Name: Caelum Adalbern
Nickname: Hermit
Species: Seraphim
Age: 21
Hair Color: Lilac
Hair Style:
Short, shoulder length hair that is unkempt and naturally messy.
Eye Color:
Violet
Skin Color:
Pale
Height:
5’9”
Body Build:
Thin and wiry, with almost no muscle at all
Clothing:
A thick, navy blue robe with ornate gold gilding and an overbearing hood which shadows the majority of his face. A cape of midnight black is thrown over his shoulders, hiding his skinny frame and giving him great bulk, while he is physically very weak. His hand, however, are always covered in black leather gloves.
Physical Quirks:
He skin is unnaturally unscarred and smooth, although what remains under his hands can be anyone’s guess. However, an experiment early on in his life left the top half of his face paralyzed. While he can still blink, he can no longer show any expression from the nnose upwards, so that any genuine smiles always seem mocking and sardonic.
Weapons:
Grimoire, Rune cards and Rune magic
Background:
Rune magic is a very specialized field of magic. It has both the potential to be a great, destructive force, and also a benevolent healing power. Both ends of the spectrum, however have the same thing in common. The spells take a greater amount of time than can be achieved alone on a battlefield. While there are spells that can be quickly cast in the field, the strength of rune magic remains in preparation, and that preparation needs time, time which a mage does not have in the chaos of combat. It is for this reason that any of the few rune mages employed in the military are left to organize defenses, and so it should come as no surprise that the capital of Aldarich is heavily guarded by rune mages and their many, many traps, each layer more deadly and complicated to unseal than the last.
Caelum is the son of a pair of researchers who specialized in Rune Magicks, devoting their entire lives to improving that art for the sake of progress. They created powerful spells as they tried different rune combinations, some harmless, and even beneficial sometimes, others being so destructive that even the Council, the ruling body of the Seraphim, took interest for purposes of war and defense. Caelum, like his parents, had an insatiable curiosity to see what would happen when one did something or other to another thing, which, of course, led to many strange results, including one memorable occasion where he accidentally created an all-consuming mass of goo which ate a lot of their assets…and was subsequently researched as a possible weapon by the Council.
Eventually, as Rune Magic became slightly more popular as a school of magic, Caelum’s parent’s were called to the capital to act as professors in various schools of magic, meaning that they could no longer perform experimentation themselves without blowing half of the city to pieces in the event of an accident. Caelum, considering himself an independent adult now that he was 15, asked to stay behind so he could continue on with his experimentation. His parents were hesitant, but after much urging and reassurance, they allowed him to stay alone, sending him funds every month to sustain him.
Taking advantage of his newfound independence, Caelum experimented tirelessly, trying to figure out the secrets of rune magic as combined, deconstructed, arranged and destroyed runes just to see what would happen. It would on the ill fated night of his 19th birthday that he would lose the control of his facial muscles and, while healing magic was able to restore the bottom half of his face, his top half was forever relaxed into a strange, glazed look, although he retained the ability to blink and move his eyeballs. Still, this did not faze him as he continued with his experiment, and, in fact, it drove him to try and found out why the upper part of his face remained incurable, which was when he started to research Feralism.
Of course, as a learned member of Seraphim society, Caelum knew about Ferals and the ‘threat’ they posed, but he had never given it any thought until he stumbled across it in one of his great ancestors’ musty old tomes. According to that book, his grandfather, who had passed away oh so recently, had been researching a way to halt, and maybe even reverse the process. Enthralled by his research notes, Caelum read deeper and deeper, until he realised that the seraphim’s noble endeavour had slowly been perverted from its original purpose. Talk of progress gave way to hybridisation, and Caelum slowly grew more and more disenchanted by his grandfather’s words. Taking note of all his grandfather’s actual research, including the grisly part about daeva hybridisation, Caelum started to research the topic on his own, in a way, continuing grandfather Adalbern’s research before they turned into the ravings of a madman.
Years later, Caelum’s crowning achievement is his ability to temporarily reverse the physical effects of the feralisation process, meaning that while the body would still look humanoid, the mind would stay corrupted. He considered this something of an achievement as he wrote down in his own Grimoire, but it was still not enough. The process was costly and painful, for both the caster and the recipient (theoretically at least), and he didn’t even have any confirmation on whether it worked. Now, he remains in his little house, trying to figure out a way to slow down the process of feralism. He has had little contact with the outside world, apart from the occasional visit from a certain pirate…
Extra: Lives alone in a house on a mountain spire on the outskirts of Adalrich. Rune magic specializes in healing and boosting allies in combat, as well as traps, although it still has powerful offensive capabilities.
Blazion