Clayton
: 20
Appearance:
Clayton is certainly an unusual figure to behold. Unlike most of his fellows, and in particular contrast to at least one of them, nearly his entire body is covered at all times by a combination of cloth and metal. Whilst his faded black jeans, shoes, and brown leather duster are all relatively normal-seeming, his entire torso is covered by a thick slab of gunmetal armour plating; whether or not this is effective as an actual defense may or may not be in question, considering his usual foes. Moreover, his head is almost always covered with a gas mask in public, hiding his features behind black filters and red lenses. Even his fellow orphans are not aware of his current appearance (or at least he seems to think so), at least at the present time; what is known is that his hair was brown, his eyes were green, and his skin was fairly light (and still is, at least on his fingers). He presently stands at around 175cm tall, with a decently strong build from lugging a full-body armoured vest around for most of each day.
Personality: Frequently, Clayton tends to act in a manner that is both blunt and cocky in equal measure. When talking, he’ll try to get right to the point rather than tiptoeing around something or pretending something isn’t so, often seeming stubborn when he has his mind set on something being just so, and in a battle, he’ll wade right into the fray, fighting the Deamis with casual, almost arrogant confidence. The reasons for this latter point are fairly simple: on the one hand, he believes heading into a fight as if he’s invincible will spur the other orphans to fight with equal confidence; and on the other, having only truly lost a fight with a Deamis once before, and that when he was much younger and less skilful, he does in fact consider himself essentially invincible, buying into his own hype a bit too much for his own good.
By contrast, his bluntness is somewhat of an extension of another trait: socially speaking, he is a bit dense, and past efforts to act otherwise with his comrades have largely gone poorly, leading him to simply not try at all. What’s the harm, after all, with being honest with friends? Yet sometimes, that doesn’t work so well either, and past outbursts from the more volatile orphans due to his blunt nature have led him to largely avoid verbal confrontations, as he knows full well he won’t fare well beyond any initial defensiveness about a point.
In any case, he does care for and about the other orphans, even if he’s not often on good terms with some of them. In particular, whilst he does consider himself unkillable, he often conveys a great deal of concern over the injuries the others suffer, especially the more serious wounds such as Nyx’s spinal injury. Who else is he going to care about if he loses them, after all? To that end, he also recognises and has come to accept that they may all suffer through failure at times, as they have all shown they are ultimately fallible even at their strongest - save, of course, his own belief in his invulnerability.
God and Deamis:
Khthon, the Warden of the Gods - Deity of the Earth and of Prisons
When the planet was born, he existed, but was yet to mature, for the young earth was hot and roiling. Soon, though, his nascent consciousness grew impatient, yearning to be free of its unconscious prison, and Khthon came to be sooner than anticipated, cooling the lava of the world to solid rock and ground. For his impatience, though, his power was seemingly incomplete; the ground he cultivated was dull and dry without others to imbue it with life, he could not demand the planet's inner layers become solid rock too, and a fraction of the planet's youthful anger constantly burned within him, making him somewhat arrogant and unaware of his limits. It may also have been that these would always have been his limitations, but who could say?
Nonetheless, when the time came to imprison the Deamis, his inner arrogance meant he felt the need to prove his worth, and so his contribution to the construction of the barrier between this dimension and theirs was disproportionate, and in a way linked it to himself and his power directly, feeding it constantly. This act cemented his role as the warden of the deities, and amongst mortals, he was taken to be a sort of protector of the weak, both literally protecting the weak from harm and keeping those who might use their strength to wrongly harm others restrained and incapable of lording it over their lessers. Yet this same act later proved his undoing, for though one demonic king could not have destroyed the barrier alone, it didn't occur to him that all of them would cooperate to do so, and its destruction damaged him greatly, rending his power and leaving him a poor fighter in the ensuing war.
Long story short, he was soundly defeated, and imprisoned as he had imprisoned the Deamis for so long. Yet, though his pride and power were both broken, this was not the end of his tale; over many decades, he drew the scattered fragments of his power back to him, and finally burst free from his cell to return to the other gods. Though he is still greatly weakened, his arrogance has only been reignited by this event, and one can only imagine it will continue to rise as his power continues to return to him.
Babelam, Queen of Madness and Broken Spirits
All the deities knew of Khthon's arrogant pride, so much so that he poured himself into the barrier between dimensions. What they didn't know was that he visited the realm of the Deamis very regularly, toying with even their kings as one might laugh at a collection of zoo animals, and fleeing to safety when he felt threatened; none were affected more than Babelam, formerly an entity of no particular birthright, but probably the closest thing to a "free spirit" the Deamis had, in the sense that she did whatever she pleased, travelled wherever her fractured mind took her at incredible speed, killing everything in her path and sending everything about her into a similar state of mania, her psyche breaking down and reforming as often as her desires changed. To this embodiment of lunatic freedom, who drew his attention for how little she seemed to care about the cage she was in, Khthon took great joy in exercising his powers to bind her, restrict her, prevent her from running wild as she so preferred, and often to tease her by letting all but one restraint free and making that last binding unbreakable, a false freedom that drove her to agonised fury time and again.
Eventually, however, she came to accept this. Though she did indeed lose her mind frequently, more often than she had in the past, she also brought herself around to, in a sense, acquire the power she had been bound with, intentionally restricting her mania with the very binds intended to limit her strength. From her bound position, she held her thoughts together for longer and longer stretches, long enough to start commanding the beings about her with her newfound control of her psychotic abilities. Some were made to channel themselves into her, bolstering her strength further and further; others were retained as beasts of burden, entities doing her will beyong her locks; and others still were tasked with breaking the divine chains that she could not shatter alone.
Ultimately, a combination of these efforts and her ever-increasing power allowed her to bend the chains binding her to her will, forming and reforming them as she pleased - and though she nonetheless had to pretend she was still truly bound to fool Khthon for a time, it was not long before the Deamis conspired to free themselves from their prison, and she found herself one of the heads of this conspiracy. As such, when she and the other demonic kings shattered the barrier, it was with a clear head and an army of minions that she approached the weakened deity of earth, laughing as she beat him into metaphorical gravel; after this, she left him for a while to the tender mercies of the Deamis he had mocked for so long, and then encased him with a power very similar to his own, coming along every so often between driving entire cities insane to whittle away at his pride and arrogance.
In the modern era, Babelam is a rather passive entity who has practically all she desires. Though she spends most of her time seemingly hibernating, encased within her own wings to form a sort of blue chrysalis at the heart of a city of frenzied and demon-corrupted humans, her body warps across the world regularly, rising from the earth for a time, and for miles around turning the meek rabidly furious, and the pride tame to the bloodlust of the mad. On the rare occasions somebody seeks her out before she moves again, they might find her to be unusually weak, enough that even a mere human could stand a chance of defeating her... at least, until she releases some of her restraints, and they realise that these are merely to weaken her for the sake of challenge, and for the sake of destroying their hope and pride. It's not clear what happens to people who suffer this fate; it is theorised that she intentionally imprisons them the way she imprisoned Khthon for so long, allowing their minds to fester in their failure and eventually go mad from the isolation. One wonders whether death would be more merciful.
Weapons:
Babelam’s FaceUnsurprisingly, Khthon is not fond of Babelam. In light of this, it makes a lot of sense why he would gift his scion a large shield bearing her image; what better way to strike her in the face than to have the Deamis do it, after all? And if it shatters, no matter, for the entire shield is crafted of pure marble, and consequently, Clayton is able to use his geokinesis to reshape its form however he pleases - restoring it to its base appearance when damaged, sharpening its edges or forming spikes on its surface to decapitate and impale his foes, reshaping it into a crude, yet highly effective two-handed sword, or even intentionally splitting it into an asteroid field in miniature, each lump of marble a potentially deadly projectile.
Shield form:
Sword form:
:
Geokinesis - 0 - Earth/KhthonThe god of earth has been quite gracious to his scion. So long as his body or his clothing is in contact with an earthly material, notably any form of silt, clay, sand, rock, or natural mineral, Clayton is able to manipulate all earth and rock of the same substance within ten meters of himself with a great deal of freedom. One would expect such an ability to be highly defensive, and indeed, whilst it is very good at protecting him from harm, he also uses it to travel far more rapidly than one might expect him to be capable of - from surfing on a wave of dirt, to launching himself off of an erupting rock spire, and even travelling up sheer cliff faces, his mobility is exceptional for his elemental affinity.
The problem, of course, with touching the ground to control it is that staying in contact with the ground whilst flinging oneself through the air via rock spire or most other means is understandably quite difficult. Moreover, whilst a concrete surface can be manipulated handily enough, he couldn't also manipulate a marble statue unless he made contact with that as well, and a wooden floor, steel beam, or even carpet will leave him high and dry, though of course not utterly defenseless given his weapons and the innate power all of the orphans bear.
Isolation - 0 - Earth/KhthonAn extension of Clayton's innate geokinesis, imbued with just a touch of Khthon's power to imprison, grants Clayton the ability to use this ability whenever he could use his geokinesis, with the same corollary on contact, but not materials. No matter what earthen substance Clayton touches, this power will throw out a burst of what appears to be sand either towards specific targets or in a radius around him, to a maximum distance of ten meters or so.
Any sentient being caught in this burst of sand will be struck by the illusion of utter isolation: most commonly, they will believe themselves to be either trapped within an infinite sandstorm, confined within four grey stone walls, or buried alive in a tomb with rock and soil pressing in around them. In all cases, they will think themselves alone, even if another creature was caught in the same sand blast as them, and if left to their own devices, most lesser Deamis, animals, and regular humans will be driven mad by the prison crafted within their minds, incognizant of the real world.
That being said, the typical primal Deamis and Clayton's fellow orphans will generally have greater power and a firmer grasp on the nature of this illusion, and can handily break it with a few minutes of concentration, or even a few seconds if they realise and focus hard upon the impossibility of the situation; the Deamis kings themselves, meanwhile, are much too powerful relative to Clayton to fall prey to such a simple trick, and if they're affected at all, they will merely be stunned briefly by the notion.
Reflect - 0 - Pride/BabelamCompared to the earthly powers of Khthon, Babelam's corruption of Clayton's being is very simple in nature: when this ability is activated, his skeletal muscles are locked in their current position, and any melee attack made against him until the abilility is deactivated will harm the attacker accordingly instead of Clayton. The obvious catch to this, of course, is that Clayton cannot move whilst the ability is active, though this is surprisingly less of a detriment than one might expect when he can still utilise his geokinesis in tandem; the less obvious catch is that it specifically reflects harm from melee attacks, and indeed from melee attacks: his muscles are not made super-hard due to their paralysis, so environmental harm such as a long fall will still damage his body correspondingly, whilst damage from an arrow or bullet will not return to its originator, ensuring that he must get in close or make good use of his other options to avoid any injuries from long-distance threats.
Relationships:
This is the part that allows me to gauge whether or not you are actually engaging with the members of this RP. This RP lives or dies with the efforts of the members. I can write amazing set pieces, but that’s not going to do much good without members.
In this section you will write
[Insert name] - [your standing with them]
[and a brief description of your relationship with them]
Member
Fetzen
Marik
Rothurage
Grijs
Willy Vereb
Phase
gammaflux
Gordian Nought
Enigmatik