Calix Falborough
AGE:24
APPEARANCE:
Standing at a towering 148 cm, weighing in at a mighty 42 kg, and with three sizes of B71|W59|H73, Cali can just barely pass as a teenage girl. In that most people would probably think he's a tween girl. There's not any ill magic, nor malicious eugenics schemes at work, at least, none Cali knows of. Seems to just be wierd genetics being wonky. Cali blames inbreeding between high blooded families, because he's of course certain he's descended from nobility. Given how odd a beard would look on someone like himself, he's just committed to the aesthetic and removed it. No matter the fact that he could probably buy the entire ice cream shop himself, convincing someone to buy some for you just never gets old.
PERSONALITY
~"Aha..Ahahee..Mwahahahahahahaa!"~ If you couldn't tell by the screen name 'Sura, the Artisan of Calamity', Cali likes hamming it up, and playing the big bad evil guy for the heroes to defeat. He loves the chewing the scenery and melodrama. He loves being the showy badguy that is inevitably taken down by the good guys.
~"Pretty Please? I promise I'll be good."~ That said, Cali isn't afraid of begging and is fairly shameless. Cali is more than willing to cry crocodile tears or promise everything without the slightest intention to follow through. Cali does enjoy the deceptive part of his appearance, even if his avatar Sura is meant to be taken more seriously.
~"Humanity defines itself as much by what it reviles as what it adores."~ And what's a good villain monologue without some 'humanity needs conflict, thrives on struggle' blah blah faux-philosophy. Still, for someone whose invested as much of their time as Cali has on actually doing that by giving people a villain to fight against, one might wonder how much Cali actually believes it.
~"Ptchou! Bakow! Boom! FWOOM!"~ For all the more serious philosophical parts, there is also the very real part of Cali that is just the little boy who still enjoys smashing action figures against each other and making explodey noises. Similarly, there's probably more reasons than just Hindu symbolism for picking a very nearly naked female avatar.
~"Behold, the destruction that is monument to what was but is no more!"~ Cali has a rather interesting take on the motto 'you don't know what you've got till it's gone'. And Cali sometimes feels like it's better for something to die, so nostalgia can blossom without being checked by reality, and how the creation can be recreated without being tied back by the old.
BACKGROUND:
While Haven online is certainly the most dramatic rise to power and wealth in recent years that has put all its competitors to shame, there are other industries that just don't care because they're in entirely different industries. The Falborough family owns a massive shipbuilding industry. The global economy isn't going to stop needing to send millions of tons of one good or another across the ocean just because a great VR came out. Sure, the pleasure cruise industry might have dampened down a little, but that's just a part of a heavily diversified pie.
Inside his father's wealthy company, Cali has one of those sorts of office jobs where you spend 30 minutes replying to emails and filling a few forms out at the beginning and end of the day. He's not very ambitious. Between the family money and his too large salary for the work he actually does, he has more than enough money to live comfortably. Like waaay more. He has other siblings and proteges more likely to continue the family business better than he could.
It is thus, that with his copious free time and cushy life style, Cali has turned to Haven to give a purpose to his life. And decided to become a megalomaniacal villain. Funny how life goes.
TALENTS AND SKILLS:
Cali is fairly good at passing for a girl. Or young boy. The looks he was born with and he's got the voices down pat.
Cali has LOTS of money, given a job he's overpaid for due to nepotism, the collected wealth of many years of allowance larger than most people's salaries, and exorbitant gifts every birthday and Christmas. Especially seeing he doesn't have particularly expensive tastes and doesn't spend a lot.
Cali is actually quite a skilled biker and roller skater, given he has given up on trying to drive around in motorized vehicles for constantly getting pulled over and having to explain that 'yes, I really am 24 and have a license and this ID isn't faked' for several hours.
Cali knows how to navigate office life fairly well, knowing how to send and reply to emails, fill out forms, and look busy while keeping one's head down.
Sura, Artisan of Calamity
STATS:
STR: ▰▱▱▱▱▱
STA: ▰▰▱▱▱▱
DEX: ▰▰▰▱▱▱
INT: ▰▰▰▱▱▱
WIS: ▰▰▰▰▱▱
LUC: ▰▰▰▰▱▱
ABILITIES
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Karmic Magic: Quantified Fate
Sura is a user of an unusual type of magic that uses the caster's luck stat as a resource bar. By default, unlocking the Karmic Magic tree allows you to still do with your luck whatever normal luck could do, except you get to consciously control it. In return, however, you 'pay' luck to do so, and you lose the chance to just get lucky normally.
If a person with a luck stat of 3, killing a certain boss, gets a 15% chance to get X rare drop, and a 5% chance to get Y super rare drop, a Karma user with the same luck could guarantee that after fighting that certain boss 10 times, they WILL get Y super Rare drop, but they will lower their luck to 2 by doing so, and will never get the X rare drop on any of their attempts nor is there any possibility they could get Y twice, or early, as they are actively manipulating their fate and sacrificing the potential of that outcome for a sure deal.
Another way of stating this is that a Karma user can spend a point of luck to dodge a hit or negate a critical, but they will never passively do this for free with their luck. They sacrifice the no cost nature of luck normally, in return for being able to demand when they get their luck procs. This can make Karma users "nova" type compared to normal luck users, where they perform super lucky in the opening moments of the fight, until they quickly run out of resources.
Karma points are slowly returned by just doing anything that normally has a luck element. You could grind for mobs that have a rare drop, and, you'll never get the rare drop. But you will regen your Karma, which you could eventually spend to manipulate fate and get the rare drop for sure, if you wanted. Or save it for what you find more important.
Karmic Magic: Calamity Conflux
Sura's signature ability, her namesake and claim to fame, is the Calamity Conflux. This allows her to store up Karma in a 'Conflux', building it up beyond her normal capacity limitations, as long as she keeps returning and feeding the Conflux more and more Karma. Eventually, the accumulated Karma will begin summoning calamity upon the land. Great storms, earthquakes, volcanos, whatever natural disaster could go wrong and ruin the area, will eventually start threatening the area. Once it reaches this point, it will feed off of luck in the area, giving everyone bad luck and accelerating the pace and intensity of disaster. Eventually, it will totally devastate the area. Fortunately, it's relatively fragile, and without Sura protecting it, it can be quickly and easily broken. And it takes like a month for Sura to feed it enough Karma to even get to that point. Still, once it's made, as long as she's in the area Sura can spend her Karma for far more offensive and overt actions than it normally could be, such as opening a fissure in the ground to impede the charge of a knight. Which still isn't THAT directly offensive, but, more so than normal.
Karmic Magic: Blessed Reincarnation
A less dramatic, but to Cali, just as important skill to acquire for Sura as the Artisan of Calamity, ability, that allows the player to make those they kill respawn with all their items still on them. In return, the user gains back a point of Luck/Karma up their maximum. In general, the idea is 'if you're ganking a group, you might give up looting one person to gain some karma to help you take down the rest', but in Sura's case, she doesn't want people to lose their stuff over fighting her. It's just win win in her case, cause she doesn't want to loot people anyway. However, this ability doesn't work on the new report system penalties.
Mudra Magic: Symbolic Seals
Mudra magic is at heart a way of 'pre-casting' spells, by reserving your limbs to hold certain specific formation. It's useful for a caster-type character like Sura who doesn't have all that high an intellect to reduce or bypass casting times. The tradeoff is that wise enemies can discern what magic you have prepared, or disrupt your arm's symbols, to disrupt them. But, like, nobody maxes Wis, so you're probably safe, right?
Mudra spells typically have a "casting reserve" which is the limbs that must be occupied to have that spell ready to cast, and some have a "casting execution" which is an action or condition to be met while the spell is actually being used.
Mudra Magic: Punish Stubbornness
Casting Reserve: 2 Arms
Casting Execution: Maintain Line of Sight on target through symbol made by two reserved arms, without moving further or closer away.
A very strange space warping ability, the user looks at the target through the symbol made by their two hands, and causes the target to be unable to move further or closer to them. The target can still move side to side or up and down in relationship to the caster, and doing such may break the spell if the target is faster than the user (if they can't maintain the casting execution). But space warps around the target such that they cannot advance closer or retreat further away, no matter how fast they can go.
Mudra Magic: Unity Mantle
Casting Reserve: 2 Arms
Casting Execution: Touch with the two casting arms, two objects that are at least 90 degrees or more different in orientation from you.
The user melds the inertias of the two objects touched. For example, if Sura was in the corner of a building, and someone was trying to snipe her with an armor piercing round through one of the walls, if Sura used this ability, one on each wall of the building, then the bullet when it hit the first wall, would face resistance as if it was passing through both walls at once, and debris would spray out from both walls, as if they they were both hit. If someone tried to cut Sura with a giant pair of scissors, Sura could use this on both the blades of the scissor, and each of them struggling to move towards her to cut her would cancel each other out, because they're moving in opposite directions.
Mudra Magic: Circle of Awareness
Casting Reserve: 2 Arms
Casting Execution: Close your Eyes
The user becomes supernaturally aware of all happening within a short distance of them, determined by Int. For Sura, it's currently about 4 meters. Very useful at avoiding attacks from melee ambushers, but not so much ranged ambushers, what with having your eyes closed.
Mudra Magic: The Living Sight
Casting Reserve: 2 Arms
Casting Execution: Close your eyes
This allows the user to 'see' all living things, and no non-living things. This can be very useful for detecting ambushes, as long as you don't mind not seeing robot or golem avatars, or knowing what the targets are wearing. It's also not very good at spotting people who are hiding in living underbrush. Can be used at the same time as Circle of awareness, bypassing some of the weaknesses of both, but that uses up 4 hands, and you still can't see everything you normally would, such as, for example, a sentry gun futher than four meters away.
Mudra Magic: Lotus Levitation
Casting Reserve: 2 Legs
While not true flight, this hovering levitation negates all falling damage and allows the user to bypass many ground based obstacles, such as rough terrain. With the legs held Indian style, the user gets the most height. Very low mana cost compared to true flight abilities means that someone with good Wis (like Sura) can pretty much just leave this on all the time.
Mudra Magic: Step Between Fingertips
Casting Reserve: 2 Arms, 2 Legs
Casting Execution: Step between one object and another matching object within line of sight.
This is a league-step or flash-step type ability, with the requirement that the things you are stepping between be thematically or visually similar. Such as from one hilltop to another hilltop, or from atop one stalk of bamboo to another.
Mudra Magic: Judgment Made Manifest
Casting Reserve: At least two Arms, but up to as many as you want (in pairs) for more power.
Casting Execution: Punch something.
Sura has a TON of tricky, situational abilities. However, sometimes you need something simple and reliable, and this is it. You punch, and a phantasmal force backs you up and does the real damage (unless you happen to have higher Str than Int). If you punch, and nothing's there, the phantasmal force projects out and deals the damage.
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INVENTORY:
While Sura does carry a big ass spear, her strength is crap and it's actually there for the boost to Mudra Magic, specifically Judgment Made Manifest, where it can be used in place of a fist to make it into a piercing attack instead of blunt. Basically all her gear is statbuffs for her casting with very little else interesting going on there. Of note it that Sura doesn't really have healing potions or stuff like that very frequently, as her Karmic Magic makes it difficult to farm for base level mats, even as it makes it easy to get rare drops. Instead, she carries a wheel and symbol that provide increased health and mana regeration respectively.
NOTABLE FEATURES: Sura is a player who specializes in finding areas of the game all the players have forgotten about and started ignoring as new stuff comes along. Places abandoned by their content creators as well as those who once explored. Then he schemes elaborate doomsday scenarios that threaten those areas, to try and revitalize interest in the area. And if no one comes to stop him? Well, he'll turn the place into a cataclysmic work of art.
