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[Dead Cruiser]

Kurokami Makoto

KUROKAMI MAKOTO

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⦋ 18 || Japan || Female ⦌

APPEARANCE & PERSONALITY

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APPEARANCE

Makoto is an intimidatingly beautiful young Japanese woman. In fact, there is very little about Makoto that is not intimidating. Her gaze is a piercing crimson, and her long, black hair runs down past her waist, contrasting sharply with her smooth, pale skin. While not much taller than most women her age (173 cm), her presence makes her seem far larger than she is. Makoto oozes with confidence, aggression, and projects a constant aura of competition and determination. Her dress sense is practical yet stylish, generally preferring black boots, trousers and sweaters.

PERSONALITY TRAITS

Tomboyish, aggressive, confident, straightforward, honest to a fault. Can be somewhat lackadaisical, is generally bad with money, and is flirtatious with other women. Constantly seeking new challenges and trying to achieve new heights.

BACKSTORY & MOTIVATION

It is not an exaggeration to say that martial arts have defined Makoto's entire life. She was born in Kurokami Temple, a monastery and dojo in a rural, mountainous region of Japan. While her parents are both esteemed martial artists in their own right, her grandfather is a true legend. Kurokami Tenshin, a man known by some as "the God of Battle." Considered to be one of the most powerful fighters in the world at his prime, he retired to raise his family and tend to his ancestral temple some forty years ago, disappearing from the world stage.

Though his son did not inherit his legendary power, it seems that his granddaughter has. A true prodigy, Makoto demonstrated uncanny skill and might from a very young age. At age eight, she was able to defeat a grown adult in hand-to-hand combat. At age fourteen, she was able to fight the Assistant Master of Kurokami Temple to a draw. By age seventeen, the only fighter at the temple able to compete at her level was her own grandfather. While she spent her youth showered in the adoration of her peers and classmates, Makoto found life to be incredible dull; no one she knew could remotely challenge her (as he grandfather refused to participate in anything more than light sparring), and her power was so overwhelming that she knew no way to improve.

As a result, Makoto was a somewhat rebellious youth. She enjoyed gambling and other mild delinquent behavior, often skipped classes, and spent her weekends in nearby cities trying to pick fights with tough-looking passerby. Her rebellious spirit was inflamed by the then Assistant Master of the temple, a man known as Shadakou, who tried to teach her his philosophy of domination and righteousness through strength. Though Shadakou was eventually banished from the temple, some wonder if his teachings had an adverse impact on Makoto.

After graduating from high school, Makoto pretitioned her grandfather to train her as his successor as Grand Master of Kurokami Temple. He denied her, claiming that she lacked the temperament and discipline to lead the temple in his stead. Rejected and disheartened, Makoto left home to become a Nomad, claiming the title of "Goddess of Battle" so that her status as her grandfather's rightful successor could become widely known. Now she seeks to pit her might against ever stronger opponents around the world, and prove to her grandfather that she has what it takes to become Grand Master.

FIGHTING STYLE & ABILITIES

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FIGHTING STYLE

Makoto has been trained in the traditional style of her family's temple, the Kuroi Hoshi, which was devised as practical hand-to-hand combat method during the first Sino-Japanese War. However, she has adapted the style to better suit her own abilities, thus creating what she calls the Hoshi Goroshi style. In battle, Makoto exerts an overwhelming offense, combining her shocking speed and enormous power to blow away opponents before they get a chance to defend. All-out, unrelenting attack is her strategy, never allowing her opponent to rest or recover. Her ki techniques visibly extrude a black, destructive aura, though the spiritual quality of her ki is still pure and noble.

SPECIAL MOVES & TECHNIQUES

■ Black Star Strike

Makoto launches forward with a straightforward punching attack. Her enormous strength is enough to blow away any normal human opponent with one strike, and can inflict significant damage to any Nomad that underestimates her.

■ Black Star Cluster

Makoto strikes out in multiple directions with unspeakable strength, fast enough that it seems like she's attacking in all directions at once. This technique is less focused than the Black Star Strike, and thus less powerful, but is meant to take on multiple combatants at once.

■ Black Hole

By focusing all of her strength into her grip, Makoto can create a localized distortion in gravity. Enemies that try to escape her are sucked back in toward her, and projectiles in midair can be slightly diverted.

■ Black Star Nova

Makoto's ki solidifies into a miniature star, a blazing-hot fireball that can be kicked at her foes, or they can be kicked into it.

■ Black Star Pulse

Makoto's equivalent of a ranged ki attack; however she pours so much power into the attack that rather than a beam or a projectile, it is instead an explosive and concussive burst of short-range power.

SUPER MOVES

■ Black Meteor Crusher

Again, a straightforward punch, but infused with the pure, destructive force of Makoto's ki. According to rumor, if her grandfather hadn't diverted this attack the first time she used it, it would have split Mt Fuji down the middle.

■ Black Star Destroyer

Makoto's ultimate technique, wherein she summons every ounce of power she has, and simply fires it at her enemy in a single blast. Makoto claims that if misdirected, this technique could destroy the Earth. Is it true? Hopefully we'll never find out.

WEAKNESSES & LIMITS

While Makoto is strong without a doubt, and a superb martial artist, she suffers greatly from her youth and inexperience. She is not what some would call a smart fighter, and her battle strategy begins and ends at destroying her opponent with brute force. Defense is a tertiary concern at best, and she'd sooner die than retreat. Though her endurance is impressive by human standards, exerting her enormous strength is extremely taxing, and she is hardly judicious in where she uses it, and as a result she tires very quickly in battle. Given that she has only rarely had a battle that lasts longer than a single strike, Makoto is completely oblivious to this weakness. An experienced fighter that can either avoid, deflect, or otherwise endure her sheer power can gain the upper hand on her by allow Makoto to overexert herself.

OTHER

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Makoto loves anything black licorice flavored.

[Dead Cruiser]

Vinco

Vinco

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^{Vincent Janus Menvra ◼ December 18 (14) ◼ Male ◼ Questioning}

^{"Witty Quote #1"}

▼ A P P E A R A N C E:

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^{"Witty Quote #2"}

//STATS:

◼ Height | 5'2''

◼ Weight | 85 lbs

◼ Build | Skinny, undeveloped

◼ Ethnicity | Caucasian

◼ Hair Color | Platinum blond

◼ Eye Color | Green

//DESCRIPTION:

Vincent is a late bloomer, so to speak. Short and small for his age, with childlike features that border on the effeminate. His hair is fair and light, though it hasn't been cut in some time and hangs down to his neck in a loose shag. His dress sense is practical, bordering on the utilitarian, wearing only hand-me-down clothes in solid colors. His favored items are a well-worn hooded sweatshirt three sizes too large for him, and a pair of dirtied red Converse All-Stars. In a crowd, he stands out in the way that people trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves always do. Withdrawn both physically and emotionally, he seems to be constantly on the defensive, keeping his limbs drawn in close to him, avoiding making sound when he can, and keeping his expression as opaque as possible. Even so, there is a strange light in his bright green eyes; a fire of intellect that belies his true nature.

▼ B I O G R A P H Y:

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^{"Witty Quote #3"}

Vincent Menvra was born to a single mother, Katrina Menvra, in Plymouth, New Hamshire. His father had been one of Katrina's professors at Plymouth University; when he became aware of her pregnancy, he made a down payment on a condominium for her in exchange for her keeping silent about the affair. Katrina dropped out of college and worked in child care to raise Vincent, who was a small, sickly child for much of his youth. Cloistered and withdrawn, he was an early reader and would prefer the company of books to other children, and had few friends. Even so, he and his mother had a close bond, and "Vinco," one of her pet names for him, remains as one of his preferred terms of address.

However, Vincent's powers began to emerge during his early adolescence. The rapid pace of his thoughts and his constant sensory overload caused him to act out in school, resulting in frequent disciplinary issues and a tentative diagnosis of ADHD. While home alone a weekday afternoon while his mother worked, Vincent suffered a seizure, and the accompanying electromagnetic pulse shorted a heated toaster oven, which caused a fire to break out in their condo. Unconscious, Vincent was rescued by the fire department after they were called by a neighbor. This incident was deemed a result of severe negligence, and Vincent was made a ward of the state.

Vincent has since floated between foster homes for years, worsening his academic performance. Entering high school, Vincent has all but given up his schoolwork in pursuit of studies of his own interest. He has tried his best to suppress his emerging powers as they continue to grow, but the trauma of being separated from his mother has exacerbated their unpredictability. Currently staying in a foster home in Crestwood Hollow, the presence of other Hyperhumans in the local area has suppressed his powers to manageable level, and Vincent feels for the first time in his life that he might be able to live normally.

▼ A B I L I T I E S / S K I L L S:

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^{"Witty Quote #4"}

//ABILITIES:

◼ Hyper-Neurons | Vincent's nervous system possesses a unique cellular arrangement and chemical composition, which enhances its efficiency to superhuman levels. His mental processing speed is comparable to that of a highly advanced computer processor, and his memory is almost flawless in its retention and recollection of minutiae. Vincent can absorb, calculate, and retain information with shocking speed and proficiency, and his IQ is somewhere in the range of 350. In addition, his senses and reflexes are both superhuman as well, owing to the speed and capacity of data his nerves are capable of transmitting.

◼ Bio-Electons | The potency of Vincent's neurons seems to extend beyond his body. While he has almost no control over these powers at the present time, he seems to be able to generate some sort of electromagnetic force, and is sensitive to energy on a similar wavelength.

//SKILLS:

◼ Omnidiscipline | As said, Vincent is essentially a sponge for information. He can recall with perfect clarity almost anything he has ever read, witnessed or so on, and can read and understand an encyclopedic text within minutes. The sheer wealth of information, both practical and academic, he can recall at present is staggering, and shows no signs of slowing or stopping.

//LIMITATIONS:

◼ Subluminal Transmission | The speed through which information moves throughout Vincent's body requires a significant amount of energy, and incurs a noticeable strain on him. Vincent requires 600% more glucose in his diet compared to a normal boy his age to maintain his peak mental functions, and prolonged use of his enhanced senses and reflexes can quickly drain his caloric reserves.

//WEAKNESSES:

◼ F'in Magnets | While powerful, Vincent's advanced neurology is also highly sensitive. Magnetic radiation interferes with his mental acuity, as well as his nervous system. Background radiation from cell phones and similar devices give him a dull headache, and he can feel active transmissions. He avoids walking under power lines, as they give him migraines. Powerful enough magnets can even induce unconsciousness. Environmental factors also come into play, as heavy solar winds or sunspots can make him feel sluggish or nauseous.

◼ Stress | Being essentially mental in form, Vincent's powers are also subject to his emotional state. His performance deteriorates under stress, and when distressed enough, he can even unleash some sort of electromagnetic feedback. Intense emotions can cause his brain to short and induce seizures, which coax out of him the most powerful form of his external abilities seen thus far.

◼ Sensory Overload | A growing boy, Vincent's body is still developing, and his powers in some ways throw this off balance. His senses and reflexes can at times overwhelm him, giving him a deluge of information that he must pause and concentrate in order to process, or making him feel like the world is moving extremely slowly. He has shown some success lately in being able to suppress these abilities when they become inconvenient, but it requires concentration and focus which he might not always have available.

▼ N O T E S:

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//SUPPORTING CAST:

▼ ALLIES

◼ TBD | Test

▼ FRIENDS

◼ TBD | Test

▼ ENEMIES

◼ TBD | Test

//STOMPING GROUNDS

◼ TBD | Test

//PARAPHERNALIA

◼ TBD | Test

[Dead Cruiser]

Xander Morse

Lime Green

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Name: Xander Morse
Age: 17
Sex: M
Physical Description:

• Height: 6'1" (human form)
• Weight: 190 lbs (human form)
• Hair color: Naturally Red, Dyed Black (human form)
• Eye color: Red (human form)
• Tattoo / Scars: Variable

Xander's human form is tallish and well-built, and he generally prefers clothes that fall under the punk subculture. He mostly dresses casually, in ripped jeans and ironic or vintage tee-shirts, though as he is a shapeshifter his clothes can be considered part of him, and he can change them at any time. He generally forgoes wearing his uniform, as it evokes the lineage of the Martian Manhunter, which he resents.

GIFT :

Teenager from Mars

Xander is a hybrid between a human and a White Martian, giving him a great number of fantastic powers. Foremost he is a shapeshifter, able to change his form into virtually anything to suit his needs. This makes him supremely adaptable, capable of replicating the effects of physiology-based superpowers, including super-strength, invulnerability, regeneration, invisibility and intangibility. Xander is also a powerful psychic, with immense telepathic abilities, which allow him to read minds, detect thoughts, communicate mentally, create psychic shields, and manipulate others with illusions and false memories. Xander also possesses telekinetic abilities, but he cannot exert any more force physically than his body can. His nine Martian senses are also supremely sharp, and he is beginning to develop his disintegrating "Martian vision."

Gift Limitations: The human parts of Xander's genome create a structural weakness in his Martian physiology. Essentially he cannot transform his body to the extremes most Martians are capable of without his DNA beginning to degrade and collapse. While as he practices his abilities his upper limits continue to grow, attempting to replicate powers as extreme as Kryptonian strength (for example) cause his body to literally deconstruct itself under the strain of his abilities. Xander also bears the Martian genetic memory that imprints their intense psychological aversion to fire, which can cause anxiety in him severe enough to cause him to lose control of his powers. Finally, Xander's alien biochemistry causes him to react to certain terrestrial substances in unpredictable ways, such as his addictive reaction to chocolate, particularly Oreo brand chocolate cookies.

Skills : Xander has gotten by on raw power and talent for most of his life, so most of his skills relate to his various hobbies, such as playing the guitar, reading comic books, and watching old low-budget horror movies.

Brief History : Xander is the son of the esteemed Justice League associate Miss Martian, and by extension the relation of the legendary superhero the Martian Manhunter. It is unknown who his father is, and his mother Megan seems ill at ease when the topic is brought up. The two have always had a distant relationship, with Megan often away on JL duties, and Xander left to his own devices. This has bred a certain rebellious streak in Xander, as he resents authority and considers most superheroes to be hypocritical bullies. His strained relationship with his mother and foster-uncle have made him dubious of his Martian heritage, and he takes pains to conceal his "true" Martian form at all costs. A series of petty crimes such as vandalism and theft have earned him the ire of the greater superhero community, and his mother issued him the ultimatum of either joining the Teen Titans to straighten out his act and learn responsibility, or to be sent to live at the reconstruction colony on Mars. Begrudgingly, he chose the former option, and has joined the Teen Titans South, though he continues to gripe about it to this day.

[Dead Cruiser]

• Name: Saaral, Son of Chono (aka Saaral Rozhenko)
• Age: 25
• Race: Lucani
• Appearance: Saaral is tall, even for a Lucani, and strikes an imposing, hulking figure. His originally black hair and fur has gone prematurely grey due to his time spent as a slave-soldier, and his body is covered in scars from his many battles. He wears little in the way of armor and clothing, as he has a great tolerance for the cold and prefers to stay as fast and mobile as possible in battle.
• Personality: Life has not been easy for Saaral, and his personality makes this obvious to most people that talk to him. His mood oscillates between withdrawn and brooding, to brash and aggressive. He is brutally honest, a habit that makes it even harder for him to make friends than his hostile personality already does. He prefers bold, usually violent action over most other options, and takes great pride in his skill at arms, though some part of him wonders if he will ever be good at anything besides killing. His lack of a traditional Lucani upbringing is a sore spot for him, which he usually tries to overcompensate for, and touching on it is the surest way to set off his temper.
• History: Saaral was born into a traditional Lucani family, a tribe of nomadic hunters that stalked across the great frozen plains of the north. He loped and play-fought with his siblings and cousins and led a blissfully savage childhood until the autumn after his fifth summer. It was then that his tribe had wandered unknowingly close to the expanding northern border of the Dreil kingdom of Vortigern, whereupon his family came under attack by a cohort of Dragon Knights intent on culling the population of savage Lucani. The adult members of Saaral's clan held off the attack long enough for the children to escape with the elders, but Saaral became separated from them in their confusion, and was left alone in the tundra plains.
  
  He wandered alone for some time, subsisting on carrion and icemelt streams, but winter approached and the tundra would soon be inhospitable to a lone cub. However, he was found and taken in by a separate tribe of human nomads, horse-riders and sheep-herders. An older, childless couple took him in as their own, and after some difficulty, the humans accepted him as one of their own. He was bigger and played rougher than the other children, but his adoptive father sought to temper his aggression by taking him hunting with him and the rest of the tribe's men. At first they tried to get him to hunt from horseback as they did, but Saaral found that he preferred to lope alongside the horses and use his teeth and claws. Life was not always easy, as he missed his original tribe greatly, their fate unknown to him, and there were those among the humans that still treated him as a beast and an outsider. Regardless, he was content for some time.
  
  Saaral's life changed once again in his fourteenth summer. The Kingdom of Vortigern had been continuously expanding their borders for years, and they appeared on the horizon once more to clear the lands they claimed of undesirables. Older and with the bitter seed of revenge in his heart, Saaral stayed to fight against the Dreil and defend his new family. He fought as hard as any of the grown men of his tribe, but it was not enough, and they were eventually overwhelmed. He learned then what likely became of the tribe of his birth, as they were taken as prisoners to the Dreil. The women, children, and elderly were sent back to the Dreil homeland to be used as laborers, and the men were conscripted into slave armies that the Dreil of Vortigern pitted against the Elves and other civilized races.
  
  Saaral grew into manhood on the battlefield, fighting against his will in wars he had no stake in. The slave legions were always put into the worst fighting, given the worst equipment, and were essentially used as cannon fodder, and so Saaral was forced to hone his skills quickly to even stay alive. He tried to stay in contact with the men of his tribe, but they were separated by the years and many battles. He encountered other Lucani that the Dreil had forced into bondage, and learned more of his people and heritage from them. On the first full moon of Saaral's twentieth winter, he as well as many other Lucani and slaves of other races staged a revolt that cost many of them their lives, but ultimately won the survivors their freedom.
  
  Since then, Saaral has traveled Strahn, plying his skills as a warrior in mercenary work, and living off of the land when work was scarce. His upbringing among humans made it easier for him to integrate among them and the other civilized races, but he still holds a deep bitterness in his heart from the many hardships he has suffered. While he has deliberately avoided the burgeoning kingdom of the Dreil, he holds a secret hope in his heart that his tribes, both of them, still survive in some way, and that he might be reunited with his birth or adoptive parents.
• Abilities/Skills: Saaral is a mighty warrior and a veteran of many battles despite his young age. He is adept in the use of a variety of weapons, including his teeth and claws, as he rarely had his choice of what weapons were available to him during his time as a slave. His fighting style is swift and savage, focused on outmaneuvering his opponent, and overwhelming them with his strength and ferocity. Saaral is a superb outdoorsman and survivalist, capable of stalking and hunting prey, and surviving in the ruthless wilderness as well as any beast. He even retains some knowledge of animal husbandry, tribal medicine, and horsemanship from his time raised by humans.
• Other: While he understands that most Dreil have nothing to do with what happened to him or his family, and tries to not judge others based on their race, he still has an instinctive dislike of the dragon-people, considers most he meets to be dishonorable and untrustworthy.

[Dead Cruiser]

Marsh

Name: Simply called "the creature" by those who discovered him, his true name is unpronounceable by human tongues. When in a human disguise, he goes by the name Marsh, which his colleagues have taken to calling him.

Inspiration: The Gillman from Creature From the Black Lagoon, with a healthy dose of Lovecraft and Mesopotamian myth.

Appearance: Marsh in his natural state is a grotesque, piscene humanoid that stands nearly seven feet tall. Everything about his presence is offensive to the senses, and normal humans that behold him are often overtaken by a primordial, instinctive state of panic. Even mystic and supernatural faculties find him abhorrent, as his soul is that of a perverse hybrid that stands in abject defiance to nature. Using his limited ability to shapeshift, he is capable of transforming into a disguise that resembles an extremely ugly man, when not closely inspected. However, his stench and aura of wrongness persist through this disguise, and most humans give him a wide berth none the less.

Abilities/ Skills: Born to a race of primordial creatures that predate the existence of mankind, Marsh has a host of strange abilities and powers. He can breathe both air and water, and is an agile predator in both environments. He is capable of surviving in such disparate environments as the hot, green hell of the Amazon jungle, and the cold, black desolation of the ocean floor. His strength and endurance both far outstrip what a human is capable of, and he can swim fast enough to chase down speedboats. Marsh can regenerate from grievous wounds, even regrowing entire limbs if given enough time.

Additionally, Marsh seems to be host to a dark, unnatural force that is beyond the ken of human science or sorcery. Channeling this power allows Marsh to supplement his strength or durability to truly mythical levels, or seemingly defy death. He is also capable of transforming his body to some extent, fostering adaptations that allow him to better survive in his environment, creating natural weapons such as claws or acidic blood, or other, more esoteric adaptations. His ability to disguise himself in human society relies on this power, though his profoundly inhuman disguise lays plain its limitations. Finally, if the conditions are right, Marsh can reproduce asexually, birthing a host of grotesque mockeries that serve his will, though they are short-lived creatures never meant to exist in this world.

History: The creature that would later assume the appellation "Marsh," was in 1954 by a scientific expedition into a previously uncharted part of the Amazon Rainforest. While retrieving samples from a pool formed by an offshoot of the Amazon River, the expedition team discovered a series of underwater caves connected to the pool. They used sonar pulses to map the cave system, but the high-frequency sounds disturbed something that had been dormant within them. The scientists attempted to capture the creature that emerged, but it fought back, killing most of the expedition, before finally being incapacitated after being repeatedly shot with an automatic rifle. The survivors returned to civilization, but their findings were considered unverifiable nonsense, and dismissed to obscurity.

Meanwhile, the creature recovered from its wounds, and emerged into a world unfamiliar to it. Its memories were left muddled and incomplete from its long dormancy, but it remembered its people had a thriving civilization in a time before dinosaurs walked the earth. Determined to reunite with its people, or at least find out what became of them, he set out to travel the world and explore its oceans, searching for any trace of its lost civilization.

In the 1990s, as Dracula sought out other creatures of the night with which to form his council, he discovered an obscure and heavily discredited account of the discovery of an inhuman fish-human hybrid in the Amazon jungle. Intrigued, he had his agents add this creature to their worldwide search for other monsters. They eventually came across a drifter in a small town in Rhode Island that went by the name of Marsh. The town's locals were extremely suspicious of him, and his questions about the town's history and the waters off its coast made them nervous for reasons they couldn't explain. It was then that Dracula's agents made themselves known to this "Marsh," and revealed that they knew what he was, and that there were other monsters in the world besides him. Marsh was greatly distrustful of any land-dwellers, even if they were monsters, but he was able to establish a working agreement. In exchange for his services on the Council of Night, Dracula would offer any lore or secrets he possessed or discovered about Marsh's lost civilization.

Goals: Marsh spends most of his time scouring waterways, ocean floors, and even archeological sites for evidence of his people's civilization. While he hopes that he is not the last of his kind, he knows that the chances of finding another member of his race are slim, and if nothing else hopes to learn what caused their civilization to end.

Notes: Theme Song

[Dead Cruiser]

The Black Prince

16 | Male | 31 July | 4 Cubits | 3254 Gold Debens

Hobbies
Dice games, chariot racing, hunting, fashion, makeup, jewelry, plotting to usurp his father's throne.

Personality
Sekhandur is narcissistic, hedonistic, indulgent, and uninhibited; all traits one would expect from a one who literally believes himself to be a god walking among mortals. Despite these qualities, he is surprisingly genial, lacking the pettiness or cruelty one would expect from one with his mannerisms. Sekhandur can also be diligent, determined, quick-witted, generous, and contemplative. His more benevolent nature stems from his god complex as well-- he truly believes that he is genuinely a superior being, and feels no insecurity or need to defend that fact. Even so, he is not without a dark streak. If the situation calls for it, Sekhandur can be utterly ruthless, scheming, or deceptive, as he sees no reason to choose the most pragmatic route to attaining that which he desires.

History
Sekhandur is the bastard son of the God-King of the Empire of Kemet, Pharaoh Qezremah IX, and a highborn woman of lesser nobility, Nefertari Khain. Kemet is a vast empire that rules much of the deep desert, famous for its towering stone monuments constructed by legions of slaves and undead. Qezremah, the ninth Pharaoh to bear that name, is referred to by many of his subjects as the White King, partially due to his kindness and generosity, but also due to his perceived weakness and cowardice. It was this kindness that moved him to bring Sekhandur to live with him at court, legally recognizing him as the Pharaoh's son, when he learned of his birth. A largely unprecedented act for a king, this action spurred much discontent among his advisors and the high nobility. Despite their protests, Sekhandur lived as a prince in the royal palace, enjoying the same care and privilege as his trueborn sisters, as for the longest while he was Qezremah's only male offspring.

Much changed when Qezremah's sister-wife, the Queen Manya, bore him a son, the prince Orimund. Now that he had a trueborn male heir to marry to his daughter Itzara when it came time for her to ascend to the throne, he had no need for Sekhandur within the palace. Rather than simply do away with him as a more brutal king might, Qezremah had him sent away to the distant city-state of Genelogia, under the guise of having him study to become Itzara's vizier. In truth, he hopes that Sekhandur never returns to Kemet, and in fact bribed the administrators of Avalice to set Sekhandur up for failure, who complied with his request by placing the exiled prince in the class with the worst track record for graduating students: Camellia.

However, Sekhandur learned of his father's plot quite some time in advance, as he first sensed something amiss when his magical tutor refused to teach him the domain of Kemeti magics reserved for those of royal blood: Sesha-Hebsu, the Closed Book. Rather than having this power denied to him, before his departure for Genelogia Sekhandur stole into his father's private vault and made off with his personal grimoire, hoping to teach himself the secret magic of kings.

Combat Information
Classification
Magic

Mana Color
Iridescent shimmering GOLD on BLACK

Mana Characteristic
The humbling magnificence of a billion stars shining in the desert sky.

Equipment
Sekhandur carries a Was staff for channeling his power, a magnificent tool adorned in pure gold and lapis lazuli. He also carries bears his father's grimoire, the tome "Hymns of the Creation of the Temakh", which carries not only the secret utterances of kings, but ancient history about the origins of Kemet and its royal bloodline.

Magic
Sekhandur is a student of Sesha-Hebsu, the secretive branch of Kemeti magic reserved for its God-Kings and their descendants. This magical style draws on the divine power that has been preserved for generations in the pharaonic bloodline since they first mixed their flesh and souls with the Shan'iatu thousands of years ago. Sehsa-Hebsu literally translates to "the closed book," but is also called "Utterances of Kings," by some, and its power is terrible. This magic can call upon the natural elements to do the bidding of the king, release the pure energy of mana from the king's soul, commune with the stars to divine their secrets, and even assert mastery over the forces of life and death.

Spells
AWAKEN THE DEAD
Sekhandur can compel a corpse to do his bidding. Either briefly rousing it to answer his questions, or reanimating the body as a simple, shambling undead,.

CTHONIC DOMINION
The incorporeal undead are also Sekhandur's to command. With this spell he may reveal the ghosts in an area, render them vulnerable to physical harm, bind them to his will, or swallow them to consume their mana.

GIFT OF THE GOD-KING
Unleashing the majesty of his divine soul, Sekhandur can mend wounds and injuries.

REBUKE THE VIZIER
Sekhandur can shield himself from magic power with special wards.

SECRETS RIPPED FROM SKIES
By staring into the night sky, Sekhandur can divine the his exact location and the hour of night.

WATER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Sekhandur can summon a spring of fresh, clear water where he stands, which heals those that imbibe from it.

WRATHFUL DESERT POWER
Sekhandur commands the essence of the earth. He may scour his foes with blasts of sand, create dust devils that chase down his enemies like living beasts, or create a clay shell to armor himself.

Parameters
Mana
☥☥☥☥

Channeling
☥☥☥☥

Magic
☥☥☥☥☥

Technique
☥☥☥

Strength
☥☥☥

Speed
☥☥

Body
☥☥

Intellect
☥☥☥☥

[Dead Cruiser]

Ryo

Ryo is a wandering Yisu warrior-monk, in search of his missing rival: his brother.

Name: Auvam Ryongi-ten-Mathengi
Aliases: Given that his full name and honorific title is a bit of a mouthful, he usually goes by Ryo.
Species: The Yisu are a relatively primitive people from a world at the edge of Talim space. More or less biologically similar to humans, they possessed an early-industrial society prior to their assimilation by the Talim. A highly spiritual people, and adept in many esoteric forms of magic, they had contact with other worlds prior to the arrival of the Talim, but limited contact with them and shunned the use of advanced technology, as they believed the void between worlds was the home of devils, and nothing good could come from it. The culture of the Yisu rich with tradition and myth, and their world was previously ruled by many competing spiritual sects, many of whom developed their own form of magical combat arts.

Homeworld: Yisu, prior to its conquest by Talim.

Age: Young adult, Ryo had only just completed his training before his departure.

Gender: Male

Appearance: Ryo is tall, extremely fit, but otherwise unassuming. His white hair and golden eyes are the only outward indication of his race, though he also bleeds gold-colored blood. He dresses in inconspicuous black clothes to avoid attention, and makes efforts to appear as passive and nonthreatening in public as possible. When he focuses his abilities, he becomes wreathed in a fiery violet aura, his golden veins light up with his inner power, and a nimbus of gold crowns his head.

Hider

Personality: Ryo approaches life, and all things in it, with the same grim, dogged determination. If something is not worth seeing through to the very last, it is not worth doing. Compared to his foul-tempered master and his flippant brother, Ryo is far more even-tempered, though he still has little patience for fools, and has his moments of levity. Being from a fairly primitive world, he has some awe and trepidation toward galactic society and advanced technology, but is quick to learn and less naive than he seems, even though he is content to let others think he is an ignorant savage from an irrelevant backwater. While Ryo can be contemplative and spiritual, with somewhat of an inquisitive, rebellious streak, he is also decisive and does not shy away from killing; it speaks volumes that the core mantra of the temple that raised him was, "Reach heaven through violence."

Background: Ryo and his brother Leth were brought to the Temple of the Knights Mendicant as infant foundlings, and were taken in by the monastic order and raised among their number. Warrior-mystics with a strange philosophy even among those endemic to Yisu, a children's rhyme spoke of the Knights, "Mendicant, the beggar-knight, roughly clad and shod. He lives as though he were a beast, but fights he as a god." Growing up among the knights, the brothers were subject to rigorous physical training, and harsh ascetic deprivations. When they were too tired and broken to stand and train, they learned history and philosophy at the feet of the eldest monks. It was a difficult existence, but they only one the two had ever known.

When they had sufficiently grasped the fundamentals of their training, it came time for the brothers to choose a master to finish their training under. Ryo had developed an amiable relationship with an apostate knight that lived in a village near the temple, Mathengi-ten-Meti. She spent most of her time living out of a barrel in the marketplace, and Ryo had established something resembling a bond with the bitter monk thanks to her enjoyment of his cooking. Ryo desired to learn the advanced and controversial techniques she had developed that made her an outcast among their order, but she shirked his request to apprentice under her for months. When Leth asked to become her disciple, she acquiesced at once, and soon after gave into Ryo's demands and trained both boys simultaneously.

After years of intense study, training, and browbeating from their acerbic master, Mathengi announced that she had nothing left to teach them both, and that their training was complete. Leth killed Mathengi on the spot once the words had left her lips, and fled while Ryo was paralyzed with shock. In the days that followed, Ryo searched for his brother, but soon discovered that he had contacted an offworld freighter, and hitchhiked into the void between worlds. Roy had little time to mourn for his master nor his bother, as within the next month, the Talim came to Yisu, and conquered their planet in short order. While the many warriors and mages of their world were formidable, they could not combat a starship armada, and were crushed underfoot. Seeing as there was nothing left of this world for him, Ryo fled Yisu much the same way his brother did, and has wandered the stars in search of him, hoping to learn the reason for his betrayal and disappearance.

Talents

• Knight Mendicant - Ryo spent most of his life as a disciple of one of the sects of warrior-priesthood on his homeworld. He was trained in battle and philosophy since he could speak and stand, and his body has been honed into a steel edifice. He can sprint for a full day without stopping, and is more than capable of killing a man with only his thumbs.
• Disciple of Mathengi - Ryo incorporates mystic power into his fighting style, which serves a variety of purposes. He can perform such parlor tricks as teleporting short distances, and projecting his blows at a range. He may also use this power to bend the laws of reality, imbuing him with bursts of strength or agility seemingly beyond that which is physically possible.
• A Metaphysical Blade - Ryo has mastered the secret techniques of Mathengi, which allow him to project his spirit into a weapon of pure energy. Most often this takes the form of a short sword of burning golden light, but he can also wield this power to create shields and barriers, or simple ranged blasts.

Cyphers: TBA

[Dead Cruiser]

Crimson

Crimson is an amnesiac shapeshifter in hiding, searching for the truth.

Name: If Crimson has a true name, they don't know it.
Aliases: "Crimson" is the latest in a variety of colorful nicknames, such as It, Sticky, Hunger, Parasite, and many more.
Species: Unknown biomorphic organism.

Homeworld: Unknown

Age: Unknown

Gender: Gender is a difficult concept that Crimson has yet to fully grasp. They consider themselves an autonomous collective, and so consider possessing a singular gender to be irrelevant. Their current host was originally male.

Appearance: Crimson's appearance is naturally highly variable, depending on how they choose to arrange their organic macrostructures. For the purpose of anonymity, they usually choose to maintain the outward appearance of their latest host, avoiding any drastic shapeshifting while in public. Crimson's current host is a tallish, humanoid male drifter they took control of some months ago, with a ragged environmental suit and a rough, ginger-colored beard.

Personality: Crimson's highly alien biological structure and means of survival has lent them an equally alien worldview. They have difficulty understanding the concept of singular organisms, and approaches concepts such as individuality and relationships with almost childlike curiosity. They have a similar attitude toward such concepts as death, memories, the mind, and the soul, but their lack of familiarity and unique perspective often come across as amoral and callous. An amnesiac orphan, Crimson is steadfastly determined to find out who and what they are, and divine their own place in the universe. They are surprisingly spiritual, holding a strong belief in a higher order to existence, and a meaning to life and its true purpose in reality.

Background: Crimson does not know what they are, who they are, how old they are, or where they are from. Their first memory is awakening in a laboratory on a remote world. Driven only by raw survival instinct, Crimson escaped the facility, consuming and assimilating their captors as they emerged. From their memories, they learned what they knew; Crimson had been recovered frozen and mostly dead from a crashed ship at their world's northern magnetic pole. They had spent thousands, possibly millions of years entombed in the ice until rapid climate change had thawed the ice enough to make the ship detectable to the world's inhabitants. Where the ship was from and who had made it were both mysteries lost to the eons.

Determined to learn who and what they are, Crimson infiltrated their society. They learned to hide among the organisms whose individual natures gave Crimson pause. They could not understand how these walking skins did not change as they did, adapt to survive, and share the experience of evolution as part of a greater whole. Attempts at revealing themselves to the organisms were met with horror and violence, and Crimson has learned to keep their true nature a secret. For years they have wandered the edges and gutters of the galaxy, seeking out those that might have a clue to their origins or their true nature.

Talents

• Bioadaptation - Crimson is a shapeshifting biomorphic organism, capable of altering their own biology to better suit their circumstances at a moment's notice. Their cells maintain a plasticity reminiscent of undifferentiated embryonic cells throughout their lifespan, and can quickly transform and replicate themselves when given access to sufficient energy and appropriate chemicals. The only true limitations to Crimson's ability to transform and replicate organic structures is the availability of biomass to them- both to form the structures and and to fuel the transformation- and knowledge of the genetic information needed to develop such a structure- blueprints, essentially.
• Invade, Replicate, Replace, Imitate - Crimson's unique biomorphic cells can not only replicate themselves, but they can assimilate living cells of other organisms and transform them into biomorphic cells while still retaining their original structure and function. In essence, this allows Crimson to infect other organisms and slowly take over their bodies from the inside. By assimilating organisms in this manner, Crimson perfectly replicates their biology and copy their neurological functions to imitate their behavior. In essence, they are replaced by a copy of themselves one cell at a time. The process is subtle and time-consuming, and while the infected organism cannot detect the changes until it is too late, advanced bio-scanners can detect the presence of the infection, especially if Crimson begins to alter internal structures, and a recent infection can be cured with rapid and aggressive treatment.
• Wisdom of a Thousand Worlds - When Crimson replicates and infiltrates neurological systems of other organisms, they gain access to the information those networks contain. In the process of taking over a host body, they gain the knowledge and memories that the host originally possessed. As each of Crimson's biomorphic cells can act as a neurotransmitter, essentially their entire body is a living brain, enabling them to store and access a vast amount of information. However, this capacity is strictly limited to Crimson's available biomass, and so they must be judicious about what information is retained and what is discarded. This ability is not without its drawbacks for Crimson either, as having multiple souls within them can become disorienting, especially as they relive the memories of having their body invaded and their assimilated. Crimson has been prioritizing galactic history and stellar cartography as of late; knowledge gleaned from xeno-archeologists and explorers.

Cyphers: TBA

[Dead Cruiser]

The Dark Elf

Identity: Emel Thilverlyg, The Dark Elf, Pariah, The Black Corsair, The Ivory Dragon

Type: Rogue

Myth: Rumor and myth swirls around the shrouded homeland of the Elvish peoples beyond the sea, but almost nothing is known for certain. It is said that they are ageless and immortal, drinking deep from the magic power of their island home, which they guard jealously with ancient and forgotten magics. Those that journey to the home of the Elves never return, and the Elves themselves only venture forth to steal children from their beds, spoil crops, or perform other mischief-- or so it is said. Truthfully, none have seen an Elf in the world since the Black God was sealed away in the Dawn Age, an act some say they contributed to greatly. There is, however, one exception.

The Dark Elf is an outcast among his kind, a hated pariah exiled from their mythic homeland. None can say for certain why he was cast out; some say he was banished for his evil ways, others will claim the Elves hated him for his physical deformity and he became twisted by their mistreatment. Regardless of the truth, the Pariah is an ill omen to all that cross his path. Accounts of this dark wanderer vary wildly as a result of his capricious nature, his behavior frighteningly erratic and mercurial. Most tell of the Ivory Dragon, a grim figure of snow-white hair, flesh the color of bleached bone, eyes red like rubies, and clad in deepest ebon, who sows terror and reaps ruin, eternally stalking the earth in his immortal exile. Sailors tell of a similar specter, the Black Corsair, a phantom of the seas astride a dragon-ship crewed by damned souls that viciously plunders any ships unlucky enough to encounter him, and spares none from a watery grave. In these nightmarish tales, the Dragon and Corsair are both described as a brutal warrior beyond compare, with mastery of swordsmanship, power, and agility beyond that of mortal men. If his martial skills were not enough, he is also master of many ancient and forsaken magical secrets, from the forgotten lore of the Elves, to terrible curses lost since the Dawn Age, as well as binding pacts made with horrible monsters. Worst of all is his black sword, known by just as many terrifying names: Nightbringer, the Mortifier, Ciernehobopryst, Drygioni, and so on. The Pariah's Blade is only mentioned in the darkest fables, and is said to cleave the soul from the body, leaving only a withered husk, and that with every life it claims the Pariah grows more powerful. However, these are just tales told to frighten children...

There are other tales, as well, of the Pariah as the patron of outcasts; protector of orphans, madmen, whores, thieves, lepers, and other misbegotten souls. But surely these legends are only the wishful thinking of the downtrodden.

Any Port in a Storm

The autumn storm battered Kiran and soaked him to the bone; the barrel he called a home offered little shelter from the elements, and he shivered furiously in his sopping clothes. This would be it, this would be the death of him, he thought bitterly. The storm had raged all day, and Maro, the innkeep, had chased him away where he liked to sit and beg under the inn's eave, and so he had retreated to the barrel he slept in under the wharf. The townfolk would probably be glad to be rid of him, he fumed, gnashing what few teeth he had. They had little patience for the old beggar, not since the accident. He had been a sailor once, when he was a strong young man, but he had tumbled from the ship's rigging and fallen on his head, and death did not see fit to take him. Instead the hit had robbed him of his wits, left him prone to blackouts and seizures. He could scarcely find honest work, and the people of the port thought him cursed and bedeviled. They were content to let him die, and soon they would get their wish. He felt his eyelids growing heavy as his limbs grew numb, and blinked slowly as he stared out across the grey, thrashing sea.

When he opened his eyes again, still bothering to do so for reasons Kiran did not understand, there it was. A ship as black as tar, with whipping sails the color of a moonless night, was not even half a league off of the port. He rubbed his eyes, scarcely believing what he was seeing. Had he blacked out, or dozed off? Where had his apparition come from? The black ship sailed through the froth and the battering waves, scarcely avoiding crashing into the wharf itself as it sailed into port. It dropped anchor and lowered its gangplank, and the crew of the black ship came ashore. Kiran watched them, silent and fearful, unseen from his hideaway below the wharf. The ships crew were difficult to see through the rain and wind, but they were an ugly, motley lot. One-eyed pirates, skinless lepers, hunchbacks, freaks, and other human detritus marched through the storm, jostling and shouting at one-another. The last to climb ashore was far different from all the rest: a tall and willowy figure that moved as though there were no wind nor rain at all. He wore pitch-black clothes, but his skin and hair were of pure white, and a heavy sword hung at his side. Kiran could even see that his eyes were red as blood, and he felt like he was being watched, even though the man did not look in his direction.

Despite his fear, the old beggar felt entranced by the mysterious figure, and once he and his crew had marched some ways into town, he followed them surreptitiously, forgetting how cold and wet he felt. He stalked between buildings to avoid being seen, though the black figure never turned his way, he felt as though he had already been spotted and his efforts were meaningless. The crew, black figure at all, entered Maro's tavern, and Kiran crept to the window to observe them further. Surely with such a strange lot in town, his presence would go unnoticed. He saw at once that Maro took umbrage with the stranger and his freakish crew, but the man in black produced a fistful of golden coins, and Maro relented, yet still regarded them warily. Kiran once again remembered how cold he was, and dared to creep into the inn to sit by the fire and observe the stranger more closely; if Maro noticed his presence despite the throng of pirates in his midst, he did not show it.

The pirates barked at Maro for ale and food, and he innkeep obliged them for as long as they kept throwing coins his way. His wife, son, and daughters served the strange crew hesitantly, obviously uncomfortable in their presence. The men did not leer or grope at the women as sailors were often wont to do, but silently stared at them with what looked like the hunger of starving animals in their eyes. Their leader, who Kiran now saw was of such fair skin and fine features that he seemed more like a statue come to life than a man, sipped at a cup of wine silently as his men ate and drank their fill. Kiran rubbed his hands, trying to restore some warmth to his bones, as he watched one of the pirates sidle closer to the man in black. He was a burly figure, possibly a half-orc or some other hated wretch, and conferred quietly with the pale man.

Kiran watched him closely, trying to read his lips. The inn was eerily quiet, and so he caught a few words over the roaring of the fire: "Please, lord, it's been too long. For me and the men both. Please, lord."

The stranger sipped his wine again, clearly thinking over his underling's request. He sighed, waving a hand to the man, and said in a voice as pure and dark as the silence of midnight, "Very well. You have my permission. Let it never be said that I am not a generous master."

The crewman that had begged him seemed to collapse with relief, not moving save to grovel with gratitude at his master's feet. The stranger stood, striding with grim purpose to where Maro stood. Before the innkeep could utter a syllable, the pale man drew the blade at his hip, and cut Maro down with a single stroke. Merely glancing at his sword made Kiran's eyes prickle and his stomach fill with ice. It was a sinister thing, pure black even in the firelight, as though it swallowed light instead of reflecting it. Before Maro's blood hit the floor, his body shriveled and blackened, like an apple that had been left to rot in the sun, and the black sword pulsed like the breathing of a predatory beast, the room seeming to darken as it inhaled.

Shocked, Maro's son wheeled on the stranger, kitchen knife in hand, raised to bury it in the stranger's back. Without turning to face the boy, the man in black reached into his clothes and retrieved something Kiran could not see. As the innkeep's son drew close enough to strike, he threw what he had retrieved into his attacker's face, revealing it to be some strange, ethereal powder. As the boy spluttered and tried to rub it out of his eyes, the pale man made some strange sign with his fingers, pointing at the boy, and spoke words that Kiran did not understand, but felt like knives in his ears to hear them. As he finished, the boy's coughing and spitting turned to gasping and choking, his skin turned grey as slate, and he quickly keeled over, stone dead.

All the while, the stranger's evil crew had taken to butchering Maro's wife and daughters, muffling their screams with steel. They did not yell, holler, or revel in their slaughter, instead merely standing and panting like rabid animals that had just been let loose from their cages. With the women dead, they filed out from the inn and into the town, swords and knives drawn, and from there the slaughter continued.

The pale man did not follow them, instead striding directly over to where Kiran ineffectually hid. He was too frightened to move and so did not resist as the man laid his white, slender-fingered hand on his head. He felt a cold, crawling sensation inside of his skull, as though invisible fingers were prying through his brain. Kiran's eyes rolled back and his body went slack as the stranger's icy mind tore its way through his. Then, as soon as it had begun, it ended, and Kiran looked out on a familiar world with entirely new eyes. The stranger took a knife from his belt, and pressed its handle into Kiran's weathered palm.

"Join your crewmates, Kiran." Said the man, in his voice of sweetest poison. "We will not come ashore again for some time. Enjoy yourself."

Kiran gripped the blade, smiled his toothless grin, and said, "Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord."

[Dead Cruiser]

Darkstar

Full Name: Halen Hubble

Nicknames/Aliases: Hal, Hallie, Darkstar, Starchild (formerly)

Age: 16

Gender: Male

Division: Strength

Powers: Darkstar's powers, inherited through his family line, are the result of his grandfather having been infused with the god particle, giving them the cosmic power of the Big Bang. In practical terms, this means that Darkstar possesses the winning combination of super strength, speed, durability, and flight. While he is still getting the hang of his flight powers, Darkstar has a strong grasp of his more basic abilities, and is an absolute wrecking ball in combat. Besides those abilities, Darkstar can also create and manipulate a variety of different cosmic energies and materials, such as stellar matter, dark matter, and so on, which he uses in various attacks and techniques. Darkstar's grasp of this power is somewhat lacking, and he can only reliably manifest a few basic types of cosmic matter.

Description: Darkstar is a self-described "late bloomer" and is short for a boy his age, barely 5'5". He is thin, with not much musculature to speak of (though his tremendous strength has nothing to do with his muscles), and his features are soft and still androgynous. His hair is dyed black from its usual strawberry blond, and his shaved and styled into a punk coif. Darkstar has a few earrings and other piercings, though he has a scar over one of his thick, dark eyebrows from where his eyebrow ring got ripped out last year. His big, baby-blue eyes and childlike features result in most people thinking he is adorable and difficult to take seriously, which Darkstar does his best to combat with punk clothes such as studded leather and combat boots.

Personality: A classic case of the troubled and misunderstood teen, Darkstar isn't truly evil, but has a lot of misplaced aggression, frustration, and personal trauma. He has felt as though he's spent his whole life pretending to be someone he isn't and sees his enrollment at Lanius as a chance to cut loose and be himself. When in a good mood Darkstar is friendly, generous, quick with a joke, and enjoys being the center of attention. When his mood sours, he lashes out at anyone in striking distance, and loathes attention.

Crush: N/A

Skills: Thanks to his sidekick training, Darkstar is competent in hand-to-hand combat even without his prodigious strength, and has basic training in hacking, forensics, engineering, and other practical skills. Of particular note is how much information about astrophysics and similar cosmic phenomenon has been drilled into his head by his father. In a less practical sense, Darkstar plays the guitar, sings, and can draw and paint. He likes video games but only relaxing ones because he tends to break controllers if he gets too heated while playing.

Weaknesses: Darkstar's powers have not fully grown in, and he worries that they never will. They can activate or refuse to activate sporadically, and he sometimes cannot control the intensity of his abilities. By and large, his superhuman physiology is the most under his control, and his cosmic powers are the least. There is also some mention of a particular antimatter particle or weapon that was used to defeat his grandfather, the legendary Star Captain, but such a weapon hasn't been seen in 30 years.

Brief History: The history of Darkstar begins in the 60s with his grandfather, Hubert Hubble, who was a world-renowned adventurer and super-scientist even before his transformation. While conducting an experiment to simulate the birth of the universe, the safety mechanisms failed, and Hubert was caught in a massive explosion of exotic cosmic matter. This converted the matter in his body to be comprised of "god particles," the essence of the Big Bang, and infused him with tremendous cosmic power. Hubert took up the superhero identity of Star Captain, and became one of the most famous superheroes in world history. His legendary reign ended in the early 90s, when he was defeated and killed by a supervillain wielding an esoteric anti-matter weapon.

The legacy of Star Captain was taken up by Hubert's son, Harrison Hubble, who had worked as his father's sidekick and understudy for years under the identity of "Starchild." In the wake of his father's death, Harrison cast off that name and became known as Stardriver, and became an even more widely-recognized heroic icon than his father, practically an international celebrity. Stardriver attempted to continue his own legacy when he had his own child, who he also began to train from a young age so that he might follow in his father's footsteps.

Halen and his father never got along, partly because Halen resented being forced into being a superhero, and partly because he and his father don't understand each other. It was never Halen's idea to become Starchild, but his father didn't understand his objections to it, and pushed it on him all the harder. They would bicker endlessly about almost everything, and it came to a head before Halen was ever able to debut as Starchild. He ran away from home, living with friends and surfing on couches for some time. While Stardriver, given his powers and resources, easily kept tabs on his son, he let him have his space, seeing it as a temporarily solution to their problems that could be fixed later. Unbeknownst to him, Halen was scouted by the Lanius School, and was whisked away to join their young villains program, out of Stardriver's notice and reach.

Rakshasa

Full Name: Rakshasa claims his birth name was "Yaun," but will mention in the same breath, "that man is dead."

Nicknames/Aliases: Rakshasa, Hell's Disciple

Age: 30-something, though he claims to have spent hundreds of years in Hell

Gender: Male

Division: Strength

Powers: Rakshasa is allegedly half-demon, which he claims is responsible for his body's extreme power and durability, as well as his ability to use supernatural demonic martial arts. Rakshasa knows a variety of esoteric martial arts techniques that allow him to perform such bizarre feats as flinging spiritual fireballs at his opponents, running on water, or other strange abilities. He also claims to have the ability to transform into a super-powered demonic state, though the consequence for doing so is that he will be dragged back into Hell.

Description: Rakshasa is very tall and powerfully built, but does not come across as gigantic. His musculature is obviously the product of extreme training, and his body has the toughness and strength of steel. While his features are generally handsome, his expression is usually stoic or dour, except when in combat, whereupon he seems to adopt the visage of a snarling demon. His hair and eyes are burning red and yellow, respectively, and his Ajna chakra is so powerfully trained that it glows through his forehead. When not in his battle attire, his dress sense is best described as "trashy," with undersized tee-shirts and shorts usually his standard fare, as he claims that cold and heat have no effect on him.

Personality: Most people that know Rakshasa casually consider him a terrifying lunatic, constantly rambling about something nonsensical and a hair's breadth from a violent outburst at any time. Those that spend more time with him understand the method to his madness, and find him somewhat amiable. While he is certainly violent, he never prosecutes his violence without good reason, though sometimes his reasoning can seem distorted to other people, and he holds his bizarre sense of honor very closely. He fancies himself a warrior-poet, and often cites koans and proverbs that seem disturbing or nonsensical.

Crush: Kill, Destroy

Skills: Rakshasa is one of the preeminent martial artists on the planet earth, his only peers also supernatural or superhuman. He has studied dozens of different styles and forms, many of which he claims are supernatural or otherworldly in origin. Aside from that he is also a master yogi, familiar with several forms of spiritual philosophy, and is a fairly accomplished vegan chef.

Weaknesses: All of Rakshasa's power is self-cultivated, and he has great difficulty working alongside others. His unpredictability can be a curse as much as a benefit when fighting opponents, as his murderous rage can be set off by strange and seemingly innocuous things. There is also the matter that he claims to be hunted by the forces of Hell, but this is as of yet unproven.

Brief History: To hear him tell it, Rakshasa's personal history is strange and mystifying, but none can confirm if what he says is true or not. He alleges that he was born from the union of a demon and a human woman, and grew up alone in the streets of Mumbai with only the ascetic gurus of the inner city to look after him. It was the depravity of living alone in an urban hell as a small child that Rakshasa claims made him "awakened to violence."

Rakshasa spent his youth traveling Asia, learning as much as he could about how to kill a man with his bare hands, and picking up a substantial criminal record along the way. It was deep in the Himalayas that he heard tell of a mystic master that could teach him the martial arts of another world. This was a ploy, however, as he found instead a demonic cult that used him as a human sacrifice, or so he claims. The next part of his tale is the most outlandish, as he claims his soul was banished to Hell, where he learned of his demonic parentage, and did in fact learn demonic martial arts from the denizens of Hell.

After his escape from Hell, which was an epic saga in and of itself according to Rakshasa, he found that almost no time had passed in his centuries in the underworld, and continued to strive to find challenging battles in the modern world. He provoked many other mystic or spiritual superheroes and villains into battling him, assembling a long list of rivals and enemies all the while. However, in recent years he was contacted by the Headmaster of the Lanius School, who propositioned that Rakshasa become his hand-to-hand combat instructor. A mysterious bargain was brokered, and Rakshasa has since fulfilled this role dutifully. Even so, students usually consider him among the strangest and most terrifying of the school' instructors, particularly when he introduces himself by claiming he will only recognize them as worthy if they manage to kill him.

Lucifuge

Full Name: Cerasus Orion

Nicknames/Aliases: Some obscure religious and occult texts allege of a figure known as the "Seventh Son," "Death-Master," or "Lucifuge." Not knowing about any of this Cerasus often goes by "Ryan" in casual company.

Age: Cerasus has the physical form of a 17 year old boy.

Gender: See above.

Division: Suavity

Powers: Cerasus is an inhuman creature of the night, infused with supernatural power. While he may have been human at one point, he is now an undead abomination imbued with blackest magic. Being among the living dead, his body has no needs and does not age, as long as he fuels himself with fresh human blood, or other vital essences. He is also infused with unearthly power, granting him strength, speed, and regenerative ability far beyond that of a human being. Cerasus' entire body is capable of transformation, as he can can reshape his anatomy into many shocking and disturbing biological forms, least suspicious among them being various creatures of the night, such as wolves, bats, or swarms of vermin. His touch can reshape living (or unliving) bone and tissue like a sculptor, and he can manipulate blood with the power of his mind. Among his other mental powers are the ability to wield telekinetic force, to enthrall humans and other animals to his will, and to conceal his presence from observers.

Description: Having complete control over his physical form, Cerasus most often takes the shape of a tall, handsome boy in his late teens. Princely features, wild blond hair, and glimmering red eyes are his most striking features. His style of dress corresponds generally with the "death-rock" musical subculture of the late 70s and early 80s, and so he often wears leathers, mesh, an excess of makeup, and styles his hair in an outrageous fashion. It is alleged that Cerasus has a "true" form apart from his default human appearance, but even Cerasus does not know if this is true.

Personality: Cerasus is a surprisingly cheerful individual. He enjoys socializing, meeting new people, and spending time with those he makes friends with. He is surprisingly level-headed and well adjusted for what he is and what little he remembers of his past. Although there are some that say he shows a different side of himself in private, and that his amiable demeanor may be a facade.

Crush: Not presently.

Skills: Cerasus is not much of a fighter, preferring to settle his issues through distraction, manipulation, and deception. His social skills come in handy with these goals. Besides that, he fancies himself an artist and musician, and often paints, sings, and plays the guitar. He dreams of starting a band.

Weaknesses: The banes of a creature like Cerasus weigh equal with his powers. The sun shuts off his powers for as long as he is in direct contact with its light, key among them being the regeneration of his body. Fire and silver are both particularly damaging to his body when wielded against him, leaving wounds that are painful and slow to heal. He can be repelled by wielders of true compassion and religious faith, rare as they may be in the modern day. Piercing his heart does not kill him, but renders him paralyzed. Finally all of his powers, including his deathless state, are fueled by the stolen life essence of human beings, which he typically imbibes by drinking blood. Excessive use of his powers drains him more quickly, and if his needs are not met he falls into a catatonic state.

Brief History: Cerasus' origins are as mysterious to himself as they are to everyone else. Some years ago, the lord of an ancient castle in eastern Europe passed away in a tragic accident, and his effects were quickly sold off by his relatives at his estate sale. Among these possessions was an ancient coffin found in a sub-basement of the castle. The coffin was purchased by an anonymous bidder, who was secretly a member of an obscure local cult with ties to supervillain society.

Once returned to their cult's lair, the coffin was opened to find Cerasus dormant inside. Once roused with blood, he claimed to have no memories of his life before he was locked in the ancient coffin, despite the cult's claims that he was their messiah risen. While they tried to conceal their activities, word spread among supervillains about the emergence of a new vampire with no known progenitor; a discovery that whipped superhuman society into a frenzy. Before the media circus could invade Cerasus' privacy, the Lanius school stepped in and offered Cerasus asylum and a place to peacefully recover his memories and develop his powers.

Other: He's adapting very well to the 21st century, though his tastes have been colored by the cult that awoke him, who have come to look after him like an extended family.

Typhon

Full Name: A name unpronounceable with a human mouth, though there are some in this age that possess this knowledge.

Nicknames/Aliases: Obadiah Marsh is his current pseudonym, having dragged his feet on updating his name for the new century. He goes by Obie among friends, and to students he is Professor Marsh. He has no supervillain alias, finding the concept asinine, but superhero databases have codenamed him as "Typhon."

Age: Hundreds of millions of years old, but much of that time was spent dormant. He's been awake for only a matter of thousands of years.

Gender: While generally adopting a masculine persona, Marsh refuses to indicate what sex he is, considering it a personal matter.

Division: Smarts

Powers: Being a primordial creature that walked the earth before mankind, Marsh is imbued with strange abilities. Being an amphibious creature, he can breathe both water and air, is a powerful swimmer adapted to the cold, crushing darkness of the deep ocean, and is superior in physical power to humans. His body's structure is somewhat amorphous, allowing him a limited form of shapeshifting. He can alter his form in simple ways, such as when he adopts a human disguise, or adopt the adaptations of aquatic life (although some of the forms he takes on do not resemble animals known to modern science). He is also capable of prodigious regeneration, as he can regrow an entire limb in a day. In his life before his dormancy, Marsh was also an arch-priest of some bizarre antediluvian god, infusing him with occult power. He is capable of influencing the minds of others, wielding the elemental power of the sea, and spontaneously birthing abominations to serve him.

Description: Marsh's true form is that of a blasphemous fish-frog, a bipedal amphibious humanoid with fins, scales, and other picine features. Needle-like teeth fill his mouth and sharp claws tip his digits. However, Marsh spends much time shape-shifted into the form of a profoundly ugly human man, only seeming human at a passing glance. His presence is extraordinarily upsetting, as he constantly perspires thick, foul-smelling mucous, and he reeks of rotting fish. Even to higher senses Marsh is offensive, as his soul is a sick hybrid thing, a defiance of natural order. When in his human disguise, Marsh does his best to dress smartly, in bespoke suits to fit his unique physiology.

Personality: Having spent so much time among humans, Marsh has become very much like one. He is a somewhat foppish intellectual, with a great love of literature and culture. He enjoys the pleasures of human society, and spends much time studying the history he didn't live through. Even so, he can be a bit stuck in his ways, and so currently seems like a relic of the past. His speech patterns are often outdated, as society has begun to evolve much faster than he can keep up. As a teacher he is strict and professional, and only nominally associates with supervillain society, as he finds most of their crimes childish and meaningless.

Crush: With a human? You must be joking.

Skills: Marsh has lived many lifetimes among human society, and picked up many random skills along the way; some of them useful, many not. Chief among his interests is the study of history, particularly ancient human history, prehistory, and paleontology.

Weaknesses: Being an aquatic creature, Marsh has to rehydrate himself on a regular basis to stay healthy and vital. Prolonged deprivation from water can result in him asphyxiating as his membranes dry out. He also has a peculiar aversion to electricity, disliking electronics and most technology, and electrical attacks are particularly debilitating for him. Fluorescent lights give him migraines.

Brief History: Marsh was once part of a grand society of creatures like himself, who ruled the earth in an age before even the dinosaurs walked the land. Their society was thriving, but not to last, as Marsh was the oracle of their strange and fearsome god, who predicted that doom would befall their race. Marsh pleaded with their maternal deity to spare them, but instead she froze Marsh in time, and cast him to the bottom of a flooded cave, where he waited out the eons.

Marsh awoke into a world he did not recognize. It was much colder and less humid, and furred creatures now ruled the world rather than scaled. He recognized that some of them, bipedal ones cloaked in furs and carrying spears, were intelligent, and did his best to study them from afar. Eventually he realized he could twist his form to walk among them, and carried on that way for a very long time. Marsh lived a thousand lives across a thousand generations, changing his identity every hundred years and wandering somewhere new to continue to learn from these fascinating ape-men. A constant in their society was a fringe of outcasts and ne'er-do-wells, which were the only ones to whom Marsh could reveal his true nature without being decried as a monster.

In Marsh's most recent endeavors, he was asked by an old friend to assist as an instructor at the Lanius school. Owing this friend some favors from a disastrous recent scheme, Marsh accepted and assumed the role of "Professor of Antiquities," although the purpose of his class was to inform students of the "true" world history shaped by supervillains, which Marsh actively lived through.

Other: While ostensibly part of superhuman society, Marsh does not actively participate in villainy, except when convinced, lured, bargained with, or begged to join one of his villainous friends in some scheme or another. Marsh enjoys the finer things in life, and they aren't cheap, and so bribery is surprisingly effective on him.

Dandelion

Full Name: The scientists principally responsible for studying Dandelion gave them the scientific name Xenoproteus taraxus.

Nicknames/Aliases: They prefer to go by the nickname they were given under scientific observation, "Dandelion," sometimes shortened to "Dandy."

Age: Unknown, Dandelion has been unfrozen for about ten years.

Gender: Dandelion is still working on understanding the nuances of human gender expression. While they are trending toward a more feminine persona based on what they understand so far, they refer to themselves in the plural in most cases.

Division: Stealth

Powers: Being an amorphous, shapeshifting alien, Dandelion's powers are bizarre to say the least. Essentially a colony of protean, amoeba-like single-celled organisms, many of Dandy's powers are dependent on their current "biomass," how much raw organic material they have access to. They can gain biomass by consuming organic material, and can shed it by regurgitating this matter into dormant "flesh eggs." Every one of Dandelion's individual cells is a muscle and a brain cell at once, meaning that its strength and intelligence both scale directly with its size and weight. Under normal circumstances, Dandelion is intelligent enough to decode a human genome in a matter of minutes, and powerful enough to smash concrete. As their entire body is more or less homogenous, it is difficult to permanently wound Dandelion, as they can just use their existing biomass to replace damaged flesh.

Dandelion's cells are amorphous and capable of reshaping and specializing themselves, allowing it to create a variety of organic structures such as muscular tentacles, hardened bone and keratin, or assume a plasmic semi-liquid form. Dandy can imitate the organic structures of any organism it has sampled and decoded the genetic material of, but this process generally works best with animal life. This ability allows Dandelion to replicate humans almost perfectly, as they will even pass a DNA test while transformed.

Lastly, Dandelion can infiltrate and parasitize living organisms. This requires some of Dandy's biomatter to enter a living body in some way, and then for that biomatter to adapt itself to its host body and graft itself into the host's biological systems, such as its nervous and circulatory systems. This process can take several hours to complete, as portions of Dandy small enough to ingest only carry a rudimentary, instinctual semblance of intelligence. Dandy can inject others with larger samples, but not without essentially invading their body. Once a host is parasitized, Dandy can consume and repurpose their biomass while inside of them, gradually taking over more of their body, or reshaping them the same way Dandelion can reshape themself, though both are time-consuming processes that are difficult to go unnoticed by their host.

Description: Dandelion's "natural" state is an amorphous, fleshy blob that can grow new appendages and other features spontenously, giving it the impression of a massive amoeba made of meat and bone. Dandy likes to keep their usual level of biomass sitting around five-hundred pounds, which means that when they assume a human form, their body is very dense and heavy. Dandy has a "unique" human persona that they typically wear around people, which was synthesized from several genetic "samples." Their human form is an androgynous chimera, around 5'8", with short brown hair, coffee-colored skin, and heterochromatic eyes in yellow and green. Their voice is high and generally feminine, and they have a bizarre accent given their small but growing understanding of human communication patterns.

Personality: Dandelion is surprisingly pleasant and cheerful in social situations, and is possessed with an insatiable, childlike curiosity about the Earth and all of the living things that walk, fly, swim, crawl, or grow on it. While they are far from perfectly adjusted to living among humans, they get by well enough, and are happy to learn from their own mistakes. They like humans, and find them interesting, but understand that many humans are not equipped to understand what they are or even try to get to know them. Dandy's feelings about their situation, being stuck on Earth with no memory of what they are or where they come from, are mostly represented by frustration, as well as a sense of loneliness and longing. As nice as many humans are, Dandy can't help but feel isolated from them, as they find human communication to be very limiting.

Crush: Dandy loves everyone and everything, but has no concept of human relationships.

Skills: Geared as a living genetic sequencer, Dandelion is a highly intelligent creature, able to store and process massive amounts of data. They do their best to learn human habits and skills, but have a difficult time picking up on subtleties that most Earthlings take for granted. Given that Dandelion doesn't sleep, they spend most nights awake on the internet, trying to learn all they can about human culture, history, and socialization.

Weaknesses: Dandelion's natural form is not particularly durable, and while they regenerate quickly and are difficult to hurt beyond flesh wounds, damaged flesh still costs them biomass, and so they are not capable of regenerating infinitely. Unless they adapt to give themselves some sort of protective shell, they are only as durable as normal flesh and bone. While Dandy enjoys hot, humid environments, fire is particularly harmful to them, as they cannot regenerate carbonized flesh. Extreme cold forces them into a state of dormancy, and their body has a somewhat high freezing point, though they are capable of freezing solid and thawing out without any harm done to them. Other things that would be damaging to organic material, such as acids, poisons, or electricity, work on Dandelion as normally as they would any other living thing. Dandelion's parasitism is limited by the lengthy process that it requires, and even if it succeeds, Dandy is as vulnerable to immune systems as any other invader organism or pathogen. Dandy's ability to sample DNA is limited by the viability of the sample, as DNA degrades very quickly in dead organic matter, requiring its samples to be "fresh."

Brief History: An ecological expedition into the melting arctic were the first humans to discover Dandelion, though at first they did not know what they were dealing with. A melting glacier revealed an ancient meteorite that had been frozen into its heart millions of years ago, and was now thawing and exposed to the open air. Investigating the massive, surprisingly spherical structure, they found that its rocky exterior concealed a metal core of unknown composition. The core had deteriorated after millions of years frozen in ice, and they found a dormant mass of flesh hidden within it.

Using the arctic climate and liquid nitrogen to keep the organism dormant, they retrieved it and its meteorite, and secured them in a governmental research facility. There the organism was finally unfrozen and allowed to become active. At first timid and anxious, the creature spent most of its time trying to escape, until scientist began speaking to it and it seemed to settle down. Recognizing language but being unable to speak it, the creature spent its first few weeks in isolation, listening to scientists speak to it through a speaker. Once it was able to grasp enough human language to speak, scientists move to the next stage of their examinations.

The creature, which was nicknamed Dandelion by the scientists, was thoroughly studied and tested, not always in ways Dandy found particularly pleasant. They tested their shapeshifting and parasitic powers on livestock, and fed Dandy a pig carcass once a week. Some scientists even offered them some of their own blood to allow them to take human form. When asked about their origins, Dandy professed ignorance, as they had been frozen so long that their memories had been damaged, and had no idea where they came from or what their purpose was.

Life like this continued for some years, until a supevillain caught word of the research facility testing some kind of organic superweapon. A team of villains collaborated to break into the facility and steal the weapon, and succeeded in their plan, until they found that their prize was not a weapon, but Dandelion. Empathizing with the imprisoned alien and recognizing its "humanity," they freed Dandelion, and put them in the custody of the Lanius School, which they thought would be the best environment for it to continue to learn and develop while avoid the persecution of most of humanity.

Other: Dandelion cannot imitate superpowers, unless said powers are written into a host's DNA, and are therefore organic structures that Dandy can imitate.

[Dead Cruiser]

THOR

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

T H O R , G O D O F T H U N D E R

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^{_{T H O R O D I N S O N ♦ P R I N C E O F A S G A R D ♦ M I D G A R D}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"So, what, I go feast and battle with the Midgardians for a year or twenty? Sounds like a vacation to me. I haven't been to Midgard in like five hundred years, but I can't imagine it's changed all that much."}

Thor is a young god, comparatively speaking. Hardly more than a few millennia old, like a newborn star Thor's character is an explosion of heat and light. His days are filled with hunting and battle, and his nights overflow with mead, feasting, and wenches. Or they were, until his father, Odin Allfather, Lord of the Aesir and King of the Nine Realms, foresaw a terrible future. Without sharing his vision, he cast Thor out of the celestial longhouse of Valhalla and exiled him to Midgard; Earth. Claiming that he was unfit to serve as his heir, Odin proclaimed that Prince Thor would be exiled until he could lift the hammer Mjölnir and claim it for his own. Odin had the weapon commissioned by the finest Dwarf smiths in the cosmos on the day of Thor's birth. Forged of mystic uru starmetal, the hammer has a mind of its own, and will not allow itself to be lifted by any except those it deems worthy. For ages it has sat in Odin's vault, waiting for a master worthy enough to claim it.

Even without the weapon written in his destiny, Prince Thor is mighty. As both God of Thunder and a Prince of Asgard, Thor is imbued with divine strength and cosmic power. Thor commands lightning, storms, and weather of all kinds, though without Mjölnir he is cut off from the divine magic of the Allfather. The Prince was not exiled to Midgard unarmed, and carries Jarnbjorn, the Iron Bear, a dwarf-crafted axe forged from Asgardian steel; though not enchanted it is a weapon finer than any earthly make. However, for all of his strength, power, and skill at arms, the young Prince is far from invincible. He proves his own worst enemy more often than not; quick to anger, slow to forgive, brash, arrogant, impulsive, and entitled; the barbarian of Odin's court. These traits are unlikely to win him friends on Midgard, especially considering that his last visit predated the printing press.

P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ):

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Prince Thor has many ideas about how to spend his exile and the conditions under which it will end; few of these have any merit. In order to claim his birthright and end his exile, Thor must not only prove to be a worthy prince, but a hero and protector of Earth. Though many rogues and other foes bar his path, including mad scientists and sorcerers from Earth, as well as the meddling of his jealous, adopted elder brother Loki. Along the way Thor may meet allies, rivals, or even find love, and could possibly discover a shocking secret about his own parentage.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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I'm picturing a Thor/Asgard/etc that is somewhere between Norse myth and recent Thor interpretations, and as such he is essentially a God from space. Emphasis on Captial-G God, I have a whole thing cooked up involving the Godwave and how all that shit works.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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Here are written the deeds of THE MIGHTY THOR:

#0 - WORTHY
#1 - COMING TO AMERICA
#2-4 - EARTH'S MIGHTIEST I, II, III

[Dead Cruiser]

DOCTOR FATE

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

D O C T O R F A T E

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^{_{K E N T N E L S O N ☥ S O R C E R E R S U P R E M E ☥ T O W E R O F F A T E , H I M A L A Y A S}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"You can't fight Fate."}

Essentially what I'm going for with this Doctor Fate is representing a classic golden-age style of hero, the super-wizard. In particular I intend for Kent to have been the original Doctor Fate, trained in the mystic arts in the 1960s by Nabu, the Ancient One. While he's an ageless sorcerer, he's an old man from a human perspective, as he was a veteran of both World Wars and didn't become a superhero until he was in his 60s. Kent is as powerful as ever, but the modern world is moving faster and faster every day, and he may be looking to pass the torch of Sorcerer Supreme to someone else, or at least be willing to take on one or a few apprentices. He has some of Doctor Strange's canon worked into him, but is essentially his predecessor and does not preempt Doctor Strange's existence, should that come down the line.

P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ):

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I want Kent to work as a Roaming Character, and in essence serve as the "tent pole" for all of the magic/supernatural heroes and villains that we accumulate, potentially culminating in the formation of the Magic Avengers/Justice League Dark. Think of him as more or less being Magic Superman for Magic Superheroes. As I said, he's taking more of a sideline role these days, looking to pass the torch to the next generation, which is why I prefer that Kent be a Roaming rather than Driving character. That said, any number of plots could be started from his rogue's gallery, or that of any other magic character in the roster; demons, dark ones, chaos lords, evil sorcerers, cthulhu, all fair game if Doctor Fate is in play.

On a personal level, I want to play Doctor Fate because I love magic characters (and need to get back to them, since I've been playing a lot of alien/sci-fi characters lately), and I want to play a classic super-wizard. I think Kent has a lot of potential for character drama by leveraging his status as Sorcerer Supreme and his high and mighty persona as Doctor Fate against his much more personable secret identity of an old archaeologist.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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As I said before, while I haven't gone full Doctor StrangeFate (because Xavier is already taken) he has borrowed some elements from Doctor Strange, and should serve just as effectively in his place should none arise. I'm imagining his version of the Eye of Agamotto is instead the Eye of Anubis, and may have the Soul Stone embedded in it rather than the Time Stone.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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#01 The Secret Name (Part 1)
#02 The Secret Name (Part 2)

[Dead Cruiser]

Brandon Rivers

• Character Name: Sir Brandon Rivers

• Age: 35

• Gender: Male

• Height: 7'1"

• Race: Dragonborn

• Class: Paladin

• Character Appearance: Brandon is a hulking brute of a Dragonborn, whose scales glimmer like tarnished gold. A giant even among his own kind, he carries more than twenty-five stone in scale and muscle, and in his plate armor he weighs a full quarter ton. Ragged scars stretch across his face and body, remnants of a life filled with battle. His armor fits him strangely, as it was forged in a human style, but its proportions match Brandon's size. The remnants of his golden heraldry are barely visible, the armor is rusted at the edges and shot through with bolt-holes, and he has completely forgone his helmet, boots, and gauntlets.

• Short History: Brandon Rivers does not know the name he was born with, he was too young to remember it when his family was killed, and there was no one among the people that found him that could read his clan's name set proudly at their gate. The clan that bore him, the mother that laid his egg and cared for his clutch, were put to the sword by a rival Dragonborn clan, a dispute over some farming land at the border of their two territories. Vultures came to pick over the remains the next morning, and found a golden, infant dragonborn clutched under the body of a she-dragon with six arrows in her back. The baby was dirty and sick from cold and hunger, but alive.

This was a find too rare to pass up. The scavengers took the baby with them, and as quick as they could manage it put him up for auction in a public slave market on the Sword Coast. A rare specimen like a Dragonborn would fetch a generous price quickly, they imagined. However, by a stroke of luck or fate, an emissary of Cormyr passed through the same market square as the baby was being auctioned off. The emissary thought nothing of the goings-on, but the knight leading his protection detail was aghast. At once he stopped their procession and bought the infant himself, swearing to raise him to defend the weak and innocent.

The infant Dragonborn, now named Brandon Rivers at the whim of the knight who had adopted him, was raised in the monastery of their order in Cormyr. Brandon was brought up among knights, monks, and priests, all sworn in service to the merciful light of Lathander. Brandon grew up idolizing Sir Harold Rivers, the knight that had saved him from a life of slavery, and as he grew (quickly, as Dragonborn children are wont to do) he trained and studied to be inducted into the Knights of Lathander himself. All the while he did his best to integrate into a human-majority society that either considered him a curious oddity, or a monster in the making.

Brandon grew like a weed, by age 13 he was taller than all of the human knights in their order. It was two years later, and after much struggle, effort, seminary study, and martial training that Brandon was knighted by his father and inducted into the order of Lathander. It was not long after his ascent into knighthood that the Dragon Cult of Tiamat enacted a bloody scheme on Cormyr, and the knights of the realm were called upon to put down the uprising. For years Brandon battled dragon-cultists and the twisted monsters that they used as weapons. Many of the cultists being Dragonborn that worshiped the Scaled Tyrant, Brandon grew distasteful of his own kind, considering their violence against the common people of Cormyr to be cowardly barbarism.

Eventually the cult's threat waned, and Brandon and his father both came away from the war as hardened veterans and celebrated heroes. Sir Harold Rivers was named Grand Master of their order, and Brandon earned many accolades and favors. The sight of the massive Dragonborn cutting down foes in swathes inspired his brother knights to bestow him with such epithets as "Drakehammer," (which Brandon despised, being neither a drake nor wielding a hammer) and "the Knight of Goldwyrm," (which Brandon still did not like, but was at least accurate). Not one to turn down a gift, Brandon begrudgingly accepted a coat of arms gifted to him by the king of Cormyr, depicting a golden serpent guarding a serene river, as a matching, purple serpent flew imperiously above it, with the golden rose of Lathander above all.

Brandon's days of heroism and chivalry came to an end as a power struggle emerged among the bickering nobility of Cormyr. The old king had passed away peacefully, but news of his hidden corruption came to light after his death. Nobles rallied to unseat the heir apparent and Brandon began to feel the tide turning against the crown. However, his father and master of their knightly order passed down the proclamation that the knights of Lathander would stand with the rightful king, their loyalty unwavering. Brandon's loyalty to his father outweighed his reliance on his instincts, and they took up arms against the usurpers. Brandon had been right, the rebel noble faction had far greater support than the crown, and while they fought bravely, their numbers could not be matched. Brandon's aging father was killed on the field of battle, while Brandon himself was captured and ransomed back to the king.

The king was eventually overthrown, and the knights of Lathander were left without a king to serve and without a grand master to lead them. The remaining knights, including Brandon, took and oath of vengeance against the rebel sat on Cormyr's throne, and went their separate ways into exile. Brandon took his arms and armor with him, as well as a keepsake of his father: the man's skull, stripped bare of flesh and dipped in gold. The experience embittered Brandon enormously, as he had spent his entire life in service to the people of Cormyr, enduring their suspicion of him as well as fighting zealously against his own kind. All of that effort was for nothing, as he was now a hated exile, a knight without a kingdom. He has wandered for years since, selling his services as a sellsword, searching for a new purpose in life. Brandon has gained some reputation as a powerful paladin for hire, the golden fetish-skull he carries him earning him the nickname, "Knight of Goldskull."

• Personality: Brandon strikes many as a hard, taciturn man; his emotions and thoughts kept closely guarded. He listens much and says little, though his scarred, scowling reptilian face often says more than enough on its own. While he has a warrior's practiced calm under pressure, a boiling rage still churns within him. While difficult to bring to the surface, Brandon's fury typically explodes in a literal gout of flame. His exile and the events leading up to it are a source of bitterness and shame for him, and in most cases he will refuse to discuss the matter. That aside, Brandon has little trouble finding work, as his clients find his service to be efficient and professional, a welcome difference from the majority of eccentric mercenary adventurers.

Additionally to his exile, Brandon considers his own race to be a source of personal embarrassment for him. Raised among humans, he was always aware that he was not like them, and they never let him forget it. He spent his youth kowtowing to the anxieties of the humans around him, and did his best to act like one among them. When he met other Dragonborn in the war against the dragon cult he was ashamed to see that these evil cultists were what others saw when they looked at him. To this day Brandon looks down on other Dragonborn, likening them to bloodthirsty barbarians, and has a poor opinion of dragons and draconic races in general, even having some reservations against Bahamut and his worshipers.

• Weapons & Armor: Brandon still wears (most of) his knightly armor, though it has seen far better days. His typical armaments include a huge, golden halberd, too heavy to be wielded by a normal human, enchanted by the clerics of Lathander, a simple shortsword and hand-axe to use as sidearms, and a tower shield that once depicted his coat of arms, but now suggests some kind of gold and purple mosaic.

• Accessories & Miscellaneous: Brandon's holy symbol that invokes his oath of vengeance is the skull of his father, mentor, and senior knight, which has been dipped in gold and often hangs at Brandon's hip by chains looped through the eye sockets.

• Skills and Abilities: As a paladin, Brandon is both a powerful warrior and a wielder of divine magic. A veteran of many battles, Brandon specializes in wielding his oversized halberd with both hands and rending his foes apart with his incredible strength and surprising speed. Brandon has the innate power to sense sources of positive and negative energy around him, can heal others with a touch, and can abjure his foes to suffer great harm at his hands, all by invoking his oath of vengeance. Brandon knows a considerable number of divine spells, such as those that invoke healing, courage, and protection, as well as those that search out his foes, undo their evil works, and smite them down. In his mercenary work, he has picked up a few other spells, mostly those that invoke greater harm on his foes, track them, or bind them in place. Brandon can summon a celestial mount to bear him into battle, which takes the form of a sturdy, robust bicorn (known among many races as a rhinoceros).

• Other: While Brandon has the ability to breathe fire like many other Dragonborn, he chooses not to except in matters of absolute life or death, as he finds such a display of his inhumanity to be embarrassing and distasteful.

[Dead Cruiser]

Dandelion

The Friendly Mimic from Beyond the Stars!

D A N D E L I O N

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^{_{B I R T H N A M E U N K N O W N ♦ N O N B I N A R Y ♦ A G E U N K N O W N ♦ B I R T H P L A C E U N K N O W N}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"Hello! It is nice to meet you! My name is Dandelion! You can call me Dandy for short! Can I drink a little bit of your blood?"}

Unearthed from an ancient meteorite exposed by melting arctic ice, Dandelion spent the first ten years of their life on earth as an alien specimen in the custody of S.T.A.R. Labs. Once thawed out, Dandelion's "natural" form of a fleshy amorphous blob did not indicate to the scientists researching them that they were an intelligent being. Invasive studies and experiments followed until Dandelion was able to mimic the behavior of the scientists and imitate human speech. Once it became clear that Dandelion was a person, the scientists changed their approach to teaching Dandelion how to interact with humans and getting to know them by talking to them. Unfortunately, Dandelion had no idea who or what they are, with no memories from before they were buried in ice. Despite their amnesia, the scientists came to look after Dandelion fondly and tried to acclimate them to life on Earth. Dandelion picked their name after being taught about Earthling plants and flowers, and they were given a genetic sample from each of their closest handlers to synthesize a human form.

However, Dandy's peaceful captivity was not to last. Hearing the rumor that S.T.A.R. was developing a secret, alien bioweapon, a coalition of supervillains raided the facility where Dandelion was interred, causing massive destruction and casualties. The scientists that had essentially raised Dandy for the last ten years were all killed, and Dandelion was forced to use their powers for self-defense. After spending their short life on Earth learning about the planet, its inhabitants, and the wonder and mystery of life, Dandelion's first exposure to violence and grief was shocking to them, and they were disgusted and horrified by the senseless destruction. They hid in the ruins of the S.T.A.R. facility until a delegation from the Justice League arrived to clean up the mess and apprehend the villains responsible, and were delighted to see that the violent criminals had a virtuous counterpart in society. Following the incident, Dandelion escaped the facility and lingered in human society incognito, before eventually managing to make contact with the leader of the Renegades and join their heroic team.

A B I L I T I E S:

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Dandelion is an alien shapeshifter, capable of absorbing and copying genetic information to mimic organic structures and adaptations. Each of Dandelion's cells is a metamorphic single-celled organism, making Dandy a colony of organisms that share a consciousness and an identity. By default each cell serves as both a muscle and brain cell, giving Dandelion tremendous strength and the mental capacity necessary to decode a genome in a matter of minutes, but each cell can be endlessly differentiated, specialized, and repurposed to accommodate Dandy's transformations. Without genetic information to work with, Dandy can only form simple organic structures such as muscular tendrils, osseous growths, or their usual blob-like default form. The plasticity of their biology allows Dandy to quickly regenerate from harm, though they have difficulty healing flesh that has been carbonized by extreme heat. Dandelion can also "graft" themselves to living organisms through a lengthy integration and assimilation process, allowing Dandy to "hide" inside living things by imitating their natural internal systems.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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Despite the trauma they have experienced so far, Dandelion still wants to make the most of their new life on Earth. They like humans, and want to understand them better, as well as use their powers to prevent unnecessary deaths and suffering. Joining the Renegades has been their best idea so far to work toward this end, as they know their abilities would inspire fear and panic among normal humans, or even among most superheroes. While they see it as a distant goal, Dandy would eventually like to learn the truth of their origins; who they are, where they came from, and why they came to Earth. In the meantime however, Dandelion is content to experience the beauty and joy offered by Earth and the life forms that call it home.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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Dandelion's human form is a genetic chimera of several different individuals, and as a result presents as an androgynous, intersex individual of middling height and build, but they try to keep their mass around five-hundred pounds, resulting in a very dense individual. While more feminine in demeanor, Dandelion does not identify as male or female. Testing performed at S.T.A.R. Labs showed that Dandelion's incredibly complex genetic structure showed no markers of other known alien species.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S:

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Julian

Dandy was rescued from the streets of Fawcett City and spared from further captivity by Julian, and for that Julian has earned their fierce loyalty. Dandelion doesn't find him more likable or relatable than any other human, but they hang on his every word and follow his orders without question, and they understand that Julian does his best to keep them safe from the outside world as well as from the other Renegades. Whenever there is downtime in their penthouse headquarters, Dandy usually makes a nuisance of themselves by following Julian around like a puppy, pestering him with questions, until he manages to pawn them off on someone else.

Charity

As with most of the other Renegades, Charity doesn't know what to make of Dandelion, and Dandelion feels much the same way about her. They understand that her body is dependent on machines to live, but beyond that Dandy doesn't quite grasp her status as a cyborg, as their familiarity with human technology is somewhat limited. Dandy is quite curious about how her organic components function in tandem with her machine components, but hasn't yet had a good opportunity to ask her about it.

Conor

Dandelion can sense the trepidation Conor feels around them, and does their best to keep their space from him to avoid making him uncomfortable. Conor's magic, and indeed the concept of magic itself, are total mysteries to Dandy, and they don't plan to try and unravel them until they have secured more basic fundamentals about life on Earth and human culture.

Gabriela

Another magic hero that bears a sense of unease around Dandelion, they and Gabi have already spent some time working together on their communication skills, though this mostly resulted in Dandy speaking nonsense in Kʼicheʼ. Despite the lack of progress, Dandy appreciated her efforts, and hopes that Gabi will come to accept them in time. In the meanwhile, Dandy finds themselves intrigued by the concept of a "god," and plans to inquire more about this phenomenon in time.

Eilidh

Dandelion considers Eilidh the most interesting member of the Renegades; at first Dandy found her accent curious, but upon learning that she was a telepath and empath, everything changed. Dandy is insistent on the two of them working together on Dandy's communication skills, as she is the only teammate Dandy believes they will ever be able to truly relate to.

Kevin

Unlike many of their teammates, Dandelion considers Kevin to be a pretty uncomplicated person, in terms of both his power and demeanor. The two cohabit easily, finding each other mutually amusing and nonthreatening.

Selene

Yet another magic hero Dandy finds baffling, Dandelion has yet to interact with Selene in any meaningful capacity, and keeps their distance for the time being. Dandy still plans to pester the other demigod in the Renegades about what that precisely entails, in hopes they can get a genetic sample from one of these "gods."

Johnny

Dandelion doesn't find Johnny himself terribly interesting, at least not in comparison to some of their teammates, but is fascinated by the scarab fused to his spine. They would love to try and pry it off and sample it someday, or if Johnny dies in battle they plan to quickly salvage it off his corpse.

Varo

Dandelion is intrigued by their fellow alien exile on Earth, hoping immensely that in time he will prove to be a confident that can understand what Dandy is going through. For the time being, though Dandy is keeping their distance. The idea of alien magic bothers them even more than human magic does, and besides being a fellow alien, Varo has just in much in common with Dandy as humans do: basically nothing. Despite this, Dandy still hopes to make friends with him, and hopefully obtain their first sample of non-Earthling DNA.

Redmond

Dandelion considers Redmond a kindred spirit, in that both of them have been suddenly thrust into human society for purposes neither of them comprehend, and are each doing the best with what they've been given. The two have begun to bond over their shared experiences, though they each find each other as terrifying and alien as anything else they've encountered since escaping their respective labs.

Hana

Dandelion has attained a... loose understanding of what a Green Lantern is and the role they play in the galaxy at large, and for that reason does not find Hana's existence as confusing as some of their other teammates. Hana was one of the first Renegades to open up to Dandelion and reach out to them, given her prior experience in dealing with various aliens, but the two quickly ran into familiar roadblocks. Even consulting the records and archives on Oa provided no answers, adding to both of their frustration.

Hayden

Dandelion considers Hayden the first friend they have made outside of captivity, and treasures him greatly. The two have spent much time bonding over their shapeshifting abilities and mutual disregard for the human gender binary. Dandy loves watching her transform into dinosaurs, though they try to spare Hayden from seeing themselves shapeshift. Dandelion wishes very much to encounter a "real" dinosaur from which they can attain a genetic sample.

Vincent

Where most of the Renegades, even if Dandelion finds them frightening or confusing, are bound by their shared commitment to justice and morality, Dandy can see that Vincent joined the team primarily for three hots and a cot. His abrasive nature, particularly his arguments with Julian, have soured Dandy on him, and while they still hope they can get along better in the future, Dandy keeps their distance from him. Really his presence in the penthouse keeps Dandy focused on their commitment to the values of the Renegades, out of a desire to be perceived as less of a parasite than Vincent.

Johnny

Much like the other Johnny in the Renegades, Dandelion doesn't find the human part of "Psi-Rider" any more interesting than the average human, but they are keenly interested in the ship he recovered. Learning that the vehicle functioned with some form of bio-technology has made Dandy intent on obtaining a sample at their earliest opportunity. They hope the ship is capable of breaking orbit, but Dandelion realizes that even if they got off Earth, they would have nowhere else to go.

Roy

Yet another magic hero, even Dandelion can tell that Roy doesn't quite have his act together. As a result, they find him less threatening than the other magic heroes, but they still choose to keep their distance.

[Dead Cruiser]

Yuri, the Last Disciple

Name: Yuri Byrgenkirk

Age: 39

Gender: Male

Appearance: Yuri is a small man with a wiry build, with a tight, muscular frame and posture generally reminiscent of a weasel. His face is lined and drawn, and his hair has gone prematurely white, and so he appears much older than he truly is. One of his eyes is bright blue and alive with the spark of madness, and the other is clouded over with milky cataracts. Even when adventuring he wears spotless white robes overtop a grey jumper, giving him the impression of a doctor or priest of some description.

Personality: There isn't much left of Yuri's sanity, but what he has left he makes great use of. Despite his constant, delusional rambling, he is still quick-witted and pragmatic, traits that have kept him alive as an artifact hunter. He has the focus and determination reserved for the ranks of the mad, and when presented with a project he finds intriguing, he will pursue it for days on end without food or rest. While he is gregarious about sharing the asinine goings-on of his delusional mind, he stays tight-lipped about his past and his personal research.

Brief Backstory: Much of Yuri's early history is lost along with his mind, but it is known that he grew up in a city in the hinterlands of some great forest that was teeming with magic-infused beasts. He aspired to become a magical researcher from an early age, and became a respected name in his field. For a time, he worked directly with the Legendary Sage Hargrave the Enigmatic, but it is said that some cataclysmic accident both ended Yuri's apprenticeship and robbed him of his wits.

Since then Yuri has worked as a freelance artifact hunter, specializing in the most arcane and bizarre artifacts. While he doesn't mind selling off most of what he finds, he withholds certain artifacts in his possession viciously. Despite his insanity, he has proved surprisingly competent as a hunter, and has designed several tools himself to aid him in his adventures. He seems set on tracking down more bizarre artifacts to aid him in his private magical research, but to what end this research will hold, none can say for sure.

Skills: Even though he's lost his mind, Yuri is still an expert in magical artifacts, and has extensive knowledge of their construction and functioning. He's a capable artifact hunter, adept in exploration and combat when it is called for. He is also a capable engineer, and has designed some gadgets of his own to aid in his travels.

Abilities: Yuri has a knack for activating the most exotic magical artifacts that few others in the world could get to work. This includes the artifacts in his possession, the secrets to which he guards jealously.

Equipment: Yuri carries a variety of bizarre tools and arcane artifacts on his person, along with general-purpose hunter equipment. His primary weapon is the "Aspergillum," a chemical dispersal weapon of his own design. The Aspergillum can be loaded with a variety of chemical agents, such as incendiary fluid, liquid nitrogen, or an aerosolized toxic "quicksilver" concoction that Yuri also designed. These chemical fuels can also be loaded into grenade-sized bombs, which Yuri affectionately refers to as his "cocktails." Yuri's secondary weapon is more straightforward, an electrified mace with a spiked head, wreathed in blue sparks when activated.

The artifacts Yuri carries are among the strangest of their number seen in this world. He calls his most-used artifact the "Moon Augur," which at first glance does not appear to be an artifact as much as a small, magical creature. Its appearance is misleading, as it is an artifact that opens a portal only a few inches wide on activation. From this portal, one to a half-dozen powerful, sticky tentacles will emerge, which Yuri can direct mentally to grab things, push things away, or pull them closer to him. The portal only stays open for a few seconds at a time, after which it and the tentacles vanish. Sometimes small objects get stuck to the tentacles and get pulled through the portal; where they end up, not even Yuri knows for sure.

Yuri's other artifacts include the "Celestial Chorus," another creature-resembling artifact that creates magical projectiles that home in on enemies before exploding, and the "Heavenly Eye," an eyeball-shaped artifact that Yuri has replaced one of his own eyes with. The Heavenly Eye can be activated with great effort by Yuri to produce an arcane missile similar to those summoned by the Celestial Chorus, but cannot home in on enemies and is much more exhausting for Yuri to use.

Faction: None, freelancer. Formerly a student of Hargrave the Enigmatic.

Nadre the Serpent

Name: Nadre, of Clan Blackfang

Age: 26

Gender: Male

Appearance: Being snake-kin beastfolk, Nadre possesses a blend of humanoid and serpentine characteristics. His yellow eyes' pupils are vertical slits, his mouth is filled with fangs, barbed predator's teeth, and a long, sensitive tongue. Nadre keeps all of the hair on his body shaved or waxed, his build is lanky but muscular, with dark skin and patches of black scales along his limbs, back, and belly. A short, black-scaled tail juts out just behind his rump, but typically stays tucked in his clothes. Knowing how mistrustful humans are of beastfolk, particularly the snake-kin, Nadre usually dresses in public in loose-flowing dark robes, including a hood and mask that cover his face.

Personality: Among those he is unfamiliar with, which is essentially anyone outside of his extended family, Nadre comes across as a stoic, humorless individual, with all of the unflinching pragmatism, predatory cunning, and wild-born brutality that the snake-kin are renowned and loathed for. Privately, Nadre is a voice of reason among his kin, open-minded and full of curiosity about the world outside his forest home. He loves his family dearly and would go to great lengths to ensure their protection. Nadre is also deeply spiritual, and is greatly reverent of his family's ancestor spirits.

Brief Backstory: Nadre, like most of the snake-kin beastfolk, was born and grew up in the Black Forest, a forbidden expanse of untamed wilderness at the outskirts of Fuso territory. Terrible creatures lurk within the Black Forest, and Nadre is one of them. He was brought up as a member of the Blackfang Clan, monk-like snake-kin who were trained from a young age to be the defenders of the Black Forest and their kinfolk within it. He and his brethren would hunt down and kill any interlopers into their territory, typically foolhardy artifact hunters, in order to keep their kin safe from persecution, and preserve the sanctity of their people's sacred artifacts.

For most of his life, Nadre was content with his role, keeping his family and their limbless kin safe from dangerous outsiders. However, the Black Forest has begun to face a new threat that Clan Blackfang are unprepared for: the dead have begun to rise within the Black Forest, including the bodies of scores of intruders that have trespassed over many years. None of the shamans or priests among their people could explain the phenomenon, and the crisis has resulted in many of Nadre's kin being injured or killed, despite their defenders' best efforts.

Determined to solve this problem, he has set out on his own (mostly) to either find the source of the sudden rise of the dead in his home, or to find some way of stopping it. He was entrusted with his clan's most sacred artifact for this mission, and has journeyed to Fuso to find out what can be done to stop the endless tide of the undead.

Skills: Nadre was trained as a killer from a young age, and can track and hunt down any warm-blooded animal with ease. An expert in the arts of stealth and subterfuge, Nadre prefers to hunt from the shadows and strike when his enemy least expects him. A skilled ambush-predator, Nadre has been known to set up intricate traps and diversions to confuse and terrify his foes before he silences them with his blades. Additionally, he is a master poisoner, able to devise toxins for a variety of purposes from both his own and his kin's venom, as well as toxic foliage and other animals.

Abilities: As one of the snake-kin, Nadre has many inborn abilities associated with snakes. Like all snakes, he is cold-blooded, making him difficult to track. His senses are different from that of a human, as he can not only hear, but also sense vibrations in the world around him, which gives him a preternatural sense of his surroundings. He typically communicates with his kinfolk through complex pheromone signals, which allow them to communicate in complete silence. He also can sense heat sources in his environment with the thermal sensory pits hidden in his nose, allowing him to track prey in complete darkness. Since his nose is given over to his thermal sense, Nadre can taste the air with his forked tongue, and can detect a variety of subtle traces and chemicals with it even hours after the source has dissipated. Nadre's fangs are functional and venomous, with a small doses able to induce crippling pain, and large doses capable of causing cardiac arrest.

Nadre has also trained himself to wield some of the spiritual magics of his people. With concentration, he can turn any of his bodily fluids to caustic poison, ensuring he is never without a source of poison for his blades. Given enough time and great effort, he can also summon his people's patron spirit, a gigantic snake capable of swallowing a man whole in an instant. However, the summoning is difficult and does not last long.

Equipment: Concealed in Nadre's robes are a variety of blades, darts, and needles, as which serve as delivery systems for the wide variety of different hand-made poisons Nadre also carries on him, concealed. He carries many poisons for different purposes, including deadly poison, paralytic poison, hallucinogenic poison, and poison that makes one lose control of their bowels, among several others. He also carries such tools as smoke bombs, rope, climbing pitons, and antidotes to some of his own poisons.

Nadre's most treasured possession is the artifact entrusted to him by his Clan for the duration of his mission: an ancient and deeply cursed blade. Nadre typically keeps it sheathed and tied to his back, but will wield it in dire emergencies. The sword is a two-handed, single-edged weapon called Bloody Shadow: Malakir, and its cursed blade inflicts a magical hex on whoever is cut by it. Wounds inflicted by Malakir do not clot, close, or heal unless by magic, making even a small cut from it a risk of exsanguination. However, the blade is hungry and curses even the wielder, as Malakir cannot be sheathed after being unsheathed unless it has tasted blood.

While not "equipment" per say, Nadre also typically carries tucked in his clothes several of his limbless "lesser kin," semi-intelligent venomous snakes. He can communicate with his diminutive partners using pheromones, and they are willing to assist him in his mission in exchange for food.

Faction: None, he only claims allegiance to his family in the Black Forest.

Zera, Electromagus

Name: Zera Rallephoron

Age: 29

Gender: Female

Appearance: Zera is an experienced and professional young woman, tall and with strong, long limbs that give her a somewhat masculine silhouette. She has dusky skin, expressive brown eyes, and dark hair in tight ringlets, though she usually keeps her hair tied back while she works. Zera typically wears her magineer's uniform, a red and blue utility jumper, soiled with oil stains and other workplace hazards as it is. She has a tattoo of a dragon coiled around her right forearm, though it's usually covered by her uniform or engineering equipment.

Personality: Somewhat mercurial and unpredictable, Zera can flit through a variety of moods very quickly. While one moment she can be deadly serious and focused on her work, the next she can be bubbly as she excitedly chatters about her current project or research. She's extremely passionate about whatever she chooses to throw herself into, though that passion sometimes expresses itself as days of tireless work in a manic state without food or rest. Her other emotions are just as wild and sometimes explosive, as those who have gotten on her bad side have found out. Truly in love with her work, Zera loves machines and is deeply curious about engineering principles she is not yet familiar with. Though she usually sates this curiosity by disassembling anything she doesn't understand, most of the time she can also put it back together. Despite her mood swings, Zera is very intelligent and knows is one of the best in her field, adept at thinking on her feet and coming up with unorthodox solutions to difficult problems.

Brief Backstory: Zera was born to two loving parents in one of the largest and most advanced settlements in the new world. While she grew up fascinated with tales of adventure outside the city, of artifact hunters and strange monsters, her parents forbade her from leaving the safety of their settlement, and once she came of age she signed up for the city's engineering corps. Zera showed amazing promise, rising steadily through the ranks, and eventually her aptitude for magic granted her training and a position as a magineer, responsible for overseeing the magitech within their settlement's infrastructure. A vital part of what keeps modern-day life civil (for those that live in the cities), magineers ensure that elemental boilers, levitating platforms, and other magitech conveniences continue to function smoothly.

After years of work as a respected magineer, Zera once again began to crave the excitement and adventure that she fantasized about as a child. Years of working in the bowels of cities repairing water mains and flux-power generators had left her longing for the freedom she was sure existed outside the cities. While she merely ruminated on these desires, too set in her ways to act on them, a mysterious discovery in the deepest and oldest foundations of her settlement turned her life on its head. She found an artifact, seemingly discarded in a sub-sub-sub-sub basement, and took it for her own. Seeing this as a sign that she should pack up and start a new life of adventure, Zera submitted a leave of absence to the engineer corps, kissed her mom and dad goodbye, and set off to join up with a band of freelance artifact hunters.

Skills: Zera is a highly skilled and experienced magical engineer. She has comprehensive knowledge of a variety of forms of magical technology, though this surely only scratches the surface of all that exists in the world. While her specialty is civil engineering, particularly electrical engineering, her talents and knowledge are applicable to a variety of different situations, as Zera is adept at improvising and substituting as needed. While her survival skills are admittedly limited, she is a fast learner and is no stranger to uncomfortable or even dangerous situations.

Abilities: As a magineer, Zera is of course capable of using magic. Most of her magic has to do with generating, containing, absorbing, or redirecting electricity, as her engineering specialty was working with the power generators and regulators of her settlement. However she has quite a few other tricks she's picked up in her time, such as having some minor control over metal, heat and fire, sound and thunder, and some light telekinetic abilities.

Equipment: Zera's primary piece of equipment is her magineer's apparatus, a standard-issue device given to each magineer in the engineer corps in her home settlement. Over the years, Zera has customized her apparatus to better suit her needs, and has nicknamed the equipment, "Maverick," and emblazoned it as such. Maverick consists of a copper-alloy gauntlet, and various tubing that connects it to an electro-magical energy tank strapped across Zera's back. The apparatus gives her extremely fine control over her electrical magic, somewhere she can store excess magic energy, and a wellspring she can tap into it as needed. Zera carries a variety of other engineering tools as well, such as spanners, torches, and so on, some of which having been directly incorporated into Maverick.

The artifact Zera found is known as Chemister's Wand: Draconium, and she has yet to entirely figure it out. It resembles a forked staff inscribed with strange runes and gemstones, and as far as Zera can tell it has something to do with elemental magic, or the transmutation thereof. The only function Zera has managed to reliably activate allows Draconium to change one form of elemental magic into another, but its trasmutation only works on fire, ice, and electrical magic. Zera intuits that there are functions to this staff that she has not yet unlocked, but she has not had much time to work on it.

Faction: Though a bonded and unionized member of her home settlement's engineer corps, Zera isn't part of any formal adventuring or artifact hunting organizations.

[Dead Cruiser]

Rakshasa

Full Name: Rakshasa claims his birth name was "Yaun," but will mention in the same breath, "that man is dead."

Nicknames/Aliases: Rakshasa, Hell's Disciple

Age: 30-something, though he claims to have spent hundreds of years in Hell

Gender: Male

Division: Strength

Powers: Rakshasa is allegedly half-demon, which he claims is responsible for his body's extreme power and durability, as well as his ability to use supernatural demonic martial arts. Rakshasa knows a variety of esoteric martial arts techniques that allow him to perform such bizarre feats as flinging spiritual fireballs at his opponents, running on water, or other strange abilities. He also claims to have the ability to transform into a super-powered demonic state, though the consequence for doing so is that he will be dragged back into Hell.

Description: Rakshasa is very tall and powerfully built, but does not come across as gigantic. His musculature is obviously the product of extreme training, and his body has the toughness and strength of steel. While his features are generally handsome, his expression is usually stoic or dour, except when in combat, whereupon he seems to adopt the visage of a snarling demon. His hair and eyes are burning red and yellow, respectively, and his Ajna chakra is so powerfully trained that it glows through his forehead. When not in his battle attire, his dress sense is best described as "trashy," with undersized tee-shirts and shorts usually his standard fare, as he claims that cold and heat have no effect on him.

Personality: Most people that know Rakshasa casually consider him a terrifying lunatic, constantly rambling about something nonsensical and a hair's breadth from a violent outburst at any time. Those that spend more time with him understand the method to his madness, and find him somewhat amiable. While he is certainly violent, he never prosecutes his violence without good reason, though sometimes his reasoning can seem distorted to other people, and he holds his bizarre sense of honor very closely. He fancies himself a warrior-poet, and often cites koans and proverbs that seem disturbing or nonsensical.

Crush: Kill, Destroy

Skills: Rakshasa is one of the preeminent martial artists on the planet earth, his only peers also supernatural or superhuman. He has studied dozens of different styles and forms, many of which he claims are supernatural or otherworldly in origin. Aside from that he is also a master yogi, familiar with several forms of spiritual philosophy, and is a fairly accomplished vegan chef.

Weaknesses: All of Rakshasa's power is self-cultivated, and he has great difficulty working alongside others. His unpredictability can be a curse as much as a benefit when fighting opponents, as his murderous rage can be set off by strange and seemingly innocuous things. There is also the matter that he claims to be hunted by the forces of Hell, but this is as of yet unproven.

Brief History: To hear him tell it, Rakshasa's personal history is strange and mystifying, but none can confirm if what he says is true or not. He alleges that he was born from the union of a demon and a human woman, and grew up alone in the streets of Mumbai with only the ascetic gurus of the inner city to look after him. It was the depravity of living alone in an urban hell as a small child that Rakshasa claims made him "awakened to violence."

Rakshasa spent his youth traveling Asia, learning as much as he could about how to kill a man with his bare hands, and picking up a substantial criminal record along the way. It was deep in the Himalayas that he heard tell of a mystic master that could teach him the martial arts of another world. This was a ploy, however, as he found instead a demonic cult that used him as a human sacrifice, or so he claims. The next part of his tale is the most outlandish, as he claims his soul was banished to Hell, where he learned of his demonic parentage, and did in fact learn demonic martial arts from the denizens of Hell.

After his escape from Hell, which was an epic saga in and of itself according to Rakshasa, he found that almost no time had passed in his centuries in the underworld, and continued to strive to find challenging battles in the modern world. He provoked many other mystic or spiritual superheroes and villains into battling him, assembling a long list of rivals and enemies all the while. However, in recent years he was contacted by the Headmaster of the Lanius School, who propositioned that Rakshasa become his hand-to-hand combat instructor. A mysterious bargain was brokered, and Rakshasa has since fulfilled this role dutifully. Even so, students usually consider him among the strangest and most terrifying of the school' instructors, particularly when he introduces himself by claiming he will only recognize them as worthy if they manage to kill him.

[Dead Cruiser]

Champion

Name: Jagannath, the God-Eater

Gender: Bull

Race: Gaja (Elephantkin Beastman)

Age: 400-something. Middle-aged among his people.

Physical appearance: Jagannath is monstrously large even among his people, standing fifteen feet tall and weighing over eight tons. His skin is thick and leathery, covered in a huge, chaining web of old battle-scars, and has gained a reddish complexion from its usual healthy grey, thanks to the influence of his spiritual magic. The huge, flapping ears on either side of his elephantine head are ragged shreds, and his right eye is dull and sightless.

History: The elephant-folk, who refer to themselves as the Gaja, form nomadic tribes that cross the breadth of the Etheria, traveling in long, circuitous routes passed down through their tribe's oral history and long memories. Despite being giants among other races, the Gaja are renowned for their spiritual and philosophical wisdom, and are mostly ascetics and pacifists. Their huge size and long lives lead them to being few in number, and grow rarer with each passing year.

The beast that would be known as Jagannath was born long ago to one of the wandering Gaja tribes. His earliest years were simple and happy, traveling with his family, foraging for food, and learning his people's thousands of years worth of history and culture. This came to an abrupt end when his tribe crossed the path of a vicious band of brigands calling themselves the "Carrion Kings," led by Simha Storm-Crowned, a powerful lionkin warrior. The Carrion Kings slaughtered his entire tribe, burned all of their huts, fetishes, and other belongings, and painted the young Jagannath in the ashes of his dead relatives. With that, they took him in as one of their own, one of the "dead men."

Now that he was dead, Jagannath performed menial tasks for the Carrion Kings, and suffered their rages with beatings and whippings. Simha saw the potential in the young Gaja thought, and had him trained in his own sword-arts, taking him on as an apprentice. Wherever the Carrion Kings went, they killed, looted, and burned, and Jagannath watched, learned, and eventually came to join in their destructive revelry, but Simha was still the strongest of all. Once Jagannath was of sufficient age and power, Simha told him that the reason he was undefeatable in battle was because he was secretly a Red Knight, a member of a secretive and barbaric religious order of warriors that granted great power to those bold enough to claim it.

Jagannath left the Carrion Kings, as Simha allowed in and none else were strong enough to challenge him, and journeyed south to the savage land of Mumit, the home of the Red Knights. There, he fought for survival and recognition among the followers of the Red God, and searched ancient, abandoned temples for the truth of the Red God and its barbaric "knights." Eventually through brutal struggle he won the right of ascension in the eyes of the Red God, and offered himself as sacrifice at the God's temple in a volcano's heart. Those that undertake this ritual usually come away maimed for life, and this was true of Jagannath, who lost his right eye to the Red God's caprices. Only one task remained for his ascension to be complete: he had to kill his old master.

Jagannath spent years tracking down Simha, and when he found the old lion again, he was an elderly and feeble man, unable to fight or fend him off. Jagannath had no mercy for the man that made him what he was that day. He ripped Simha in half from shoulder to hip with his bare hands, and ate the lion's heart. In that moment, he had the full blessing of the Red God and had truly become Jagannath, the Red God's greatest monster.

In the many years since, Jagannath has been a scourge on the "civilized" nations of the world, and has been the subject of much rumor and myth. Tales of an unstoppable juggernaut, sometimes accompanied by other beasts, sometimes alone, always an engine of death and ruin, are whispered of in cities and temples. It is said that the temples of other gods are his favorite to sack, desecrating their altars and burning their sacred texts. This has given him the epithet of "God-Eater," as it is said that by destroying the sacred relics of other gods, his Red God rewards him by adding their power to his own.

Equipment: Jagannath wears little armor, as his leathery skin is proof against many blades and arrows, and there is not an armorer alive that could make a suit to fit him. Rather, he fastens huge, bronze sheets to his limbs, and has a stylized iron helm the size of a bathtub, which he uses to protect his head and sensitive trunk. Serrated metal blades have been bolted onto his long tusks, making every part of him a dangerous weapon. In terms of armament, he carries into battle a pike hammer as heavy as a human man, as well as a longbow made from a salvaged ballista that he can use to fire huge bolts across the battlefield. His most favored weapon is the blade Ruin, a massive sword made to suit Jagannath's enormous size. An enchanted blade infused with the fury of the Red God, Ruin carries with it the elemental essence of warfare and destruction, and its influence drives others to supreme acts of savagery and brutality.

Abilities: Jagannath is a veteran of hundreds of battles and thousands of duels, and he has never been bested in combat. His huge size and tremendous power are supplemented by extensive and diverse martial training, as he has studied under many schools of martial combat and warfare. Not only a masterful warrior, but also a skilled commander, as his studies on the nature of warfare and massed battles have aided him in his numerous struggles. Jagannath also has the ability to use powerful spiritual magics to enhance his physical abilities to supernatural levels, and imbue his flesh with the power and heat of the Red God. His magics often take the form of a corona of crimson flame that ripples across his skin and armor.

Regiment

Title: Red Knights

Number: 100 Knights, 400~ slaves, apprentices, followers, etc

Specialization: Elite Shock Infantry, Raiders, Cavalry, Linebreakers

Description: The Red Knights are an eclectic group made up almost entirely of savage, predatory beastmen. Every true Red Knight is a seasoned killer, for whom murder is a religious act, and had to kill their predecessor to "earn" their knighthood. All of them have made a flesh sacrifice to their Red God, many in the form of limbs and extremities, but others have given up less obvious parts of themselves. Apart from these commonalities, each Red Knight is a unique combatant, though their intense bloodlust and martial prowess lend them best toward smaller engagements, mounted combat, and any battle where they can tip the spear.

History: The origins of the Red Knights are lost in the ruins of Mumit's long-dead civilization, a thousand years buried in volcanic ash and rock. Those ruins that still carry some of their creators' legends tell of an age where the Red God walked the earth, and appointed its knights personally. In the modern day, the Red Knights are more of a myth to the wider world than a known force. Beastman brigands and raiders are not unheard of in Etheria, and the savage attacks led by Red Knights often go unremarked upon. These occasional attacks by wild fanatics are the most visible mark on the world left by the Red Knights, the vast majority of whom go unnoticed among common soldiers and mercenaries as they ply their bloody trade. Becoming a Red Knight is not an easy ordeal, and many have this life of death and depravity thrust upon them rather than seek it out willingly. Only the most vicious and committed of warriors can survive their training and trials, and to earn a knighthood one must kill their master and take their title for their own. Ostensibly this would mean that the number of Knights stays the same, but their numbers seem to shrink and swell despite that fact.

Country: Mumit is not a country as much as it is an ungovernable no-man's-land. A tropical, volcanic land in the furthest southern reaches of Etheria, Mumit's inhabitants are primarily savage, feral beastmen that live in bestial competition with the unforgiving landscape. It is rumored that tribes of wild men, elves, and even dwarves live among the ruins of Mumit's extinct civilization, outcasts from their people that live as though they were beasts, themselves. The closest thing to an organized body within this anarchic wasteland would be the Red Knights, a bloodthirsty religious order dedicated to the Red God worshiped by the people that were swallowed by the awakening of Mumit's volcanoes.

[Dead Cruiser]

The Black Dragon

Name

Ophidias Seht
The Black Dragon, the Serpent of Chaos, Magician of Black Chaos
Mekhari Khain (formerly)

Age

Though born mortal, Seht's corporeal form has become suffused with magical energies, ensorcelled to render him beyond the physical limitations that bind mortals. As such, he does not age, and more than two thousand years have passed since his birth.

Race

The child that was named Mekhari, born to the house of Khain, was of a people known as the Remet. Originally a mortal desert people that peacefully farmed grains on riverbanks, they came to be enslaved by demons that had been summoned into their native land, and lived for many generations thereafter in bondage. Most lived as slaves, for their labor or sacrifice, but the house of Khain was among the rare few noble families, permitted to commune with the demons and learn their secrets, and ruled their kin as their dark masters' proxy.

Appearance

Seht is a master of transformation and illusion, and so his physical form is mutable and chaotic. The most common avatar he wears among those he considers peers is that of a jester-like sorcerer with pallid skin and long hair of midnight black. Most of his forms have similar characteristics, generally masculine, though lithe, elfin, and dark-haired. In his mortal youth, Mekhari had been an enchanting youth with bronze skin and golden eyes, though he was thin and weak in the chest and limbs.

Background

Born to the desert-dwelling tribe known as the Remet, "Weeping Ones," in their language, was a child named Mekhari, a scion of one of their people's dwindling noble bloodlines. While they had been shaman-lords when the Remet were free, they were now merely foremost among slaves. No Remet had been born out of bondage for thousands of years, and Mekhari of the House of Khain was no exception. The magical talents of Remeti sorcerers were bent toward the enduring oppression of their tribesmen. They had been taught black magic by the demonic slave-masters that called themselves their kings, and were used to enforce cruel edicts, quell dissent, punish the families and neighbors of troublemakers, and crush the spirit of hope among the Remet. The servitude of the masses was stable under their lash, erecting monuments of stone for unknown purposes as their masters dictated, and appeasing their hunger for blood and suffering. Even their dead served, as mummified puppets hewed stone blocks from the earth. While the masses toiled and were tortured, the House of Khain and others like it lived as their masters' lavished pets; gifted with education, great knowledge possessed only by demons, afforded pleasures, comforts, and luxuries, and were even given medicine and restorative magic if they fell ill.

Mekhari was always a sickly child, having barely survived a birth that killed his mother. As he grew, his heart and chest were weak and frail, and his limbs were thin with brittle bones. The magical houses of the Remet were few, and always dwindling, as the gift of magic did not always pass on to every child. Desperate not to lose their master's favor, they had long since resorted to desperate measures to keep their bloodlines intact. As such, Mekhari did not grow to be imperious and terrible like his father or brothers, but his love of books and learning was all the greater, and he spent long whiles through his youth practically buried in the ancient, malefic tomes gifted by their masters.

When Mekhari was on the cusp of manhood, the demons' terrible scheme that had been mortal generations in the making finally came to fruition. The stone pyramids, towers, and other edifices they had constructed formed the structure of a massive ritual. A blood sacrifice like none that had ever been offered before was extracted, and every one of the Remeti sorcerers were present as the chorus to this black sacrament. Their demonic kings lent their own power to the ritual, and it was successful-- at first. Centuries of toil and sacrifice had summoned Apep, the Sun-Eater, a serpentine avatar of pure chaos and apocalyptic destruction. Its very entry into this world absorbed the souls of every living Remeti, and the power emanating from its physical manifestation obliterated every physical trace of their society. All that had been spared were the stone temples and structures that had been part of its summoning, and the mortal sorcerers that had aided in that act. Apep's first and only action in this world was to immediately devour the demons that had summoned it, which cut off the power supplying the ritual, and forced Apep to be unsummoned to the realm from whence it came.

At once stripped of their masters, their homes, and their entire tribe, the sorcerers of the Remet set off in separate ways, into the world at large. The lazy and untalented were quickly made fodder for other demons, or burned as warlocks. Some stuck together as families, and formed covens that bewitched the countryside for generations to come. Others struck out as lone sorcerers and wizards, some turning to good, most remaining evil. Mekhari was among these, setting off on his own with tremendous purpose to accumulate more knowledge and power. In time he would visit every single one of his tribesmen that remained, tracking them across the world (and across dimensions for some), and killed them himself, starting with his father and younger brother.

One of the first lessons Mekhari learned was that names carried power, and unless he wanted to become someone else's slave, he should conceal his own. He took up the sobriquet Ophidias Seht, taking the names from books he remembered from his cloistered youth, about the ancient gods of his people, and foreign treatises on astrology. Another early lesson was that he could not hope to match a demon when measuring power against power. His only hope when confronting demons, as he often did in his pursuits, was to outmatch them in knowledge or preparation. Demons often carry many secrets, and so Seht loved to learn from them, and use their secrets to defeat other demons, only to then learn their secrets as well. In this way Seht learned many varied and powerful magics, manipulating terrifying forces such as elemental death and the void between worlds. All this while Seht could only think of the terrifying power of Apep, and how if he could wield the might of the Chaos Serpent, there would be none that could ever enslave him again.

Centuries passed, and Seht grew powerful. The stronger he became, the easier it became to gain even more power. However, he was always tempered by caution and distrust, which saved his life on many occasions. The schemes of other mages were trivial to foil for one that had been raised as the slave of a demon, and grew up to battle them for their knowledge. Furthermore, he had seen firsthand what overreaching into the forbidden wrought, and it had been the doom of beings powerful enough to enslave nations. His research was methodical, careful to avoid magics that could consume him, or unfair bargains with greater powers. Seht took up a hobby of sorts through his long life and wide experience: trapping noteworthy or rare demons into playing cards, collecting them, and traveling with them so that he might summon them again at his pleasure.

It was only natural that such an august presence as the Demon Lord, a king among kings with a nation of devoted followers, would seek the service of one of the greatest black magicians to ever live. While his task seems childishly simple, Seht of course has an ulterior motive to his service. He plans gain enough power to capture and enslave the Demon Lord himself, which he could use to di the same to Apep, the most powerful chaos god of all, and assume his rightful place as master of the universe.

Skills and Abilities

Ophidias Seht is a black magician of nightmarish strength, with mastery over many different styles and studies of magic, centuries of experiences, and the victor of countless magical battles. He has proved himself more than a match for many demons that greatly outstrip him in raw power, as he can win out through guile, preparation, and the breadth and esotericism of his knowledge. His expertise is focused in powers and lores such as necromancy, void magic, alchemy, psionics, draconic magic, infernal sorcery, diablery, hexes and curses, chaos magick, dimensional travel, pyromancy, sangromancy, umbramancy, oniomancy, ophiomancy, astrology, hypnotism, and haruspicy. He of course knows much of the natural world, mathematics, and philosophy, as would be needed to attain his magical expertise. Seht's physical body is completely suffused with enchantments and spells empowering and protecting his mortal flesh, to the point where magic has taken over for almost all of his vital functions. If one were to manage to pass through his numerous wards and protective spells, and harm his reinforced flesh, magic would keep him alive for the few moments until his flesh was healed.

Quips

Omega

The familiar of Ophidias Seht is the mutant beast he calls Omega. She was the final result of Seht's dragon breeding program, which itself was a product of his lifelong fascination with dragons following him witnessing Apep destroy his people's civilization. With a careful selection of stolen dragon eggs, and painfully extracted dragon hormones, he was able to magically force dozens of generations of dragons to grow, breed, and die in mere decades, accelerating the timetable of his artificial selection by centuries. He suffused the dragons with enhancing magics and dark blessings until their bodies were saturated, and chose the children that kept those traits, enchanted them, and repeated the process. This often carried painful, unwanted side effects though, and after fewer generations than he had hoped, the dragons began to pass on defects and mutations. Many eggs were stillborn, and more did not survive long past birth. Omega was the final, and most successful subject of these experiments, a mutant dragon suffused with darkness to her core. A sleek, silvery-grey beast with five heads, she is a creature of ferocious, evil power, and cold, predatory intelligence. Normally she would hold no affection for Seht, and likely kill and devour him for the crime of her birth. However, he has implanted powerful mind-altering crystals into her brain, forcing Omega into slavish loyalty. This terrifying, hulking monstrosity accompanies Seht into pitched battle, or wherever he wishes to terrify others into compliance.

To Be Filled With Trivia Spontaneously

Seht currently holds 108 different demons enslaved in his deck of cards. These correspond each to a symbolic figure on the card. These are his rarest and most treasured minions, valued greatly over the ghosts, undead, and other entities he can summon to do his bidding.

Seht's skills in political maneuvering and subterfuge were forged in his noble house, as his family and their peers would often scheme and sabotage each other to gain their demonic masters' favor. In his youngest years, before he had learned deadly curses, Mekhari favored poison in the wine cup as a means of dispatching rivals. He killed two of his brothers this way before reaching age fifteen.

The ruins of the demonic ritual site that destroyed the Remet now serve as Seht's home and headquarters. The stone monuments and much of the ground below them has been hollowed out to form his lair. The ruins serve as the hub of Seht's network of leylines, portals, and teleportation circles, allowing him to travel great distances with almost no effort. Besides that, his lair is warded with powerful geocentric enchantments and charms, guarded by numerous malevolent entities under Seht's control, and the land itself is cursed and inhospitable, teeming with tortured Remeti ghosts. The location is now known as the Tomb of Chaos or the Serpent's Lair.

An avid alchemist, Seht has crafted a series of homunculi through advanced alchemical practice. They are each very different, and serve different purposes for him. The first he created, and weakest is Nigrido, who resembles a many-eyed humanoid made of living tar. Nigrido is Seht's most "domestic" familiar, and serves as his equerry, butler, and bodyguard on many excursions.

Seht's magical focus of choice is called the Leviathan Staff, a deeply cursed magical staff. Carved from the bones of a demonic whale-beast, adorned with the preserved skull of a snake-demon, with "eyes" that are orbs of concentrated chaotic power, the staff serves as a locus of prepared spells, a reservoir of stored magical energy, and either a magnifier or focus for Seht's spells. To those with magical or spiritual sight, the staff takes the form of a searing black tear in reality. An artifact of chaos, the staff is capable of warping its shape to better match Seht's forms and disguises.