*stumbles in with a cup of coffee and bunny slippers* Mmmnngh.... gewwd morning. =___= I'm still dragging ass, but I'm awake. Gotta clean the house here in a few and go buy some groceries.
Name: Suliss the Thief Age: Unknown Height: Unknown Weight: Unknown Race: Usually human Alignment: Evil
Appearance- He could be anyone.
*Equipment: Naught but a mere dagger with a seven inch blade.
Abilities- Suliss is a powerful sorcerer with access to many forbidden magics. He is currently in the body of an average joe, and as such from a physical standpoint is completely normal. His body right now is around twenty-five years of age, can bench press 175 pounds, and can run 15 miles per hour.
*Body Steal: Suliss has the power to change bodies with his victims by repeating the following chant whilst in physical contact with them. This works even if they wear clothing, armor, or other forms of mobile protection, so long as they can feel the pressure of his direct contact.
"Thig Mòr Athair! Thoir dhomh an fheoil mo nàmhaid.
Airson tròcair m 'anam. Airson a 'phuing mo bhàis. Eisdibh rium -mach à bho mo dhìteadh guth.
Bidh mi a ' lùbadh fheòil a thoil, Mòr Athair! Bidh mi a ' lùbadh fheòil a thoil, Mòr Athair! Bidh mi a ' lùbadh fheòil a thoil, Mòr Athair!
Dòcha chaillte n-anaman a ghabhail gus ur shuthain uaimh!
Bidh mi a ' lùbadh fheòil a thoil, Mòr Athair! Bidh mi a ' lùbadh fheòil a thoil, Mòr Athair! Bidh mi a ' lùbadh fheòil a thoil, Mòr Athair!"
When he switches bodies, he gains unrestricted access to all of his victim's powers with a full knowledge of their abilities and skills. Suliss must repeat the entire chant to complete the change, and has to start over from the beginning if he loses contact with the opponent. If he is interrupted from speaking, he can pick up where he left off, so punching him in the mouth wouldn't force him to start over. If new forms allow him to speak faster, then he may complete the ritual all the more quickly. Currently, it takes him twenty seconds to finish.
*Siphon: Suliss can emit a spell that steals a lifeform's energy and transfers it to himself. The converted energy can be used to increase his own strength or allow him to immediately cast a spell with equivalent or less power than was gained. He slowly loses the power over time unless he switches into a new body more powerful than his own, in which case he can keep all of the power he stole. He loses all power gained after exactly one hour. It currently takes him two seconds to charge a weak Siphon spell which travels at 329 fps and steals 5% of an opponent's vitality, thus creating a 10% gap in strength. Every two seconds the spell is charged tacks on another 5% drain, and with a fifty second charge he can entirely drain a victim. If he makes physical contact with an opponent whilst Siphon is charging, he can continually drain 5% from them every two seconds. He can dual cast this spell with both hands to steal 5% per second, or half the charge time of the max power Siphon. If he switches bodies with a Siphoned opponent, he loses no strength and the opponent gains nothing. This spell creates a thick, sickly yellow haze around his hands.
*Wrack: This spell functions with the same power charge as Siphon, except instead of stealing strength, it inflicts enormous agony. The more time Wrack is charged, the more intense the pain is and the longer it lasts. The pain lasts for half as long as the spell is charged. A two second Wrack spell will make one's body feel as if it were beset on all sides by needles covered in salt and vinegar. At half power the body feels like a giant testicle that has just been crushed flat by a hot waffle iron. At full power the victim feels all the agonies of ultimate hell, and unless they have some ability that renders them immune to pain or their body functions differently from other biological life forms, they will typically die instantly from shock. Wrack manifests as crackling maroon energy winding about Suliss's mitts like snakes.
*FoulFire: A form of fire magic that, instead of burning the flesh, slowly flays and peels it apart like a cheese grater on a banana skin. It functions with the two second charge of course, with a weak spell being painful but almost negligible, and a max power Foulfire able to slowly and irrevocably entirely separate an entity's tissues from its skeleton. Usually a direct hit from a half charged Foulfire is enough to send a human into shock and kill them from blood loss. When charging this attack, his fingertips are set alight with dripping green flames.
*Chain: By charging a spell for an extra five seconds, Suliss can make the attack bounce from target to target without losing momentum. With this versatile trick, he can pinball an attack throughout an entire army. Each target must be within 100 yards of the next to get hit. Suliss can steal mass amounts of power in populated areas this way.
*Asylum: This spell can only be used after a full minute of one-handed charging, or thirty seconds with both hands occupied. It creates a magical barrier ten yards across, a perfect black orb that lets nothing in or out, lasting for twenty seconds. Whilst in the orb Suliss can /instantly/ charge his magic, allowing him to spam spells as fast as he can think them. Needless to say, getting caught in it is undesirable.
*Conjure: If Suliss can obtain one ounce of biological matter from a target, be it hair, flesh, blood, or whatever substitute the lifeform has, he can use the matter as fuel to summon a "Bogle" after seven seconds of charging, a demon that embodies the worst fear of the one from whose tissues it was spawned, and will pursue the target ceaselessly. The bogle can only be defeated if the target can overcome their fear, at least temporarily. If the target has no fear, then in the bogle's stead will the caster's worst fear be called in true, not as a mere accurate imitation but the real thing. In Suliss's case, an unnatural monster he encountered many lives ago known only to a cursed few as...
Aliases: The Sleeper of the Clandestine, Shasheuss-Gux (Seminole), Salmu Pulhu (Sumerian), The Great Father
Gender: Male
Species: Living Nightmare, Primordial Vampire
Lifespan: As long as it can continue drinking blood. It doesn't age when it sleeps for years in-between large meals.
Age: 2,387 (Current Physical Form and Mental State), otherwise timeless and unrestricted by the concept of age.
Appearance: A piebald monstrosity with slime slicked flesh and no hind legs. Its only limbs are two craggy, winged arms and a powerful tail of prodigious size. It has four fingers on each hand, with the middle one bearing a claw eight inches long and capable of slicing through muscle like tissue paper. The other claws are half that length. It wears a dripping maw packed tightly with gruesome tombstone teeth, concealed beneath flabby lips pulled back into a knowing, dog-like grin. Childhood fears, once long forgotten, echo dimly throughout its unseeing, oily eyes. These features are accentuated by long, crinkle cut ears and wrinkled leaf nostrils. It has a sharp, hollow tongue which can extend three feet from its mouth and act as a siphon to suck in blood. Dermal branchial papulae, like the thousands of little tube-like legs on a starfish, coat its skin and protrude whenever it is beneath water or drenched in slime. When inactive the respiratory feelers retreat into the body, leaving the flesh porus and spongy.
It is without a reflection and the monster's motion and form exhibit a surreal, dreamy quality that offends the basic innermost sensibilities of any remotely natural or sane organism. From snout to tail base it's over eight feet long. The tail is fourteen feet, and each arm is six foot five to the wrist. It weighs in at about two-hundred and ninety-five kilos, as much as a Siberian tiger.
Abilities
~Limited flight. Due to its wingspan and body weight, it can only glide.
~Ectothermic: Its body temperature adjusts to match its surroundings. It can withstand the hottest or coldest environments.
~Tremendous strength, speed, and agility, the likes of which dominate the animal kingdom.
~Keen hearing and sonar. It's echolocation has a maximum distance of 6,700 meters and can detect objects moving at half the speed of sound. Its hearing is so good it can locate a victim even through miles of dense forest and with its back turned. Anything faster than its echolocation it can sense almost instantly via air pressure gradient.
~Breathing: The Magna Pater respirates via both lungs and tracheae located all over its body. The tracheae are highly developed and allow it to survive in every kind of atmosphere or lack thereof.
~Stealth: Its mucous gums up and muffles any minor sounds it may make when sneaking, and it is immune to any magical or supernatural detection that doesn't naturally or scientifically originate within the five known senses. That is to say, it cannot be located via any sixth sense. It is, however, unable to change color or camouflage itself, and as such rarely stalks during the day. One with sharp eyes or a sharper wit might be capable of finding it.
~Heat pits: Can detect all forms of heat and energy. This includes light itself.
~Tongue: Can draw in blood through a wound like a vacuum. It can also squirt or spray blood and bile. The bile is not highly acidic.
~Natural weapons: Its teeth and claws are composed of a complex chitin and protein polymer, harder and sharper than a Humboldt squid's beak, which can pierce modern body armor. The Magna Pater's bite force is superior to what a Nile crocodile can exert. Its tail has nearly 90,000 muscles, flexible enough to delicately pick up small pebbles, and strong enough to accelerate to whip-like striking speeds or strangle large animals.
~Can squeeze into any opening that it can fit its head through.
~Capable of entering a state of metabolic stasis which can last for decades. It retains spatial awareness during this "hibernation" and can awaken at will.
~Sense of smell: It can track down others thousands of kilometers away just by smelling them on the clothing of its prey.
~The Pull: The Magna Pater and the places it most often visits bear a quality that faintly arouses a victim's morbid curiosity when nearby. This doesn't work if one is aware of the monster's presence. As an example, were the Magna Pater to be waiting outside of a locked window, the victim may feel vaguely compelled to go to said window and look out, but not unlock the window after sighting the horror beyond it. The monster can decide whether or not a victim feels the "Pull". It has scarcely any effect on those with a strong will and a firm grasp of what is real, since the Pull is predominantly meant to snare children.
~Intelligence: Is far more clever that it looks. It has nearly two millennia of experience as a highly prolific interdimensional serial killer, can grasp (but not speak) all languages, and never makes the same mistake twice.
~Can quickly regenerate from wounds by consuming blood and flesh. The amount of mass healed is proportionate to how much is consumed, I.E one pound of food to replace one pound of damaged tissue. It can selectively heal different parts of its body, and any excess food it eats is stored for later regeneration. It can hold up to 110 kilos of food in its stomach.
~The membrane of its wings is tougher than Kevlar, and can easily stop bullets of the highest caliber.
~Its body mucous and saliva contains anticoagulant, cytotoxic, and bufotoxic properties. Those whom it bites or claws will suffer gradual necrosis, unstoppable bleeding, and fast-acting, nightmarish hallucinations. Supernatural forms of healing are drastically hindered where the Magna Pater's juices are concerned, the anticoagulant preventing even magic from clotting or regenerating blood cells, although the monster is immune to its own toxins. The speed at which the bufotoxins take effect depends on how close the wound is to the head, ranging from several minutes to several seconds. The viscosity of the mucous can be regulated, allowing the Magna Pater to be extremely slippery or adhesive. The mucous at its stickiest can bind even the strongest of life forms, deaden the momentum of heavy impacts, and tear off the skin and muscle of any victims that are unfortunate enough to come into contact with it. The mucous functions also to mask its scent. It can convert and excrete up to twenty percent of its body weight in mucous. It becomes significantly faster when empty, and can regain the weight by eating.
~The Alpha:
Though it would never allow its young to live unless driven to desperation by an immense threat to its existence, for it is a selfish thing that dislikes sharing its hunting grounds, it is able to impose its will upon its brood of lesser vampires via shared split-consciousness. By forcefully breeding with another organism, it can produce in one month a litter of four juveniles. The juveniles are capable of killing at birth and mature after a single month whereupon they become able to breed, weighing at that time around 100 kilos each. The brood will never grow to more than 200 kilos. They are vastly inferior to the Magna Pater in terms of physical power, albeit still capable of easily tearing an adult male polar bear limb from limb. Each one can have a litter of four young, and can breed with as many victims as are available. Any sort of living organism that weighs at least seventy pounds, male or female, can be impregnated. At such a rate the number of mature brood would grow exponentially as follows, assuming the lowest estimate of each one breeding a single time per month.
Month One- The Magna Pater breeds and the young emerge.
Month Two- Five mature brood counting the Magna Pater.
Month Four- Twenty brood.
Month Six- Eighty Brood.
Month Eight- 320 brood.
Month Ten- 1,280 brood.
Year One- 5,120 brood.
Year Two- 26,214,400 brood.
~Malocchio:
It may use this power by shutting down its other senses. Before it uses the Malocchio, the intended victim(s) will have a brief premonition of the danger to come. Those who see its eyes will see also a fragmentation of its true essence, and a connection will be made. It is a thoroughly foul experience with no proper comparison. Afterwards, each time the victim goes to sleep, they will enter a trance and begin moving in the direction of the Magna Pater, wherever it may be. They will awaken at the time they normally would, such as a few minutes for a nap and several hours for deep sleep. It also allows the Magna Pater to see with the eyes of its prey whenever it uses the Malocchio, even at the same time if there are multiple victims. By using the Malocchio on one who is already cursed, the victim's sight will be replaced with that of the Magna Pater's until it deactivates its eyes. As it shares the sight of any victims cursed by the Malocchio, this enables it to mix and match the eyes of any marked opponents by proxy, without requiring them to look at it so long as it has other prey to work with. This only lasts for as long as the Malocchio is sustained.
As an example, were it to mark and capture a dog and then mark a dozen humans, it could let the humans go but then repeatedly alternate their vision with that of its own, the dog's, or with each other, by making the animal look into its eyes. The only way to break the Malocchio is to kill the Magna Pater's physical body.
It is a passive curse that has no immediate negative effects unless the victim is entirely under the influence of the Magna Pater's hallucinogens, in which case the victim will immediately lose their mind from fright as the Magna Pater fully claims them into its transcendental nightmare. If the bufotoxins haven't taken full effect then the victim will feel an intense fear which escalates in accordance to the strength of the already terrifying hallucinations.
Looking into its eyes for too long can result in the victim's body becoming riddled with cancer at a later period in time, I.E developing prostate and skin cancer two years after the encounter. It takes roughly seven seconds of eye-to-eye contact (does not have to be constant) before the dormant cancer cells begin taking root. The Magna Pater can only keep the Malocchio active for at most sixteen seconds, and cannot use it again until the same amount of time has passed. As an example, if it only uses it for ten seconds and then deactivates, then it must rest its eyes for ten seconds. The Magna Pater is able to travel to any realm or dimension that withholds a victim of the Malocchio as well. What's more, when the Malocchio is active the Magna Pater is able to touch and otherwise harm incorporeal beings.
Those that are consumed by the Magna Pater whilst cursed by the Malocchio are reduced to their "essential salts", the physical manifestation of their very being. Their consciousness is bound to these salts, and at the monster's whim it can excrete its victims and leave them to be forever lost in the earth as inert particles, the crushing weight of the ages and of their last tormented memories forming an intimate and inescapable hell. The Magna Pater can also, by consuming enough food, give "birth" to a reincarnation of a devoured victim, altering their very essence and defiling the laws of nature and spirit to create a lesser primeval vampire that wields all of the powers it had in its past life. The stronger the victim, the more powerful the primeval thrall. They are entirely subject to the Magna Pater's will, and with the telepathic connection the Magna Pater shares with all its brood, it can gain all of the life experience and knowledge that the victim had stored up before being eaten.
(An untranslated 18th century copy of De Vermis Mysteriis.)
Behavior/Personality: The Magna Pater is what one would first think of when the word "monster" comes to you in the dead of night. It may be called if one completes a forbidden ritual detailed within the ancient tome of black magic known as De Vermis Mysteriis, but nary a being would consider doing such an obscene thing. It makes no noise, has no mercy, cannot be reasoned with, and lives only to drain the blood and devour the flesh of all living things it can bind within its greasy wings. Despite its incalculable intelligence, it never makes any attempts to communicate with victims. It has no desire for social interaction or for personal expression. The Magna Pater is wise in the ways of psychological torture, and knows that it is much more traumatic for a victim to not understand the nature or identity of their tormentor. Such is its cruelty that it affords its prey not even the courtesy of acknowledging them as sentient beings.
It enjoys all manner of prey and is especially inclined to go out of its way to find toddlers and infants, but it is shy and despises the light. It prefers to remain in damp pitch-blackness, where no eyes can spy it and no light can fall upon it. Areas that it has frequented for many years are imbued with distinct, otherworldly vibes, as would be felt in a grievously haunted house. Its lairs are moreso thickened with an underlying feeling of unreality, as if partly submerged in an eerie fantasy. It holds residence in the wilds of Florida, in a basalt cavern that does not flood. When outside of its primary lair it lurks around graveyards and canals. In the graveyards it may be found squirming through the wormy soil to feast upon the dead and decaying when no live meat is available. When swimming below the canals that criss-cross through Cape Coral, it preys upon the elderly and the infirm that wander to close to the murky waters.
("The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.")
It frequently impregnates victims with its brood, keeping them alive until its malformed young are birthed. It will eat both the victim and the young, doing these things not for food but to purposefully inflict prolonged torment. The few who come into contact with it and live may never be the same as they had been before, for above all else it is a creature of persistence. Even if one leaves the Magna Pater, it will never leave them. A variety of lifelong physical complications and psychological ailments can stem from a meeting with it and it never stops pursuing its prey, even if they move far away. It will also track down any living thing that leaves its scent on a victim. This leads to the Magna Pater consuming the families of those it hunts, along with anyone those families had come into recent physical contact with. Though one may travel often and abroad, once the Magna Pater has chosen a victim their fate is inevitable. It could take days, weeks, months, even years, but eventually on some cold and moonless evening one will awaken to see a sticky face with dead eyes peering through their bedroom window.
(Drawing found in the desk of ten year old Vidya Singh, who went missing in Kanpur, India, two months after claiming to have seen a demon in his backyard.)
History:
Once in a millennium does a creature awaken, a primal horror that represents the physical manifestation of an ethereal, reincarnating monster originating in and as a part of an eternal non-Euclidean nightmare extending past the boundaries of reality. The literal translation of the creature's name, and the name of the nightmare (for it resides within itself) is that of the "Great Father", as many other monsters come from it. In order to fully influence other spheres with its presence, it must obey most of the natural and dimensional laws present. As such, it casts forth a tangible extension of itself. Through this physical presence it may gradually submit other lifeforms and habitats to its will and alter their fundamental states of being. The Magna Pater stalks alone, for it is greedy and does not abide its own kind, but always has one lived. It is the alpha of its mindless subspecies, who thrash and writhe in a charnel chaos of endless autocannibalism amongst the desolation of the heavenly bodies the Magna Pater has ravaged. When all other life is gone, the brood eat and grow off of each other as a self-sustaining conglomerate organism that is its own ecosystem. Only when the lone alpha dies is a new one conceived in the nightmare, as a new Magna Pater recycled. At this point in time does a special one exist, the worst that has ever lived, who was known by the humans of old as "The Sleeper of the Clandestine". Such is its cunning that it has learned to retrieve its memories via the psychic link to its vast brood scattered throughout time and space. It can live again as itself after death, when one-hundred years of incubation has passed. Only can the Magna Pater be permanently stopped if its pneuma, its true state of being, is destroyed or sealed away. Though it is exceedingly difficult to entirely destroy the full entity, as each brood carries with it a fragment of the whole, which in and of itself exists in abstract form, the Magna Pater can be ultimately contained and stopped potentially forever by capturing its pneuma, which leaves its eyes when it dies, in a stone of turquoise weighing at least five pounds. Turquoise was regarded by Aztecs and Native Americans alike to be the holiest of stones, and infinitely more potent than a woven dreamcatcher at stifling nightmares. Such is the truth.
It travels far and with little preference, drawn to whatever realm has foolishly called it via black magic. In Sumeria it was worshipped as an obscure and cruel deity to which countless sacrifices were made. Before the Seminole Wars it was dreaded by the Creek Indians, who gave it many names and forms, as it was too wicked a thing to exist under any one description. Even the most vile of devils balk at associating with it. Like each Magna Pater before it, it wields the unique capacity to share the senses, memories, and will of its subspecies, which it can use to wipe out entire populations. Fortunately it is a petty thing, and despite the magnitude of its origins, it remains content to personally antagonize one victim at a time. It treasures the world, but only for the sadistic pleasures it can derive from slowly bringing pain and grief to other living things.
Though it lingers not permanently on this planet, it is anchored here during times of inactivity. It haunts the secret places deep below ground, amidst a lichen hellscape of death and graverot. It slumbers upon a towering mountain of soggy bones, the bones of children, reigning over its decaying empire on a haphazard throne several thousand lives thick. Those who enter this wretched domain, where the blue sky transitions into a black void, do so at the risk of becoming yet another skeleton upon which the Magna Pater may sleep, with their loved ones soon joining them.
Theme Music:
It is the very entity whose black essence he draws upon in order to gain the ability to steal bodies. So frightful is the creature that Suliss only resorts to using Conjure if he is sure of an opponent's fear, or if he expects to die anyways. Even then Suliss prefers to take to his heels after casting Conjure, for the Magna Pater, if it heeds the call of a dark wizard and the scent of a fearless being, will most likely pursue the nearest prey. Whomever is caught by the creature, for them death will kind mercy they will never receive, forever and after.
*Mix-Ups: Suliss can use his dual casting ability to mix and intertwine his magics to create new spell combinations, such as WrackFire, Siphoning Flames, and LeechWrack. His ultimate attack is to combine all three spells by using his mouth as a third conduit to charge another spell, though this greatly taxes his stamina and leaves him too weak to walk afterwards. The result is LitchFire, a flamethrower-like assault that can continue shoot forth and burn for as long as it can Siphon energy from a victim. Its heat depends on the victim's durability, as the Siphon will continuously fuel the power of the fire with the target's own life force. If set on fire, the only way to put out the flame is to remove whatever part of the body the fire is feeding on. Like all of the other spells, LitchFire follows the two second charge rule.
The speed of the spells and the charge rate may change if Suliss harnesses bodies with greater reserves of life force.
Personality- Suliss is a cruel and conniving villain that desires only power. He enjoys dominating others more than life itself. Throughout his countless ages of switching bodies, his own personal identity has dissolved save for his core desires and ambitions, turning him into a sadistic machine-like creature with no set body. He has no quirks, no little likes or dislikes, nothing like that. He relentlessly pursues power without rest, and that is all.
History- It is not known for how long Suliss has lived. He himself doesn't know. It is not known from whence he came, or where he is going. All that is known, to a select few who know more than they wish they did, that up until a few days ago, Suliss had been imprisoned beneath the ground in the skeletal corpse of a dead woman, having been buried alive many years ago. Grave diggers. Idiots. They went and took Suliss out from his prison, and in return he freed them from their bodies. Again now he resumes his quest to attain ultimate power, and to gain dominion over all existence by working his way up the chain of command until he can inhabit the greatest form of all.
In truth, however, Suliss was the grandson of a powerful sorcerer once feared throughout many realms, a wicked man known as Count Malimore Maclung. Malimore exercised all kinds of foul black magicks, many of which may not be spoken of in polite society. He trained a then young Suliss Maclung in the dark arts, but then and without warning, Malimore vanished. At the time, some said he achieved such power that he ascended into some other morbid existence. Others claimed that his grandson slew him and hid the body. Whatever the case, Suliss is no longer a Maclung. He left that life behind long, long ago.
@cloudystar@Doc Doctor I guess approve, just please don't god mod or make him too powerful. Don't forget to post this in the characters section and welcome to the Cafe!
@ineffable Great, and don't worry about Suliss derailing anything. Every evil thing he tries to do will be countered by horrible, hilarious luck. And a cat.
@ineffable Well, she's already with the others hunting Gus, so maybe. Initially that's the quest I was gonna have her do from the start, but decided to go with assassin chasing csuse why not. XD
Submittin' two characters as a mixed package - both an old favorite I've modified since last usage, and a new one.
Name: Brunhilde Vigmundsdóttir
Race: Human; Nordic.
Occupation: Wind Elementalist. Problem solver for hire.
Age: 27
Appearance: Brunhilde is tiny. Not quite dwarf-scale, but extremely small nonetheless, standing at 4'10" and weighing roughly 80 lbs. unladen. Her ice blue eyes appear to be somewhat unfocused, as if she's looking through the world instead of at it. Shortish auburn hair sits atop her head, clearly fairly recently trimmed - though not particularly well. She doesn't appear to take much care of her appearance beyond basic cleanliness, which suits her just fine.
Her figure is mostly obscured by an incomplete patchwork set of leather armor and a thick steel gorget - all of which are damaged by deep scratches and burns. Beneath the armor is a simple set of late medieval style clothing as is the style in her homeland.
When not wearing gloves, a faded tattoo is visible on the back of each hand - a message atop a white spiral. The left states, "I have amnesia.", and the right states, "Check the journal." Speaking of journals - she carries an enormous book in her left arm at almost all times. The cover is plated with thick steel, embossed with her name and the year of the first entry. A blank space is left for entering the year of the final entry, when the journal is eventually filled.
Gender: Female
Background/History: Brunhilde is from an island to the far north, somewhere between Greenland and Nunavut. The total population of the island was under a thousand, and despite being a Danish province according to their history books, they have neither been taxed nor acknowledged by Denmark for several hundreds of years, and the assumption is that they were forgotten shortly after colonization. The population is a mixture of Danes and Inuit.
Her childhood was a good one, if a strange one by modern standards, as limited communication with the rest of the world has given access to both modern technology and a lack of access to modern culture and building techniques. As such, her hometown governed itself not unlike a medieval city-state. Her own home was a patch of farmland just a couple miles away from the main village, and her family raised Highland cattle with the help of some local assistants - not all of whom were competent. At 6, she manifested elemental manipulation skills, and her family, fearing ostracization and persecution by the locals, sent her to take martial arts lessons from the only self defense teacher on the island. She dropped out of the class some months before the exam to receive the equivalent of a black belt, out of lack of interest.
At 10, she was struck in the head by a rampaging cow while working in the field. One of the farmhands had consistently failed to identify the symptoms of mad cow disease for months, and the condition of the cow had been unknown. Miraculously, Brunhilde survived having her skull cratered by a large animal, but she didn't fully recover - her hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and oculomotor nerves were damaged to varying degrees, with light damage to the entire rest of the front and midbrain. She lost the ability to form new episodic memory, and human growth hormone secretions were severely limited. Her family was, despite being predominantly made up of farmers, able to afford treatment by a psychologist and a neurologist, which eased her transition into her new life with the help of an autobiographical journal.
At 17, her nature as an elementalist was discovered by the locals, and she was tried as a witch. In the absence of any other crimes committed, she was sentenced not to imprisonment or execution, but to banishment - and was sent by her family to the only place known to accept people with such magical abilities. For three years she stayed at what was only referred to as The Academy, studying under headmaster Kano Hargor's staff with the intent of attaining full control of her skills as an air manipulator. Her memory difficulties made it troublesome to remember the results of lessons and homework, but friends at the Academy helped keep her moving forwards. Much of the training was with the intention of handling the ever increasing threat of Elementals, which had begun to leak into the physical plane to cause mayhem.
After her departure from the Academy, she spent much of her time wandering from place to place, 'dealing with' elementals of various sorts. At 24, she met a strange man who appeared to have fallen out of time itself: Arturo da Venezia. A mute, Arturo was initially difficult to understand, but eventually they discovered that they shared a love of writing and art. Arturo himself was effectively an apprentice wizard, or so he claimed - and his own magical skills appeared to back up his claim. He decided to make himself useful as Brunhilde's aide and apprentice, despite not being of the same families of sorcery.
At 25 through late 26, Brunhilde's brain damage had finally repaired itself sufficiently to almost function correctly. Brunhilde is still extremely forgetful and somewhat absent-minded, but her ability to remember people has returned in full, and major events stick with her again. She is, midway through 27, still trying to adjust to not having to reread every journal entry for a week to be able to know basic information about where and when she is.
Likes: The sciences. Anatomy and physics in particular - the spaces in her journal which aren't dedicated to biography are dedicated to detailed artwork of her observations and her inventions, none of which have ever been successfully constructed to this date. Races. Quiet. Food. Beef especially. Fighting equal opponents.
Dislikes: Cattle. Fuck cattle. She despises cattle to her core, though this hatred is irrational and she knows it. Neglectful animal owners. Having to defend herself against sentient creatures.
Skills: Atmospheric manipulation in general. Her focus is mostly on macromanipulation, but she also is knowledgeable in manipulation of individual molecules. For the most part, her elemental manipulation is limited to natural Earthborne atmospheric gases. Water, technically being a simple mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, should be possible to manipulate, but attempting to do so has consistently and violently caused rejection.
As a near master level Air elementalist, she is capable of supporting up to twenty times her own bodyweight for up to an hour, or her own bodyweight indefinitely. Her range of finer manipulation - predominantly offensive tactics - is limited to moving air within fifty meters, or a bit over half of a football field.
In somewhat greater depth... She is capable of hovering or flying, though flying takes not-insignificant concentration. Creating large gusts of wind is child's-play to her. Cyclones, pressurized air, localized vacuums, and other such specific motions are easy by this point, though she isn't quite capable of causing anything on the scale of even a small tornado without abusing an alternate energy source. She has, in the past, successfully cloven boulders and trees with precision application of high pressure winds.
Her manipulation relies upon either putting energy into the air herself, or on abusing already existing energy in the air. Cold air is harder to move, but hot air - particularly air heated by fire, electricity, or lava - is extremely easy. The hotter, the better.
Unlike Arturo, her talents do not require incantations or hand motions or spell components, and can be conjured at will from any point within her sphere of influence on the spur of the moment.
Her ability to manipulate the atmosphere partially requires being able to feel the movements of the atmosphere at every point within her sphere of influence. As such, she is able to feel the motions of other things long before she sees them. Her airsense grows duller with distance.
Personality: Confident, but not arrogant. Completely oblivious to romantic advances. Terrified of actually killing anybody, but unafraid of defending herself. A little bit on the inconsiderate side sometimes. Easily excited by new discoveries and theories, with a habit of rambling to herself and pacing when exposed to exploitable information. Brunhilde is aware of potential ulterior motives, but tends to be overly trusting nonetheless. She is violently protective of herself, her friends, and her important possessions.
Name: Arturo da Venezia
Race: Human; Mediterranean.
Occupation: Arsonist. 8th level Sorcerer.
Age: 25
Appearance: Arturo is enormous. Standing at 6'4" and nearly 300 lbs. of muscle, he would be easy to mistake for a Kodiak bear if it weren't for his lack of fur and snout. His physical features are obscured by his bizarre outfit, though, which appears to be a Fire Proximity suit fashioned vaguely into the shapes and colors of mid-period Italian renaissance garb. The visor on his headwear is difficult to see through, though under intense light, he can be seen to be a relatively attractive man for his bulk, with clean, sharp features and near perfect symmetry.
On his back is a fuel tank, with a pressure gauge reading at roughly 160 PSI. The fuel tank's hose leads to a compact flamethrower consisting of a series of tubes and a high capacity battery - indicating that the fuel stream is ignited electrically. Strapped into a back holster next to the napalm thrower is a red and yellow fire axe.
Gender: Male
Background: Unknown. Doesn't like to tell others about it, and doesn't keep a diary. Allegedly, a wizard was involved in a wicked plot in 16th century Venice, resulting in Arturo's displacement to the current time. Claims to have no family. Brunhilde hasn't ever seen a reason to press him on his past either, considering that she has difficulty remembering her own.
Brunhilde discovered him setting fire to a rampaging plant elemental she had been hired to remove from the area outside of Milan, Italy. She was unable to take care of the creature herself before Arturo's flames burnt it to ash. They quickly identified eachother as magic users, and Arturo instinctively knew that this was a person he did not want to try to burn, for his own safety. Instead, he chose to follow her, not thinking to try to start a conversation until after seeing her writing in her journal for the first time - at which point he promptly snatched the book and pen to write 'Hello.' Despite Brunhilde's initial anger at his defilement of the book, the two quickly became friends of a sort, although Brunhilde made it very clear that he was not to intentionally cause any property damage while they traveled together. Arturo promised to keep his pyromania in check on the condition that Brunhilde promised to teach him how to use his limited magic skills. Despite her inability to advise him on his style of sorcery, she has been able to guide him in his attempts to discover his own talents.
Likes: Fire.
Dislikes: No fire.
Skills: He is not yet able to adequately sustain his predominantly fire-based magics as a Sorcerer, so he supplements with a flamethrower and an axe. His fuel of choice is an extremely hot-burning variant of napalm, the formula to which is known only to him. Finely powdered elemental Magnesium is suspected to be a primary ingredient, judging by the sparks present and the extremely bright flames.
He is not a fast runner, which he generally works around in combat these days via his twice-daily potential usage of Dimension Door.
Current spell list:
0 (∞): Create Bonfire, Mending, Fire Bolt, Control Flames, Prestidigitation 1 (4): Burning Hands, Shield 2 (3): Aganazzar's Scorcher, Pyrotechnics, See Invisibility, Detect Thoughts 3 (3): Fireball 4 (2): Wall of Fire, Dimension Door
Personality: He keeps his inner thoughts hidden, and his facial expressions are obscured by the visor. However, he seems to be very protective of Brunhilde. He also seems to consider most other people to be little more than kindling, with the exception of those he knows for a fact can and will put him down if he tries. When let off his leash, he quickly begins setting fire to everything in sight, and requires the intervention of someone he respects to avoid burning down half the city or otherwise getting himself killed. Thankfully, nobody is usually stupid enough to give him permission to go wild.
To keep his pyromania in check, he plays with lighters or candles when he has the chance.
you may have two evenly powered mages from what i've seen so far, so approved! post them up in the characters tab and put approved by me pls lol...welcome to the Cafe and go ahead and RP!