Behind the AvatarName: Trần Quốc Chau
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Bio:
In short, Chau fell for a gamer nerd.
In her second year of college, she met Khang. At the time, no one would ever guess the diligent, bespectacled student spent almost all of his free time gaming. Her expectations were shattered when she found out, but Chau was nothing, if not persistent.
Once they started dating, she tried prying him away from his console games, which worked for a time, but he always went crawling back. After repeated begging, pleading, and shedding enough crocodile tears to fill an Olympic swimming pool, she capitulated and started playing.
That was a mistake.Chau has what you might call an addiction-prone personality, and will get can wildly obsessed over the most trivial of things. YGGDRASIL proved to be very addicting, and the two played together quite often. Khang was content. It was one of the few ways, he and his old high school friends could keep in touch, and he'd finally convinced his girlfriend to start playing too.
But the good times didn't last. New jobs. College graduation. Girlfriends. Husbands. Kids. Slow and inexorable changes in their real lives forced them to stop playing eventually. Khang and Chau eventually started to settle down. Once their son, Nầm, was born, they stopped playing entirely.
A chance text message from one of their old guild mates invited both of them to a closing party, since the game server was going to be shutdown. The old team wanted to have one last hurrah to reminisce. Khang left early to be ready for work the next day, while Chau stayed after, reading through the guild logs and immersing herself in nostalgia.
The AvatarName: December
Appearance:
Race: Heteromophic Race - Chimera
Gender: Female
Character Level: 100
Alignment: -50 | Post-Shutdown: 150 (Good-natured, if a little unpredictable)
Racial Class:
Chimera 15
Beast Shaper 10
Shaper Savant 5
Job Class:
Godclaw Scion 5
Winter Tyrant 5
Alchemist 15
Transmutation Specialist 10
Beast Tamer 10
Others 25
Fighting Style: Most at home in a body with horns, sharp claws and fangs, December typically fights like a feral animal and never holds back against her opponents. Melee combat is her expertise, and her shapeshifting ability is a means to an end, so she can close the gap and engage her opponent quickly. Her attacks may be swift and powerful, but the magic that enhances them is the real danger.
Strengths:
December can transform into a variety of animals with many different forms and sizes. From the diminutive mouse to a thalassic leviathan of colossal proportions, she has a variety of forms to choose from, allowing her to assume one that most suits the situation at hand. Through partially or completely transforming her body to take on different animalistic features--horns, wings, venomous fangs, spiked tails, thick fur, armored scales, and so on--she adapts her physical form to counter her opponent's tactics and tries to keep the advantage. Like all bestial shapeshifters, her raw physical attributes are increased when she transforms.
The character December was specialized with both PvE and a few specific raid bosses in mind. In particular, December trained to fight extremely large enemies or large numbers of enemies. As such she is well-suited to pulling the entire room and kiting it death.
Chimera are amalgam creatures shaped by powerful arcane magic, as such December shares their racial traits which offer moderate resistance to magic in general, and an especially high resistance against arcane magic. Her inhuman physiology causes her slowly regenerate her HP, and causes poisons and diseases to behave differently--they are either inert, more potent, slow acting, or causes a different set of effects entirely.
Weaknesses:
While a versatile offense is useful, her abilities make it difficult to handle large groups of extremely agile enemies or those who can consistently exploit a long-range advantage. Her class skills make wide open spaces her preferred combat arena, and fighting in tight spaces can be especially troublesome for her.
The Winter Tyrant abilities also come with an inherent vulnerability to the fire attribute. She is aware of this chink in her otherwise well-rounded defenses, and has a few items to help alleviate the problem. Low-tier Fire magic she can shrug off or dispel with little effort, especially if they come from an arcane source, but higher tier fire spells are still a significant threat and require special preparation to overcome.
Equipment:
Ring of the Golem Emperor = Received from a special crafting event, December is recognized by all golems and other animated constructs as a superior existence. She can issue commands to any one of them that she can see and that can hear her. Who made them or programmed them is irrelevant. The golem will follow her orders to the exclusion of everyone else's, but only until her instructions for a given task has been completed, or unless the order is impossible to follow. Moreover, they can only respond to one command at a time. Constructs will not engage her in combat, although Relic-Tier constructs and higher may elect to ignore her commands if they have their own will.
Winter Tyrant's Set = This unified set of gear makes December immune to any kind of frost damage and the
frozen condition. Magic with the frost element targeting her is instantly absorbed and refills her MP according to the strength of the spell.
The chest piece empowers her frost element so any damage is treated as
frostburn, which reduces the enemy's maximum HP instead of dealing damage normally. The shoes allow her to create ice platforms out of thin air for her to step on, allowing her walk through the air. The gloves allow her frost damage to ignore any special resistances. The other items confer similarly thematic buffs.
Pets/Minions = During her time in YGGDRASIL, December tamed and befriended a wide variety of monsters in the taiga and glacial zones. She was on relatively good terms with the Frost Dragons, and on more than one occasion took side quests to protect egg clutches from Frost Giant raids. She never really kept pets per say, often letting her tamed monsters roam free, but she tried to visit them periodically.
At one point, she crafted several Ice and Mithral Golems to protect her old guildhall. She took pride in making her personal golems closely resemble animals in the wild or other characters from the guild, so they seemed less like robotic automatons and more like living, breathing creatures. She had built several golems by commission as well, but by far the strongest one she had made to date was Lexus Dominiel, which also the first and only divine-class golem she had ever created. Lexus was the result of group crafting project during a special event, where she, her husband's character, and another guild mate, IYamWhatIYam, pooled their crafting resources and made a superior divine construct.
There are only two servants that December typically kept with her while she was adventuring with Khang. The first is a Homonculus Wizard named
Akena. She was the first successful homonculus NPC December had ever created. The second is
Myr, a Dark Valkyrja. By accidentally failing some of her quest objectives in a specific order, she gained the opportunity to help redeem Myr instead of slaying her. December received a magic horn as a symbol of Myr's loyalty.
AbilitiesFellcalling = With a threatening warcry or bolstering howl, she can grant temporary buffs to any subordinates and allies who can hear or see her. The buffs are quite strong, but don't last long and aren't suited for prolonged fights. Additionally, her roar can produce concussive sonic blasts capable of pulverizing stone.
Master Transmuter = Mastery of transmutation spells afford December some specific protections and is thus immune to petrification or any form-altering spell, unless she wishes to be affected by it. Moreover, her spells are especially potent, allowing her to transform mundane materials, like stone, into rare, albeit raw materials like unprocessed silver or rough gemstones. Similarly, she could turn a muddy pond into wine or a noisy human into a statue of volcanic glass. The problem lies in the cost prohibitive Mana consumption and cool down times, which don't scale down very much even at higher levels.
It does, however, make crafting and upgrading much easier. The item is instantly transmuted into the desired final product after all the necessary materials have been gathered and an appropriate amount of MP is spent.
Godclaw Inheritor = December's natural weapons--goring horns, slashing claws, stomping hooves, and so on--are enhanced to the point of being divine-class weapons. However, all her weapon slots count as being occupied, and she can never equip any other weapon or shield. She receives no item or set benefits whatsoever and the item's durability quickly deteriorates if she tries to wield them.
Avatar of the Winter Tyrant = A rare innate talent that Chau randomly acquired when she first created her character, December. Her physical attacks are automatically imbued with the frost element, causing a
slow effect. It also artificially increases the tier of any frost element spell by 1 (max 6) without increasing its cost or casting time. It has a few other minor benefits, such as automatically acclimating to extremely low temperatures, altitude, and being completely unhindered by winter terrain or weather (magical or mundane).
Frozen in Time = In a pinch, December can suspend a spell in time by freezing it with her magic. It doesn't prevent the spell from being cast, but it delays its manifestation. If the caster is defeated before the spell manifests, it fizzles. Keeping a spell suspended, however, slowly drains her Mana and drains it more rapidly depending on the strength of the spell. She must be aware the spell is being cast and be able to perceive its caster in some way. She can freely end the effect at any time.
Fimbulvetr = Earned as a reward for a series of solo quests, it is a manifested ability that functions as Super-Tier magic. December summons an apocalyptic winter storm around herself rife with bizarre magical effects. The howling boreal winds slow all movement to a crawl and carry razor sleet that can pierce through mundane walls and ramparts. Hail erupts in a burning cold flame when it makes impact and also causes
frostburn. The snow slowly rusts and corrodes all but the toughest of metals, and the accumulating rime can quickly cover an area in several inches of ice.
By nature it is difficult to dispel and its massive area of effect makes it useful against armies of mobs, but it also doesn't distinguish between friend or foe, and is exceedingly dangerous for anything that's not immune to frost damage or the caster herself.
How a normal human would view her: While she normally transforms into a beast in combat, she can appear as an unassuming young human or beastkin girl while she is in town.
