without significant consequences. Should they ever be well and truly separated–be it by distance or potent magics–the severance or weakening of the Chain of Invocation that binds them together will cause both Twins to enter a drastically weakened state. Where before Lírha might be an unstoppable juggernaut, consuming all before her and bending the very laws of the world to her Will, she would be reduced instead to the likes of a more mortal mage. In such a state she would lose much of her inherent power, retaining only her resilience, healing factor, and the ability to make more subtle alterations to her vessel. Furthermore, she would retain the ability to make constructs of lhuin, but their potency and range would be even further reduced, forcing them to remain within an armspan or so of her person. Lhuré on the other hand, who before was a beacon of unending purity and light would become but a lantern in the dark. Forced to preserve himself, he would be forced to rely on his defensive aura, and be limited to summoning only a sparse few constructs at a time or manifesting his light only in limited amounts and at closer ranges than before.

However, so long as the two remain together, they are more than a force to be reckoned with, for while they each possess their individual boons, they too can call upon their sibling’s power through the chain of their entangled souls. So it is that the piercing light of Lhuré might emanate from the vast Chaos of Lírha’s shroud or vice versa. Furthermore, one twin may reduce their own capacity to drastically bolster their counterpart, and indeed the two may weave magics together with frightening dexterity beyond the abilities of most mages–even those considered masters of cooperative magic.

【Ephemera】
♦~“Creation; Destruction. Purity; Corruption. We will use whatever means we must so long as the ends are just.”~

Sgàil(Shroud):
Typically taking the form of a crimson cloak that drapes down from her shoulders, Sgàil is composed entirely of indestructible mianloinnir and is attuned to Lírha’s soul alone. Its precise form can transform and move according to her will, and it can also be used as a conduit to enhance her various magics. Notably, should she channel her inherent nature through the living cloak, it will become just as deadly as any of her direct physical assaults, taking on the properties of subsumption and domination in kind.

Òir-gheil(Brightmaw):
As with his sister’s implement, Lhuré’s is also composed entirely of mianloinnir attuned to his soul. Not often seen, it is instead integrated with his body and thus hidden from the world, Òir-gheil is liquid mianloinnir infused with the inherent power of his being. However, though its form can shift according to his desires, the implement’s favored form is that of a prismatic greatsword, shining with blinding light. Whereas Lhuré’s typical projections can transmute energy and matter into more of itself, or pierce/destroy it utterly by returning it to its most basic state any attack delivered by Brightmaw cannot be resisted. This stands in stark contrast to his typical attacks which can be matched, overwhelmed, or prove ineffective in various circumstances.

Mianloinnir Regalia:
Created when they dove through the Heart of Starlight and transcended their Iteration, the regalia of the Twins was crafted to contain and stabilize the tremendous potency of their ascended sparks and the souls tempered by their presence. For Lhuré, this meant containing his vessel in a solid shell, protecting him further from outside influences, and ensuring that he retains cohesion. Should he be deprived of his garments and rendered in his purest state, he will lose solidity. In such a state he would remain a considerable threat but would lose some of the intense focus required to wield his vast power.

His sister, Lírha on the other hand found her typical garments simply transformed by their traversal to realms above and beyond their own. These alterations made her regalia better complement her powers, making it an extension of her vessel. While this allows her to transform her armor as well and always maintain a protected state regardless of her form, it also means that she can quite clearly feel pain even through her armor and anything affecting it will also affect her to a lesser degree.

Hidden 3 yrs ago → 3 yrs ago Post by yoshua171

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yoshua171 The Loremaster

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yoshua171

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'The Wards Version'

Presidio

"Alright! Let’s...um, make the world a better place, one piece at a time! Yeah...."
[ ♦ ] Bio
♦ Name: Kari, Avalielle. Simmons.
♦ Age: 22.
♦ Loyalty: Guardians.
♦ Appearance: Kari is short, measuring only 5’3 and is at a healthy weight due to her routine and fortunate genetics. Her neck-length hair is styled in a relaxed way, with short bangs that frame her face and highlight her gentle features and hazel eyes. Her style varies depending on mood, but frequently has her hiding within her clothes as if self-conscious of her figure. As such much of her wardrobe is modest, rather than showy, with her favored color choices being soft, gentler shades accented by brighter complements that make everything pop! Though infrequently in display in her civilian identity, Kari’s figure is hourglass in shape with curves in all the right places--something which brings her far more attention than she would normally prefer. 

On the other hand, when in costume, Kari attempts to combat her typically quiet diminutive nature by putting herself on display more prominently. To further differentiate herself Kari wears contacts in costume, whereas normally she would wear glasses. While she does not wear much in the way of a proper mask in costume, she does tend to alter her make-up, particularly around the eyes, choosing rather striking blue for eye shadow and liner to shift the color of her hazel eyes. Beyond this, she uses many incredibly thin layers of “locked” forcefields to create a mask of sorts, ringing around her eyes with angular, winged shapes that branch outwards in addition to skintight forcefields that hug her jawline and outline her lower lip.

A tiara-like set of forcefields define her hairline, holding her bangs back in addition to a hair tie. The aforementioned “tiara” is reminiscent of the crenellations on the top of a castle’s walls or towers, with the imagery being an intentional reference to her cape name and insignia. Beyond its ornamental purpose, this tiara actually contains a set of incredibly thin interlocked forcefields and a set of mechanisms, the former being compressed onto eachother to fit in the small amount of space. At will, she is capable of activating the mechanism effectively lowering a curved shield over her whole face. Furthermore, all of the forcefields that help make-up her mask are connected by thin threads of her power or other mechanisms all of which are “locked”. As a direct result of this, her mask is roughly the durability of steel.

Beneath the forcefields around her eyes, against her brows, and against the bridge of her nose there lies a relatively simple light blue mask, which is tied around her head tightly with several strong cords wrapped in dainty ribbons that she works into her hair--she often reinforces this with more forcefields. It is worth noting that in costume, Kari’s hazel eyes appear as a startling blue, whereas most times out of costume her eyes appear a rich brown or light mottled green.

Keep scrolling.

In the colder seasons, Presidio modifies her costume's typical design. This modified version includes a black turtleneck with sweeping arcs of light blue in place of the revealing top beneath her vest, as well as warm black pants that go into her boots rather than shorts.

♦ History:
James Clairville and Sarah Collins, a performer and an artist fell in love and married. A year or so later the two had Kari who they lovingly nurtured. James, an actor, and Sarah did their utmost to support eachother and their daughter, doing double duty as they worked and raised her. Truly things were sometimes a blur in their household, but more importantly it was always warm and fun. Of course things became even more interesting as Kari matured, for as she participated in school her parents found that she was truly gifted. So, naturally, they edged for her to carry on in their footsteps, encouraging the arts--writing, acting, painting, singing, it hardly mattered, “just pick one,” they’d say. Seeking approval, Kari did so, taking part in little plays and helping design costumes. This trend carried on from her early schooling into middle school until finally her burgeoning personality could not simply conform anymore.

From then on Kari let what she’d long hidden beneath the surface out into the world, a curiosity not for the arts, but instead for what her parents would think their polar opposite. For, unlike her parents, Kari’s passion was the world, math, science, history and as she got older she only leaned into her passions more. In school she excelled, skipping a year in middle school and going into high school earlier than most. She was a nerd, but she found some acceptance among peers, as, while her parents supported her, they could not ever really understand her passions. Kari’s were just too different from their own. Of course, high school ended too soon as she breezed through courses and wowed both her parents and teachers in a frenzy wrought of diligence and ambition. She wanted to be a scientist, to enter the field of tech and much fell away as a result. Hobbies that she’d kept up with since childhood drifted away, only resurging as she required the skills honed through them.

Accepting her passion, even though he did not understand it, her father hired tutors and began the process of enrolling his daughter in college. All the while, Kari and her mother grew apart, a rift opened by what Sarah had taken as a betrayal. Once enrolled she worked hard, majoring in computer technology, intending to go into the field, designing new hardware for the world over. It was hard, but she loved it. However, just before she could graduate--though she’d been damned close--Gold Morning happened, the world collapsing around her. The months were filled with a quiet horror, fleeing, and the desperate hope that they would make it through. Eventually, they did, but not all of them. Many had been lost and among them...people she held beloved. Friends, colleagues, but most devastatingly...her mother.

Wracked by guilt and sorrow Kari and her father just tried to keep their heads up. Despite their loss they were fortunate in other ways, finding themselves in Samekh, and then Serstol, near its infancy. They settled in and her father was forced to take up menial labor--the world was not in a state to support the career he’d led before. She hated seeing him so, and she hated more the terrible loss that tore at her heart. So, naturally, she distracted herself, steeling her resolve and moving forwards. She picked up where she’d left off, teaching herself more skills and applying to jobs with a dedicated determination to ease her father’s burden and to make a difference.

After months of work she landed herself a job and immediately launched into development and customer service--using whatever spare money and resources she could to build and design something new...something that would benefit everyone. Soon her efforts earned her a proper place at her job, allowing her to leverage their resources with her skill to really begin the development of her project. Things were going well for awhile, the pay was good and she was happy, but soon misfortune reared its head. Checking her work one week she came upon an error in her work. Thinking it largely inconsequential she set about fixing the problem, replacing parts and altering code. However, the more she did the worse things got. She’d come back to it only to find things in a worse state than they’d been before. Worse still, a meeting was coming up where she was supposed to be showcasing her new product. The stress only worsened the issue and eventually things spiralled out of control, totally ruining month upon month of work. Feeling totally out of her depth and utterly overwhelmed--and baffled--by her situation she triggered, the fear of losing such a huge part of her life, and jeopardizing everything, breaking her down.

Having lost months of work and seemingly wasted resources, upper management demoted her to a junior position, shelving her project for a later date. Fortunately, they were much more understanding that she’d expected. In the interest of her mental health, they gave her a month’s paid leave and left things at that. Still reeling and feeling cast aside she spent many of those days aimless and lost. The only things that saved her were the preoccupation of experimenting with her newfound powers, research on the subject, and more importantly...escape by way of art. While not many of her mother’s pieces had survived the flooding of her childhood home some years back, they’d managed to reacquire a few. Kari surrounder herself with them and decided to give her mother’s passion a second chance.

Taking up the brush and pencil, she spread her emotions over the canvas and found that perhaps she’d never really had a particular dislike for the arts. Maybe she’d just been rebellious. Maybe that’s what had led her on this path? She wasn’t sure and it was impossible to go back and find out so instead she looked forwards. She still had a job to lead, soon, but now she had powers. She was a parahuman. Couldn’t she do so much more to affect the lives of everyone for the better?

Eventually deciding she could, Kari began designing a costume and after a time, returned to her work as well. While she has yet to rise to her former position, she still makes enough to get by. Though it is not just her former failure that has kept her from rising again, but rather that her ambitions have taken on a new form. With her costume finished and name chosen, Presidio has every intent to make the world a better...safer place and perhaps bring humanity back to its former glory.

Only time will tell whether her work with the Guardians will truly make an impact.

Two Weeks ago, 3 days after Transferring.

Arriving on the scene, her forcefield armor already carefully crafted, Presidio took in her surroundings. An intersection, cars abandoned, people far away to keep clear of the danger. Several stores with broken windows, and most notably, a single individual sitting cross-legged in the middle of the street, eyes closed. Narrowing her eyes, Presidio straightened her back and began generating forcefields, 12 for each second. Unsure what sort of person she was going to be dealing with, she started simple, creating a set of 5 shields at the upper end of her size range (3 feet across), which she then swiftly molded and fit together. Smaller shields fit into grooves and slots, locking the components into place before the entire thing folded into a single shield. She counted down in her head.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6--….

Activating her communicator she contacted HQ, “I’m on site. One individual, likely parahuman. Sitting in the street. Civilians have backed off significantly.” At the sound of her voice, the costumed individual glanced up at her, opening his eyes in the process. The eyes had no pupils.

“Only one?” the man said, his voice strangely detached, almost as if it hadn’t come from anywhere in particular.

Presidio frowned slightly, “Are you going to come quietly, or do we need to do this the hard way?” There was a hard edge to her voice, a tone that brokered no argument, yet on the inside she was unsure. It was an act. The man tilted his head, smiled, and then casually gestured. From left field, a blue mailbox suddenly splintered violently into hundreds of shards, which hurtled towards the heroine.

Acting quickly, Presidio swiveled her shield into place at her left, placing her hand against its center and twisting. It unfurled, expanding into a larger disk, the mechanisms she’d established prior taking action. She braced herself, keeping an eye on the villain.

She felt several of her forcefields lock into place. In the next moment, the shards of metal slammed into her shield, sending a shock through her as she absorbed some of the force behind the attack. She swallowed hard.

‘That hits far harder than it has any right to,’ she mused, filing the information away as more shields began to warp and arrange into another construct. With some of her spare shields she began to harry the villain, sending them forwards at max speed to pin him down. The countdown began for them locking into a more stable arrangement.

The man shot to his feet and gestured towards himself. The dispersed shards flew towards him, striking down a vast swath of her shields before they reached him. She grit her teeth. He gestured again, the fragments flying in her direction. His other hand was in a pocket, yet to move.

She spun her shield into place, moving her still building construct behind it and her, ensuring that it wouldn’t get taken out preemptively. Again the force struck, pushing her back slightly before the splinters passed her over. The man gestured sideways. Shields moved to slow the projectiles, even as her eyes widened and she lunged forwards. Still, despite her efforts, she lost a construct, and still suffered several cuts as a few of the splinters bypassed her armor--shattering components--drawing jagged lines across her flesh.

She was vulnerable. This bastard could attack faster than she could shift her shields into position to defend herself. Without her armor she’d probably be out of the fight…. Something needed to change.

Taking action, Presidio ran forwards, attempting to close the distance. She saw him begin a movement, and moved her shield behind her, blocking an attack. As the force of the strike passed she moved the shield again, predicting how he’d move his arm. It worked. However, she knew she wouldn’t have time to defend again. Taking the initiative, she hopped upwards, using the shields of her armor to add distance and height to her action. A shield popped into existence beneath her as she began to arc down. Then several more. She hopped again on contact, getting a good distance from the ground even as the splinters of metal hurtled through the air where she’d just been.

Jumping from shield to shield, she made it harder for him to aim his power at her. He seemed surprised.

Good.

Acting, she arranged a set of forcefields into an array, a net of sorts, hiding them behind the surface of her main Shield. The countdown began. He struck at her again and she winced in pain as more jagged blades struck her, cutting through costume and flesh. She’d have bruises after this, but hopefully only those and some cuts. Hopefully, none of the attacks had lodged in her flesh.

Five seconds passed, she descended, pulling the extra forcefields she’d generated up and around herself--helping the cumbersome locked ones along by pushing against them with the more mobile blue shields. They didn’t quite fit together, but she managed a crude sphere, with the leading shield being the only proper construct in the mix.

The man moved, taking his other hand from a pocket. A phone pole was promptly shredded as he pulled it into the sway of his power, striking at her now from two directions. Many of her shields were taken out--some of the attacks hit her--but she bulled through, hitting him with her Shield, before collapsing it and spinning it on its axis. In the next moment she willed forth the array of shields she’d been prepping. Promptly they splayed out, hitting him full on, and entangling his limbs before locking into place. He fell over on his back, struggling, but unable to move. The shards of metal stopped moving. Presidio landed next to him, breathing hard.
[ ♦ ] Personality
♦ General: Kari wants to make the world a better, safer place. Specifically, she wants to make a big difference, furthering civilization, and pushing back the chaos that villains bring into daily life. She wants to give more people the opportunity to truly thrive. Similarly, though she’d never admit it, Kari is using her cape activities to branch out, to enrich herself, and as a result, she’s trying to rise to prominence in her own way.

Furthermore, though Kari is typically rather shy and unassuming in personality, she has been slowly changing after her trigger. In part, this is a result of her desire to move forwards, but more prominently it is the influence of her shard pushing her into a more “dominant” role to suit its own ends. By reinforcing what confidence she has, and to a more limited degree, fostering possible arrogance, her shard is doing its subtle work to drive her into further conflict. Where before Kari was just very dedicated, now she is something of a perfectionist. While she’s always been ambitious, her shard has shifted that ambition to a world-scale and is angling for her to become more lofty and domineering, wanting her to attempt at rising above all others. Granted, all of this is very subtle and most of it is not so severe that Kari--or those close to her--would immediately notice. It is worth mentioning that over time some of these traits will be further accentuated, resulting in the further alteration of her personality. Lastly, her shard has driven a sort of psychological wedge between Kari’s actions...and her actions as Presidio, allowing Kari to more easily rationalize anything she does as Presidio.

♦ Derangement: While perhaps not so life altering as some changes, Kari’s shard has indeed changed the make-up of her personality. First and foremost by shifting her closer to “dominant” than shy, reinforcing confidence and, to a limited degree, arrogance in the interest of causing additional conflict. Where before Kari was just very dedicated, now she is something of a perfectionist. While she’s always been ambitious, her shard has shifted that ambition to a world-scale and is angling for her to become more lofty and domineering, wanting her to attempt at rising above all others. Granted, all of this is very subtle and most of it is not so severe that Kari--or those close to her--would immediately notice. It is worth mentioning that over time some of this traits will be further accentuated, resulting in further change. Lastly, her shard has driven a sort of psychological wedge between Kari’s actions...and her actions as Presidio, allowing Kari to more easily rationalize anything she does as Presidio.
[ ♦ ]
Parahumanism
♦ Skills:

Engineer - As both a software and hardware engineer, Kari has significant expertise both in the development of programs and/or websites, as well as in creating components. Since gaining her power she has begun expanding her repertoire, learning about the physics present in more brute force physical engineering to allow her to better utilize her power’s unique functionality.

Artist/Design - More of a hobbyist than anything, Kari has a decent hand for sketching out designs and some skill with choosing color palettes and the like. She took a few classes in the arts, but didn’t finish any of them, so her style--and skills--are unrefined, if functional.

Sewing - Her mother taught her some of this, and it is one of the ways she stayed connected to her after her death, and as a result she has a significant amount of skill with making her own designs and executing them with some reliability. Still, she’s no professional and only has fairly basic tools, such as a sewing machine, to help her in this regard.

Combat Training - Due to her having joined the Guardians, she’s been received combat instruction as well as additional exercise to get her in better shape--though she’s always eaten well and taken care of herself.

Social/Cognitive Skills - Though Kari is fairly self-conscious and awkward out of her costume, she is observant, empathetic, and cares about people deeply. She’s the sort of friend you go to for comfort, to vent, and for good advice. Perhaps her most relevant mental skill is how quick of a study she is, and furthermore, how dedicated she can be, both of which are considerable assets in most situations.

♦ Classification: Shaker|Thinker.
♦ Mechanics: Kari’s power allows her to generate numerous translucent forcefields within 10 feet of herself or 6 inches from another forcefield. She can control these forcefields within a 30-foot radius, as well as alter their shape or interlock them. At most, she can generate 12 forcefields per second, with the rate decreasing depending on several variables, including the number of active forcefields, the state of those forcefields, as well as whether or not her shields are part of constructs. Kari maintains awareness of her forcefields and is capable of controlling them telekinetically with incredible precision, implying an enhanced capacity to process information and multitask. In tangent with this enhanced processing, Kari’s power grants her an intuitive understanding of how components can fit together to form larger functional wholes. The aforementioned thinker power almost solely applies to her forcefields but can be applied to things with similar constructions, thus excluding technology that possesses wires, circuits, and the like.

Her shields have two states, the blue baseline state they manifest in and the silver locked state she can shift them to. Baseline shields are brittle like common glass but can move at 60mph and change shape; Locked shields are equivalent to 1/8th inch of RHA (rolled homogeneous armor) plate* but can move at 10mph. Switching a shield from baseline to locked takes between 5-15 seconds proportional to the size of the shield(s) in question. The size of individual shields is limited between 1.2 inches in diameter (a half dollar) and a 3-foot diameter disk’s surface area. The average shield is 1.5 feet in diameter or equivalent surface area. All shields are about .01 inches thick, or roughly equivalent to several stacked sheets of paper. Her larger forcefields do tend to be slightly more difficult to control, though this might just be a result of air resistance. Her shields are Manton limited and cannot be generated inside of solid matter, though they can be created in empty spaces inside things (such as a hollow inside a gourd).

Despite their apparent frailty, baseline shields can briefly carry Kari’s weight. This reveals a quirk of her power, as her shields are far more effective at pushing, pulling, and interacting either with one another or in tangent to affect the world. This quirk does however render proper flight impossible. If not actively in use, her shields will decay; the same occurs if the shield exits her standard range. If the durability of a shield is exceeded--or the shield decays--it will harmlessly shatter into dust, and then vanish. The decay of her shields within her range is slower than if they leave it. In a similar vein, her power’s range of influence is somewhat variable, capable of expanding if her constructs become large enough to exceed its size so as not to limit her experimentation overmuch.

*Her locked shields are strong enough to resist handgun and shotgun ammunition, though slugs are at the upper end of that range. Rifle rounds will penetrate at least a layer on average.

**Her Thinker power allows her to effectively “store” and “recreate” things she has seen before, including mundane objects--within the constraints of her power--and constructs she’s made in the past.

***Her shields act ablatively, reducing the force/momentum behind things striking them by breaking/absorbing some of it.

****Getting hit by (or running into) a baseline shield is like a paper thin pane of glass that shatters into solid nothingness as soon as it impacts you. It might throw you off a little, or marginally slow you down, but the worse you’ll get is the most minor of bruises.

*****Kari’s power affords her a significantly potent telekinetic grip on her forcefields. This is particularly relevant to her locked shields. Individuals with muscle/strength brute 5 ratings or higher can force individual shields into new positions via brute force. This effect stacks per shield. Smaller shields can be moved more easily, with the lower end requiring only a muscle brute 3 rating or equivalent amount of exerted force.

Brute 5 equivalent: Exert force equivalent to moving 2500 lbs.
Brute 3 equivalent: Exert force equivalent to moving 1700 lbs.

♦ Equipment:
Gauntlets: Though their name implies heavy armor, the reality is that these implements are more like gloves than anything. They are mostly cloth, with thin metal fittings, including pieces that jut out and then hook in as well as slots. She has worked similar metal embroidery into her costume as well. The colors include light blue, silver, and gold with patterning to match the rest of her costume.

Med kit: She carries a small medical kit at the back of her belt in a pouch. Contains gauze, bandages, pain pills, small scissors, and several ointments for pain or infection. Similarly there is hydrogen peroxide, though only a small quantity.

Wireless communicator: Issued from the Guardians. Often defended by a complex array of tightly bound forcefields.

Bmp Bmp

The rough bassy sound of a finger tapping a live mic rumbled for a moment as Presidio pulled her finger away, her smile easy and warm.

“Oh good, haha, the last guy who interviewed me didn’t realize his microphone had come unplugged. To answer your question though, ah I’d say it’s less that I have a favorite type of power…and more that I like seeing heroes find unexpected applications for them. Like Unforgiven! On paper her power doesn’t sound terribly impressive. I mean, its range is only two feet!”

Chuckling lightly, Presidio shook her head briefly, continuing as she stopped. “Then you see her zip around a battlefield like a proper flier, just as impossible to hit as she is to deal with whenever she closes the distance and lands one of her surprisingly effective hits. Even then, she doesn’t tend to do much damage, but it turns out hitting the right spots’ll do you much better than hitting hard sometimes. That’s just my take though. That said…” she trailed off, thinking for a moment before her eyes lit up, “...if I had to pick, I do love a good ole telekinetic, but hey…maybe that’s just my bias talking.”

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Crosspoint

"Hey man, no worries. After all, I'm sure you'll make it up to me."
[ ♦ ] Bio
♦ Name: Caiden Mckay.
♦ Age: 17.
♦ Loyalty: Wards.
♦ Appearance: Standing at 6 feet exactly, Caiden is roughly 200 or so lbs, possessing a slim build with a small amount of natural muscle definition. He’s got an easy confidence about him that simply must have come from years of not having almost any reason to think less of himself. Beyond that, his blue eyes and white hair–obviously dyed–make him a rather striking figure, or at least he thinks so.

♦ History:
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Caiden’s upbringing was filled with the subtle struggles of the not-so-well off. Fortunately though, both his parents were around during Caiden’s upbringing. Still, that didn’t mean that things weren’t rough, and though it was perhaps the least of their problems, Caiden was never happy with how much his dad was gone. Nonetheless, life was fairly routine until he reached the age of 13. Around that time Caiden’s father left, things between his parents having grown increasingly strained over the past couple of years. From there it was a slow road downhill as his mom picked up two jobs to make ends meet and he was forced to grow up fast to help take care of his younger sister, Kaelyn. Between her and school, Caiden had little time to hang out with friends or express himself. He took to using fashion–paying for clothes by doing odd jobs whenever he had free time. By the time he was about to enter high school, he’d amassed a considerable collection of clothes. Though things weren’t perfect and there was a quiet ember of anger in him, things seemed to be taking a turn for the better as Kaelyn was now old enough to largely take care of herself. However, as he entered high school, things would certainly take a turn that no one could have predicted.

Around his Sophmore year of high school, Caiden was in a bad place. Though he was popular at school he found himself more attracted to a particularly bad crowd of kids. Hanging out with some of them he became acquainted with some older students, be they seniors in high school or sophomores in college. As summer rolled around and he’d found himself spending a worrying amount of time with these people, his mother started to notice the changes in his behavior. Sneaking out, coming back smelling like cigarettes and once, weed–not to mention the terrible terrible argument. Confronting him, Caiden’s mom was on her last nerve. The next week it seemed Caiden had turned over a new leaf, however, having gotten a job to occupy his time over the summer. Little did she know that he’d gotten his job through the new ‘friends’ he’d made. Initially, it seemed like a decent way to pass the time, Caiden found, as it let him stay away from his difficult home situation and the constant reminders of his father’s absence. Then the hours got longer and the weight of dealing with shitty customers started to push him down. However, as his situation started to show, his coworkers noticed his weakness and capitalized on it. The true gauntlet began. Every day was a new exercise in torment. He’d be forced to work in the kitchen with the friers and often he’d get bumped or pushed far too close for comfort, often getting little burns here and there. Still, he grinned and bore it even as the pressure mounted. Then his coworkers, the bastards, started calling in or forcing him to take their shifts. He’d get called during time with those few friends who would still tolerate him, the ones who weren’t caught up in the shitty crowd he’d foolishly involved himself with.

Family outings interrupted, plans canceled, it was quickly becoming too much. Yet, while Caiden certainly wanted out, he wanted to get back at them so much more. After all, while the job was hard, the money was nice and it was a welcome distraction. Days passed him by and eventually on one of his particularly long shifts, on his 8th day in a row, one of the bastards took it too far and almost had him end up burning his whole arm. Absolutely furious, Caiden snapped, pushing the big idiot onto the ground with a bit more strength than he’d intended. With the hoodlum on the ground, looking like a stunned deer in the headlights. Cussing out the lot of them and throwing around insults that he’d never thought he was brave enough to say aloud, Caiden eventually–totally fed up with the situation–left. He felt their stares on his back even after he’d left. In the day that followed, one of oh so few days off he had that week–not that he intended to return–he got back-to-back calls from his manager. He didn’t answer. It was only as he checked his email and opened a message from that same boss that he realized how fucked he was.
“You better be in tomorrow, or all that shit you did is getting out, you little punk.”

In that moment he realized that he’d have to face them again. There was just no avoiding it, he couldn’t risk his mom finding out about the bullshit they’d made him do. Just as angry that he’d been so stupid as he was that they wouldn’t just let him off the hook, Caiden realized that things had well and truly spiraled far out of control. So, not knowing what to do, but understanding that the consequences of going back would be just as bad, he triggered.

Doing what was–fortunately–only a small amount of damage to his room, Caiden adjusted to his new powers surprisingly quickly. After all, he’d gotten used to changes in his situation, and honestly…having powers meant that he suddenly had a solution to his problem. What followed were a series of poorly conceived plans and decisions that would inevitably lead to a rather public case, followed by the PRT contacting his mother. After being given an ultimatum to figure his shit out and become a member of this new “Wards Program” or be grounded effectively forever Caiden relented. The months that followed were hard, but with funding and his mom’s savings they managed to move to Redline, Maine where the new program would be starting. From there, things started getting better as, despite the things he’d done, Caiden had learned some valuable lessons from his experiences and so had grown–if not in all the right ways.
[ ♦ ] Personality
♦ General: Caiden has a certain magnetism to him, the kind that rather easily lands him in the more ‘popular’ crowds among his peers. He’s good with people and seems to thrive in social situations, at least so long as he isn’t overtly challenged. After all, beneath his generally relaxed attitude and friendly demeanor there is a simmering repressed anger, and a desire to be needed, to belong. This can express itself in subtle barbs that he might pepper into an otherwise innocuous conversation, or perhaps as a more insidious manipulation of public opinion over an extended period. Hell, if you’re lucky, you might even notice a hint of arrogance about him, something he tries to keep under wraps…at least out of costume. Beyond that, Caiden is possessed of a fierce competitive spirit that belies his typically ‘chill’ mannerisms. Though he is intelligent and even internally critical of the world around him, Caiden is the sort that tends not to use his observations unless pushed to–though this is not to say that he can’t be unduly harsh at times. All-in-all, despite his faults, Caiden is a relatively pleasant person to be around…at least if social harmony is maintained.

♦ Derangement: Simply put, Caiden’s shard played off of his repressed anger to encourage a sort of enjoyment for violence in the young man, as well as dialing up his need to feel in control of situations and to a lesser degree, people.
[ ♦ ]
Parahumanism
♦ Skills:

Street Smarts - Having hung out with a rather…questionable crowd when he lived in New Haven, Caiden learned some unexpected pieces of knowledge about surviving on the streets. While the rules are often different in different cities, some things are universal. On top of this, he’s got a bit of street fighting experience when he was forced to rough house with some of the older ruffians. Simply put, he knows how to hold up an effective guard, and he can throw a mean punch. Though he’s managed to stay out of similar crowds since they moved–if only because he’s low-key terrified of ending up in a similar situation as his last encounter–Caiden has gotten to know the city well in the months he’s lived in Redline. As such, he’s got a good understanding of its layout, where the dead ends are, and how best to lose someone therein. Perhaps this will help him uncover the criminal elements in the city in his newfound role as a Ward.

Smooth Talker - Used to having to explain his way out of trouble due to his background, and furthermore possessed of a not insignificant charisma, Caiden is exceptionally good at talking his way out of or into a wide variety of situations. Similarly, he can lie without batting an eye and is rather good at not being caught in the lies he does tell.

Fashion Sense - As this is the primary way through which Caiden has expressed himself throughout his adolescence, Caiden could be considered rather fashionable. Furthermore, having been in a wide array of social situations, he’s got an eye for what sort of impression people want to leave based on what they’re wearing. While this doesn’t make him any sort of master detective, it does mean that people’s clothing tends to tell him a lot more about them than it might someone without his background. Beyond this it gives him another avenue to cultivate an image or particular impression when interacting with different people.

Endurance & Athleticism - Simply put, Caiden has a lot of energy and he’s in pretty decent shape. As such he can last for longer than average during physical activities and he finds most social engagements energizing, rather than tiring. Just don’t expect to outlast him if it’s a matter of human perseverance.

♦ Classification: Blaster|Shaker.
♦ Mechanics: Crosspoint’s power allows him to conjure blade-like projectiles from prismatic energy within a five (5) foot radius of his person. These blades take a fourth of a second to manifest and upon materializing fully, the prismatic energy becomes bound to them. These blades are treated mostly as if they are mundane objects, meaning that they do not demanifest after striking something else. Notably, the young man can hold up to ten (10) of these blades within his manifestation radius with each blade being roughly equivalent to wood in durability. Additionally, Crosspoint is capable of telekinetically maneuvering his blades at roughly twenty (20) mph while they remain within his manifestation radius. While the blades remain under his control in this field, Crosspoint may alter their post-launch attributes, allowing him to adjust their durability, velocity, and launch type with each of these traits drawing from the same ‘pool’ of power. Furthermore, it should be noted that Crosspoint is capable of creating ‘composite projectiles’ by melding two (2) to four (4) of his blades into one, giving the resulting blade a greater allocation of potential that may be divvied between its three properties. These composite blades will always be visually distinct, as the prismatic energy surrounding them becomes more pronounced due to a consistent ‘pulsing’ pattern that is observed to occur. Lastly, testing has revealed that despite composite blades technically reducing the total count of active projectiles, that until used, they will still take up the same amount of his total capacity as if they remained separate (i.e. if Crosspoint has ten (10) blades active, and merges three (3), he will not be able to manifest an additional two (2) blades until he has launched some of those that are already active).

Crosspoint’s explanation for how the allotment of power to a given trait functions was, essentially, to compare his pool of power to a set number of ‘stat points’ with each property of his blades being an individual stat. The following information was compiled after extensive testing on Crosspoint’s power after the allotment of varying ‘stat spreads’ to different blades.

This property, as expected, dictates how much punishment a given blade can handle before shattering, be it pressure, tearing, or cutting force.

1st Tier (Brittle) - At this tier, the blades are much like glass in durability and will break relatively easily even from forces a normal human could output.

2nd Tier (Hardwood) - About as durable as particularly dense wood, these blades can be destroyed with significant effort, making them remain somewhat formidable if only due to their density.

3rd Tier (Stone) - Roughly equivalent to concrete or granite in durability, these blades can be cracked or shattered by similar forces as these materials.

4th Tier (Steel) - Roughly as durable as processed steel.

5th Tier (Titanium) - Roughly as durable as processed titanium.
This property, simply put, dictates the speed at which Crosspoint’s projectiles will travel prior to being ‘launched’. 

1st Tier (Slow) - Moving at an almost glacial pace, blades at this tier will barely even appear to be a threat as they fly forth at a measly 10 or so mph, barely faster than the fastest human olympian. 

2nd Tier (Steady) - Crossing distance considerably faster than the first tier, blades at this speed tier will move at 40 mph.

3rd Tier (Pitch) - Equivalent to the fastest human throw, these blades can move at roughly 100 mph.

4th Tier (Split) - Finally far outstripping any human limit, these blades move at a startling 300 mph.

5th Tier (Blind) - Stunningly fast, blades given this tier of velocity can be propelled at a startling 1000 mph, somewhat slower than the speed of your average bullet (1700), though still 300 mph faster than the speed of sound. Notably, blades charged with this tier will glow more brightly than others and will flash once before firing.
The only non-standard property of Crosspoint’s blades, Launch Type dictates how released projectiles will behave.

1st Tier (Directional) - The most basic launch type, the first tier allows the blades to be fired in a single straight line decided prior to launch.

2nd Tier (Angular) - Building on the tier before it, the Angular launch type allows Crosspoint to have his projectiles turn once at a 90-degree angle. The time that they turn, and what direction they turn in are set prior to launch.

3rd Tier (Trajectory) - Breaking the mold, this launch type allows the blades to have complex preprogrammed trajectories, allowing them to curve multiple times. As before, the trajectory is decided prior to launch and cannot be changed afterward.

4th Tier (Tracking) - Further exceeding limits, this launch type allows Crosspoint to choose a target prior to launch and then have his blade(s) track its movement until they strike something.

5th Tier (Liminal) - Obliterating the previously established blueprint, but keeping to the trend, the liminal launch type gives Crosspoint a drastically increased amount of control of his projectiles. While still unable to manually control their movement after launch, the Liminal tier allows him to combine up to two launch types for a single projectile. In this way a blade could be fired with a Directional Launch Type, only to swap to Tracking at a point of Crosspoint’s choosing. Notably, Crosspoint can only swap the movement type once, though he does not have to choose when this switch happens prior to launch.

As a predictive measure used to approximate the properties of any given individual projectile, we have worked with Crosspoint to create a basic ‘stat pool’ which serves as a rough equivalent to the pool of power that he draws from. As such, it must be assumed that any individual–read: Not composite–projectile will have a maximum of eight (8) ‘points’ to divvy between its three aspects. Furthermore, when creating composite projectiles, some power is lost in the melding process, causing each joined projectile to allow an additional two (2) such ‘points’ to the pool.

Expanding upon the above, Crosspoint’s blade-like projectiles have two secondary abilities, both of which are directly tied to the prismatic energy that surrounds them. The first, and simpler of these, is that Crosspoint can detonate this prismatic energy at will, causing it to erupt outwards in a blast of kinetic force easily capable of sending loose material flying some distance, or–conversely–knocking a person or large object two (2) to four (4) feet in a given direction. Notably, these blasts are typically diffuse enough that they cannot cause significant damage to all but the weakest objects or substances. However, should someone be hit point-blank by such an eruption of force, it could cause low-end blunt force trauma in line with what is needed to cause minor bruises.

Significantly more noteworthy than the prior application of Crosspoint’s prismatic energy is the secondary manifestation of such. Rather than releasing the energy outright, Crosspoint’s power allows him to position multiple blades in the environment in the interest of creating arrays, the smallest of which require at least three (3) blades. After being positioned properly, Crosspoint may trigger this secondary manifestation, causing the prismatic energy to blanket the inner bounds denoted by the array. Upon activation, anything, or anyone caught within the bounds of an array is subjected to incredible pressure. This is the result of the prismatic energy exerting kinetic force therein. This effect becomes more pronounced–and dangerous–as additional blades are added to a given array, with a basic three (3) blade array drastically impeding the movement of a normal human or conversely causing surface-level damage to inanimate material (i.e causing cracks in stone or slowly warping metal). Though extensive testing on this effect was conducted, no upper limit of potency could be found and due to the significant risk involved, testing was aborted after [redacted] blades were utilized. However, though no limit to potency could be established, it became clear that the strength of a given array is inversely proportional to the length of time it will remain active. It has been estimated that while a basic three (3) blade arrangement may last almost indefinitely, larger arrangements are increasingly unstable. As such, though the results of the tests were somewhat inconsistent, it has been theorized that for each order of magnitude, an array’s duration is reduced by roughly a half.

♦ Equipment/Belongings:
Costume: Surprising Fashionista and her department with his choices, Caiden made sure that his costume was sufficiently impressive. The costume is much easier to maneuver in, often making it seem like he’s not wearing it, with the way the cloth somehow actively doesn’t get in his way. Further, it’s more akin to leather in durability than regular cloth, despite appearances, and it is startlingly light considering.

Smartphone: For personal use.

The villain lunged at him, building up speed with every inch of the distance she traveled, her power clearly ramping up as black energy arced across her form. Reacting quickly, Crosspoint gestured, manifesting six silver blades at his right which he swiftly calibrated. Each would be as durable as steel, with half tracking his adversary, while the other half would follow set trajectories. He keyed the latter set to move more swiftly than the former and then without any hesitation released them. Snapping, a small grin forming on his lips, Crosspoint manifested four more blades even as the villain was forced to take a zigzagging path to evade the blade he’d sent her way.

Satisfied that he’d bought enough time, Caiden watched as three of his blades rose a few feet into the air, angled off suddenly, and then thrust themselves downwards and into the ground. As he kept track of his adversary’s movements, he noted that his other blades–finally–had all missed, instead striking other targets much as he’d expected she would manage. Noting as she turned on a dime and rushed at him, he gestured again, releasing two of the four projectiles he’d conjured. These weren’t terribly durable, nor were they as fast as he could manage. However, in exchange, he could toggle them between tracking and manual. Thus as the villainess dodged both of them, ducking under their movement, Caiden took direct control. Turning on a dime, the blades spun into motion and then stabbed downwards in an instant. The attack was unbelievably precise, piercing her clothes, without touching her flesh, before digging directly into the ground. At the same time, he hopped backward and sent one of his last two projectiles downwards into the ground.

“Checkmate,” he said with a smug air, and then the secondary effect of his power activated. The woman’s inhuman eyes widened as she surely felt an immense pressure suddenly come into being, pushing inwards on her body from all directions. Unwittingly, she’d walked right into his trap. Fortunately for her, the pressure was nowhere near-fatal, only rendering her immobile as she pressed her forearms and legs against the ground in an attempt not to be flattened to the ground. All around her, prismatic energy swirled and pulsed inwards, seeming to caress her form even as it battered her into submission.

“Man, that cannot be pleasant, but while I’ve got a captive audience, did you even have a plan?” Pausing, his grin unrelenting, his eyes glittering faintly with mischief as he stared through the gaps in his mask. “Like, attacking one of the Wards I can see. You get some street cred, some rep, if you will, but attacking their base of operations? That’s just idiotic. What if the local Guardians show up? What if the PRT soldiers respond first and you aren’t equipped for that? How do you deal with consistent reinforcements fighting on their home turf? Like, honestly woman, rub some brain cells together for once in your villainous life.” Shaking his head as she merely growled and grunted from the intense strain required to keep resisting the pressure of his power.

“Tsk.”

Turning away, Caiden waved as he crossed the street and poked his head into the PRT’s office. “Hey, can we get some restraints out here,” he called out in the interest of prompting the so-called adults into action. That said he took up a post to the right of the door leaning against a wall while he kept watch–a bored expression on his features. However, after a few brief moments, Caiden found himself growing bored and so pushed off of the wall and walked over to the edge of his bounded field. Crouching down he got close to eye level with the villainness he’d captured.

“You know, I’m curious, your own power can’t be your favorite. It’s just too…” he made a gesture with his hand, as if to imply that it wasn’t even worth explaining. The woman merely gritted her teeth and spat. He snapped his fingers in response, “Exactly! Wishy-washy. I mean, you villains have got to look up to someone right? Me, personally, I figured that a hero should only aspire towards the best of the best. That said, Guardian’s sort of my jam. I mean, what’s not to love about hyper-potent forcefields, you know?”

Hidden 3 yrs ago → 3 yrs ago Post by yoshua171

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Refracture

"QUOTE"
[ ♦ ] Bio
♦ Name: Darius, Sullivan. Gelham.
♦ Age: 30.
♦ Loyalty: (Villain)Consequence.
♦ Appearance: Darius is a tall, absolute unit* of a man, black complected, and commanding. He moves with an air of unshakable confidence, and frequently with a serious, even imperious cast to his visage. He is a man with the silhouette of a heavyweight category professional mixed martial artist, all wrapped in smart, well-tailored garb. While reasonably attractive, his serious expression can easily intimidate, while his piercing blue eyes can unsettle or intrigue. His hair is always kept short, and his face clean-shaven, their coloration white. The color is striking, only a shade or three off from natural, with it still being quite thick and full.

*He stands at 6’3 and weighs 230 lbs.

Darius has the kind of costume that, just by looking at it, you know was professionally made. The same applies to the mask he dons when discarding his civilian identity. Further, he is always equipped with his signature armaments, a pair of nightsticks at his back, and four karambit knives sheathed at his belt. Having gotten his costume custom-tailored by a series of professionals, virtually all of the cloth is slash-proof, with his jacket/overcoat having bulletproof soft armor layered within the cloth as well. Furthermore, beneath his clothes on his forearms and shins are grade 38 rolled titanium bracers.

♦ History:
There was discipline, there were tutors and classes and friends. His parents cared for him, their love clear and strong and true. Easily it could be said that Darius' childhood was a good one. It was his early adolescence that was the problem, for suddenly those he cared for the most in the world were taken from him by men and women armed and armored, costumed and not. It happened in the dead of night, but the noise woke him. Little kept him from watching the solemn, terrible affair that was the disappearance of Mariah and Jermaine Gelham. Strange sentences taken out of context, men and women with powers, menacing his parents, their mere presence threatening. Yet he knew not to intercede, for his parents had seen him, and the look in their eyes told him what he needed to know. The staff guided him away from the scene soon after, hiding him away as if afraid that the strangers would take him too.

It was a night that would leave him confused and alone for a long time, yet it did not break him. Still, though fairly mature for his age, it did leave an impact. With the departure of his parents, their company began a slow decline. It was as if another part of them, something they’d left behind for him to remember them by, was slowly dying before his very eyes. This and his memories of those capes–people he’d come to think of as heroes...possible members of the Protectorate itself–became the object of a slow-burning resentment. Yet, though this hatred grew and a hole had been left in his heart, he kept moving through his life even if he had to harden his heart against the world to do so. With great fervor, he devoured knowledge and practiced the skills he'd need to one day inherit the legacy of his parents. Yes...their legacy, people were always saying that, implying that they were dead.

He never believed them. Despite his guarded nature, despite the years of loneliness and pain, some part of him always held out hope. Some part of him knew they were still out there somewhere. Perhaps one day they might come back, or maybe he would find them himself instead. The years dragged on and as he finished his schooling and began to navigate the workings of the company he was to inherit,  he turned eighteen. It was then that things began to intensify. Where before he was subtly guided, now he was openly corralled, told what to do and how to conduct himself. He hated it, but for the memory his parents' dream he endured. With the slowness of time, he came to enjoy certain aspects of this learning, and eventually, they came to suit him in their way. He began to feel that he was ready and he began to make suggestions, and even corrections, to his mentors, showing his expertise.

So it was that when he turned twenty he was given his first official project within the company, his first team. It would be the test that decided whether he was ready to take on the greater mantle of leadership. It brought a certain satisfaction, but like all things, it could not last forever.

They'd been grooming you for half a decade or more, trying to prepare you for taking the reins of their company. It was hard work, but you thought you had the hang of things. So finally, after years of trying to prove yourself–at the detriment to other parts of your life–they put you in charge of a project. It was meant to be something small-time, but as things progressed something changed, a development in tech, a leap forwards, or maybe it was contracts the company had lost in recent years. The pressure rackets up by spades, you're team lead, your mentors watching–investors breathing down your neck. The units of your team are cracking under the stress, you take on extra work to make-up for them. You assure your superiors that you've got things handled, you even believe it. Things seem to be holding up, but the extra work, juggling the desires of the investors, the needs of the team, and the expectations of your mentors is getting to you. The company loses a major deal, if stakes were high before, it’s worse now. Your team starts to break under the stress. Friendships fracture, you manage to stifle arguments, take on extra work, do whatever you can to make sure the project succeeds. You have to, but despite all your efforts, everything falls apart at the presentation. The pressure gets to you, anger wells as a screaming match ensues, with everyone in your department–the people you slaved to help–turn the blame onto you. You trigger as the self-deception shatters and a deep resentment turns to hostile hatred and horrible anguish. Everything you built, all the work you put in, crumbling around you. Your very future almost certainly in tatters.

Recovery. A long fostered resentment built now to a fever pitch. The unfairness of the world and those who held fast the way of things. The authorities. The establishment. It was these things he blamed for his circumstances, but despite them, he knew that some of that fault lay within. So he took to bettering himself in any way he could. Dispensing with formalities he took to business with new vigor, working his way up the ranks till even those he had disappointed could not help but recognize his efforts. It was a long journey, but finally, he took the mantle of leadership and properly gained access to the company, leading it from the top down. Things were a mess. It took him several years to bring it back from where it had fallen, to prop it up. It took a significant measure of his inheritance. It required manipulation and charm and a keen mind, socially, politically, and otherwise.

It was a fine balancing act, but it was not perfect. This fact gnawed at his patience and drove a wedge between him and society, if only in his inner thoughts. The resentment grew and after years of working to stabilize the company and numerous attempts to revitalize it, he began to devise another plan. No longer satisfied merely with making a small profit, running a middling corporation, just getting by, Darius shifted his priorities. With the family business no longer in dire need of all his attention, he worked on himself. He packed on muscle, trained every day, and navigated more niche social groups, gaining influence and contacts that he could use in ways beyond just bolstering his business. Slowly an idea crystallized, even as he explored his power which did much the same.

He would cut at the source of all his problems and woes. He would burn down the very system that hurt so many, that he had seen firsthand to cause unreasonable pain and unnecessary suffering. The police, the PRT, the Protectorate? He'd burn them all down and build something better in their place.

With a goal set firmly in mind, Darius began to reach out to some of his contacts, always through many layers of obfuscation, hiding his identity. He acquired weapons and armor, a costume and a mask. All he was missing were subordinates. In this time he has purchased–through intermediaries untraceable back to him–a certain warehouse in a seedier, largely abandoned part of Redline. With these assets attained, it is time that he reveals himself and a thing of greater Consequence to Redline. Perhaps one day the greater world will know its name as well.

Perhaps they will not have a choice in the matter.
[ ♦ ] Personality
♦ General: Stoic, seemingly aloof, Darius can often appear quiet and contemplative, yet it is clear just from one look that he is the furthest thing from shy. There is a steadiness to him, and when he takes a stand it seems that he might weather any storm, no matter how fierce. Beneath all this is an undertone of calculating anger, a constant simmering resentment, a silent rage. Though, despite this, he is not easily provoked to acts he might not otherwise take, perpetrated due to irrational desire. Possessed of a startling intellect, Darius moves through the world both socially and societally with a certain domineering presence. While others might dance, and others still stumble and flail, Darius simply arrives, confident and superior in his bearing. Still, he is not at all without his faults as though not easily riled, Darius’ temper is a dangerous thing and if brought to a pique he is likely to resort to violence of some sort--verbal or otherwise. Further, he has a stern, unflinching, hatred for the establishment, something he has fostered for over a decade now. Though understandable, it is hardly truly justified and it shows that despite evidence nothing in the world has successfully convinced him of the good that government--and particularly the Protectorate--brings to the world.

Yet, despite his serious demeanor, and his severe facade, Darius does have a lighter side to him. If you’re valuable--personally or practically--he can even show something like fondness and care, revealing that perhaps beneath the thick veneer of practiced apathy there might dwell a thing one would call a heart. For those who make it into his good graces, there is even fierce loyalty, a devotion so strong that one might think it almost unhealthy. Socially, though he is capable of maneuvering well through society, Darius instead tends to come off as cold, uncaring, abrasive, and often utterly brutal in his criticism.

Though he puts up a strong front--one that he even believes--the man is, in his way, rather lonely. He’s surrounded by people who serve functions, and none of those roles include “friend and confidante.” Further, he has difficulty properly opening up to people, let alone feeling vulnerable around them in any capacity. Often he will default to anger or apathy when pressed, rather than choosing to appear vulnerable and--in his opinion--weak. As a direct extension of this, Darius has some difficulty properly empathizing with people and often finds himself held apart. Though in some ways this suits him, in others it is a constant psychological pain he must muscle through. It should not however be said that he is incapable of these things, nor that he cannot sway people to his side through sheer force of personality.

♦ Derangement:
[ ♦ ]
Parahumanism
♦ Skills & Resources:

Business Acumen - Having to run his parents’ business, as well as navigating high-class social circles has lead to Darius knowing his way around the corporate and affluent world. He knows how to conduct himself well in these settings.

Close-Quarters-Combat - Darius is trained in both Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and Krav Maga. He is exceptional in both and has mixed them together over time as he’s grown more used to fighting. Darius was trained privately, and personally at significant expense. This combined with his physique makes him effectively a legal weapon...or he would be if the Law knew he was a trained martial artist. This has included some weapons training as well, both improvisational and more traditional.

Guncraft -  He’s no crack shot, but he’s spent time learning how to take care of firearms, how to shoot different types safely, as well as what to look out for. He does not prefer them, nor does he carry one as Refracture, but it is a skill worth having all the same.

First Aid - He’s taken a few classes on this, learning the basics of stabilizing a person, giving CPR, dressing a wound, and setting a bone. You wouldn’t want him over a professional, but at least he has a license and the know-how to help if he feels so inclined.
Company & Inheritance - Inherited from his parents after their disappearance, Darius is the CEO and major shareholder/owner of a tech and financial corporation. It fell on hard times due to bad luck and tough competition, but through hard work and the actions of his parents, rose to some prominence again. However, with their “departure” from the company and Darius’ ensuing mistakes, it has been in a slow decline. Much of his inheritance has gone into investing smartly and branching out with his company in the interest of revitalizing it.

Social Web - Due to his parent’s and company’s connections, Darius has significant influence, or at least contact, with a number of rich and influential people. While not so far-reaching as to have sway with major politicians, he does have some more local elements on his side, as well as a wide variety of other less publicly appealing contacts.

Mansion - Though not absolute sprawling, Darius owns a decently large estate, which was handed down to him through two generations. It has long since been paid off and so he only pays for utilities and amenities, as well as the staff that helps him keep the place running smoothly.

Armory - Somewhere in his house, well hidden, is a room, a room stocked to brimming with weapons–martial and modern. A small few of these weapons are owned legally, whereas a great many others were obtained through indirect, likely illegal means. None of them could be traced back to him, nor could they be traced all back to the same buyer or original owner.

Personal Wealth - As the owner and CEO of his family’s company, Darius has a salary of roughly $157k, fairly middling for a business of its size and scope. While he does have some additional funds leftover from his Inheritance, it is really only accessible under certain conditions, mainly for assisting in the maintenance of the business or in case of emergency regarding his health or wellbeing. In his savings account, he has roughly $528,000 as well about $200,000 or so in invested assets, be it in his company or other stock and the like.

♦ Classification: Shaker|Breaker(Brute).
♦ Mechanics: Darius’ power allows him to draw forth a purple crystalline substance interspersed with jagged veins of pulsating golden energy; he can saturate his body or inanimate matter with the substance so long as contact is established. The substance is much like high-density hydroxyapatite in durability. When imbued, the affected gains durability proportional to the quantity of the substance saturated into a given area or volume. The greater the percentage of saturation in a volume, the more durable it becomes according to the substance’s material properties. Notably, any force exerted by the affected–or things such as falling from great heights–have no impact on the affected structural integrity. When gaining or imparting this substance into something, Darius may decide on its distribution, effectively allowing to control the structure of the affected to a limited degree.

The durability imparted by Darius’ power is, however, a double-edged sword, for if sufficient force acts upon an instance of it and overwhelms its structural integrity, the entire substance will shatter. The resulting effect of this is that the affected material will be damaged as if blades or shrapnel cut through and throughout it, causing incredible damage. Despite this, Darius may use his power again to “replace” damaged flesh in particular, allowing him to remain functional even if technically fatally injured. However, injuries persist “beneath” the effect of his power–though they do heal at an accelerated rate. Due to the material being unaffected by force it exerts, Darius–while fully empowered–is capable of lifting roughly 1240 lbs or exerting similar force. The aforementioned increase in his physical aptitude is a direct result of his body being able to exert the maximum strength of its muscles without the worry of personal harm.

The golden energy held within the “veins” of the crystalline material can be released, resulting in a brief blast of heat and force, which then crystallizes, encasing anything in its path. This crystal is golden rather than purple and is more brittle even than glass, shattering easily under stress. Shards eventually dissipate into nothing, but the process does not occur for about 20 seconds. These blasts, and the crystal resulting from them, will not exceed 212 degrees Fahrenheit, 2,749 lbs of force–roughly equivalent to the strongest human kick–and can only reach a maximum of 1 meter long or wide.

While saturated with his power, Darius’ body can heal any injury or condition that his body would normally be able to treat in a manner of hours. In light of more serious injuries, especially those that would otherwise be fatal–with the exception of destruction of the brain–Darius can recover within the space of several days. Shallow cuts and bruising can be healed in the space of minutes. While under the influence of his power, Darius does not experience pain or even normal sensation, though he does maintain an awareness of how close his power is to its damage threshold, and is capable of detecting pressure, even if it is below his mundane sensory threshold. 

The material affords Darius resistance against extremes in heat and cold, but not outright immunity. Heats beyond 315F, especially if sustained, will begin to reach the durability threshold of his power–though the density is of course a factor. He is more resistant to cold than he is to heat, but it is nonetheless simply a matter of time. Darius’ crystal has a low conductivity, rendering tasers essentially a non-threat akin to being shocked by “severe” static electricity. Though typically resilient, acid is very effective against his material, as is vibration and violent abrasion. Sharp impact–more force over a smaller surface area–such as piercing or slashing attacks are more effective than blunt force.

Functionally, when fully saturated with his power, Darius is more or less in a breaker-state. In this “state” Darius technically weighs roughly 711lbs. He can increase his density/mass beyond this point, but it slows him down the more he does so. Given his increase in mass/weight, Darius can hit about 3.11x as hard while in his pseudo-breaker state (1138 psi in a punch. 8549 psi in a kick).
Darius can saturate himself or inanimate matter with his power at a rate of about 3.65 cubic feet per second, which is roughly equivalent to his body volume.
Notably, acids of similar strength to Hydrochloric or Nitric acid are particularly effective against the material of his breaker state.

♦ Equipment/Belongings:
Personal Cellphone: Self explanatory.

Burner Phones: Self explanatory.

Warehouse: Owned through a number of shell corporations, not one of them leading directly back to him, Darius is in possession of a rather large warehouse in a largely forgotten part of Redline, it appears rundown from the outside, and on entering it is not in amazing condition. There are even what appear to be some homeless–or other stragglers–who occasionally squat in the structure.

Bluetooth Earpiece: Connects wirelessly to a burner phone. It allows him to give voice commands as well as serving as a “comms” device.

Karambit: In costume, Darius carries four of these deadly foldable knives. They can lock into the open position, and be flicked with force to extend or retract the blade when needed.

Nightstick Pair: Each is roughly 3.5 feet long, with most of the length being the business end of the weapon. They are particularly heavy as the length of the weapons are mostly metal. However, they are also well balanced for ease of use. Notably, these are custom-made such that they are heavier than normal to maximize the enhanced strength his power gives him.

Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by yoshua171

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Chatterbox
Name: Drake Vettman.
Alias: Chatterbox.
Age: 21.
Alignment: Villain.
Loyalty: Local Villain.
Appearance: The short and simple of Drake's appearance is that he's a 5'9 pretty boy with a a devilish mischief in his eyes and a charming smirk tpyically plastered over his well sculpted face. He's got eyes so strikingly blue that they almost look silver under most light, and short blonde hair framing his face. While he gives of a cocky vibe in costume, he's a bit more tame out of it, though he walks through the world with a certain swagger in his naturally slim and toned build. Really he's all around a well framed case of good genetics, though he'd rather call his looks 'god given,' if only to get on people's nerves.

In regards to his cape identity, Chatterbox, Drake wears a rather simple costume, consisting of a crimson dress shirt and pants, the shirt with green buttons and the pants with green decals on the sides and near the belt. For his costume he quick dies several locks of his hair a stark green and dons what amount to goggles with reinforced material, which act as shades as well so as not to be easily blinded. To add more mystery to his face, Drake has made his costume include two crimson plates of relatively thin metal to conceal the shape of his jawline as well as a single green plate at his chin to conceal his chin slightly. These plates are actually part of a small modified chingaurd which has been painted to skin tone. He wears this along his jawline where it fastens in his hair behind his head.

History:
Drake, despite appearances, was a quiet child, growing up to an Alicia and John Vettman in the suburbs of Denver. He had a a childhood as quiet as him, playing with some kids in his neighborhood, though he read alone or watched TV more often than not. School was full of studies and loud children playing tag and calling names, but Drake went through it all in relative peace, ignored or treated relatively well by his classmates. As he moved into middle school he became the token “quiet guy,” in the class, with some making fun of him for it, and others trying to figure him out, while very few every really tried to approach him. As he transitioned into highschool and thus adolescence the loneliness finally started to gnaw at him, though only slightly. He wanted friends, if only a few, so he tried to make some, but his generally soft spoken nature and awkwardness in social situations made it...more than a little difficult. Even those who shared his problem eventually drifted away from him, leaving him on his lonesome once again. So he tried a different approach, practicing jokes and studying comedy in his free time

Then in his senior year he entered a talent show at his school, a decision he'd sorely regret as none of his jokes came out as he succumbed to stage fright and ended up running of the stage. Still, even with the embarrassment he didn't give up and started going to comedy clubs on nights where the stage was free and the customer count low. Gradually he learned to make people laugh and his confidence grew until one night when he decided to go to a new club. During his performance not a soul laughed eventually even booing him off stage, throwing paper and food at him.

He ran out of the building...only to run into something worse, a mugging in process, and not just any mugging, one being committed by parahumans. Getting caught up in it, robbed both at gunpoint, he tried to—reflexively--joke to maybe reduce his chances of death by amusing the criminals. Instead, it got him pinned up against a wall by one of the parahumans, that is...pinned with a telekinetic power. It was at this point that he lost his composure and started calling out for help, but alas...no one came and in that moment he felt truly alone and the fear, shame, and loneliness caused his trigger. With the parahumans stunned from the sudden trigger event, as they often were, Drake came to on his knees, having been dropped by the telekinetic.

Angry and confused he shouted at the parahumans and in response the cowered away, listening as he berated them and told them what shitty people they were. It lasted for only several minutes, but they nodded attentively at every word, enraptured. Realizing that something was off, Drake told one of them to punch their ally and in response...she did. A fight was incited in moments and, despite himself, Drake found a grin slipping across his face. Before he could get too caught up in the feeling he called the cops, told the victim of the mugging to forget him, a command that was obeyed without thought, and fled.

In the ensuing months and years, he practiced his ability, continuing to go to comedy clubs, now with his reception becoming significantly improved with each successive act. More often than not he found that smirk plastered across his face and so he began his slide down a slope that he didn't even know he was descending. Drake devises his first outfit and heads out in his new cape identity, Chatterbox. While he doesn't encounter any capes he manages to rob some couples senseless before heading back home in a roundabout way.

With each theft and each comedy act and his introduction to other villains, his behavior, and his crimes, would deepen leading him to the present day. Now, Drake is anything but quiet spoken. He's manipulative, he's conniving and he's turned his exceptional intelligence towards darker, more selfish ends. Now, with the offer from a mysterious cape named Broker, he's decided to join a new team.

A team of villains. Luckily for him, the heroes haven't caught wind of him just yet...so he expects to put on a grand performance to...introduce them to his fun little power. After all, what's a grand performance without some skilled actors.

Personality

Motivations: In short, Drake is motivated by three things, money, attention, and feeling powerful. As a result these are the things he wants to achieve using his power and he'll go to almost any length to achieve them.

Sexuality: Ladykiller.
Likes:Messing with people's heads.
Saturday Night Live.
Jokes/Comedy.
Being amused.
Feisty women.
Mixed drinks.

Dislikes:Being underestimated.
Having his fun ruined.
When no one laughs.
Boring people.
Being Bored.
Fish.

Derangement: As odd and likely silly as it may sound, Drake's power has actually made him prone to nihilism, sadism, and power trips as such personality alterations will drive him to use his power more and more, compounding the alterations to his personality, and so improving the likelihood of him using his power—something his shard wants a lot. Additionally, it makes him less mindful of the moral code and his societal responsibility to uphold it to a degree making his morality decidedly gray...at best.

Parahumanism

Skills: While not a seasoned individual, Drake has been going to the shooting range a fair amount within the last few months. He's skilled with card tricks, good at running, and has a pretty good grasp of psychology—having taken some and studied it in highschool and in recent years. He's also a comedian as his day job, which was going fairly well even before he got his power.

Classification: Master/Trump.
Details: In short, Drake’s power makes his voice capable of tampering with the mental state and--to an extent--physiology of the affected. With it, Drake is capable of using his words and intent to brainwash people on a deep or surface level. Beyond this he possesses a loose awareness of the proximity and direction of affected individuals in relation to his own location--though this has a limited, if vague, range. Variables such as the volume of his voice, the acoustics of the locale, and the length of exposure increase the potency of his ability. With prolonged exposure individuals will move through the three stages of influence severity, which are detailed below.

The first stage is Psychological Addiction, during which individuals receiving first exposure to his voice--or having received very little exposure prior--have a gradually intensifying desire to listen to him. This desire is both subtle and nigh irresistible, driving individuals to not just heed his words, but subconsciously try to conform to both whatever he says and the intent behind those words explicit or implicit. If he tries to drive you to feel a certain way towards him or even something else, the affected will sway closer to that ideal, all the while unaware of the manipulation. While an individual is at this stage of influence their behavior--from an outsider’s perspective--will infrequently set off red flags. Furthermore, if observed by other individuals also under the influence of Drake’s power, nothing will appear particularly amiss even if their actions are significantly divergent from the norm. It is this insidious property which carries through all three stages, as Drake’s power makes it incredibly difficult--even after exposure has ceased--to tell that one was ever affected at all.

Naturally following is the second stage, which transitions the psychological addiction to Drake’s voice into a physiological one, creating in the affected a physical craving and need for his voice. While typically the resultant behavior might be anomalous, individuals in this stage have a more subtle addiction, which is tempered by the insidious nature of Drake’s shard, making them seek out his voice through appropriate mediums. Unlike the first stage, in which influence tends not to decay even over long periods of time, individuals in the second stage can lose their addiction if they are not exposed to the power sufficiently. The period of deprivation can result in irritable behavior, which the affected will almost always attribute to other aspects of their life or environment. Individuals who have been exposed just short of becoming Third Stage risks may actually resort to other addictive substances in an attempt to recreate the physical high caused by hearing CB’s voice.

Individuals at this stage of exposure are exceedingly suggestible and will often--almost without question, or with very little need for convincing--follow Drake’s suggestions and orders, thinking nothing strange about doing so. At first requests may be followed simply because more exposure to his voice is promised, but as the severity of their exposure rises, their mental defenses weaken, making them less and less likely to question or resist his demands. At this upper register, individuals become suggestible enough for Drake’s power to begin repurposing them for his ends--though only minor psychological alterations can be made in any reasonable time frame. Those at the upper limit of this stage can receive orders even through non-verbal means, though not without Drake being physically present.

Finally, following the above, individuals reach stage three, hitting a critical juncture where they become Enthralled. Individuals at this stage, referred to as ‘Thralls’ will not question or disobey Drake’s orders regardless of their contents so long as they remain possible for them to achieve--short term or long term. Individuals who have reached this level of exposure are so thoroughly under the influence of his power that complex commands, brainwashing, skills, and otherwise psychological programming can be used to reshape them into living extensions of the parahuman’s will. It is at this stage that Drake can give commands even through filters such as phone calls, text messages, or other long range forms of communication. Strangely, despite these filters, Thralls will be far more able to understand Drake’s exact intent and meaning than someone equally equipped might. While the influence of his power can eventually decay all the way back to the first stage, it does so at an incredibly slow rate and would take months without any exposure to Drake’s power for an individual to return largely to ‘normal’. However, while someone who was formerly enthralled might one day regain all of their agency, any alterations to their personality enacted during their time as a thrall would remain...meaning that Drake’s victims are irrevocably altered if they are to reach the third stage of exposure.

Aside from the effect Drake’s power has on his victims it is notable that he can ‘tune’ it, allowing him to affect specific individuals rather than anyone present. Furthermore, he can even lower the potency of his power from its max all the way to zero, allowing him to make it even more subtle as well as grant people a sort of ‘immunity’ by not directing his power at them at all. Additionally, Drake--due to the circumstances of his trigger--is capable of imparting his power to others, though with a rather specific limitation. Namely, he can only impart his power to thralls. The Empowered gain a less potent instance of his ability, which possesses significantly reduced control and roughly 60% potency relative to Drake. Individuals exposed to Empowered Thralls accrue influence in the same way as those exposed to Drake himself and are not only subject to the commands of any Empowered Thrall, but also to the original holder of the power.
As a small side effect of his power, Drake’s voice never gets hoarse even from screaming or otherwise strain.
Anyone affected by his power is capable of extracting intent and meaning from any sound he makes with his vocal cords even if it is unintelligible. Their ability to discern his intent/meaning becomes more pronounced as their exposure increases.

Beyond the result of Drake’s power it is worth mentioning that the power works almost entirely by interacting with the neural and endocrine systems of the body. The first stage works almost entirely with the endocrine system, while the second stage begins to affect and alter the peripheral nervous system until finally one reaches the third stage, at which point even the central nervous system is affected. At the third stage (while Drake is currently unaware of this), this power actually allows an individual to actively and intentionally alter the psychology of the victim in addition to inducing intense emotional and physical responses including pleasure, pain, fear, paranoia, and any number of other related or similar phenomena.

Limitations: Due to his power originating entirely from his voice--at least for the duration of the first two stages--Drake cannot use his power if he cannot make sound with his mouth or vocal cords. Furthermore, the less you can hear his voice, the less effective his power is. Earplugs or excessively loud noise sufficient to overwhelm the sound of his voice are perhaps the most effective countermeasures against him--perhaps excluding not being close enough to hear him in the first place. Furthermore, while Drake can issue commands to the enthralled through non-verbal and technological means, his power does not work through any sort of filter. If recorded, or transmitted, his power will not work, meaning that any non-acoustic/natural amplification of his voice will not work and that he cannot enthrall or otherwise affect individuals through a phone call or a speaker system. Last among his power’s weaknesses is the sheer amount of time that it takes in order to reach its full potency on a given target as typically even getting to the upper limit of stage one requires several minutes of continuous exposure. Stage two on the other hand tends to require ten(10) to thirty(30) minutes to reach. Lastly, Stage Three can even take an hour or more to reach and longer for an individual to be fully enthralled.

Drake, when I the guise of Chatterbox carries several things of note, including a deck of modified cards, which have metal edges and are reinforced to be stiff and resilient. On his person are also smoke pellets—that act as effectively as smoke grenades or bombs. Additionally he carries a revolver armed with blanks and a single real bullet as well as additional ammo, which he refers to affectionately as Roulette. He also carries around what amount to amplified pop rocks, which he calls blast rocks as upon hitting the ground at sufficient speed burst into a bright sparks capable of blinding for a second or two or just throwing unsuspecting people off. Drake's costume also includes a bulletproof vest beneath his dress shirt as well as knee and elbow guards.

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Tali Kei Kyshi ⇋⬤⇌ Maei Ta' LhurWeaver of Fates⇂↿↾⇃Womb of souls⇂↿↾⇃Forge of Creation⇂↿↾⇃Arbiter of Axiom
“From the Womb of Souls did you emerge and unto it I may return thee. So heed my words, ye mortals, and do not forget. I am the Mother and the Judge.”
Theme I ♦ Theme II ♦ Theme III ♦ Theme IIII
Tall-ee kay kai-she-ah   May-eye Tah lure-ee
Aspect
♦Quintessence♦
♦
♦
Drawn from the living, possessed by the dead, and pervasive throughout the primal fabric of existence, quintessence is that which animates, allows potentialities, and narrows the gaze of fate. From this essential component of the cosmos, identities arise bearing the living unto their vessels. Irreducible and infinite, quintessence is a wellspring of unknowable power, continually differentiating and iterating upon itself to fill all life with an essence that persists. Through this power, borne of it and serving as its source, the Progenitor of Breath may become many things. Through their Aspect, the Progenitor unifies each Conscious Spark with a web of tangled threads, each a path they might walk, every strand someone they might become. As the Weaver, Tali-Maei can view the potential paths of all who live; they may alter these probabilities or sunder any threads they choose.

Yet, Tali-Maei is more than the Weaver; so too is she the Womb of Souls, from which every animating spark was born. Through this facet, the God of Quintessence may imbue life into the lifeless or youth into the old. With this power, so too can the nature of a being's essence be changed, granting any number of banes or boons. Thus, Tali Kei Kyshi'a--Maei Ta' Lhuri--is the source from which all souls were derived, whether one was aware of it or not. Yet...as the Arbiter of Axiom--the principles by which all must abide--so too may the ensouled become empty husks at the Arbiter's command.

Through understanding, one may glean Tali-Maei as the source of souls, and so too the Weaver of their fates. She is the Mother and her warmth; He is the Judge, the Scales, and the harsh Blade of judgment. After all, what one has created, so too can they destroy. What one has given, so too can they reclaim. Such is the way of the Progenitor.

Persona
♦Compassionate  ♦  Enigmatic  ♦ Merciless ♦
♦♦♦
Though a great many traits aptly describe the Progenitor of Breath, none may entirely encapsulate the deity’s mystique. While Tali-maei is indeed a profoundly maternal figure, holding a nigh endless capacity for compassion and love for all her many children, so too is the god capable of incredible cruelty. Yet, it cannot be said that the Weaver of Fates is truly unkind or cruel, for any punishment meted out by the Arbiter is innately just, as their rulings are based upon the precepts of Fate itself. Thus, though it can be said that they are merciless, it can never be said that she is inequitable.

Beyond these defining features of the Progenitor’s persona, little can be said, as their capricious and willful nature defies succinct or stable description.

Myth
♦TITLE IF YOU WANT♦
♦
♦
"Tali

"Mei

"Kei

"Ta'."

A bright chant floated upon the air of that bright moonlit night, its source a woman perched atop a mountain's peak, her hair and clothes in disarray. Yet, upon her face was an expression of purest joy and jubilation. Slowly her belly had grown as she'd climbed the icy peak, its fell winds clawing at her skin and clothes, threatening to pull her into the great beyond. Nonetheless, she had persisted, and so now she remained, in meditation upon the peak, as she had been for nigh on a year. Blessed by the Great Tree's sap she found that she could subsist on the sparse plants and animals that existed at those once frightening heights.

Now, atop that cold mountain, with warmth in her heart and belly, Tamira knew that it would soon be time. As heavy with child as she had become, it was only a matter of hours or days before her child was to be born into the world. It would be a harsh place to be born, Tamira knew, and yet a contented smile lay upon her lips and a knowing look within her azure eyes. Though she already held a deep maternal love for her baby, she knew that the reality was that her child might not survive in such a place.

Yet she had come, for it was to this place that she had been drawn. Now, with peace settled within her heart and the open sky stretching in every direction above her, she found that even if she'd been wrong to come that she did not regret it. In a world such as theirs, if her child could survive atop this peak for several days as she made her way to ground, then they would not survive the trials of their life. So it was that in the glowing night, with swollen belly and swelling feet, Tamira's water broke.

Then the trial began. Waves of twisting pain--contractions--then heaving pushes. The wetness of sweat and fluids, harsh breathing, calls into the night for anyone. Her mother, her father, her lover, her friends, but she was alone and between waves of shattering, constricting pain, she held the power. Shuddering and cold, yet at once on fire as her body fought for release, Tamira lost herself in the hours of long and arduous labor. As time wore on and the sun began to finally crest upon the horizon, something pushed beyond her body, and she found she had lost all sense of herself. There was no individual, only a body in spasmodic pain, striving for rest, pushing new life into the air's embrace.

There was nothing except breath, and pain; exhaustion, fear, loneliness, and finally...release. Spent, Tamira gathered what she could of herself, finding her identity, and then her name. Finding where she ended and another began, all without moving. Though her mind struggled to focus, she would not have her fight end for naught. So with power drawn from the air itself, she lifted her child with the intentions of her mind and drew the warm body into her arms to shield it from the wind.

Yet....

There was no breath. As she looked down upon her child a quiet horror struck her. A terrible realization. Tears spilled down upon her cheeks without understanding why.

The wind shuddered.

Then prismatic lightning struck down from on high and as the sky shattered, so too did that horrifying moment.

Warmth spread from the small body in her arms. Tamira's eyes widened and the tears too grew warm as a gentle loving smile pressed itself upon her lips. A small cough, then another...then a deep breath and a piercing cry.

"Taei'ka. My little miracle," she cooed, pulling the baby close to her bosom to share her warmth with her newborn child.

Then another spoke and their voice was motherly warmth and fatherly protection. It was a song that sung of fates, bittersweet, but loving. Stern, yet somehow gentle. "A wonderful name, Tamira. A beautiful child. A glorious beginning."

Tamira was too tired and relieved to be shocked or afraid. Yet, as she turned and beheld the form that knelt beside her her eyes did widen and she found herself clutching her son to her chest. Yet, even as worry for their safety crossed her mind, something reassured her. It was as if they could not be safer than they were in that moment, in the presence of the strange being who had manifested before them.

The figure smiled, their form a silhouette sculpted of darkness and light, threads of warmth and cold brutal fated ends and beginnings both. "I have many names, but you may call me Mother," the goddess said, as if replying to an unasked question. Tamira remembered her own mother, but did not feel any shame when she spoke the word in reference to this being.

"Mother, why are you here?"

The goddess' smile became warmer and a hand wrought of swirling stardust and churning colorless quintessence reached out and stroked Tamira's cheek. "To help you of course, my child." Tamira's tired body welled with gratitude, but still she found herself confused.

"Why?"

The Goddess laughed lightly and pushed up from the ground, her silhouette vaguely humanoid, yet undeniably strange as if she were in every moment shedding essence and being remade at once.

"Silly child. I am the Womb, the Weaver, and the Forge.  I am the Breath, the Essence, the Soul. I came because this is what I am. This is how things are to be."

Tamira's frown only deepened, "But Mother...how am I to repay you? This debt it is too great. I--" the Goddess shook her head and Tamira fell silent, wordless and confused.

"Live and give thanks. That is all I ask."

Tamira nodded, her expression suddenly grave, as if she understood.

How could she though? How could she even fathom a divine intellect?

Turning away, a veil of threads and power trailed from every inch of her form like the train of a dress, like long sleeves dragging through the air. Like fates woven into garments adorning an arbiter of creation. The being paused in its departure though, stopping for a moment, silken threads drifting lazily in the wind. Thoughtfully, she spoke, but no more was her voice feminine and warm. No, his voice was searing ice, the frost that kills--cold, implacable, and impossible to deny.

"Ah, but do not forget little one. Your child's fate is not your own."

Tamira swallowed hard and nodded. The god half turned, regarding the woman, then nodded as well.

"Do not forget, Tamira."

Turning away, he left, stepping off the cliff's edge before gliding away upon the air before dissipating into the heavens.

Visage
♦True Form♦
♦
♦Too vast to behold, too unfathomable to bear, the true visage of the Womb of Souls–the Forge of Creation–expands throughout existence, cradling all that is in a vast cosmic womb. Eclipsing all else should it ever fully manifest, this truest of forms is only ever glimpsed in flashes and fragments. Though Tali-maei is indeed innately a being of creation, should their form ever slip entirely into this world, it surely would destroy it.

♦Facade♦
♦
♦
Possessed of many forms, the Progenitor of Breath can take a genuinely endless quantity of guises. Nonetheless, each and every one bears an aspect of her nature, never fully solid, never properly mundane. So it is that, unlike many gods, the Arbiter cannot hide her nature even from men and mer.

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Mistress of the Mists⇂↿↾⇃Zenith⇂↿↾⇃The Arcane Source⇂↿↾⇃Nadir⇂↿↾⇃Keeper of the Well
“I am the Source and the Catalyst.”
Theme I ♦ Theme II ♦ Theme III
M A Y  A H L A H R E E
Domain
♦Arcana♦
♦
♦
The Arcane mysteries of Power both Personal and Cosmic, flow through us—giving life and consciousness—and around us, imparting motion and action and change upon the world. Arcana is the force that changes, that transforms, empowers, creates, and in equal parts destroys—always paring away at the world to reveal truths deeper still. With dominion over—if not mastery of—this power, Mae-Alari threads themselves through the world, desiring to understand it and herself as well.

In this way, Arcana is the expression of these ideas and ideals. In the living, Arcana exists primarily in the form of the Soul, whereas within the world it exists as the driving force for change, manifesting as the numerous energies that flow in and through the cosmos. This allows Mae-Alari to draw upon, manipulate, and manifest the many energies of the world by harnessing the potential energy contained within them. This potential energy can then be transmuted into any other form of energy or even new varieties. However, as a caveat, Mae-Alari cannot directly create, destroy, nor manipulate matter—instead they must influence it through the lens of energy. Where another god might create stone from their very essence whole-cloth, Mae-Alari must take pre-existing substance and mould its form and nature with energy, coaxing it into a new state. Though it may seem strange, while matter may not be created whole-cloth, more of existing matter can be propagated.

Tl;dr: Mae-Alari’s prime domain gives them power over the energies of the world, above all others being Potential Energy, Quintessence, the Breath, and the Soul. However, as a caveat to this incredible power, matter is beyond them. Stone must be coaxed by heat and pressure to become steel. Water heated or cooled to become gas or ice, whereas another god might simply bring these spontaneously into being.

Aspect
♦Curious ♦ Enigmatic ♦ Wise♦
♦♦♦
Mae-Alari is, first and foremost a being seeking understanding of itself through interaction with all else. Through its interactions with other deities and their myriad creations--as well as the reflection of its own expression through such objects, places, and peoples--the Arcane Source is always on the search for further aspects of itself. In this way its curiosity is clear as it finds a fascination with all things, particularly those it does not understand. Yet, despite its obsession with the world's workings, Mae-Alari is unquestionably wise, capable of drawing unexpected knowledge and insight from almost everything it encounters. In this way they contain both the aspects of an ancient sage and the overflowing enthusiasm of child-like curiosity.

As Mae-Alari's purpose is ultimately to understand themselves in all their vast and incalculable complexity, it follows that they are prone to change and--furthermore--difficult to fully grasp even for others. This often makes their intentions opaque and the reasoning behind their actions sometimes inscrutable, leading others top an enigmatic impression of their character. Still, despite their seemingly malleable and indiscernibility, Mae-Alari can always be relied on for their perceptiveness and willingness to assist others. Still, not everyone is wont to risk seeking them out given that often the true reasons behind Alari's giving nature are--at best--difficult to ascertain.


Visage
♦True Form♦
♦
♦
Nested within the beauteous vessel of the Goddess dwells a singularity most sublime, its churning patterns the sum total of all Arcana. It is a sigil, an evolving pattern of energy catalyzing itself into yet greater forms. It is the eye and the heart and the mind as one, bound and unbound, endless yet circumscript. It is the Arcane Source, the Unseen Wellspring and it devours and blooms in equal measure.

Upon her conception in the Great Void before the World was born, Mae-Alari took in a wholly different shape, one far more alien and strange.

A more worldly manifestation, pared down from her full divinity for the sake of the mortal mind.


More will be added.

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【Miryoku, Seikō】


【Theme I♦Theme II♦Theme III♦Theme IV】
~"Cherish what you have, for it will not last forever."~
【Personal Info】
【Name: Miryoku(Charm), Seikō(Delicate).
【Nicknames: N/A.
【Alias: N/A.
【Age: 437.
【Age Appearance: 25.
【Gender: Female.
【Race: Shinigami.
【Former Rank: Ryoka.
【Former Division: Fifth Division.

【Additional Appearance Info: Wearing her Shihakusho well-cinched, one could say that Seikō is rather conservative in terms of her clothing choices. The reality is due to her experiences, she’d much rather not tempt the world. Nonetheless, Seikō is a rather attractive woman, standing at 5’4 and weighing in at around 140 lbs with an hourglass figure and sufficient assets that she feels she must conceal them. Above all, though, her brilliant, almost glowing sapphire eyes are her most defining feature, especially when paired with her barely shoulder-length raven-black hair. Beyond this, of note is the pendant that rests around her neck, almost a choker given its tightness.

【Biography: Born far out in the Rukongai in a District often raided and terrorized by the violence of the gangs of the outer districts, one could say that Seikō has always led a difficult existence. Even as a young child, she came to know that danger was always just around the next corner. Yet, sometimes one can never truly understand what is at risk until it is taken from them, and unfortunately, this has very much been her experience.

So it was at a young age, barely able to fend for herself, that she witnessed the horrible violence of the outer district. Though her parents did their utmost to protect her, hiding her away, they failed in one way.

They did not blind her to the world, did not deafen her to their screams, did not dampen her senses as the scent of blood filled her nostrils. Crying in silence and wanting to scream, she lost her parents and much of the community she’d grown up in.

Frozen in terror, trapped in a state of shock, face and shirt drenched with her own tears, Seikō remained in that decrepit place for a long time. Whether hours or days, she didn’t emerge until someone found her and sadly, they were not just a kind stranger, but rather a raider.

Still, seeing her dirty tear-streaked face as her wide blue eyes stared at him emptily, he must have taken pity on her. So it was that she accompanied the raider in his rough lifestyle.


Many years later, after hardships too numerous to count, Seikō escaped Funinjō and his posse, fleeing to safe districts. Now a young woman hardened by the many hardships of learning to survive and stay safe–and often failing–amidst such rough company, Seikō was closed off for a long time. Retreating into herself and avoiding others for fear of being hurt, it took many many years for her to begin coming out of her shell despite her resilient nature.

Still, eventually, she sought greater safety and decided that she would rather die doing something that mattered than continue to waste away in the districts forever. So it was that she began opening up, reaching out, and even occasionally letting people into her life. Though she could not wash away the pains of her past, Seikō found meaning in helping others escape the possibility of such things in their future.

With time, she heard stories even as she noticed the imperceptible burden that others seemed to bear with her around. Though it upset her to see this, eventually, she found solace in the knowledge that it wasn’t truly her fault, as she discovered the source of the problem: Her Spiritual Pressure.

Though it wasn’t titanic like some legendary shinigami of the past, it was still sufficient to cause the average soul trouble. With this knowledge in hand, she applied for the Shin’o Academy, thinking that she could better protect others from the horrors of the world if she was stronger. Yet in her heart of hearts, she knew that she was running away, trying to get as far from reminders of her past as she could. After all, maybe that distance would help her heal or…help her forget.

Years passed, and she trained, and though she was never considered particularly talented by her teachers or her peers, she was well-liked. Her kind demeanor and attentiveness made her rather popular, but as she graduated and became a member of 5th division, such things stopped mattering nearly as much, and she quickly found herself isolated. Time went on this way for some time until the steady, safe, and largely unchanging environment of the Seireitei was struck by a sudden and violent upheaval.

The betrayal of a Captain, in fact, the Captain of her very own division: Tsubomi Suzunami. Though she’d never had any special relationship with the woman, the sudden violence and instability in a place she’d thought free of such rattled Seikō moreso even than many members of her division. Worse still was that many of her peers joined their Captain in her insurrection. So it was that she found herself numbly watching as so-many strangers–people she knew but was not close to–fought eachother because of the foolish mistakes of one woman.

It was madness. It terrified her, but she’d been scared before, frozen, petrified. Never again. Acting quickly, Seikō had sprung into motion, getting as many of those who had not betrayed her and Soul Society out of the way even as she felt the true battle begin. The one between their Captain and a shinigami who she recognized as the Lieutenant of 7th Division: Yōki, Kōunora.

Eventually, in the process of serving as triage and combatant, Seikō found that she’d moved startlingly close to the brilliant and blinding display that was the two high-ranking shinigami. It was a sight that she found both harrowing and stunning in equal measure. After all, one woman was a blinding flourish of almost impossible-to-follow blades and afterimages, one flowing into the next with an ease that had to have been practiced for decades. Yet…the Lieutenant never faltered, even outclassed as she should have been by Tsubomi, Kōunora somehow managed to evade or turn away the vast majority of the errant Captain’s blows. There was something about the younger shinigami’s movements that felt somehow more honed even than the Captain’s…but that was impossible. Tsubomi had been a Captain for a long time and even if she was hardly the strongest of the Gotei 13’s upper echelons, she was couldn’t possibly so sloppy as to be outclassed by a lieutenant.

Yet she was.

Still, as enraptured as she’d been in the magnificent display above, she soon detected a presence at her side, attacking. Eyes widening, Seikō reacted as quickly as possible. Rather than attempt to block, she’d utilized kido, using a defensive spell in the same instant as she preemptively wreathed herself in Kaido.

Still, the blade struck her with a terrible ferocity that sent her flying. Gritting her teeth from the pain, she flipped in the air and drew her blade in the same instant as she dug her fingertips into a wall to slow her flight. Still, the traitor kept coming, his eyes blazing with fury as he used shunpo to close the distance.

That was his first mistake, for she saw through his every move, and as he appeared, her hilt was already in position to slam his sword down into the ground. With her other hand upraised, she paralyzed him with a spell and then left him for dead. Wiping a bit of blood off her cheek, she cast her gaze around and located one of her compatriots fighting a small group of lesser shinigami who had surely defected.

Narrowing her gaze in disgust at the sight of her ally being bullied, Seikō vanished in a flash step. Joining Kana, Shion in her defensive, the two bonded that day, even amidst that chaos and despair. It was a good thing, too, for though Seikō had shaken off her shock rather quickly, Shion was another case entirely. In the coming months, the two grew close, and as the vice-grip of depressive trauma began to loosen, their friendship began to blossom.

It would be the one thing that truly made Seikō feel secure in the world. Well…that and their new Captain, the very woman who had defeated Tsubomi.

The thought always made Seikō chuckle with a grim sort of amusement; after all, fate did have a twisted sense of humor, why should she be any different?

【Personality: Seikō is a woman who has been tempered in the fires of tragedy and pain, given time to cool, before being reforged in the very same flames. Through the many trials and tribulations of her life thus far, Seikō has been forced to be strong to survive. So it is that in the face of violence, she does not flinch but remains steady and brave as she braces herself against further misfortune. Yet still this is not the sum of her being, for not every facet of her has been forged to the same pristine finish. Quite the opposite, as beneath the brave face, the mask, the wall she puts up to protect herself from the world, there is something brittle and bleeding. Something she refuses to look at, refuses to acknowledge, refuses to accept. It is part of her and it is hurting, wailing, clawing, screaming…silent. Unwilling to look at such a part of herself, Seikō instead turns her attention outwards, nurturing others where she can and protecting whoever she can manage such that perhaps some few will never experience what she’s had to endure.

Still, her past has not just left her with nasty scars and unhealed wounds–psychological and otherwise–but wisdom as well. When one suffers and struggles and yet finds a way through the world, so too do they learn, and indeed Seikō has learned much from her trials. She has learned the importance of bonds, of appearances, and what strength truly looks like. Sadly, a gentle heart and a kind guiding hand cannot save the world…indeed, cannot save her from it either. Nonetheless, she tries, and secretly she hopes as well, hiding that tiny flickering flame of wonder away from the cruel claws of existence such that no more of her innocence might be torn away.

【Notable Traits】
【Likes/Dislikes】
✔ Hopeful people
✔ Kindness
✔ The night sky
✔ Steamed Buns

✘ Liars
✘ Fish
✘ Pessimists
✘ Violence for its own sake


【Defining Traits】
Positive

▲ Compassionate
▲ Forgiving
▲ Kind
▲ Patient
▲ Resolute

Neutral

☯ Gentle
☯ Observant
☯ Empathetic
☯ Warped Sense of humor

Negative

▼ Closed-off
▼ Sensitive
▼ Hypervigilant
▼ Overprotective
【Relationships】
Kana, Shion: Closest Friend / Peer
Friends who bonded in a time of strife, Shion and Seikō could be considered to be inseparable. They look out for eachother…and in a world intent on doling out unpredictable cruelty and violence, it’s a good thing that they do. Though she’s never said it, Seikō’s feelings for Shion are more deep and complicated than she might like.


Yōki, Kōunora: Superior Officer
Finding the Captain inspiring, Seikō sees in her what she wish she could see in herself. True strength. Not soundness of body or soul, but mastery of self. In this way she admires the woman tremendously and tries–in all the wrong ways–to to be like her. Perhaps one day she will learn that it is not her capacities as a shinigami that afford Kōunora peace and confidence, but rather the fact that the Captain has accepted herself in her entirety. Then again…perhaps not.

【Capabilities】
【General Aptitude】
Fighting Style:

While it cannot be said that Seikō is quite a generalist, she certainly isn’t a specialist either. Instead, she combines her skills into a more comprehensive style that relies heavily on her capacity for analysis and variability. While some are exceptionally fast or skilled in one art or another, Seikō’s strength is that she can easily adapt to most situations. Thus, it should be said that–at least for now–she is too early in her development to have developed a proper Fighting Style, as it were.

Attributes

Reiryoku(0): 95
Reiatsu: 490 (10)

Strength: 15 - Unremarkable
Resilience: 5 - Dismal
Mobility: 25 - Average
Spirit: 50 - Impressive

Skills

Proficiency(0): 285

Zanjutsu: 45 - Layman
Hakuda: 0 - Untrained
Kido: 90 - Expert
Hoho: 50 - Practitioner
Perception: 100 - Expert

【Specialization】
Calculating: (Expert Perception)
Your perception gives you an edge in combat, allowing you not just to follow the movement of things much faster than you, but also to predict things more accurately than the average individual and act–or react–accordingly. Functionally, this allows the individual in question to treat half of their Proficiency in Perception as Proficiency in Hoho, but purely when reacting or attempting to predict and capitalize on someone’s future positioning. Notably, the Proficiency Tier is rounded down to the nearest number.


Kidō Specialist: (Kidō Practitioner) {Primary: Kaido | Secondary: Bakudo}
Notably, those who do not possess this Specialty only choose a Primary and cannot use any other class of kido. Otherwise, those possessing this specialty must choose either Hado or Bakudo as their Primary and Secondary, respectively. The Primary discipline gains the full allotment of spells for their rank, whereas the secondary gains the allotment for one tier below their Proficiency. Individuals exceeding the Grandmaster Proficiency Tier are capable of utilizing their secondary at the same rank as their primary, but they are not capable of creating new Kidō of that class. Individuals below Grandmaster cannot utilize Forbidden Kidō, whereas those at Legend or Mythic Proficiency may create Forbidden Kidō. Individuals below Adept cannot create new Kidō.

Kaido: (Kido Expert):
Unlike the other classes of Kido, Kaido requires a particular degree of aptitude to utilize at all. This Specialty allows the user access to Restorative Spells, allowing them to heal themselves and others. Individuals with this Specialty can heal themselves at their Proficiency tier and heal others at one level below such. At Expert, this specialty allows the complete restoration of minor wounds--lacerations, bruises, minor fractures, etc. Notably, at Expert, a specialist can heal more serious injuries but never completely, resulting in lasting complications that cannot be corrected. However, due to the individual’s lack of general experience, they are only capable of healing themselves at their full capacity, whereas they can heal the superficial wounds of others as well as stabilize them. At Adept tier, this specialty allows the restoration of major wounds, including broken bones, major fractures, and even the partial loss or destruction of some organs. At Grandmaster, a Kaido practitioner can even regenerate organs and limbs wholesale. Beyond the threshold of Grandmaster, even long-standing injuries can be mended, reducing or removing complications entirely.

*If Chosen as a secondary via Kido Specialist, the shinigami's Kido Proficiency will need to be one tier higher than normal.

【Artes】
Shunpo(Hoho Practitioner):
Meaning “Flash Steps,” this technique, while not the pinnacle of Hoho, is the primary Arte afforded by the Skill. This Arte allows the user to move faster than the eye can easily follow by using as few steps as possible to cross a distance. The higher the user’s Hoho Proficiency, the faster and more efficient this Arte becomes. This technique clashes against the Perception Skill, meaning that the lower an individual’s skill value is, the more difficulty they will have predicting the trajectory of or even following the user’s movement. This becomes more pronounced if the Perception Skill is at a lower Proficiency Tier than the Shunpo User’s Hoho Skill.

{Unique} Bakudo #60 Datsuraku Hada(Shedding Scales): “Interlock, defend. Lock yourself away from the world and hide…”
A spell designed by Yōki, Kōunora, the Captain of the 5th Division, Datsuraku Hada is a defensive kido utilized to protect either the user or a chosen target. When activated, this spell creates numerous ‘scales’ of dense reishi over the entire surface area of the protected individual’s body–each of these scales serve as numerous powerful barriers. However, the spell’s most distinct property is that if the damage threshold for a subset of barriers (scales) is exceeded, the scales will destroy themselves in such a way that disperses the attack. This is accomplished by the reishi temporarily adapting to the reiatsu or reishi of the opposing attack, briefly causing the scales in question to become the antithesis of the opposing force. Notably, these ‘scales’ may be replenished by channeling additional reiatsu into the spell.

{Unique} Kaido: Mae-sedai(Pre-generation):–“....”–
This spell utilizes the user’s understanding of biological systems to harness Kaido in order to prime the body for healing before any damage has occurred. This drastically increases the efficacy of Kaido spells, in addition to wreathing the caster’s body in light blue healing kido. Unfortunately, Mae-sedai does have potentially dangerous side effects as it can lead to the generation of malformations in the body and is intensely draining if maintained for too long. Notably, the more skilled the user of the spell, the more potent Mae-sedai is and the longer it may be used without negative side effects.

{Unique} Shin’en Hansei(Impressive Spirit | Expert Perception):
Meaning “Profound Reflection”, this technique functions by arresting the outward exertion of one’s reiatsu, allowing Seiko to harness the full extent of her reiryoku. After managing this process, Seiko channels said reiryoku directly to her senses. Through this process, her physical and spiritual awareness are drastically amplified. Through [name]’s use Seiko can analyze her opponents and the environments around her with drastically increased precision allowing her to react more swiftly and accurately than normal. This technique can be utilized for up to 6 posts at base, with this duration increasing by 2 posts for every additional tier in Perception Seiko has. At Legend, the duration is increased to 20 posts, whereas at Mythic the technique may be utilized indefinitely.

*During this technique’s use, the user’s Perception Proficiency is raised by one tier for every two tiers they already have in the Skill. If the user’s Perception is Mythic, this technique gives them perception beyond that of those at their same Proficiency Tier.

**For users who have reached the ‘Master’ Proficiency Tier in Perception, this technique may allow them to win clashes that would otherwise have ended in a tie.

***At ‘Perception Grandmaster’ they may treat clashes where their Attribute or Skill was one tier below that of the aggressor as if their proficiency was tied with the aggressor, allowing them to tie.

【Zanpakuto】
Sealed State
~"They say Ignorance is bliss, but I will not let you choose it."~

Attunement(1): Phase One - Unattuned.
Deviation: N/A.

Inner World & Spirit:
A vast serpent whose coils contain a frozen ocean of endless depth. Cracks splinter across the ice’s surface and throughout its form as it begins to buckle under the pressure of the Serpent’s constricting vice grip. As it tightens its grip, the serpent’s smooth obsidian scales shimmer with a prismatic sheen. Staring into her soul, always watching, the serpent gazes out into the dark beyond, its reptilian eyes speckled with flickering starlight.

This is the current form of her inner world and sword spirit, though it may change to some degree in the future.


Zanpakuto Personality: Patient and understanding, Zen'nō Kaiyō-kami is a rather maternal figure, its voice one of reason in its master’s mind. Nonetheless, their relationship is rocky as Seikō finds the ancient and ever-present gaze of her spirit to be overbearing. After all, it can see into the depths of her being where no one else can, and though Zen'nō is as gentle as possible…she has no intention of allowing Seikō to avoid her traumas forever.

Shikai
Zanpakuto held aloft, its point to the sky, Seikō drew a clockwise arc before aligning the blade at its center. As she began to chant its release, she swiftly brought it down into a horizontal alignment and declared.~"Constrict the endless depths, Zen'nō Kaiyō-kami(全能海洋神 Almighty Ocean God)."~

Thusly, her blade grew wider and its grip longer, becoming a sword spear as its hilt dissolved and spikes grew backwards from the base of the massive spearhead. As the transformation completed, so too was its potency revealed. Roaring backwards, an azure aura and a tremendous force came suddenly into being, parted by the spear tip of Seikō’s shikai. She gritted her teeth for along with its power, so too had been unleashed the furious—barely tolerated—agony that had been nestled deep within her soul.

Ability: Upon entering its release state, Seikō’s Zanpakuto continuously generates an incredibly intense aura of turbulent azure reiryoku that acts much like incredibly high-pressure water. Additionally, Seikō’s Shikai focuses her reiatsu, bringing it into alignment with her Sword Spirit. As a result, there is an intense–physically tangible–force that emanates from her Shikai’s azure reiryoku at all times. This force can be used both offensively to enhance the already potent reiryoku of her Shikai or defensively to slow or weaken attacks. However, there is–unfortunately–a catch: Seikō’s Shikai is indiscriminate and constantly puts her body under significant physical strain so long as it remains active. Functionally it is as if Seikō is being constantly poisoned while her Shikai is active–unfortunately, this effect does not carry over to other individuals who come into contact with her Zanpakuto’s Shikai ability.

As with all Shikai, Seikō’s Reiatsu modifier is doubled while it is active (Mod 10).

During Shikai, Seikō’s Zanpakuto puts her under tremendous pressure in addition to poisoning her. As a result, her Resilience stat is reduced by 10 points. If at Dismal, this effect instead reduces her Strength and Mobility by 5. This can be offset by continuous usage of Kaido, but the effect is only halved (from 10 to 5, thus affecting either Strength or Mobility, rather than both).

This effect is more pronounced on other individuals and performs a check on their Resilience stat, causing a reduction of one milestone tier. This reduction carries over to the affected individual’s Skills, allowing them access to the maximum Proficiency value for their new attribute score in their affected stats.

Techniques
Currently Unknown.

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【Valerian, Remi. Leclère】


【Theme I/|\Theme II/|\Theme III】
~“The past casts a long shadow.”~
 [ ❖ ] B I O
❖ Name:Valerian Remi Leclère.
❖ Age: 18.
❖ Birthplace: Perrence.
❖ Height: 6 ft.
❖ Weight: 213 lbs.
❖ Physique: Tall and in shape with faintly wavy, not-quite-straight, white hair, and amber eyes, Vel is the sort of person who easily stands out in a crowd. With an easy air about him, Vel moves with confidence in his stride and the natural grace of an athlete. Possessed of the pale flesh of someone from colder climates and the muscle of someone who takes care of themselves in all the ways one should, there is a certain discipline to him. His clothes are often well-cared-for, without scuffs or holes or loose threads, despite the fact that he often wears them almost sloppily. Yet, as if as a deliberate contrast, Vel can often be seen in well-tailored, and certainly expensive, clothes—not that such things could quite be described as ‘finery.’ On the other hand, he has a penchant for jewelry, wearing a few rings, one of which is the signet ring of his house—which he wears as a pendant around his neck, often hidden beneath his clothes as if to make a statement. While Valerian can often be seen with a smile, there is nonetheless something off about him; perhaps he’s seen too much….

❖ History:
Perrence born and raised, Valerian—or Vel for short—was a product of deliberate breeding, an experiment by his father—Marius Phillidor Leclère—to create ‘the perfect mage,’ insofar as one could even attempt such a thing. The ambitious, if callous and almost cruel, man had always desired only to bring his family—and his own—reputation and status to ever greater heights. In his wisdom, Marius married a Blarthic noblewoman despite her status even as he lusted after the distinctive Blood Type that ran in her line: Dualblood. So it was that arrangements were made and maiden names were shed as the families were joined as the two were wed. In swift order, a child was conceived and then another as Marius made sure he would always have an heir regardless of their circumstances. Though it was hard on Vel’s mother—Laufey Sessilia Leclère was made of sterner stuff than most. Thus were born Émeric, then Valerian, and of course, his sister Nina-Blær, though each was several years apart by necessity. While their mother cared for them all equally and her serving women assisted, Marius spent time and care with only one: Émeric.

Marius, it seemed, could not have asked for a more perfect candidate for an heir, as the boy had not only inherited his mother’s Dualblood manas, but had both a high RAS value of 8.25 and two stable mana colonies. So it was that Valerian grew up in the shadow of his older brother’s accomplishments—even though his parents believed that he too was possessed of the rare dual colony arrangement, something that he eventually discovered was not true (a fact that he quietly kept to himself). Of course, with a father who paid him little mind, Valerian often found himself somewhat desperately vying for the man’s approval, until eventually, Marius lost his temper. Berating the young boy, Marius drove a single truth into Vel—it was better to not be noticed.

So it was that for much of his childhood, and practically all of his adolescence, Vel made sure not to garner his father’s attention. He kept up with his studies, listened to his tutors, and diligently developed his magics if only to make good on his parents’ belief that he’d manifested two mana colonies at birth. At the young age of 13 Valerian finally—after many attempts since his Gift awakened at 9–managed to create a stable population split between two mana colonies. Of course, given that he couldn’t tell anyone he received no acclaim for the feat, but rather was treated rather poorly despite being what he’d thought was up to his father’s standards.

It turned out that meeting expectations was simply not enough for Marius, no, to please the man one would need to exceed such things. For a time, Vel did what he’d always done, doing his utmost to ignore the harsh words and displeased glances his father cast his way. That was until an argument between Vel and his older brother broke out when Vel was merely 15.

Yet though there was certainly a serious disagreement between them, it was their father who took things too far. Tired of their arguing and furious with Vel’s “lacking” performance, Marius forced the two into a no-holds-barred duel.

It ended in tragedy.A year passed between his brother’s…unfortunate passing and Vel’s withdrawal from his family. Rather than stay in their primary estate, he took up permanent residence in one of their other properties along with a small array of servants. It seemed to Vel—now haunted by his brother’s shocked final gaze—that while he’d finally earned his father’s respect, it had come at a cost far too great. Indeed, it had been one he had not willingly paid. So it was that for some time—indeed until the ripe age of 18–that he ignored all of his father’s correspondence and buried himself in frivolity.

It was an empty time, one devoid of any true joy, or at least absent of anything meaningful or lasting. However, when the clock struck midnight on his 18th birthday, it appeared that his father was quite done with his sulking. Showing up unannounced, the man gave Vel an ultimatum.

Attend Ersand’Enise Academy and further his father’s goals or be disowned.

Reluctantly, Valerian chose the former.
[ ❖ ] P E R S O N A L I T Y
❖ Motivation: Having few proper drives, let alone clear goals, perhaps the only thing that can be said about Vel’s motivations is that he has almost none. If there were one thing though, it would likely be that he desires to be better and perhaps make sure that fewer people like his father are left to roam free in the world.

❖ Persona:
♦Intelligent
♦Observant
♦Loyal
♦Considerate
♦Easy-going
♦Charismatic
♦Selfless
Sharp-witted and with a tongue that could lash if he ever desired such, Vel is something of an ambivert preferring both more cerebral activities at some times and people at others. He is fiercely loyal, but often takes on an almost aloof affect as if he isn’t particularly attached to anything in the world. While he’s certainly no doormat, it couldn’t exactly be said that Valerian is the sort who tends to deliberately attract or seek attention, nor is he one to make much of a fuss about most things. Insults and slights roll off him like oil and water, almost never sinking in or mixing; whether this is a result of his not caring for himself much or a thick skin due to his father’s ravings is anyone’s guess. Yet despite his seemingly aloof nature, Vel is in fact fiercely loyal to those he truly connects with and could easily be considered a staunch defender of anyone he cares for. Furthermore, Vel is particularly opposed to the selfish or self-obsessed, and in particular, anyone with manipulative or exploitative behavior, which he absolutely abhors. Beyond this, he is slow to anger and eminently rational when it comes to most matters. At the same time however, he is a lover of the absurd and can at times take on mildly reckless, and decidedly mischievous, behavior so long as it is not at the expense of others–or at least only a fairly mild inconvenience.

It should be said that Valerian is decidedly good with people regardless of their age, creed, or gender. Easy-going, observant, and understanding he has fairly strong intuition and as such adapts rather quickly to both people and situations. However, perhaps one of his greatest flaws is that he simply cannot abide certain forms of injustice—even if he cares little about law and crime. Bullying, malicious pranks, narcissism, and cruelty are things that he not only hates but simply cannot tolerate. If he sees them, he will act, often before or without thinking and frequently with little regard for himself. Such situations are perhaps the only ones that are likely to result in his openly expressing and acting upon his anger—an emotion that he is rather unfamiliar with processing, let alone dealing with in anything remotely resembling a healthy manner.

Perhaps this is simply the cost of trauma.
[ ❖ ] C A P A B I L I T I E S
[ ❖ ] T H E  G I F T  | RAS {7[64]}
Kinetic{4}Arcane{3}Chemical{2}.
Sanguinaire: Blueblood ❖ Agitator ❖ Dualblood

❖ Experience: While he’s certainly not been to a school or other similar institution for mages prior to Ersand’Enise’s prestigious Academy, Vel has been tutored by skilled mages and experts since he first displayed the Gift. As a direct result of this and his own experimentation, Vel is surprisingly adroit in his use of magic. While he has managed to maintain a stable pair of mana colonies for the last five years, the young nobleman’s ability to ‘boost’ himself is inconsistent at best and dismal on average. However, he has gained sizable control over the colonies allowing him higher efficiency and control than the average mage of his skill level.

Beyond this, due to his extensive experimentation–if only in the interest of distracting himself since the…incident with his brother–Vel has developed some signature skills with the Kinetic school in particular. This school of magic is easily his most developed, allowing him to draw, expel, control, and cycle kinetic energy–and convert other energies into it–far more efficiently than with other schools. While his ability with the Arcane and Chemical schools is drastically less developed, one could more accurately state that he has overspecialized at the cost of many foundational skills. In the case of both schools, he uses them almost solely to draw energy and convert it, or to manage his own body’s energies to a degree. Nonetheless, he is somewhat more capable with the Arcane School, allowing him relatively standard–or at least simple–expressions of its signature magics.

❖ Skills
Catalyze
Chemical{2-5}
By narrowing their focus, the mage drastically increases their awareness of their own biological make-up to the point that they can precisely detect even the mana colonies inhabiting their body. At this stage, the mage will begin drawing energy from their surroundings, deliberately catalyzing the reproductive processes of their colonies. This ability—while not terribly useful for most magic users—is absolutely pivotal for mages possessing the Dualblood Mana Type.

Essentially, by deliberately feeding a sharp influx of power into their mana colony (or colonies) they cause the manas to rapidly begin reproducing, thus causing a sizable increase in their RAS value. Eventually, mages using this spell can hone their control to such a degree that they can actually deliberately target only groups of their manas, allowing them to control the strength of the boost they receive up to a point. At the highest level, these individuals can even turn off the “reproduction signal” in their manas allowing them to more quickly recover from—but never entirely get rid of—the refractory period suffered by Dualblood mages.

❖ Spells
Force Implement
Kinetic{3-7}
Through a series of varied and complex calculations, a mage skilled in the Kinetic School may arrest control of a chosen amount of air in their surroundings through the use of applied kinetic force. Following this, the mage can ‘shape’ the air using patterns of continuously generated kinetic energy moving in two or more opposing vectors. This results in largely invisible, but entirely tangible, ‘objects’ composed of pressurized air. These objects can be moved and otherwise manipulated by altering the position and orientation of the kinetic energy patterns. Notably, the kinetic force applied to the outside of the ‘object’ moving inwards is incrementally less than the force moving from the core moving outwards. The amount of kinetic energy used can vary. Lastly, if the ‘construct’ is destabilized the outer kinetic field will always fail first, resulting in a localized kinetic explosion. Notably, the pressurized air gradually increases in temperature the longer the spell remains active.

Force Lance
Kinetic{4}
Functioning by the principles of Force Implement, this spell differs only in its shape and in the fact that it has a sort of internal kinetic energy reservoir that Vel can specifically use to—on command—and in an instant accelerate it to frightful speeds. Beyond this, the spell is only particularly notable in that Vel is exceptionally familiar with it due to having practiced extensively in its use.
[ ❖ ] L A N G U A G E S
❖Perrench - Native speaker.
❖Blarthic Eskandish - Native speaker.
❖Avincian - Fluent spoken. Advanced written.
❖Revidian - Fluent spoken. Advanced written.

Valerian is natively bilingual, being a native speaker in both Perrench and Blarthic Eskandish. Additionally, Valerian had to become fluent in Avincian and Revidian due to his noble upbringing. He is passable in several other local languages, but his grammar is significantly more rough.
[ ❖ ] T A L E N T S  &  F L A W S
[ ❖ ] Strengths & Flaws
❖ Knowledgeable - Skilled with magical calculations
❖ Athletic - High stamina (Limited)
❖ Exceptional Focus - Multitasker
❖ High pain threshold
❖ Fast Learner
❖ Resilient

❖ Unmotivated - Situational
❖ Emotionally Intelligent
❖ Mischievous
❖ Aloof

❖ Blinded in the face of Injustice
❖ Conflict Avoidant - Emotional
❖ Dismissive - Situational
❖ Part-time Overthinker
❖ Prone to heatstroke
❖ Bad with authority
❖ Physically Limited

Though he’s not one to bring it up, it should not be understated that Valerian is, in fact, a polymath—otherwise known as an individual with wide-reaching knowledge, in this case with his particular areas of expertise being physics and what he refers to as ‘Magical Calculus.’ This form of math is essentially designed around making complex calculations and considerations that allow the magic-user to then create and maintain spells of particular complexity. In tangent with his exceptional ability to multitask, Vel becomes a significantly more impressive specimen than one might think considering his fairly ‘average’ (for a mage) RAS score.

Beyond the above, Vel is in good shape and fairly athletic, if only because he had to increase his physical stamina to compensate for the taxing nature of his mana blood type. Furthermore, on account of his being a dualblood with two active mana colonies, Vel runs particularly hot making him prone to overheating and things such as heatstroke. This means that despite him being in good shape it is not particularly safe for him to exercise or exert himself physically for long periods of time without magical aid. He is, like all Dualbloods, prone to sudden and unexpected bruising—though this has died down more and more as his colonies gradually acclimate to one another’s continued existence.

While he doesn’t suffer from issues of self-esteem, Vel often questions whether he ought to continue on given the sins of his past. This leaves him somewhat directionless and somewhat unmotivated beyond distracting or enjoying himself much of the time. In this way, he can sometimes be misunderstood and thought to simply not care for much of anything at all. Having been more or less controlled by his father’s whims for his entire life, Vel is wont to follow rather than lead. As, though he desires independence, he knows not at all what to do with it. Additionally, though he appears aloof to most things and largely unflappable, the reality is that he is actually far more aware of the harm that simple words or careless actions can cause. While this doesn’t always make him hesitant, it certainly can, and in addition to that, it means that any action he takes that might harm another is one he is likely to secretly agonize over far more than most. Yet, at the same time, Vel is just as likely to challenge authority as he is to follow the leader. This is the result of virtually all such figures in his life abusing their power more often than not. On another note, when faced with his own anger, Vel will often shut down–freezing and fleeing rather than choosing to fight. Only if cornered–physically or emotionally–is he ever likely to choose to fight as he has seen the damage his father’s lack of self-control caused and is adamant not to repeat the man’s mistakes. The only exception, however, is when his anger is in response to injustice, in which it will burn cold and quietly. During such times Vel will often ignore logic and his instincts, instead gunning recklessly to right perceived wrongs.

As a result of the physical limitations imposed on him by his mana blood type, Valerian tends to favor ranged magic. This is largely due to his having to expend energy to keep himself from overheating or otherwise overexerting himself. It should additionally be noted that the variety of his casting is somewhat limited—or at least specialized—due to his lack of training and unique situation. This has resulted in his being particularly good at drawing and casting, whereas his ability to contain energy is severely lacking relative to most mages and his conversion rate is rather middling.

Sanguinaire Talent - Clinical Finisher: Valerian is exacting in his method of feeding, doing no more harm than is necessary, and extracting only so much as he requires. Mechanically, this results in a +1 on each feeding roll (Satisfaction/Quantity/Mana Type).
[ ❖ ] I N V E N T O R Y
Money - Owned: Vel has about 349 Magus to his name in the bank, but only carries about 2 Magus worth at any given time.

Wardrobe - Owned: Largely kept in his quarters at Ersand’Enise, Vel has a wide assortment of clothes, the majority of which are high-quality. He does have a series of garments that are…lower class at best, as sometimes he enjoys consorting with commoners as he’s not above such things. This assortment of clothes includes a few different sets of jewelry–mostly rings and necklaces, though there are the rare, but simple earrings for when he’s in the mood for such things.

L'Oeil Ensanglanté - Worn: A Strangely gorgeous and intricate ring made of multiple moving rings, With the 2 most center rings appearing to be made of gears. These central rings each have intricate cravings within and are made of dark steel and vibrant bronze. Each tooth of the gear is marked with a number going from 1-9. The ring has a very intricate enchantment made specifically to assist in the daily life of Dualbloods. The ring is able to keep track of the amount of manas in circulation within the wearer's body, which makes it essentially useless to non-dualbloods. For Dualbloods however, it is an essential tool as each ring is attuned to one of the wearer's mana colonies. As a result, the numbers of the gears serve as a means for the wearer to keep track of their colonies. Each denotation on the gears represents a factor of 10%. Keeping the gears at roughly 5 each is often best.


Additive Effect: 3 manas
Mana Type:  None
Longevity: Platinum 2
Efficiency: Platinum 
Density: Gold
Capacity: Platinum
Attunement: Platinum 3
Final Grade: Platinum 2

Lilac - Owned: A horse, affectionately named and cared for, Lilac is Vel’s favored mount and in a way, his closest confidante. She is fast, strong, well-trained, and incredibly loyal–if somewhat fiery in her temperament.

Signet Ring Pendant - Worn: Always on his person, if typically hidden beneath his shirt, is the signet ring of his house, which on top of denoting his lineage also serves as a universal sign of his position as heir. The ring is, all-in-all, incredibly intricate and rather ostentatious. It is rather valuable as one might expect of such a thing.
[ ❖ ] J O U R N E Y
This will be updated as the RP goes on.

【Entry title】
Entry location/date
WRITTEN ENTRY
[ ❖ ] M I S C E L L A N E O U S
The Leclère Family
~ “Bloodless and Bloodied.” ~
[ ❖ ] R E P U T A T I O N
Starting with Lazare who was essentially the family’s founder, the Leclère Family has held the favor of three kings since their rise to power. Notably, Benedict the Blessed, Guillaume II, and now Rouis XI have favored the Leclères, with Marius outright having Rouis XI’s ear. They are—nonetheless—considered an upstart and rather young noble family, if a powerful one. The oldblood noble houses hold them largely in disdain, with some notable exceptions for those who have worked with them historically, and perhaps one or two who have recognized their rather impressive rise to prominence. The Leclères are considered unwise to cross, even if they are held—to a degree—in low esteem by some of the old blood houses.

Holding the King’s ear, and a relatively stable standing amongst the high nobility, much of their power comes from political maneuvering, historical reputation, and allies rather than large holdings or huge stakes in the economy. In recent years, there have been rumors that have rather put into question whether it is strictly wise to allow the Leclères in their positions. As such, some of the lower and middling noble houses have closely watched their dealings, watching and waiting for any weakness or opportunity to take them down. This has been what the current head of the family: Marius Phillidor Leclère has been working against as no one would have dared oppose them when his father was in power. So it is that Marius works to ensure that they will not dare do so in the future as well.
[ ❖ ] H I S T O R Y
Lazare Phillipe Leclère–Marius’ father–raised their family’s position from that of lesser nobles during the great unrest caused by the War of the Glades. Capitalizing on the shifting political situation and unstable footing of a great many noble houses, Lazare took a gamble on his holdings to raise a small militia, which he went on to train alongside several compatriots who he later allowed to inconspicuously go missing. Once his force was thoroughly trained, he waged a smaller guerilla war on the usurpers to gain the favor of Benedict the Blessed while he remained in hiding. Lazare’s small, but elite, force came to be known as the ghosts of the countryside and demons of the night, striking unexpectedly and with a ferocity not often seen in a force so small.

While they could hardly win a war entirely on their own, their efforts did ultimately earn the King-in-hiding’s attention, which eventually allowed Lazare to join forces with Benedict’s allies. With time and underground collaboration–keeping their plans and troop movements as clandestine as possible–they were eventually able to assist Benedict in reclaiming his throne and securing his rule.

So it was that in the aftermath Lazare and his family were rewarded for their patriotism and loyalty earning themselves land and titles to match. For some time, Lazare bided his time, but to his chagrin opportunity would not present itself again in his generation, so instead he trained his sons such that they could continue his legacy and rise amongst the peerage. Years later, after Lazare had passed–and Marius had “outlived” all his brothers–strife once more reared its head in Perrence. With the country threatened by foreign powers that had once been theirs to control, King Rouis XI found himself desperately in need of allies and advisors whom he knew he could trust. Thus he called upon his old friend. Marius Leclère as the two had attended the same Academy in their youth and the two began their plans to unite the nobility and resolve the war that would come to be known as the Joruban Revolution.
[ ❖ ] M E M B E R S  &  T I T L E S
Marquess Marius Phillidor Leclère.
Marchioness Laufey Sessilia Leclère.
Lord & Heir Valerian Remi Leclère.
Lady Nina-Blær Leclère.

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Mistress of the Mists⇂↿↾⇃Zenith⇂↿↾⇃The Arcane Source⇂↿↾⇃Nadir⇂↿↾⇃Keeper of the Well
“I am the Source and the Catalyst.”
Theme I ♦ Theme II ♦ Theme III
M A Y  A H L A H R E E
Domain
♦Arcana♦
♦
♦
The Arcane mysteries of Power both Personal and Cosmic, flow through us—giving life and consciousness—and around us, imparting motion and action and change upon the world. Arcana is the force that changes, that transforms, empowers, creates, and in equal parts destroys—always paring away at the world to reveal truths deeper still. With dominion over—if not mastery of—this power, Mae-Alari threads themselves through the world, desiring to understand it and herself as well.

In this way, Arcana is the expression of these ideas and ideals. In the living, Arcana exists primarily in the form of the Soul, whereas within the world it exists as the driving force for change, manifesting as the numerous energies that flow in and through the cosmos. This allows Mae-Alari to draw upon, manipulate, and manifest the many energies of the world by harnessing the potential energy contained within them. This potential energy can then be transmuted into any other form of energy or even new varieties. However, as a caveat, Mae-Alari cannot directly create, destroy, nor manipulate matter—instead they must influence it through the lens of energy. Where another god might create stone from their very essence whole-cloth, Mae-Alari must take pre-existing substance and mould its form and nature with energy, coaxing it into a new state. Though it may seem strange, while matter may not be created whole-cloth, more of existing matter can be propagated.

Tl;dr: Mae-Alari’s prime domain gives them power over the energies of the world, above all others being Potential Energy, Quintessence, the Breath, and the Soul. However, as a caveat to this incredible power, matter is beyond them. Stone must be coaxed by heat and pressure to become steel. Water heated or cooled to become gas or ice, whereas another god might simply bring these spontaneously into being.

Aspect
♦Curious ♦ Enigmatic ♦ Wise♦
♦♦♦
Mae-Alari is, first and foremost a being seeking understanding of itself through interaction with all else. Through its interactions with other deities and their myriad creations--as well as the reflection of its own expression through such objects, places, and peoples--the Arcane Source is always on the search for further aspects of itself. In this way its curiosity is clear as it finds a fascination with all things, particularly those it does not understand. Yet, despite its obsession with the world's workings, Mae-Alari is unquestionably wise, capable of drawing unexpected knowledge and insight from almost everything it encounters. In this way they contain both the aspects of an ancient sage and the overflowing enthusiasm of child-like curiosity.

As Mae-Alari's purpose is ultimately to understand themselves in all their vast and incalculable complexity, it follows that they are prone to change and--furthermore--difficult to fully grasp even for others. This often makes their intentions opaque and the reasoning behind their actions sometimes inscrutable, leading others top an enigmatic impression of their character. Still, despite their seemingly malleable and indiscernibility, Mae-Alari can always be relied on for their perceptiveness and willingness to assist others. Still, not everyone is wont to risk seeking them out given that often the true reasons behind Alari's giving nature are--at best--difficult to ascertain.


Visage
♦True Form♦
♦
♦
Nested within the beauteous vessel of the Goddess dwells a singularity most sublime, its churning patterns the sum total of all Arcana. It is a sigil, an evolving pattern of energy catalyzing itself into yet greater forms. It is the eye and the heart and the mind as one, bound and unbound, endless yet circumscript. It is the Arcane Source, the Unseen Wellspring and it devours and blooms in equal measure.

Upon her conception in the Great Void before the World was born, Mae-Alari took in a wholly different shape, one far more alien and strange.
A more worldly manifestation, pared down from her full divinity for the sake of the mortal mind.





More will be added.

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⇂↿ NAME GO HERE ↾⇃


⇂↿“QUOTE GO HERE”↾⇃

⇂↿↾⇃ Bio ▼

⇂↿↾⇃ Name:
⇂↿↾⇃ Race:
⇂↿↾⇃ Age:
⇂↿↾⇃ Height:
⇂↿↾⇃ Affinity:
⇂↿↾⇃ Soul Strength:
⇂↿↾⇃ Social Standing:

⇂↿↾⇃ Appearance:

⇂↿↾⇃ Personality ▼
⇂↿↾⇃Interests: TEXT GO HERE

⇂↿↾⇃Persona: TEXT GO HERE


⇂↿↾⇃ History ▼
TEXT GO HERE


⇂↿↾⇃ Belongings & Equipment ▼
Name:
Description

Name:
Description

Name:
Description

Name:
Description


⇂↿↾⇃ Capabilities ▼
TEXT GO HERE

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⇂↿ Lhirin ↾⇃


⇂↿“Knowledge permits everything.”↾⇃

⇂↿↾⇃ Bio ▼

⇂↿↾⇃ Name: Lhirinthyl.
⇂↿↾⇃ Race: Ascended Deigan (Hybrid).
⇂↿↾⇃ Age: 132.
⇂↿↾⇃ Height: 5’9.
⇂↿↾⇃ Affinity: Lightning.
⇂↿↾⇃ Soul Strength: 6.05kWh.
⇂↿↾⇃ Social Standing: Exiled Vagabond.
⇂↿↾⇃ Languages: Fermian(Native language), Rodorian(Fluent), Kirkinian(Nearly Fluent), Penin(Fluent), Melenian(Limited), Catalohne(Read/write), and Gazzerashei(Fluent).

⇂↿↾⇃ Appearance:
Possessed of the exotic beauty of his people, Lhirinthyl takes after his father in overall appearance, though he only stands at roughly 5’9 in height. Thin and lithe, with silver irises Lhirinthyl has the unique appearance of a mixed blood deigan as the golden feathers he inherited from his father are rimmed in an obsidian hue. While once he was the sort to keep himself well-appointed, his new situation has resulted in a somewhat bedraggled appearance. While his feathers are usually well groomed, his clothes, and the dark bags beneath his eyes give away the reality of his situation. Nonetheless, Lhirinthyl has a certain presence about him, always moving with a purpose and giving off a sense of restrained power. Perhaps the most distinctive–and certainly the most expensive–item in his possession is a sheathed runeblade of surprisingly exceptional make.

Below is an official commission of Lhirinthyl from the wonderful TwistedFae. This displays Lhirin’s garb and equipment with a fair degree of accuracy–though his runeblade and sheath are not the most accurate.

⇂↿↾⇃ Personality ▼
⇂↿↾⇃Interests:
Lhirin has an eclectic set of fascinations many of which border–to a degree–on obsession. Below is a rather short, very perfunctory list, of his interests. These are not in any particular order.

Anatomy
Magic
The Planes
Valderoth - God of Magic
Xoril - God of Secrets
Enchantment
The Ether
The Mind/Soul
Pending other additions lol

⇂↿↾⇃Persona:
Lhirinthyl is, for lack of a better word, intense. A culmination primarily of his prodigious paranoia and exceptional intellect, this tends to manifest–internally–as a fierce desire to understand and account for everything around him. As a result, it’s rather easy for others to get the wrong impression. This is of course worsened by the simple fact that a great many irrational things frustrate him, something that he tends to have either too great or too small a filter for both of which can get him into rather difficult situations. After all, not speaking when spoken to can enrage some, whereas saying the quiet part out loud tends to infuriate everyone else. Many who have met him tend to sum him up rather simply as a ‘jerk,’ this honestly fails to really encapsulate Lhirinthyl’s strange persona.

On the one hand, he can be oddly thoughtful, often without meaning to be. After all, sometimes the truth is just what someone needs to hear. Besides that, there is a sort of playfulness beneath his paranoia, an eccentric bent, and a twisted sense of humor that–for some–might even be considered weirdly charming. Sadly, his long isolation has buried much of his true self beneath the symptoms of his paranoia. Yet the intensity of his desires and fierce determination in tangent with a strange mixture of fearlessness and paranoia make him an undeniably interesting person to keep around–his various talents notwithstanding.

Hidden beneath all of this is a caring dreamer, passionate about his craft, and intent upon revolutionizing magic for everyone in Reniam. Unfortunately, many of his more positive characteristics are often warped on their way up from the depths of his soul. Clear evidence of this is his propensity for fixation on seemingly insignificant details, not to mention his high likelihood of missing social cues. This fixation can happen both on details he understands–or at least believes he does–and on particularities that he finds particularly nonsensical or interesting due to his lack of understanding.

⇂↿↾⇃ History ▼
Lhirinthyl grew up in the shadow of his father, a man with considerable wealth and power in the community, even as his mother hid in the man’s shadow and shielded her children from his judgment. Still, his childhood was a happy one, spent listening to stories from his mother’s culture. They were strange and unique tales from the True Deigan, even if they did have to make sure his father wasn’t near when she told them.

Stories of mages and merchants, orphans, and castaways clawing their way up through society to make their way into the world intrigued him. Perhaps it was then that the pathway to his goals was set in stone. Yet, perhaps if things had been different, if his father had been more present with his son, the woes that were to come could have been avoided.

Perhaps.

Alas, ‘twas not so for by the time his father took any interest in his son’s exceptional memory, and talent for the arcane, that seed had well and truly taken root. With every book read and every piece of arcane knowledge, Lhirinthyl began to notice the negative space in the material. It was like everyone had taken something in particular for granted, the Planes. People used them to swear or exclaim, and some texts referenced them, and yet…at no point did he ever get the sense that anyone had really considered them properly. The only exception was the Dream Realm, the realm most closely associated with the Arcane. It was understood, to a certain degree, what caused the crystallization of spells, and naturally that the energy of that realm was what facilitated spellcraft. Mages explored it, plumbing the depths of the collective unconscious, as it were.

Yet, spells of significance, those that revolutionized the craft, were startlingly rare. Much to his father’s joy, Lhirinthyl began to research on his own, taking a vested interest in the art. After all Lhirinthyl didn’t just want to learn bog standard spells, or simply iterate on the design of those who had come before him, no he wanted more than that. He wanted to innovate. More specifically as he learned about the planes and the cosmology of their world–insofar as the leading scholars understood such things–he found that perhaps aside from the Favored or beings from such realms, modern mages had yet to truly harness the power of these places. Even the Dream, such as it were, seemed underutilized. It was something that surely could be harnessed more concretely.

Though it was a technique that had been used long before his time, Lhirinthyl first delved into Lucid Dreaming, training himself to carry his waking consciousness into the Ether itself. With time he improved at maintaining the state, and even exiting the Self to explore beyond his own subconscious. With time he learned to use the Dream to better understand himself, and spellcraft as well. He used it to study, simply flipping through books, rather than reading them, and then using the malleable flow of time within the realm to review the information his subconscious had held onto.

It was a useful technique, though it didn’t always work, nor could it entirely replace proper memorization. Gradually, the years wore on and his father began to lose interest, perhaps writing his son off as nothing more than a dabbler. The idea irked Lhirinthyl, but he never let the man know. Instead, he pondered how he could expand his repertoire of knowledge.

One day it came to him in the form of a memory, a story really, one told to him by his mother. The moral of that particular story, he realized, had been simple…even if he’d never understood it until then.

Take what you must, just don’t get caught doing so.

Like a lamp being lit, that single lesson showed him a new path, if a risky one.

From that day forward, Lhirinthyl refocused a great deal of his efforts, turning his mind to iterating upon known spells as best as he could even as he gathered intel--as he liked to call it–on other mages in his community. After all, the more spellcraft he knew, both theory and verified works, the less he would need to do to create what he truly desired—planar magic.

Though he failed to notice, this obsession of his was leading him down a treacherous path. Nonetheless, when he was ready, Lhirinthyl stole from other mages, snatching research notes and spellbooks all in the pursuit of achieving the first of his many aspirations: Reaching the Realm of Dreams or, better yet, affecting permanent change that wouldn’t take him decades or centuries to accomplish.

While he could certainly visit after a fashion, that was merely his soul, and all that he could do was control the nature of his dreams and explore what already existed. Any changes he made were ephemeral at best, lasting only so long as his soul remained to maintain them.

It wasn’t enough, in fact, it was downright unacceptable. He wished to trawl the vast ocean of ideas, sift through the concepts formed by mortal kind, and record them as well. The whimsy of it called to him, but so too did the potential power that such a feat might bring, not to mention the doors it could open for further research.

Could he draw directly from the Dream, could he enchant objects that could do so? Could he sift the infinite threads and currents of knowledge to discover spells that no other mortal had yet to make or even consider?

What could such revelations allow? Might he step from one realm to another soul and body both? The idea delighted him and since it had come to roost within his skull, he found he could not escape it.

So, foolishly, he’d stolen and pilfered, and snatched. Any scrap of magical research, any spellbook he could get his dextrous hands on. For some time Lhirinthyl went uncontested, uncaught, his own spellwork shifting to make his deeds easier.

However, one cannot escape the consequences of their actions forever, and he was no different from any other in that regard. So it was that one day he was caught, one day he was brought up on charges. Yet, not all could be proved or even pinned on him. Surely a single man, let alone a boy, could not steal from so many mages. Surely their defenses, their precautions would have caught him sooner.

His sentence was–as these things go–far kinder than it could have been. Still, he did not fight it, realizing that there was little point. To further anger all those mages would be folly. So he plead guilty, and his sentence was decided.

Eight years of confinement. No tools for writing. He would pay in time, and time itself would wear down his memory such that all that he had stolen would erode within his mind. Though not happy that the thief would live, many of the mages were placated by his sentence.

On that day, the story of his life crystallized in him a singularly important lesson. Sometimes, to win a war, you must first surrender several battles. You must lose, so that later you might win, or at least survive.

Still, he was lucky, for while he was disowned, his family at least paid the fines for his transgressions. His father told him not to show his face in their community again and left never to visit him again. It stung, but what stung more was the disappointment in his mother’s eyes and the confused dismay in the gaze of his younger sister.

He would likely never see her again and he knew the girl had adored him as only a sister could her elder brother. He could not watch them leave and he convinced himself that it was just as well that they’d never meet each other again.

For there was one thing he knew.

He couldn’t stop.

This was too important.

After all, why should only the gods know other realms? Why not men as well….

His family would be safer this way, far from him and his workings.

The years dragged on, without a book to read, without decent company to talk to, yet he would not languish. He couldn’t, he simply would not allow it. He chipped at the stone of his cell and the wood of the single bed he was provided. He drew diagrams, runes, and incantations. Depictions of the realms as he understood them. Old spells he’d read from books he’d stolen. The guards surely thought him mad. After all, he spoke to himself, always muttering under his breath. It was nonsense to many of the guards, but the reality was simple. They were invocations, chants, notes he’d read, principles of magic. Anything at all that he could remember.

However, it was his dream that buoyed him, for with them he reveled in the expression of his craft. Every word he’d ever read or written swirled in endless colorful patterns around him. He made diagrams of many colors, connecting words and ideas, concepts, and designs. In his dreams, he kept the spark alive. While he was awake, he made sure it would not diminish.

He told himself he would forget not a single passage or phrase. Alas, the years wore on and despite his determination, something within him gave. While he maintained much of what he’d learned, other things slipped. When the guards jeered at him or threw insults to make his sentence worse, he found himself bereft of proper responses. He knew not how to feel or what to say. Yet, it wasn’t that his wit had left him, not precisely. Though it felt that way, some part of him knew that any tool left unused would grow dull or worn.

So it was that as his way with people declined so too did his certainty. Where before he’d known their words to be untrue, he knew himself to be sane…now he doubted. Days and months passed and eventually the mutterings of his captors, the chuckles and mockery of their laughter as they watched him scratch desperately at the stone of his cell…it made him think.

‘Perhaps I am mad….’.

Though the idea haunted him, he never stopped his work. So years slipped by, knowledge and skills slipped away, and eventually, the date of his release finally arrived. He was given only the clothing on his back and what few belongings his family had deigned to leave in the custody of the prison. It wasn’t much. Some clothes, some food, a bit of coin, and better than anything else…a single thick tome. To anyone else reading it, it would appear entirely mundane: A wide tome filled with stories, fanciful tales and other such wistful and useless things. The reality however was different, for it was the culmination of his research. When he finally had privacy again, as he made his way away from the city–knowing he could not stay–he looked over the tome. It didn’t take long for tears of joy to spring from his eyes for everything remained. The book had not been found, it was untouched, and likely his mother had left it here…knowing he’d always held a strange nostalgia for such things.

More importantly though, with the fines paid, and his sentence served, he was finally free. This time, he would endeavor to keep it that way. With that in mind he wandered, bartering for knowledge where he could, researching on his own time and continuing his daily practice of the arcane going. Eventually, after a particularly harrowing encounter, where he thought he’d met his end–lying out away from the road, grievously wounded–a Deigan woman came upon him. Only later once she’d healed him did he come to learn her name: Deo’Irah, a True Deigan. Still healing as he was, the two traveled together for a time. Eventually, they came to a more long-term agreement and have been traveling together ever since.

⇂↿↾⇃ Belongings & Equipment ▼
General Supplies:
Two small vials of piaan, well concealed.
Firestarter
A single small metal pot - now carried in Irah’s stagecoach.
Writing Implements.
A smattering of clothing, kept in the Stagecoach.
Enchanter’s Tools
Craftsman’s Tools (Anything portable). These have been acquired during his time with Irah.
A nice Hunter’s Knife.
Water flask.
Various odds & ends.
Various materials stored in the Stagecoach.

NAME PENDING Ether Drill: Ether Drone Prototype
An exceptionally complex piece of enchanted artifice, this prototype is something Lhirin has created with the express intention of accessing the Ether more directly. At the very least it is his desire to create a sort of autonomous construct that can travel and sift through the Ether in his stead. This way spells and the like can be more easily discovered. However, at present, this ‘drone’ is more of a one-use drill that can punch a hole between Reniam and the Ether, allowing magical energy to spill into the former. The exact mechanism behind this process is not something he openly talks about with many. Additionally, it is worth noting that once the Ether Drill has been used its Sealing Stone battery will be depleted and thus must be manually refilled before it can once again be used. This can take quite a while to recharge especially given that Lhirin must do so manually as he has yet to find another reliable method to supply the enchantment with energy–though some obvious options do exist.

Official Name Placeholder: Lightning Rod Heirloom
An heirloom of over four generations in Lhirin’s family, these cylindrical stakes, currently six(6) in number are a unique piece of enchantment. Essentially, each of these lightning rods is composed of a pair of half-stakes, each with a single pointed end while one bears a slightly wider circumference. This allows the two half-stakes to fit into one another. There is a relatively simple mechanism within each of the six stakes that allows them to slip into one another, one stake sliding into the hollow cavity of another. This mechanism can also lock the joined half-stakes in a fully extended or fully nested state. When the half-stakes are nested within one another the small soul fragment within them does not power their enchantment making them safe to handle. Alternatively, when fully extended the enchantment becomes active, causing [NAME] to exhibit properties similar to the Galvanic Anchor spell.

Runeblade & Sheath:
A paired Rune Blade and Sheath, the former with a blade of bronze and a handle of Etherite, the latter crafted of Ebony Wood. The Rune Blade and the Ebon Sheath are both inscribed with a number of Arcane Runes, notably Hardness and Sharpness. The blade alone is inscribed with the runes for Fire, Wind, Light, Earth, Lightning, and Protection. Additionally, the Blade is inscribed with three of Lhirin’s Spells: Electrify, Magnetize, and Bound Blade. The Ebon Sheath has spells inscribed on the inside of the sheath, the spells are as follows: Compress Air, Magnetic Field, Attuned Barrier, Voltaic Barrage, Lightning Spear, and Galvanic Authority. Notably, the scabbard can be disassembled for maintenance and both implements have plenty of space should Lhirin desire to add more runes to his repertoire.

Research Supplies:
Lhirin carries three books of note. One large tome (deeply encrypted) that reads basically as an anthology of stories. This is his primary research and spellbook. The other two books serve as a decoy spellbook that only has minor spells and research in it, some of which aren’t even accurate. Encrypted but in a far easier-to-decrypt script. The last book is purely for random notes and thoughts and is not encrypted at all.

⇂↿↾⇃ Capabilities ▼
Rather than a man of many talents, Lhirinthyl is a deigan possessed of unique focus and specialization. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the deigan exile is most remarkable in two distinct areas: the Mind and the Arcane. The first of these is exemplified in numerous ways both small and large. Perhaps the most apparent of these is his observant and highly analytical nature, coupled with a unique familiarity and intuition for abstract ideas. In this way, things that most would consider ‘high concept’ or complex are not simply familiar to Lhirin, but drastically easier to comprehend. This does, however, come at the cost of Lhirin’s capacity to quickly and easily grasp simpler things. As such he has blindspots, particularly in the social spheres. Whereas he can understand people on a logical or rational level, he finds it difficult to empathize and interact on a moment-to-moment basis as such topics and ideas as emotions, thoughts, and interpersonal reactions and interactions do not come with the same ease or immediacy that they do to others. Beyond this, Lhirinthyl’s already exceptional memory has been well and truly refined. Particularly, his visual memory–and spatial understanding–are nigh peerless. While this does not necessarily allow him to remember every word someone has said or every passage in a book, it does give him a distinct advantage with navigation or the recollection and visualization of symbols. While these are the primary manifestations of Lhirin’s relative mastery of his psyche, there are other–more subtle–ways that such things can manifest.

Of course, let us not forget the second aspect of what others might call his ‘genius,’ which pertains to the field of Arcane practice and study. The deigan’s propensity for the Arcane can be easily divided into two categories: Magic Theory and Enchantment. The latter of these–Enchantment–is a topic that Lhirin would consider more of a hobby than anything else, but given the length of his life and the resources he once had at his disposal, he has become inordinately skilled with the art. Any manner of Enchantment falls into this, though Lhirin is arguably best at Imprinting. Still, most forms of Enchantment come more easily to him than to most. If any distinct sub-category of the art could be considered as his specialty though, it would certainly be Runes. This is indeed the case with his casting as well for while Lhirinthyl’s exceptional memory and unique grasp of concepts would normally make him a particularly potent mage, the reality is that his deficiency in memorizing the words for spells generally makes him less efficient than others of similar skill. However, do not be fooled, for despite his failings in this area, he can more deftly weave Runes to cast spells than most, and when aided by a Spell medium or Focus he becomes a truly frightening combatant indeed.

Yet, though Lhirin’s aforementioned faculties could certainly be considered impressive, they are not the capstone of his accomplishments. No, for that honor goes to the deigan’s preternatural ability with compound spells, which far surpasses a great many of his peers.  This particular ability of his originates both from his familiarity and ease with the abstract, his visual memory, and indeed his extensive research into an abnormally wide variety of spells. As a culmination of these things, Lhirinthyl has gained an intuition for both which spells can be compounded, and what the result of said combinations may be.

Notably, Lhirin is something of a linguist as well and picks up languages very easily and naturally.

Name: Electrify.
Type: Standard.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: Lightning
Difficulty: Basic.
Description: Generates electrical energy where the caster desires based on where the magical energy is placed. By altering the location of the energy creating the charge, the user can guide the electricity as projectiles and the like.

Permutations:
—Lightning Affinity{Galvanize}: Drastically improves the caster’s control of the electricity, the potency of the charge generated, as well as the efficiency of the spell.

Name: Magnetize.
Type: Standard.
Range: (In)Direct Contact.
Affinity: Magnetic.
Difficulty: Basic.
Description: An incredibly simple spell with a baseline low-cost, Magnetize does as one might think, allowing the user to project a magnetic field on touch through physical mediums. The mage can choose to bind this magnetic field to objects affected by the spell. Additionally, they can switch the magnetic charge of an object from positive to negative or vice versa.

Permutations:
—Magnetic Affinity: Allows the caster to project a magnetic field through the air as well as through touch.

Name: Galvanic Anchor.
Type: Standard.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: Magnetic.
Difficulty: Basic.
Description: Designating a target object either by touching it or marking it with magical energy, the caster then activates this spell, causing the affected object(s) to strongly attract electrical energy as well as resist damage from it. In simpler terms, this turns the affected target(s) into lightning rods.

Permutations:
–Lightning Affinity{Voltaic Beacon}: Causes all affected objects to discharge some amount of any electrical energy attracted to them in a small radius with the marked object as the central point.

Name: Bound Blade.
Type: Standard.
Range: N/A.
Affinity: Kinesis.
Difficulty: Basic.
Description: Named after the tendency to use this spell to manipulate weapons, Bound Blade allows the caster to control the motion of one object through the binding of kinetic energy to a target.

Permutations:
–Kinetic Affinity{Unseen Hand}: Increases the spell’s efficiency and drastically improves the caster’s control of the chosen object. Additionally gives enhanced awareness of the affected item, almost as if it is an extension of the mage’s body.

Name: Elucidate.
Type: Standard.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: N/A.
Difficulty: Basic.
Description: Causes magical energy in a designated area/range to glow.

Permutations:
—Unknown.

Name: Call Flame.
Type: Standard.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: Fire.
Difficulty: Basic.
Description: Allows the caster to conjure and then guide fire. The effect becomes more powerful when more energy is used.

Permutations:
—Unknown.

Name: Call Wind.
Type: Standard.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: Fire.
Difficulty: Basic.
Description: Allows the caster to call upon and guide the air around them. The effect becomes more powerful when more energy is used.

Permutations:
—Unknown.

Name: Spark Javelin.
Type: Standard.
Range: N/A.
Affinity: Lightning.
Difficulty: Intermediate.
Description: Creates an electrical charge in the caster's hand, to be launched in any desired direction. Upon launch it will assume the appearance of a short spear made of lightning, which will travel unwaveringly forward, potentially passing through and electrocuting numerous targets before its energy is depleted.

Permutations:
—Lightning Affinity{Lightning Spear}: Creates a bigger, even more powerful electrical projectile that can char flesh at contact and travel further than the original spell.

Name: Magnetic Field.
Type: Standard.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: Magnetic.
Difficulty: Intermediate.
Description: Generates a spherical magnetic field either centered on a designated location or the caster if no location is designated. The caster may switch the polarity at will to attract or repulse objects that interact with magnetism. The power of the spell can be adjusted by altering the energy input.

Permutations:
—Magnetic Affinity: Amplifies the base power of the magnetic field, thus increasing its efficacy of the spell. Makes the spell more efficient, thus allowing a larger magnetic field to be generated for less energy.

Name: Compress.
Type: Standard.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: Wind.
Difficulty: Intermediate.
Description: Pulls wind into a space designated by the caster's magical energy and then compresses it inwards at a rate and pressure relative to the amount of energy supplied.

Permutations:
—Wind Affinity: ????

Name: Galvanic Authority.
Type: Standard.
Range: 10 meters.
Affinity: Magnetic/Lightning.
Difficulty: Advanced.
Description: Initiated by a pulse of magnetic energy originating from the user, this wave stops after covering a 5-meter radius. After this, a maximum of [blank] object that interacts with magnetism in this area can be chosen. Once chosen, these targets are magnetically charged, the energy from the pulse being redirected into and around them. The user may then manipulate the orientation, velocity, and trajectory of these objects at will. The fewer objects chosen, the stronger the caster may influence the aforementioned variables. This spell cannot affect targets that are more than two hundred (200) lbs if manipulating one object. For each additional object, this is halved. The objects cannot be manipulated any further away than 10 meters.

Permutations:
—Lightning Affinity: This bestows two distinct effects on the chosen objects. If positively charged, the objects begin to generate a small electromagnetic field, drawing objects and electrical charge to them. If negatively charged, this field condenses around the objects and pushes away anything sufficiently influenced by electromagnetism. This gives it something like a penetrating effect on metal in particular due to its susceptibility to magnetism.

—Magnetic Affinity: Drastically increases the efficiency of the spell and thus increasing its output, thus allowing the user an additional 5 meters of control radius and the capacity to control up to double the amount of objects, with a maximum weight of three-hundred(300) lbs.

Name: Analyze.
Type: Standard.
Range: 4 meters.
Affinity: N/A.
Difficulty: Advanced.
Description: This spell causes a wave of energy to pass through the mage’s target of choice. Once the object has been fully ‘scanned’ by this film of energy, a translucent structural diagram is created  hovering in the air. This diagram can be rotated, “zoomed in” on, and even allows the caster to increase/decrease the “opacity” of different sections of the structural diagram. While the spell does not supply any information in regards to what it is scanning directly, it nonetheless allows the caster to observe the resulting holographic diagram to better ascertain the structural elements of any scanned target.

Permutations:
—Unknown.

Name: Voltaic Barrage.
Type: Standard.
Range: 15 meters.
Affinity: Lightning/Magnetic.
Difficulty: Advanced.
Description: Practically requiring either the Magnetic or Lightning affinities,  Voltaic barrage is otherwise an energy hungry spell not designed for the newly initiated mage. On completion of its incantation, lightning is conjured from the user, spreading out before collapsing into numerous fist-sized arrow-like projectiles. The movements of these projectiles are dictated by the caster’s will and will largely ignore electricity’s tendency to take the path of least resistance. Additionally, on contact with either liquids or solids, these projectiles will first pass into them, after which they will violently discharge all of their electrical energy. Naturally, this can cause incredible damage as it sears pathways of white-hot electricity through sufficiently conductive materials–living or otherwise. Furthermore, conductive materials will tend to retain the imparted electrical charge longer than normal due to the spell affecting lightning’s typical tendency to ground itself.

Permutations:
—Lightning Affinity: Increases energy efficiency drastically.
—Magnetic Affinity: Increases range to 20 meters as well as making the spell somewhat more efficient than normal—though not to the same extent as lightning affinity.

Name: Magnetic Confluence.
Type: Compound.
Range: Variable.
Affinity: Magnetic/Lightning.
Difficulty: Advanced.
Description: Requiring some awareness of the interaction between electricity and magnetism, Voltaic Confluence occurs when Electrify and Magnetic Field are cast on an object. The resultant effect causes the object in question to levitate and project a magnetic field drastically stronger than Magnetic Field, but costing significantly less energy than one would expect. Additionally, the user is capable of moving the object that the magnetic field is anchored to, essentially creating a powerful mobile electromagnetic field.

Permutations:
—Lightning Affinity{Voltaic Confluence}: As a result of the user’s Lightning affinity, the effects of Magnetic Confluence are slightly altered and the user becomes able to alter the polarity of the magnetic field. Additionally, with a bit of additional magical energy, the caster can electrify the field, sending waves of lightning expanding outwards from the central object. While diffuse and thus no more than a minor annoyance, these waves of electricity will bind to conductive physical material in the same way as Electrify.

Name: Galvanic Launch.
Type: Compound.
Range: N/A.
Affinity: Lightning/Magnetic.
Difficulty: Advanced.
Description: By first casting Galvanic Authority on any number of objects, the caster may then initiate this spell at any time by casting Magnetize while maintaining the former spell. Once done, the caster can—by changing the polarity of either the magnetic field surrounding the object(s) or the polarity of the object itself—explosively launch the objects affected by Galvanic Authority and Magnetize. Once launched, these objects can no longer be controlled, though the remaining objects—if such applies—will be easier to control as if the caster had chosen less than the maximum of 6 objects for Galvanic Authority. Notably, objects affected by this compound spell—when launched—move drastically faster than those normally controlled through Galvanic Authority.

Permutations:
—Unknown.

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