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by Naval Monte » Sat Nov 07, 2020 3:23 pm
by Theyra » Sat Nov 07, 2020 9:38 pm
by Naval Monte » Sat Nov 07, 2020 9:52 pm
by Nagakawa » Sun Nov 08, 2020 3:19 am
by Naval Monte » Sun Nov 08, 2020 3:11 pm
by Naval Monte » Sun Nov 08, 2020 11:06 pm
by Reverend Norv » Mon Nov 09, 2020 3:53 pm
by Britanania » Mon Nov 09, 2020 5:20 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:Character Application
Character Name: Remus Valante. He still thinks of himself as Father Remus Valante, O.I. The Ordo Inquisitorium itself would, to put it mildly, disagree.
Gender: Male.
Appearance: A man of average height and average build, Remus usually seems smaller than he is; he holds himself in an unprepossessing way more typical of the Third Estate than the First. He is swathed in a traveler's brown canvas greatcoat that always seems a bit too large for him, stained with the dust and mud of countless miles on the road, and repeatedly patched by hand. His battered leather tricorn, pulled low, is likewise stained and scratched. But the black suit hidden beneath the coat, though sober, is of good cut and cloth. Remus walks with a long ironwood staff, capped and banded with steel. His gait is marred by a slight limp: the legacy of his recent and narrow escape from his erstwhile colleagues.
Beneath the tricorn, Remus' hair is a dark iron-grey, cut carelessly and unfashionably close so that it sticks up in an incongruously boyish cowlick. The face is handsome but not memorable, broad and frank, with fine laugh lines around the eyes that belie Remus' typically serious expression. His eyes are brown, calm and watchful but not cold. A faded scar crosses his forehead from hairline to brow, and his skin is weather-beaten and tanned to a pale brown.
Personality: Remus cannot help but question: he possesses both the intellectual's curiosity and the orphan's cautious independence of thought. He derives both confidence and satisfaction from seeking out evidence, weighing arguments, and thinking matters through for himself. This methodical empiricism is part of what made him an effective inquisitor. But it sits uneasily with Remus' other defining trait: his ironclad integrity. He comes cautiously to conclusions, and he never holds them beyond question or beyond doubt; yet he feels compelled, once he comes to a belief, to act upon it. However cautious his commitments, they have the power to drive him to action even against vast odds, and even at a terrible cost. He fought for the Eklessia, and now he flees it, for the same reasons: not out of hate or self-righteousness, but because he could not in good conscience do otherwise.
Although these contradictory impulses cause Remus no end of angst - it is a difficult thing indeed to question and doubt a principle, and then to throw one's life away for its sake anyway - they actually derive from a consistent root. Remus cares more than is sensible or wise: about ideas, people, Enas, and almost everything else. He cannot close his eyes to the suffering of others, whether peasants replaced by clockwork machines or rural healers accused of witchcraft. Nor can he close his eyes to the humanity even of those who disagree with him: and so he must always doubt whether he has all the answers, and he cannot judge others too harshly for their limitations. Still less can Remus close his eyes to the truth as he sees it; he is incapable of conscious hypocrisy. To deny any of these things would be, for Remus, to deny truth itself - and perhaps therefore Enas Himself. And so there is no cynicism in him, and he does not shut the world out; he is easily moved to tears by acts of kindness, and to simmering fury by acts of cruelty. All of Remus' doubts, all his questions, all his sacrifices, all his careworn compassion - all reflect this same unguarded humanity.
Age: 47
Occupation: Former inquisitor of the Eklessia's Ordo Inquisitorium; subsequently an instructor at the Schola Ordinalis, the Inquisition's academy in Sopdet; currently a fugitive from the Eklessia.
Likes: Stories: people's stories, places' stories - Remus understands best through stories. Reasoned deliberation, and hearing both sides of the issue, and feeling like he has all the facts. Patient people, decent people, thoughtful people. Poetry and music. Fine craftsmanship. Exercise - long miles on the road, self-strengthening, self-discipline. Books, libraries, the smell of parchment. Prayer, and still moments in the early morning, and the fleeting touch of peace.
Dislikes: Arrogance; this can be expressed in cruelty or in braggadocio or in dogmatic fanaticism or in simple insensitivity, but at bottom, it represents a kind of self-involvement that affronts Remus' sensitive character. Elaborate noble etiquette, though he is fairly proficient in it; likewise, the intellectual incuriosity of many peasants and merchants. Boats; Remus is a weak swimmer. And actual witches and monsters; while Remus was considered a moderate inquisitor because he exonerated far more suspects than he purged, he has still seen firsthand the harm that can result on the rare occasion when the powers of darkness are unleashed for real.
Skills:
- "Killing, not Dueling": Remus is neither a soldier nor a duelist. He has not practiced leading a cavalry charge or fencing with rapiers in a ring. Instead, his father and grandfather taught him to fight monsters and witches, and then the Eklessia did the same. Remus has applied that training for more than two decades, and learned much from the experience. In combat, he is fast and decisive: capable of killing four different targets with his brace of double-barreled pistols in less than five seconds. With the sword, though he might struggle to hold his own in a formal duel, he is deadly effective in a swirling melee where brutality and experience count for more than technical precision. He is a practiced and sophisticated unarmed fighter, with a devastating left hook and a working knowledge of joint manipulation and throws that lets him exploit the weaknesses of larger and stronger foes. Most of all, he is resourceful and ruthless, constantly seeking any advantage and exploiting it to the hilt; Remus is too old to see honor in battle, and he never fights fair if he can possibly help it. And he is highly unusual in having specialized training and practice in fighting supernatural creatures whose abilities and weaknesses deviate sharply from the human norm.
- The Unwelcome Shadow: The Inquisition is the relic of a past age, unwelcome in most modern courts, and closely watched by its targets. Remus learned long ago that discretion was key to his work, and so he learned to blend in: to adopt local clothes and tongues and body language, to follow a target without being seen, to vanish into the shadows, to know if he was being followed himself, and so on. He is a hard man to find when he does not want to be found. Likewise, he is a hard man to hide from: he can pick locks, decipher codes, reveal invisible ink, and talk his way into or out of secure areas. Those skills have stood Remus in good stead in his weeks as a fugitive hunted by his former colleagues.
- The Secret Archives: After his retirement from active work as an inquisitor, Remus was a distinguished scholar and instructor at the Schola Ordinalis: the Inquisition's elite academy in Sopden. He has sophisticated academic skills: an extensive knowledge of history, ancient languages, theology, philosophy, and mythology, as well as training in debate and rhetoric - both theological and political. He is particularly adept at text criticism and archival research, which produced his heretical theories. And Remus possesses arcane knowledge known to only a handful of living men, for he once had extensive access to the Eklessia's Secret Archive. His understanding of Old Magic, while still very partial, is based on far more detailed research than the myths and legends available to most others. Finally, Remus nurses a personal love of literature and especially of poetry, and can quote from memory many of Vespiera's most distinguished poets.
- Life on the Road: In his years as an inquisitor, Remus spent many years travelling from one end of Vespiera to the other. He retains many of those skills: how to find his way, on foot or by horse or by steam engine or airship, across a continent still largely devoid of road signs and proper maps. He can hunt and forage when food runs out, navigate by sun and stars and dead reckoning, find shelter from rain or snow or blazing heat, and assess the potability of a water source with a practiced eye. He has a weathered, leathery endurance and rarely tires, and he has survived frostbite, heatstroke, exhaustion, and near-starvation. The wilderness has few terrors for Remus Valante.
- "My Mother's Hands": Remus was born into a family of medieki, the traditional monster-hunting caste of the indigenous Robezan people of the Shadowlands border country. While he was placed in the care of the Eklessia when fairly young, he still absorbed certain skills from that upbringing. He remembers, for example, the stories handed down in his family for generations of the creatures that lurked within the endless forests to the northeast - their strengths, their weaknesses, and how medieki in days past managed to kill them. And he recalls a limited amount of the herbcraft traditionally practiced by medieki women, a skill he learned from his mother. Half alchemy and half conventional medicine, it lends itself to the creation of simple potions to heal the body, sharpen the senses, and calm the mind - or to poison either a human adversary or a more monstrous foe. As a young ward of the Church, Remus learned not to speak of such knowledge - but neither did he forget it.
Magecraft: While Remus has made an intensive academic study of many fields of magic, his only aptitude as a practitioner remains traditional mediek alchemy. This is far less sophisticated than conventional alchemy, but it does not require complex equipment, and it is rooted in the local herbs and roots of the Shadowlands border region; while magi agree that it involves certain magical properties, it also has much in common with conventional herbcraft. What distinguishes it is its purpose: the medieki are an ancient, indigenous caste of monster-hunters, and much of their alchemy revolves around producing poisons that are deadly to creatures of the dark or that undermine magic-wielders, and potions that enhance senses or reflexes and that defend against spells and curses. The Eklessia believes that such practices are of pagan origin, and takes a dim view of them, but they have saved Remus' life on many occasions.
Items: Remus escaped his trial with very little. He has his battered old coat and tricorn; one suit of clothes; and worn but decent traveler's boots. He also has his walking staff - ironwood banded with steel. He managed to retrieve his weapons before fleeing Sopdet: a finely-worked pair of double-barreled wheellock pistols, and a mortuary sword given to him as a gift by a duke whose daughter Remus exonerated of heresy. He also carries a more esoteric weapon: a traditional cross-hilted longsword of wrought black iron, its blade intricately engraved with prayers and wards. The mortuary sword is sheathed at his waist, beneath his coat; the longsword is sheathed across his back, with the hilt above his right shoulder. In a leather pack above the longsword scabbard, Remus carries the simple equipment required for medieki alchemy, and a few vials containing associated potions - mostly to enhance reflexes, night vision, healing, or strength. The pack also contains a roll of bandages, a box of flints, a hunting knife, a coil of rope, a sewing kit, powder and shot, and some other miscellany. Remus carries, too, his Book of Hours and copy of the Scriptures, and an embroidered silk stole given to him by his own mentor at the Schola Ordinalis upon his ordination as an inquisitor.
Sexual preference: Remus has been celibate for his whole life without much difficulty; while he has begun to doubt the theological basis for the Eklessia's celibacy rules, sexuality remains mostly a matter of inchoate instinct for him, not anything that could be described as a clear preference.
Identifying features: Scars - the most visible one crosses his brow, the others are mostly hidden under his clothes. Frostbite nipped the lobe of one ear, and a blade took the last joint of his left middle finger. But these are wounds no more serious than many peasants suffer in their own lives.
Bio:"To begin with, you must understand: I was born in the Robaiziche Commonwealth, far to the northwest, along the border of the Shadowlands. I am Robezan - one of the indigenous people of the region, long since largely displaced by misfits from all over Vespiera. But here and there, in rural areas of the frontier, we remain.
"The Robezans have always had to contend with the darkness that leaks out of the Shadowlands: monsters and witches, goblins and ghosts. Holding back that menace fell to the medieki - the woodsmen, in the Robezan tongue, a hereditary caste of monster-hunters. Secrets were passed down from father to son of the creatures that lurked beyond the treeline, and how to kill them; mothers taught daughters secret decoctions that could sharpen eye or limb, or poison a goblin's blood. Into such a family I was born.
"As I tell you this, I know that it may seem terribly quaint: the rural backwater, the superstitious rubes clinging to their half-pagan fight against monsters long unknown in civilized circles. But to us, it was very real. My father was rarely home, so busy was he in responding to attacks from the forest, so it was my grandfather who taught me to use the sword and spot the signs of a giant spider or a will-o-the-wisp. And since I was an only child - my mother almost died in bearing me - I also learned the traditional alchemy of the medieki women, and how herbs and magic together could fortify a man against darkness.
"It was serious business. A lot of my childhood seems hazy now: the memory of a memory. I don't remember the names of my friends, or the face of my father, or the warmth of our fire. But I remember knowing, from as far back as memory reaches, that I had been born into a sacred trust. I did not exist at random. I was in the world for a reason. I don't think I've ever forgotten that.
"When I was ten years old, my father did not come back from a mission. We never found his body. My mother walked into the woods the next day, and she never came back either. I saw her pass the treeline. Her hair was shining gold, and then she was gone.
"My grandparents could have taken me in, I suppose, but they did not. The grief was too deep, too sore. So they gave me to the Eklessia instead.
"I was old to be given up - far older than most orphans taken in by the Church. But I had learned much of the way of the medieki, and the clerics thought I could prove useful. They made an exception, and sent me to the Schola Ordinalis in Sopdet to make an inquisitor of me; to turn the half-pagan tools of my caste to the service of Enas. I will always be grateful for that.
"My years at the Schola were good ones, I think. I was young, and I struggled sometimes with the desires of the flesh, but far less than many of the other novices. I felt very out of place, at first; most of the others had been wards of the Church since infancy, and I was still mourning my family and my country and my old life; I had lost something that my new friends had never known. But they were my friends all the same; I have never been lonely, not really, no matter where I've gone. I learned what not to speak of, and I kept the lessons of my ancestors inside, and I learned what the Schola had to teach me: reading and writing, history and theology, theory and poetry. A whole world that I had never known existed.
"And faith. We had been believers, there on the edge of the Shadowlands, but we rarely saw a cleric. In Sopdet, Enas became real to me. The prayers, the Scriptures, the sacrifices: they all became real to me. It filled an absence in me; it supplied something I never knew was missing. Everything I have done since, the man I have become, is because of that. The irony haunts me, these last weeks: the great gift the Eklessia gave me is the same reason, ultimately, why it now seeks to kill me.
"I finished my studies and was ordained. Jean Tressaud, the one teacher to whom I dared to speak openly of my roots and my faith and my doubts, gave me his stole to commemorate the occasion; I still carry it with me. And then I spent twenty years as an inquisitor: the better part of my life.
"What is there to say about such a life? It is utterly strange, perhaps even unnatural - to have no home, no family, no purpose beyond one's calling. I travelled at least forty thousand miles in those years: by foot and horse and coach and train and airship, crisscrossing the known world. I was looking for immorality, they told me; for heresy. But what do you do when you find it everywhere? Ten million peasants toiling for scraps, trying to outcompete machines that never tire; wars that kill thousands, fought for the pride of those who never see a drop of blood shed; clerics who grew fat upon the tithes of the starving faithful. But this was not what I had been commissioned to seek - oh, no. I sought university professors who dared to impugn the Eklessia's interpretation of three verses of one book of the Scriptures. That was the real heresy.
"That was what I learned, in those years: I could not look away. It is a great blessing, and a great burden. And the more I saw, the more I doubted: not Enas, and not the Scriptures, but the works that men did in their name. I acquitted far more accused heretics and witches than I burned, because as the years went on, I found it harder and harder to see the difference between accuser and accused.
"But I did do some good in my time as an inquisitor, at least now and then. Six times in twenty years, I found something truly monstrous. It was almost always toward the edge of the world, in some desert or woodland or high valley that time forgot. Sometimes it was grotesque, but at least comprehensible: a den of giant spiders under a desolate moor, a troll carrying off sheep and children in a salt marsh at the ocean's edge, a tribe of swamp goblins hiding out in an urban sewer and robbing the water market in a nearby canal. Other times, I still can't say exactly what I fought: a voice on the wind in the sands of the Deadlands that turned the earth itself against me as I tried to exorcise it, or glimmering beautiful shapes on the barren heath that showed me a door shining in the sky, and fought me sword-to-sword with blades of moonlight. And once - in twenty years of searching - I even found a witch: a scholar who had discovered an ancient birchbark book and been driven mad by the power within. She had built a shack in the woods, and she nearly killed me before I managed to shoot her in the knee and set the roof on fire. Afterward, I found dozens of children's bones among the ashes.
"That was good work - work worth doing, work that genuinely saved lives. But there was so little of it, in the end, and so much suffering that the Pontiffs said was not my problem - not Enas' problem - nobody's problem. By the time I was forty, I was just exhausted. I couldn't look away, and I couldn't bear to see any more. So I retired, and they sent me back to Sopdet, and the Schola, to train a new generation of inquisitors. I was known to be fair - perhaps to an overgenerous fault - but I had also seen true darkness and lived. I was qualified to pass those lessons on.
"And I did. I enjoyed teaching much more than I'd thought I would: I was a mentor to a lot of those young men and women. I treated them with respect, and always tried to tell them the truth, and I was delighted when they responded: when they thought differently, and grew stronger, and asked questions, and occasionally decided on answers. I think it was by watching my students that I realized how much I still had to learn, too. I spent more and more of my time in the archives, reading about history and philosophy and theology and mythology. At first, I mostly studied Old Magic, and I learned how much of the Eklessia's knowledge overlapped with what my medieki family had passed down by word of mouth. But the more I studied Old Magic, the more I learned about the world that had surrounded that magic: the ancient world of Mordia, and of Enas Himself.
"I suppose that was when I began to question - or, rather, when the questions formed in my mind, so deep that I could neither ignore nor forget them. Enas ruled over a vast empire, where men and monsters lived side-by-side and rose or fell by merit, not by birth or appearance or even faith. How far was that from our own world! - from the goblins driven into the sewer, and the idols of the Old Gods long since burned, and the serfs bound to their fields until the golems arrived to replace them. Why did the Eklessia's teachings justify and establish our ways, and not the ways of Enas? What if we were wrong?
"The answer was irresistible. It arose from everything I'd read, everything I'd seen. We were wrong. I tremble even now to speak it; to set my face against a thousand years of inherited wisdom. I know the hubris of it; I feel the terror at the possibility that I've missed something. But after seven years of study, I could not resist the conclusion any longer. Enas would not recognize the world we have built in His name. And if I was to be faithful to Him - as I have always tried to be, since the day I arrived at the Schola as a novice - then I had no choice but to say so.
"The Fifty-One Antilogies. An antilogy is an internally inconsistent concept, a paradox, a crack in the syllogism. To teach Enas' example but claim that it sanctions hereditary serfdom and devastating poverty - that is an antilogy. To follow Enas' Word but proclaim that any who fail to kneel to him should perish - that is an antilogy. To drive creatures into the darkness in Enas' name merely because they are not human, even if they do no harm - that is an antilogy. To restrict education to the sons of gentry while preaching Enas' grace - that is an antilogy. To offer fragrant offerings to Enas and then make the Inquisition and not Him the judge of sin and righteousness - that, too, is an antilogy. And more, and more, and more. All in all, it ran to about thirty pages: a slim booklet. A press in Carmina published tens of thousands of copies. I presented the first one to the Generalis Inquisitor. I knew the risk, but I wanted - needed - to believe that he could understand. That the Eklessia could change, could be better.
"I have been disappointed. I was not arrested, not at first. The Generalis tried to persuade me to change my own mind; then he simply asked me to be silent about my questions. When he learned that the Antilogies had already been published, that ceased to be possible. So instead there was a debate before the Concilium Pontificum. We talked, back and forth, for five straight days to no avail. The Council got angrier and angrier, and I got sadder and sadder, because I knew what was going to happen and could not change it. The newspapers, especially the Advantist papers, made me out as a martyr. But it wasn't the thought of the stake and the pyre that broke my heart. It was the knowledge that the only family I had left would set the flame.
"At the end of the debate, they placed me under arrest and sentenced me to burn for heresy. As I was being transported to the dungeon, I knocked two guards unconscious with my own chains and jumped into the river. I sank, but I survived; the current was strong, and it washed me up unconscious a half-mile downstream with a bad sprain in my knee. I got the chains off - what good inquisitor can't pick a lock? - and crept back into Sopdet, and retrieved what few belongings I needed. And then I ran hard, for the only place I could think to go. I went home.
"I don't know what I'll do next. I expect the inquisitors will follow me here, too; I trained them well enough for that, after all. I have lost a great deal, and oh, my heart aches sore. But Enas must have a purpose for me; I first felt that here, before I ever came to the Church. Perhaps I'll find that purpose once again in this place; and if not, He will gather me to Himself on angels' wings. I remember this town, the chill in the air, the loom of the treeline where I saw my mother vanish all those years ago. Home is as good a place as any to begin again."
Theme Song Here.
Reason: Remus is fleeing his former colleagues in the Inquisition after his trial for heresy. He has run back to the one place where he still has friends, the one place he thinks he is least likely to be followed: the border of the Shadowlands.
by Naval Monte » Tue Nov 10, 2020 2:37 am
by Nagakawa » Tue Nov 10, 2020 4:39 am
by Menschenfleisch » Tue Nov 10, 2020 11:15 pm
by Naval Monte » Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:07 am
by Ranoria » Wed Nov 11, 2020 3:09 pm
by Britanania » Wed Nov 11, 2020 3:11 pm
Ranoria wrote:Character Application
Character Name: Esther Strathos
Gender: Male
Appearance: Tall and lean, with well developed pulling muscles due to his consistent archery
Personality: Impulsive is the first word that comes to mind. Reckless might be the next one. Stemming from this, he's generally quick to decide whether or not he likes, or trusts, someone. Expect him to be more than willing to help the less fortunate so long as he can provide for himself as well. Also has a desire to learn and experience new things after spending most of his life under the heel of a desperate noble or the smog of a city.
Age: 22
Occupation: Textile factory machine operator during the week, hunter/trapper on the weekends
Likes: Meat of all varieties, knots, a reasonable minimum wage, rural or, better yet, uninhabited areas
Dislikes Vegetables, cities, shitty nobles
Skills:
Damn good hunter: Be it tracking, trapping, or just a giving that deer well-placed arrow the eye, Esther can do it for you. Esther hunted religiously in his youth to provide for his family after his father's passing, and did habitually, at every opportunity, once his mother elected to move into the city. When he still lived on a struggling noble's land, others who helped him along the way noted that his aptitude with a bow and arrow was astounding. Esther can, somewhat as a result of the above skillet, skin his kills and prepare meals.
Archery: As you may have guessed, Esther's a bona-fide marksman. He can make his own arrows and such (even if he prefers to use more modern, manufactured ones), but has never had to use his bow in a deadly situation.
Farming stuff: Esther is really good with a scythe. No, not on the battlefield.
Sneaky Little Bastard: Skimming off the nobility's stash was a way of life for the young man. It started with food, peaked at his acquisition of his first bow, and continued when he needed arrows, or perhaps some tasty treats.
Notably, he's not an experienced fighter in any sense. Sure, he's been in a couple little scraps, but nothing life threatening, and no formal training. This is important, because he hasn't had to use his archery in that sort of scenario, where time and pressure are key.
Magecraft: Sensory Enhancement: Esther can enhance his senses for a period of time, around fifteen minutes at the most. This allows him to perceive the world in much finer detail, detect movements in the air, hear a pin drop, and to see farther distances. Pretty neat trick when he has elusive, camouflaged prey. However, the longer he uses it, the more intense symptoms of nausea and migraines become until he is forced to exit the state. Worse yet, symptoms of synesthesia can set in, causing strange associations between his senses, seeing shapes when hearing certain sounds, etc.
Items:
-Modern style recurve bow (90 lb draw weight)
-2 dozen manufactured arrows
-Canteen for water, preserved foodstuffs for rations
-A bit of extra clothing, including a few with hoods to cover his bright hair if necessary
-Materials to make a dozen or so snare-style traps
-Two knives, which are good for cutting into flesh, but he's more used to using them to skin than he is using them to fight
-Survival necessities: Flint and steel (duh), a bit of first aid equipment such as bandage wraps and whiskey, sleeping bag and such. Actual rope in case it's necessary.
Sexual preference Straight
Identifying features Long, bright red hair. A couple wide scars in the inside of his left arm he acquired when teaching himself to use his first bow, though these are covered now with a leather brace.
Bio:In a time where feudal lords were losing their power, and their wealth, Esther's family's servitude quickly became less prosperous than it had been even in its heyday. In the northern fields, that nobleman clung to power and wealth with all his strength even as it slipped through his fingers like sand.
Esther's father's labor, eventually, just wasn't enough to feed the family. Around when Esther turned eleven, the regular cuts and scratches his father accumulated from his work stopped healing and developed rashes, his stomach became bloated, and soon, he got sick. By then, he only had a few days left. His mother would, later, explain to him that his father had been sacrificing his own sustenance for the rest of their well being.
Once he finally passed, when Esther was forced to take on the brunt of his family's work load, he decided that he wasn't going to die forgotten in a field. But in the mean time, he made himself useful. Now, Esther made a habit of sneaking into the nobleman's estate to swipe a bit of food regularly. One night, he didn't find food. Instead, he found various tools and such, and snagged the first thing he saw that caught his eye before hightailing it when he heard someone coming. That tool was a bow, and it would become his means to provide something for his mother and siblings.
Even being a smaller bow, Esther had trouble using it at first. But as he grew, managing to hunt his own food when he had time, he quickly became adept with the weapon, and at tracking. Picking up what tips he could from other hunters, by the age of fourteen, he was one of the best of them. As such, his family never went hungry, and the well fed young man grew into a solid frame with plenty of meat on his bones. Throughout this period, Esther also taught himself to read, much of that coming from stealing books, and in one of said tomes he was able to reproduce a bit of magic, used to enhance his eyesight temporarily. He quickly discovered that the recoil effects were traumatic, but it was useful for finding hidden prey.
However, his mother soon made the decision to move their family to the nearby, blooming city of redwater, where she could work and try to provide for her children. Her son, however, vehemently opposed the decision. He saw little difference between the muggy sweat of the fields to the filthy stench of the city, the environment had changed little in reality. Esther himself, after finding himself work, would go out into the outskirts of that city for days at a time to escape its constrictive environment and do what he did best. And that gave him time to think. He saw what was becoming of his mother, his brother and sister. He saw how he was working for just as much of a reward. All of them, they were slaving away for just enough compensation to keep them coming back, never enough to be free.
So, fairly recently, he woke up one day, packed his bags, told his boss to piss off, and headed out.
And so, here we are. After scraping together the cash to replace his bow for a less medieval, more modern instrument, he decided to head into the shadowlands, for better or worse.
Theme Song You're welcome.
Reason: Esther saw the way his father died, and the way the rest of his family worked, and realized that he didn't want to go out forgotten, insignificant, and uneventful. So here he is, ready to take on the shadowlands and whatever they throw at him, in pursuit of something between true freedom and a bit of glory along the way, if he can find it.
by Naval Monte » Wed Nov 11, 2020 3:22 pm
Ranoria wrote:Esther Strathos
by The Order of the Sovereign Heavens » Wed Nov 11, 2020 4:05 pm
by Naval Monte » Wed Nov 11, 2020 6:59 pm
Sarderia wrote:Tag. Thinking of making a businessman venturing to the Shadowlands to explore possibilities to introduce the clockwork/steampunk-type industry.
by Naval Monte » Fri Nov 13, 2020 4:10 pm
by Ormata » Mon Nov 16, 2020 7:16 am
Character Application
Character Name: Maryn Potocki
Gender: Male
Appearance:Standing at 5’3”, middling for a citizen of the Commonwealth, Maryn’s back has gently bowed with age and today he walks in a hunched-over posture. His body is thin, nearly skeletal due to long hours of study, practice, and forgetting to eat, with the ribcage being noticeable about his torso. Pale skin is well-worn by the years, much like leather, while his grey hair is kept smoothed-back and relatively short, beard of a moderate length. Maryn’s nose dominates his face, outshining his beady, blue eyes.
Personality:
Nevertheless, due to a long practice in the arts of magic and all the mistakes which naturally come to perfecting an art, he has a variety of scars about his hands and arms as well as some stranger oddities about the body. A number of small scars mix with the furrows of his face, while his neck plays host to a collection of bark-like growths, a wreath which extends from just below the Adam's apple to his collarbone, brown scales lightly crackling with the smallest motion. Particles of salt collect about his nostrils. Maryn lacks his little finger upon the left hand.Quiet, contemplative, and meticulous in nature, Maryn is the sort of man with more secrets than he really has time to tell. He is inquisitive in magic, pushing boundaries and attempting to devise new rituals and spells, new foci, and it is common for the mage to become so invested in making a certain action work as he wants it to work, provide the result he want, that he may not emerge for some time until it is wholly and completely done. Caring for most people in a clinical, physician’s manner, Maryn is not one to completely ignore suffering and yet he is not the most invested. Seeing a bisected soldier die doesn’t impact against the mage’s memory as hard. In some ways he has become psychopathic in nature, as a man who displays the same care and measure towards everyone is a man without true, complete empathy; it is hard to be a humanitarian upon the remains of a battlefield, to remember every single failure to save. Maryn is not apathetic towards all people, however, with a small group counted among his friends and, therefore, among those he gives a strong effort to protect and truly love.
Age: 73
Occupation: Mage
Likes: Tobacco, Tea, Research
Dislikes Ignorant folk, Loud folk, Politics, The Religious
Skills:Craftsman
Magecraft:Maryn has created dozens of foci over the years, both for personal experience and for his own studies, and a portion of such magical creation is the actual construction of the item itself. When the mage creates the item instead of merely utilizing a layman’s designs, when they carve sigils and mosaics into steel and wood, the focus and connection towards that item is often improved; to use a foci in the most efficient way possible, a mage should be familiar with that foci’s every detail. To this end, Maryn can carve and etch adequately though for obvious reasons such methods take longer than a layman might. He neither has the experience which comes from common repetition nor the ability to simply make an item; during such a process, magic must be poured into the foci itself, after all. Nevertheless, compared to other mages Maryn cares a bit more in the creation of what will most likely save his own and others’ lives.
Practical SurgeryDue to his first master and the resultant surgeries and experimentations, Maryn is familiar with nearly every organ in the human anatomy, at least to the understanding of the general sciences, and knows their connections and interactions well. He is capable of diagnosing conventional problems in a human body, most usually those involving battlefield wounds, and can use the scalpel well. The human body, in Maryn’s mind, is a vast machine and he can fix what maladies befall it.
Scribe-workDeveloped during his years as Kott’s apprentice, Maryn is suitably able in writing, researching, and compiling information into usable, honest notes. Moving through a library could be considered second nature to him, albeit a second nature he has long forgotten due to partial disuse, and understanding a new categorization system that is used may take some time. In addition to this, the mage is capable of reading through the written word at a relatively fast pace, picking up on key points with some measure of ease and jotting down the reason. In the simplest terms, Maryn’s a quick study.
Apotropaic Magic (luck and protection)
Items:A product of Maryn’s long years of research and his intent in varying his own skills and capabilities, it would be an understatement to call the use of magic involving luck and protection of the self a rapid habit. What was once practical necessity turned to a ritual of the self, one performed over and over again through those same long years, and through this he performs such rituals and incantations daily upon the rising sun. His skills in this realm of magic are plainly rigid, focused more about the implementations against physical harm and dangers, though Maryn has focused also upon the more off-hand systems Apotropaic Magic provides. Through this, he is able to deflect away from his person some spells, though the effectiveness of such deflection depends much on the Art and strength thrown against him. His more daily rituals focus more about keeping an enemy from striking him, keeping his feet light and his eyes open, keeping the wind in his favor should the enemy fire arrows or the smoke about him.
Anatrophic Magic (corpses, resurrection, and golems)The realm of the Art which caused Maryn to be exiled in the first place, it is in this that he excels greatly. Formed from the bedrock of Iatric Magics, Anatrophic extends the reach of the hand farther than the doorstep of death and it is through this that Maryn fishes for souls with which he intends to reunite with their bodies. Such procedures and ritualized magics are of course only experimental and formed by no basis of known magical law and as a result are not really of a practical nature. In addition to this, Maryn utilizes this realm of magic to preserve bodies he intends to reunite with their souls. The use of this magic is correspondingly rare.
Erevnatory Magic (discovery and information)A prerequisite for any serious Magus, the realm of magic dealing in information is one practiced by nearly all. Maryn is no exception. Through Erevnatory Magic he searches through libraries where the organizational system proves lacking, finds who may yet be tracking him, and finds the distance of the next town, the next city, the next ambush. Through this, he opens his eyes and ears to the universe and listens. It is also through this realm of the Art that Maryn speaks to those he loves most dearly in his sleep, in his dreams, and that they too may speak to him.
Fernontatic Magic (misfortune and curses)”Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger” is a most apt way to describe the Magus and Maryn is little different. He prefers to take the less lethal approach, the use of such magics being not fully within his purview, and instead of working magic to kill prefers magic to halt. Through these curses, he may make a pursuer become far more clumsy than they ought to be, may ensure that a blade catches in it’s scabbard, or may cause the winds themselves to move against the intent of a vessel he particularly dislikes. Of course, while Fernontatic Magic proves to be a most versatile form of the Art it is not one Maryn commonly uses and, as such, his skill in it’s use off-handedly is far less.
Iatric Magic (healing)By far Maryn’s most preferred and common realm of the Art, through this realm he takes the broken and makes whole yet again. Bleeding of severed limb is staunched by his hand, enraptured in the once bloodied stump, and by his hand are bones broken, reformed and whole yet again. He is by no means a miracle worker, far from it, though through his intent of the realm and his dedication in it’s practice is such a talent honed to the near perfection today. Maryn’s skill against the illnesses of the lung and heart are, while somewhat lesser than his ability against the more mundane injuries, still nothing to be dismissed as he holds significant experience against such plagues and miseries through his former master. Due to this experience and due to his own personality against the injury and disease, Maryn implements Iatric Magic extremely commonly.
Kalyptic Magic (obfuscation and spirits)Maryn knows much of the other planes, those vast fields from which he fishes for the lost souls, and knows much of such for he has inquired with the denizens of such planes of existence. Through them and theirs, he questions for greater answers of the universe and magic, of mortal man, of immortal spirit, though the answers they give are more commonly riddles. In addition, Maryn uses such a realm to hide his own secrets, to obscure the truth to those who would wantonly uncover it, taking care to make ingredients seem mere spice, books of ritual mere religious dogma.
Skopolytic Magic (universal fundamentals)Steel is hard and water is wet, the air light and sound echoes down the cavern; the truth is malleable, however, and Maryn has taken some time to study the Art of twisting it, bending it, and sometimes breaking it. Another product of his desire to know more of the realms of magic, such a realm is a haunting, careful thing which requires the utmost respect and diligence. He has learned something, though only only to the effect of being capable of altering the space within a small bag to some factors of itself.
Themeliodic Magic (energy)The lifeblood of the universe and one of the most basic steps to any action, it is in energy that Maryn finds a good deal of utility and practical application. Through it one may heat a meal, create a fire, cool boiling water, and light a smoking pipe in an afternoon. Due to his own beliefs on the matter, the mage has not taken steps to learn the offensive methods of Themeliodic Magic to a grave extent, preferring instead to focus on defensive magics, though he has created his own smoking pipe with the use of such a thing. The expulsion of energy is one of the more direct forms magic takes, something which he practices on only rare occasions.
Arms
Sexual preference: HetrosexualDagger, steel
ClothingWoolen cloak w/fur lining
Foci
Waistcoat
Woolen tunic
Linen undertunic
Leather belt
Pantaloons
Leather bootsBog-wood smoking pipe
ElixirsCarved in the pot style with dark, partially petrified wood, Maryn’s smoking pipe is decorated with spirals of spruce, intertwining and flowing as flames might. Such is quite deliberate as, while smoking alchemically-treated tobacco, the user is able to use the pipe as a foci. If the smoke is blown out through the nostrils, it expands and multiplies such that the smoke, normally minor, is thick, black, and expands to cover a radius of fifty feet. This smoke is then activated by a word and motion wherein, save for the user, all living objects within the smoke or having touched the smoke erupt in spontaneous fire.
Bronze armletA simple armlet, lacking in decoration yet by no means shoddily made, this foci is worn about the forearm. When activated via phrase, it affects the air via rapid vibration, causing a pitched whine inaudible to the conscious mind of humanity yet a constant annoyance to the subconscious. The noise, therefore, breaks the concentration necessary for most magical endeavors, rituals, and foci invocation.
Oak staffMeasuring at 5’ in length, this thick staff is banded with silver at one end, gold at the other, this tool of Maryn’s is medical in nature. When silver is placed against the torso of a creature, man or beast, and it is audibly activated by phrase the staff draws ailments from a creature, storing it within. When the gold is tapped against a living creature, mentally activated by Maryn, it transfers all stored ailments to whatever is tapped. This staff can only remove and store ailments which are contracted from an outside source and illnesses which act against a specific target, normally magical in nature, are difficult to remove fully from that individual. More time must be taken for these supernatural illnesses or they may yet linger.
Iron ringInscribed in bronze lettering and silver geometric shapes about the whole of the ring, this ring is encircled with the images of thirteen figures, one shadow forming the next person. It enables the wielder to transform from the material to shadow and vice versa via a thought and is linked with Maryn’s Familiar. While as a shadow, the user views the world as the shadow, the holes in shadow by any light, within a radius of fifty feet. The user can move at a running pace. It should be noted that the use of such for long periods causes a mental buildup in the user which, upon return to normal matter, may induce vomiting. The degree which one can use the ring before such effects are certain to set in is determined by their familiarity with the magic and it’s methods, how long they have been attuned to the ring, leading to Maryn being capable of using the foci for eight hours consecutively before the effects begin.
Steel ringInset with a small, obsidian rock carved in the likeness of a gemstone, the ring under normal, everyday conditions siphons illnesses and ailments, as well as the many physical issues which comes from age, away from Maryn and out, into the air. As such, the ring has a slight rusted look about it no matter how it is treated or cleaned. When the obsidian rock is removed from it’s housing and popped into the mouth to suckle on, the removal process is vastly accelerated. The rock does have a limit to the amount it may take, determined both by number and by severity, and as it absorbs more and more the obsidian gradually turns clear, tinted with veins of quartz and gem. In order to replenish the ring, Maryn must place it in the stomach of a recently killed animal, most normally a squirrel of some sort, and perform a ritual by which the corpse itself acts as the rock might, absorbing every illness before the rock is removed and the corpse is burned.
An accomplished alchemical brewer, Maryn keeps about his person some few vials of prepared magic for the poor moments of life. Such things more commonly include what he’s come to call bottled lightning, a violent mixture which when exposed to air causes a thunderclap noise in the direction of the bottle’s opening. Should it be broken open, the effect would be far more general and far less extreme. In addition to this, he prepares at least two vials of thick, black smoke which rapidly consumes the space about him. Maryn does produce a variety of more medical elixirs, though commonly would prefer to produce them once an issue is made known. Elixirs which cleanse the wound of infection, however, are relatively easy to produce and thereby are commonly kept on Maryn’s person in the form of a small, iron flask.
Misc.Alchemical tobacco
Familiar: Mira
Book of Times
Large pack
Notebook
Prayer beads
Rations (dried meats and bread)
Small cauldron
Small reagents pouch (minor foci)
Surgeon’s kit
The Fifty-One Antilogies by Remus Valante
Writer’s toolsAn air elemental of limited intellect whose True Name Maryn gleaned from the works of two other mages which he had acquired, Mira takes the form of a small dust storm, whirling about with whatever loose material which may be nearly dancing about her. This commonly takes the form of black smoke, though can also be from leaves, dust, pebbles, and other such light objects. Silent towards others, Mira communicates in simple brief flashes of emotion to Maryn specifically if she communicates at all; more often than not, Maryn simply gives direct, unsubtle orders towards the spirit for actions desired. Incapable of aiding in research, the elemental is a valuable companion for the purposes of keeping watch, something Maryn uses wholeheartedly.
Biography:Born in Szina, a township within the Robaiziche Commonwealth, Maryn’s life was relatively quiet for the first portions. His parents lived within the retinue of a nobleman, father as a woodsman and mother in the kitchens, while Maryn helped them where he could. At a young age, perhaps seven, the nobleman took note of Maryn’s sharp mind and fluid hands, his ability to memorize chapter and verse, and as the boy was already technically under his employ would ‘gift’ him as an apprentice to a mage of some repute who resided within the region: Lubomir Kott. The Magus was a man of war, a master on the battlefield against whom blades rusted in their scabbards, shields rotted, and the waters themselves turned putrid. Whenever hired by the nobleman for whatever campaign he intended to wage, Kott went to gather his samples and test new, exciting ways to kill people. He had little remorse for the deaths he inflicted, the pain he caused, and the many burned, starving, or worse places he left in his wake.
Theme song: Spiral Dance
Needless to say, such an assignment was jarring to Maryn and despite Kott’s lack of empathy to those he killed, he did recognize a child when he saw one and acted accordingly. The Magus set his new steward busy, working him as an orator might a scribe in countless hours of theoretical study, mental discipline games, and the occasional game of strategy. Maryn was tired as all can be, though in those blessed early years his master would not once take him on campaign and as such he was provided with a measure of ignorance. Whenever Kott would come back to his small citadel, invariably it would be with a dozen prisoners in tow and invariably they would disappear into the prisons where they would never be seen again. Maryn didn’t ask questions about the captured; it made him afraid and he knew Kott was not the sort to abide many questions to his practices. Eventually, however, he would take his apprentice to the battlefield. Maryn was twelve.
What he saw horrified him. Kott took pleasure in the orchestra he conducted, in the plagues he inflicted upon the enemy force, their food and water supplies, their mounts, their very men. Maryn saw the water fester and bubble, erupt with great swarms of mosquitoes and leeches, saw fresh bread rot and mould, saw horses keel over and die of old age. He saw the writhing bodies of men as they fell from their ranks, as panic spread throughout, as blood boiled. Kott performed his rituals in perfection, the circle complete, the dance fluid, all aided by Maryn, and he felt implicated in its action. He felt wrong, like his hands were covered in blood, and then came worse horrors as Kott bade him to come as he walked down to the battlefield. He looked over the still twitching bodies with a morbid curiosity, looked them over and had his young apprentice help to take the ones he picked out into the cart. They would leave the battlefield with two wagons full of corpses, some still thinking themselves alive, many already dead, and Kott spoke on the journey with an unseen, childish joy. He was happy his young steward had so matured, that he could finally set about the work before him. Maryn helped to carry the bodies down to the prison, down to the morgue, and there Kott showed him how to dissect a corpse.
Maryn watched as the still living were opened up, their organs removed as they gasped for breath, Kott speaking of wanting to perfect his little babies. That’s what he called his plagues, his little babies, and he desired them to be as lethal as possible. The more lethal they were, the more impressive he was as a Magus, as a scholar, as an artist, and Kott could not tolerate imperfection in his art. Those who lived showed those imperfections, their life lingering as the magic itself lingered. Maryn would learn the names of the organs, of what they did and the thoughts on how they did, and would learn of retinue Kott carried with him. After some time, the Magus began to teach his pupil the magic in these, the plagues and curses, but Maryn took the lessons far more differently as an acute mind turned to a different goal. How such actions came to pass turned to how to prevent them, their methods into their cures, and Maryn settled himself into the arts of healing and rejuvenation, of helping the injured, sick, and lame. He had seen the battlefield, the screams of the fearing and the moans of the dying, and had little want to see them again.
When Kott found out about these views and feelings, he was disgusted and enraged. His temper broke as a volcano might, the room turning into a whirlwind of anger as the man became sorely tempted to blight the child, to kill him in the utter anguish that he so adoringly tried to halt and hamper, to kill him slow and long with poison and watch the bones fester. A perverted sense of logic came upon Kott, however, halting the words from tumbling from his mouth, and he consented to the change in tone his apprentice had. After all, having another mind pit themselves against you and your creations, trying to halt and stifle it as you try to improve, this could truly be the crucible in which his most blessed plagues would be born. He relented falsely to Maryn, attempting to deceive him in saying that he would merely teach how one might heal such pains. The young man was not fooled, however, knowing the glee that his master had in his eye when he spoke of the plagues, and conspired quietly. Before he could act, however, another force struck. His master died in poison and blood, high up in his tower, and Maryn was blinded and brought before a council of mages. They spoke of Lubomir Kott, of his tower, of his dungeon, questioning Maryn thoroughly before subjecting him to rituals to discern the full truth of the matter. They opened his mind as a book, saw his disgust of the matter, saw the pain there, and saw the plans he had prepared to lay. They saw that he had potential for good, for the new world of new people, of new magic.
Thus was how Maryn Potocki was enrolled in the Lycaeum Academy, a student of a deceased criminal, an unknown. Magic was re-termed science, a new field for scholars to take under their wing and move from the fettered dark shadows of tribal superstition into the lights of civilization, and the dark plagues Maryn had witnessed first hand turned into mere theories and conjunctions for others to speculate over. He found himself disconnected with other students as they had no practical experience in the subjects the lessons marched over, as they had not heard what he had heard, seen what he had seen. He spoke little with them, though by most accounts from teachers Maryn was a good, attentive student. He worked hard in his studies, in his practice, and it would be during those years that the child from Szina would call out into that void for another, for something which could speak to him, that could hold his secrets in. He performed a ritual, an old ritual he had once seen Kott perform, one with all the symbolism, the motions, the methods that the Academy didn’t teach. It was a binding circle, one made from the crushed and powdered products of industry, and thus was that circle made from the ashes of Man’s furnaces, the cinder from his smokestacks, the red brick of his roads, enclosed and sealed with a drop of blood. Maryn called out into that vast void, summoning to himself a Familiar. It bound into being from the very air, a whirling cloud of gas and vapor about which the candle-smoke spun and collected until a face appeared.
It was childish, primordial, crude in intellect and simple in being, an air elemental drawn from other planes, and to it Maryn spoke a single secret before releasing it from the hold he had established. One secret was enough to tell, enough risk to take in the Academy, and it was a miracle in itself that he was not caught by it. The ritual was too closely connected to the old ways, the superstitious ways, to the ways of magic when magic was just that compared to the retinue of knowledge the unwashed masses possessed. Besides, he wasn’t meant to know it, not yet in his studies, and the questions might then arise of how a student so new had knowledge ahead of the curriculum, was performing ahead of the curriculum, and the implications therein would be that Maryn was either from another, wherein his connection to the infamous Kott would be known, or that he was dangerous, ignoring safety for vainglory. Such questions he could do without. Maryn worked within the boundaries set forth by his professors, constantly working to better himself in the guidelines they set forth. When they introduced the creation of foci to the class, the cornerstone of magecraft in all it’s infinite uses, he set about the construction painstakingly. Drawing upon a wealth of information garnered from the studies in Kott’s library, upon the patience as a student of a monster, the student built his first foci with the care of an artisan. Where others took to it as merely another assignment, he took to it as a test for himself, proctored by himself, to create the best he might. Maryn made for himself an iron ring inscribed in bronze lettering, ancient words of power in a tongue seldom-used in modernity and geometric shapes laid with silver about the whole of the ring, the images of thirteen figures, one shadow forming the next person, and in this ring Maryn forged the magics to transform a person from mass to shadow with a thought and, with another thought, vice versa.
Compared to others, his was a work of art among works of drudgery. Compared to others, his had taken the three weeks set aside to complete in full, nineteen hours a day. The professor was suitably impressed by the foci, complimenting him upon the work, and that was merely the start for Maryn. He would take his free time whenever he could to build and create, to find new ways. His attentions would turn from the magics of defense and protection, the shields he could find, to his old ways. The student wanted to heal people, that hole in his heart clawing away at the scabs of memory, and so Maryn set about when he had time towards those goals. Displaying an affinity and knowledge for the human anatomy which surpassed every other student, Maryn built staffs to draw away sicknesses in the blood, bellows to purge accursed air from the lungs, and a salve with which he could heal broken bones. He worked with a purpose, moving from one method of ailment to another to another, garnering a reputation among the other students as something which most definitely was not a student. They thought he was odd, strange, that he might think himself above them and their peasantry as Maryn never spoke to them in passing. To them his interactions were all business and he preferred to keep it that way. It would be in that time that the student took up smoking, purchasing a pipe before carving his own after a few months.
Alchemy and salves was but another area he had success in, though such was stifled by his desire to find a cure for the various diseases of the world. Staffs and bellows were but stepping stones to Maryn’s want to create a potion which could halt the unreasonable death, the unnatural death, which could drive away the curses and plagues which a cruel world and cruel race of man might inflict upon a person. Even as he graduated from the Lycaeum Academy, the desire to heal and heal grasped a hold of Maryn’s mind and cemented itself fully. What was once passion turned to obsession and the young man began to act very much as his mentor once had. Where war was afoot, where nobles marshalled their armies, there he was and the tasks he set himself about were ones Maryn took to calling of mercy. He walked it afterwards, trying to heal those he could, trying to ease their suffering with staff and bellows, salve and potion, with magics old and new. Practical surgery came well to the mage, working there among the grievously injured with saw and blade. He would be involved in multiple conflicts as a result, though in every one Maryn worked as a noncombatant and generally a bystander to it. He fought in a limited number of engagements, mainly in the defense of civilians and their structures, and garnered a good reputation from it.
Eventually, as he reached into his fifties, Maryn would be involved in the conflict between the Maunkang Khanate and his own homeland, the Robaiziche Commonwealth, in the areas near to the Shadowlands and, in a land bereft of civilians to guard and concrete battlefields to move about and save the injured, he was the stalker in the shadows. The tribals from far away had come as invaders and murderers, had come to try and outflank the Commonwealth’s armies and soldiers. They wanted to burn and loot, to destroy towns, and for a brief, bright time Maryn drew upon his talents to go to war. He loosed curses against the camps, watched as the forest came under his command and struck against the foe with swarms of insects, broke the spirits of warbands until their leaders lost control and choked on their own blood. It was a just war, in Maryn’s eyes, a just war and a just cause. In the midst of this, however, he would feel the influences in the Weave of another strong in the Art, strong in magic, and sought them through the forest way. His progress slow and tiresome, intent as he was to not be found, it was a week’s hunt before the mage found his quarry. It was a collection of huts about a great, petrified tree, gnarled limbs the color of marble, and women danced about it as they chanted. Maryn watched as they healed a being upon the altar inset to the tree, as a spirit of the wood spoke in deep, dulcet tones to thank them, as an honest, live satyr lept from the altar to run into the woods. They were witches, true, but they were healers.
Maryn approached them, making his introductions as one recoiled, one stared, and another readied a curse to fling against him. He merely wished to know how they had so healed, the chant, the method, and he said as much before offering his own knowledge for theirs. He would teach the ways of healing learned under Lubomir Kott, honed by the tyrant’s exhibitions, and they would teach their ways. The three sisters whispered privately before turning. They asked him if he would be missed, to which Maryn replied no, they would not. An old shade would not be missed among armies which barely kept track of him in the first place and the battles were, by and large, won already. And so he learned old magics from witches in the forest, learned and taught in equal measure. Months passed as they slowly accepted him as one of their own, as trustworthy for he had steeped himself in enough heresy to no longer be a true enemy, and in time he grew fond of one. She was as old as him, true, a woman who had fled from the Commonwealth when a golem-maker wished to throw her into a pot and draw away her soul, and despite such experiences the kindness in her heart outshone all else. Her name was Brygida. Struck by this, Maryn spent more time with her than the other two combined, yet eventually he had to say goodbye. More knowledge could be found in the civilized lands, more ancient tomes and libraries, and when he left he could but promise that he would return.
When Maryn came back from the Shadowlands, he continued his search for healing and health, slowly delving into Anatrophic Magic, the magic of corpses and golems, of drawing a soul back into the body once it had already left. He wanted to heal those deemed already gone. As he kept studying, kept moving forward, the man would come under the eye of the Inquisition. They were suspicious of his time in the Shadowlands for it was longer than most and they had lacked an agent there during the conflict, and took it upon themselves to investigate the mage. The fact that he had once been a student of Kott placed him only further under suspicion. The first of the Inquisition’s agents was one Remus Valante, Father Valante, a man who collected his information diligently, carefully, and would eventually pronounce Maryn innocent of heresy. For some years, the Inquisition relented until Remus, too, came under some amount of suspicion as he grew tired, jaded in his crusading. The case was quietly reopened under higher orders.
All the while, Maryn grew more and more closed-in, more interested in his study and experimentation at home, and yet he grew less and less alone. He would be visited, sometimes weekly and at least monthly, by his estranged love. They would speak through dreams, speak of current events, speak of the other two sisters, speak and speak and relax old gripes, old bones. Dreams were pleasant compared to life, dreams when Maryn could be himself to another who could not judge, and every so often the witch would ask him if he would come back to her and Maryn had to say no. He still had his goal, still had that eternal crusade for the better health. The Inquisition still watched. Years passed as they investigated, eventually coming to the conclusion that while they could not pin anything directly against Maryn a blanket conviction for dangerous endeavors and studies into heretical magic seemed most apt.
And so he became a criminal and, in response, Maryn fled to the Shadowlands.
Reason: Maryn has fled to the Shadowlands to go once more to the coven and, more specifically, the one who’s stolen his heart.
by Sarderia » Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:57 am
by Naval Monte » Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:35 pm
by Naval Monte » Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:12 pm
by Britanania » Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:27 pm
Naval Monte wrote:Character Application
Character Name: Gwendolyn "Hex" Carle
Gender: Female
Appearance: Hex is a fairly tall, young-looking woman with a tanned complexion, long slightly disheveled white hair that parts in the middle of her back with long bangs that goes over her shoulders when not tied up, with green narrow eyes, roman shaped nose, and full lips. Her facial features are narrow and sharp. Hex has a slender but noticeably curvaceous and athletic frame with broad shoulders and flared hips and she sports a well-endowed chest with a fairly muscled and well-toned built, most prominent on her legs, arms, and abdomen. While genetics, diet, and exercise helped, one can not forget that as with most Reavers her body was significantly altered and when the magi who made her altered her appearance they wished for her to become both powerful and attractive, to become a living symbol of what they see as human perfection. Her height is 6 feet 3 inches tall with a weight of 211 Ibs and measurements of 43/28/46.
Because of the Reaver procedure Hex was left with numerous scars that show where the magi cut her in order to change her form; the most prominent being the scars on her cheeks and forehead. Others that are hidden scars throughout her body; these being located on her neck, torso, shoulders, biceps, forearms, back, hips, thighs, shins, ankles and wrists. Most of her teeth are now fangs as a side effect of monster materials being used to augment her. She also has keratinous wedges instead of regular nails at the end of her hands, creating claws whose color is noticeably darker than her skin. Her voice can produce a much larger vocal range than normal, even allowing her to growl as a wolf if she wishes too. Her ears are slightly longer with points eerily similar to lycanthropes. Her pupil can shrink into slits during low light environments and expand back into a regular size in bright rooms. She also has a brand on her right inner thigh that acts as an identification mark of not only the Order of Reavers but also the magi guild that made all Reavers.
She wears a black dye vest that has metal plates, studs, and rivets integrated into the heavy layered cloth to provide added protection and durability with plated chainmail armor underneath and two crossed chest belts to hold her knives and sword. The rest of the armor is plated with most being black. From her back there is a long, black, tattered cape with a hood on it with a piece of cloth she can raise to cover her lips and nose. A leather collar with plates of metal and studs is worn around her neck to prevent vampiric creatures from biting her neck.
On the shoulders there are black metal spaulders and rerebraces covering her upper arm. As for arms on her right hand she wrapped both her hand and forearm with coarse cloth bandages, the forearms have a leather and black metal vambrace. The bandages are to assist in handling a sword and for hand stabilization while also separating the leather and metal vambrace that is used to provide a measure of protection for her least armor arm.
The left hand armor has a metal gauntlet interwoven with coarse cloth bandages and black dyed leather. She has couters to protect her elbows. As for leggings they mostly consist of soft trousers made from skin of an unidentified animal or monster with both leather and steel armor protecting her legs with poleyn on the knees and tassets to guard her thighs, the leather armor in particular protects Hex's thighs and crotch, the latter having a metal plate to protect that area from any kicks or stabs to it. She also wears a leather brown belt to hold many other items as well along with a pouch on her right side and to hold her dagger. The boots have sabatons on them and greaves to protect the shins of her legs. She wears a pitch black shirt that has torn sleeves that resembles an undershirt and her boots without plated armor when relaxing.
Personality: Cold, Wary, and Rigorous. These are three words most would best describe Hex upon first meeting her, as well as intimidating. The woman generally prefers to be aloof when it comes to others and stays silent on most occasions, speaking only when needed too. Because the general public either fears or despises Reavers it has made Hex cautious when around a large group of people as she suspects that anyone would try to attack her for being seen as a "monster". Having a tough and serious personality, she can easily come across as very strict, aggressive, and even rude when interacting with people, though the degree of wish changes depending on the person she is speaking too.
Hex can also be sarcastic, especially around people she particularly don’t like or feel aren’t taking things seriously. She has little patience for people who are zealots or incredibly arrogant or are consumed with greed and vanity, just as she has no pity or patience for cowards, especially if they are willing to leave others to die just to save their skin. While Hex tries to maintain a calm persona deep within a seething rage born from years of injustice and trauma lurks within that if pushed too much can erupt. However her training allows her to control this rage and use it for combat, but sometimes this rage becomes too powerful even for her to control when confronting something she truly despises, like werewolves. In some instances she has been known to feel bestial-like impulses similar to the monsters she hunts, such as the thrill of hunting down a target. In Fact, she genuinely feels joy being in combat as it makes her feel alive and gives her a sense of control that she often feels she never had in her life. She can also be vindictive if anyone commits a grave injustice on her. She can also become very competitive when she feels driven
Her appearance does much to conceal how much of a cunning person she can be. Hex very perceptive, quick-witted, and clever. Taking this cunning with both her resourcefulness and pragmatism makes her a far deadlier fighter. Despite the coldness, rage, and furocity she shows there is a woman who not only follows a code of honor and while feeling apprehensive on getting close to people once she does she cherishes the companions she makes. She is also willing to assist people being plagued with both mundane and supernatural troubles, though she would try to get some form of payment to hide the fact she is performing a form of charity. She not only enjoys her job due to the combat but also because she has a secret fascination over the strange creatures she was created to hunt. One can even call her a dork when it comes to monsters, faeries, and other such beings. This also manifests with her refusing to hunt down certain targets as she can see that not all creatures and nonhuman sophonts are monsters, that in many ways they are no different to regular animals or humans. This causes her to at times defend the very beings she was made to hunt if she feels that the humans that went them dead are in the wrong, going as far as to fight or kill another human being if there is no other way to resolve the conflict. She also at times hunt down humans whose crimes she deems as being fitting of a monster.
Age: 40
Occupation: Reaver- Augmented monster hunter and labrat. Professional Orphan.
Likes: Monsters, combat, food and drinks, bathing,
Dislikes Werewolves, politics and backroom dealings, bugs, religious zealots, cheapskates
Skills:
- Ways of the Blade: Hex has been taught the ways of the sword from a very young age, only improving as the years went by. Having been taught how to fight monsters and witches, and being granted both incredible strength, speed, and dexterity, Hex can effortlessly use any sword of any size and strike with the same speed, precision and power used by most monsters who hunt men. Hex prefers to go for fast and decisive manner in her fight as she prefers to go after weak points or limbs to weaken her prey. Hex is even taught how to duel wield two blades should the situation comes when she is forced to use them to deal with multiple opponents at once. She combines her swordsmanship with her willingness to improvise on a fight and her cunning in fights to cause her targets to fall into traps or unexpected counterattacks.
- The Flight of Arrows Reavers are powerful beings and are blessed with senses that makes them into the most excellent hunters; but alas it is those same senses that curse them to be terrible soldiers. With most firearms, cannons, and explosives used in modern battlefields being in loud enough volume and frequency to cause hearing problem has resulted in many Reavers (save for a odd few) to turn away from firearms and rely on the old and reliable bow and arrows for long range weapons. A combination of training and acute visions makes most Reavers who use either a regular bow or crossbows into deadly marksmen as they can pick up a target from incredible distance and be able to quickly determine when it’s the right time to fire. Hex is no exception to this as she has great skill in both the use of her regular bow and her repeater crossbow, of which she carries by her side, just in the event she needs to take out an enemy from a distance or is hunting for good and materials.
- The Grit of Nature: Because Reavers often travel across Vesperia to find their latest target it means they often spend long periods in isolation in a wide variety of environments. Hex was taught in a year age basic survival training: telling which plants to avoid when foraging, how to create traps, and how to live off the land. Among her skills of how to utilize the resources of the wilderness and how to best avoid the dangers that lie with the wilderness, Hex was taught how to become a powerful hunter as she can track and devise traps for her target. Other skills she learned while out in the wilderness include navigation by sun and stars and dead reckoning, find and even making shelter from rain or snow or blazing heat, creation of simple tools from whatever resources she has on hand, cooking her own food as well as drying meats and preserving food to be saved for a later time, and assess the potability of a water source with a practiced eye. Her mutated body has made her very adaptable and durable to survive against a variety of weather and environmental as well as the many dangerous flora and fauna that would surround her in the wilderness.
- Movement of Shadows: While her size and appearance does make most avenue of stealth incredibly difficult for Hex she nevertheless tries her best to get close to the enemy before they realize what is happening. This usually take on the form of infiltration as she finds ways to enter the domense of her target and try not to alert them of her presence. Hex often uses deception and even intimidation of what she is to aid in her getting into places she should not be. Her enhancements allows her to see into the dark, allowing Hex to better use the shadows to cloak her presence when not wishing to be seen. Because of her dexterous and fast hands she can perform sleight of hand tricks and pickpocket people before they realize they were robbed.
- Monstrous Bestiary:Hex was taught from childhood the many mythologies, folklores, fairy tales, and stories of the monsters that still roam Vesperia. Hex, always having an odd fascination even with the ones she genuinely despise, took to the courses that taught her more about these entities with great enthusiasm. Hex is knowledgeable about a variety of things when it comes to monsters; from prefered habitats, the life cycles and temperament of the creatures, their physical, psychological, and pyschomagical capabilities, their intelligence, their weaknesses and relation to magic. This information not only grants her a great many advantages in her hunt as she can both expect the capabilities of her target and exploit any vulnerabilities her targets have, but she can know the value of certain body parts and make sure to bring back the most desired parts to earn herself more money for her effort. This grant knowledge also includes witches as many tend to view rogued arcanists as being akin to monsters.
Magecraft:
- Alchemical Wonders: Hex focuses on the core tenants of transmuting, combining and purifying matter, often to create a variety of elixirs and potions that would aid her in battle, but others to augment or even enchant some of her weapons such as throwing knives and arrow bolts, even armor plates can be augmented. Some of her alchemical creations include a vial with a substance that would produce a thick plume of smoke once exposed to oxygen, a tar that would produce azure flames, a potion that can temporarily allow her to see the more ethereal parts of the world. Hex lacks the skill to create golems as she found the art to be too time consuming and wasteful of materials that would be better used for other activities.
- Esoteric Tools of Trade: Hex was never had the time nor inclination to use magic proper, even if she respected the utility and power of magic. The use of sometimes lengthy rituals and their memorization, as well as use sometimes expensive and rare materials, discouraged her from practicing magic as she wish to find methods that she can use almost immediate in combat. However an alternative was available in the form of focis. The ones in her possession are a few foci created for the Reavers to use in their mission. She can not create her own foci but she is trained in how to use the ones she possesses as well as other foci made for Reaver use. Of the foci in her possession include:
- Energy Conductor: Deceptively looking like a regular old quill, while it can write just as a regular quill this mundane appearance and functionality hides the fact that it was crafted to be used as a foci. This quill is in truth an Energy Conductor; a foci made to absorb any energy nearby into itself and store it until by command it can unleash the stored energy in specific manner dependent upon the amount of energy being released. With the conductor one can absorb nearby fires and either unleash a stream of flames, a fiery blast after bringing it close to a person, or unleashing sparks to light something on fire. This can also absorb electricity to either unleash a static shock to either paralyze or even kill under the right voltage. Even light can be stored so the conductor can either unleash a bright flash to blind people or to act as a magical torch. However all usage of it will eventually drain it of all of the energy it has absorbed, with larger displays of it's powers being the most energy intensive. The conductor will have to absorb more energy to repeat earlier actions. One can still use it to stab someone in the eye if desperate enough. The conductor can only store one type of energy each. To store another type the user must remove the energy type that is already in store within the conductor.
- Purification Flask: A worn down, amber color, flask. When water that is contaminated is placed within the flask and is shaking while the key word is chanted the pollution and toxins within the water will be cleared away, making the water safe to drink. Clean water that undergoes the same process will be given a purification quality that can be used to clean off wounds covered in dirty and mud, clean stained and dirty clothing, and even clean the body. On minor wounds being clean the water can even accelerate healing. However the flask can not turn salt water fresh, blood into drinkable fluids, nor can restore spoiled food, only remove the terrible odor for a short while. An interesting side effect when drinking clear water that was enchanted by the flask is that it can cause a mind, addled by stress and worry, to become more calm and collected, making the flask a stress reliever and a bringer of restful nights. Unfortunately using it on alcohol will only cause the alcohol to be water down to the point of uselessness if one wishes to become drunk.
- Shield Bracelet: Made from silver with five shield shaped charms attached to a silver chain, these effigies of physical shields act as talisman to ward off most minor curses and spells sent against her, augmenting the magical protection offered to her by unicorn mane, as well as a shield against projectiles ranging from rocks, arrows, and even bullets. However for such projectiles the power of the bracelet often manifests in subtle manner; often it would appear that the projectiles seem to have difficulty hitting the target, a sentiment that would grow stronger due to Reaver’s increase speed and agility. Should a projectile actually be able to hit the wearer the bracelets will either cause the projectile to not hit either half the intended force or to hit a non vital area. This aspect of the bracelet’s power strains heavily when multiple projectiles are used and explosives and cannonballs are notorious for getting around the bracelets powers. Throwing knives, when used by regular humans, can also get pass the protection of the bracelet due to the speed rarely reaching those used by similar projectiles.
- Etheric Effector: A gem found in the Sathrol Marshes, another location said to be similar to the Shadowlands in terms of high arcane energies, that was found, cut, and polished to be small enough to be carried on the palm of one's hand, or in the case of Hex was built into the palm of her gauntlet, the enchanted mists of the marsh has changed much in the marshes and for a grove of trees they have absorb the magic so much they all turned into crystalline structures containing magic within them. The gem in Hex's possession can be used to control etheric energies to move small objects around her by her thought and motion. This is normally use to move obstacles out of the way or to bring objects to her, to push them away, or even stop objects. At close range to an opponent and if she offers plenty of her own energy the gem can unleash a powerful telekinetic blast that can knock down and repel certain enemies or stun others, disarming those that carry weapons. The finesse and power to move largely objects is beyond Hex as of now and constant use of the blast will eventually drain her and during the charging period she must not lose concentration otherwise she will lose the energy she offered but gain nothing in return for the failed attempt.
- Truth Stone: The basic looking tool of a Reaver, Truth Stones are a vital tool when encountering targets of a more spectral nature or ones that can use psychomagical capabilities to obfuscate themselves from any hunters that would come after them. By seeing through the hole at the center one can see the more ethereal aspect of existence; witnessing the etheric energies that awash the world and the part of reality that many mystic say spirits reside in. When rubbed against a blade a certain amount of times while reciting specific chants the blade gains the temporary property of harming non corporeal beings. When brought up the stone can protect one against spectral entities that wish to do harm. A specific rite known to only to Reavers can cause Truth Stones to unleash a powerful magical defense that can harm, and in some cases banish, spectral enemies and break away any magic used to hide someone, but this causes the stone to be inert for a time. This property does not affect physical beings, even mages who were invisible won’t be harm once their spell is unraveled. Truth Stones are perfect amplifiers for rituals dealing with spirits and other ephemeral matters.
Reaver Physiology: Taken in as child, Hex was subjected to intense alchemical processes, consumption of mutagenic compounds, implantation of monstrous organic materials, exposed to sorcerous binding agents, and relentless physical and magical training with a strict dietary regimen, to make her into dangerous and highly versatile living weapon to be used against a vast array of opponents, many of which possess superhuman speed, strength and/or other deadly powers. These procedures ultimately mean that Hex is a mutant built specifically to hunt and kill inhuman prey. The key permanent results of mutations shared gained by the diabolic surgical operation she undergone include:
Items:
- A repeating crossbow with 20 bolts
- A hunting knife.
- A shortsword bearing resemblance to a kukri made of Reaverium, a bright yellow metal with an appearance similar to polished electrum. The metal tends to form a regular crystalline lattice likened to the appearance of cells under a microscope, arranged regularly in an extremely strong matrix. Reaverium naturally repels magic, allowing objects made of it to deflect spells and cut through wards. It also has the peculiar property of converting dissolved minerals that it touches (assuming it is at a high enough concentration) to turn into more of itself, meaning that when it is exposed to blood, it converts the haemoglobin inside the target organism’s body into Reaverium, causing acute heavy metal poisoning and anemia. Disposing of the Reaverium in one’s bloodstream is highly taxing for the liver and may result in organ failure.
- An extremely large claymore made of Reaverium
- Hidden Blade below the right wrist
- An oil lantern
- A tinderbox
- Acupuncture pins
- A bag with caltraps, ropes, and other traps
- Eklessia Prayer Rope
- A shortbow for hunting game with seven arrows
- Lethal toxin to tip arrows
- Various salves and medicines
- Several spools of reusable razor wire
- Snares
- Petroleum jelly bomblets
Sexual preference N/A
Identifying features Tall height, White Hair, Otherworldly Beauty, Monstrous Features, Scars, a Hidden Brand in her inner thigh
Bio Before she was known as Hex, before she became a Reaver, she was known as Gwyndolyn Carle, a simple girl born into a simple life in a village called Wygol just a few miles away from the industrial citystate Tallarn. She spent her youth hunting small game with a sling. She was eventually taken under the wing of the local huntsman who helped her graduate from braining rabbits to stalking deer with a shortbow. She was a precocious archer and was on the verge of becoming a monster hunter when disaster struck. Her town was beset by lycans in their dozens, massacring the militia and leaving no survivors. Hex was only unharmed because she was away from town at the time of the attack. Returning to gnawed-on corpses and burning straw, she quickly deduced the source of the attack and, driven by a cold resolution toward retaliation - though she justified it to herself at the time as a simple test of her skills - she began the long process of tracking the lycans down and killing them. The first encounter went poorly. She’d cornered one of them but she herself was half starved and delirious from sleep deprivation. She was mauled, severely, and left for dead. It was through luck alone that a passing group found her and took her to the city of Tallarn, where she was quickly discarded as a lost cause by the medical establishment and thrown into one of the many morgues to be buried later. Representatives of The Cultus Monstrum found her, however, and decided that she was right for the Reaver Initiative, a project to create unparalleled hunters, soldiers and warriors: in a word, their desire was to create god in the flesh.
Hex was violently ripped from Death’s doors, given a new body and form of existence. Her mind was desolated by drugs and hypnotism, her veins pumped full of solutions and reagents as the scientists working on her attempted to find the perfect substitute for her blood. They removed whichever limbs and organs were most damaged and replaced them with monstrous counterparts. Later, they began simply removing anything that they felt they could improve, regardless of its condition. She was hardly aware of the years that passed while they worked on her, only bringing her out of a drug-induced stupor every now and then to ascertain her intelligence, memory and sanity. The rest of the time they forced knowledge into her mind using techniques which made the blood in her brain curdle and the humours in her eyes boil.
The end of the programme felt to her like being born again. She hardly remembered the child that she’d been or the town that she’d lived in. She was an Olympian at that point; perfect, determined, undeterred by either emotion or toil. For a time, she was what her creators had envisioned. An automaton of blood and bone, made only to destroy that which threatened humanity. She broke her knuckles a thousand times, dulled her blade a hundred. Each time, she grew back stronger and more knowledgeable. But then something cracked. The source was impossible to ascertain, the reasons for her awakening inscrutable, but one day, she simply… stopped. She woke up after a short night’s sleep and remembered who she was. Fallibility, bias and greed had somehow worked their ways back into her personality. She was human again.
With the return of her humanity also came the memories of the attack and her desire to get revenge on the lycans who attacked her village and left her for dead. With the return of her memories she now found herself driven with a new purpose; to use her new abilities to finally kill the monsters from her past. However she knew that if she was to just leave so suddenly it would arise suspicion from her masters, she would need to act as though she was still their living automaton. So when she returned back to the cultus abode she pretended to act as though nothing happened.
She accepted whatever missions was handed to her only to use the travels to listen out for any information about the lycans that attacked her village. It was in these travels that she would encounter many new creatures and even more interesting people. Such the time when during the event in one solemn autumn Hex enter a farming town that was plagued by mysterious disappearances that many in the town believed to be caused by either a witch or a fairy. In that time Hex was hired by the lord who still own the town despite protest from the religious community who saw her as a monster. In her stay in the village she would venture into the woods to find proof of the fairy that was kidnapping children.
It was during the hunt she would encounter her first Inquisitor, unfortunately for her the first encounter she would have with the illusive order would be the only time she would have a positive encounter with them. She would the inquisitor in the woods leading a child through the woods and wondering if perhaps the inquisitor might be related to the disappearances she would follow them.
In her pursuit the two would find strange lights coming from the woods that was getting close to them. Once the lights were close they would find human like figures flying around with many insectoid like features on them mixed with elvan features, the lead one resembling a young girl who was a moth.
The inquisitor would have the child hide while they would fend the faeries off with a sword of iron. Knowing now that the inqustor was now actually saving the child after being lured into the woods by the faes Hex would reveal herself and aid the inquisitor. The fight would last only for a short while as the faeries would flee once one of their own was harmed by the inquisitors blade and Hex’s own shortsword.
The two monster hunters would lead the child back home and after learning that the inquisitor was named Remus, the two would form an alliance to take down the faeries. The two hunters would find out, with assistance of Hex’s enhance hearing, that the faeries would emit a haunting song that would place a targeted child into a trance and lure them into the woods. Each time this occurred the two hunters would follow the child so to lead them to the faeries and once they encounter them would fight off the faeries until they fled once one of them was struck by either Remus iron blade or by Hex’s Reaverium blades, of which would often cause the faeries to lose a member of their rank eventually due to the blade’s properties.
It was during these weeks of slowly weeding out the faeries that the two hunters became far more willing partners, Hex being reluctant to call the pastor the first friend she made over years. Their hunt would end finally when the two manage to corner the lead fairy in their nest. In the fight Hex would set would their nest and most of the fairies on fire and Remus would break the wings of the lead fairy, with Hex delivering the final blow and ending the fairy.
However the the two would soon come to a horrific discovery as the spirits of the faeries departed that the bodies would revert to their true form, the missing children. The faeries were possessing the bodies of the children they have taken in order to stay in the material plane and with their bodies now perished the faes were forced to leave this plane, but not before changing the bodies back to their original form. To make matters worse the town folks, who were drawn in due to the fire caused by the fight, would find the bodies and Hex stabbing the missing daughter of the lord.
The lord now distraught and furious of the turn of events would order the Reaver to be executed for her crimes. While Remus would try to bring reason the lord refused to listen to the pastor as his knights charged towards Hex who was able to ruthlessly cut them down. The lord would order the rest of the town folks to strike down the Reaver but only a few would try, they suffering broken limbs, but ultimately having their lives spared by Hex.
Remus would be forced to knock out the lord and while he told everyone the truth of what actually happened it was clear to the two that most would only see her as a monster regardless what he told them.
Knowing that their stay was now over the two would departure from the town. But not before Remus gave Hex a gift that she would carry to this day, a prayer rope. In his own words, it was proof that while most would see her as a monster she proved herself to still be a good soul and as such is still a child of Enas regardless of what she is now. Those words would have an effect on Hex as would remember them for years to come. The prayer ropes becoming a symbol of those words.
Of her other hunts she would have dealt with ogres sabotaging a railway because the trains kept interfering with their sleep. Remove an infestation of monstrous lamprey that attacked merchant vessels that traverse the river the monsters were in, and even banish several spirits haunting fields and abandoned homes.
In one such hunt she was tasked to kill a dragon that apparently have taken livestock and farmers in order to consume them and she agreed to hunt down the dragon. When she climbed up to the dragon’s lair and venture inside she found a horde of gold, gems, and other treasures. Yet in her search she found no evidence of the people taken by the dragon.
She did find the dragon slumbering and not wishing to disturb it she would try to sneak out. However the dragon would wake up at the worst possible time and when it saw the Reaver it would blast out a stream of fire at her. Being forced to defend herself she would contain the flames within her energy conductor and stab the dragon inside it’s mouth with her short sword, having her arm almost torn off as a result before the dragon was forced to let her go.
Hex would use this as her chance to flee the cave as the dragon chased after her despite it’s pain. The Reaver would be forced to kill the beast within the tunnels but not before it caused a cave in, to trap her in the tunnel with her. It’s attempt would have succeeded if Hex was rescued by golems who were made by a mage who hired Hex to slay the dragon. With Hex released and the dragon slayed the golems would immediately go down the tunnels to claim the treasures in the dragon’s chamber.
Having a hunch on what was going on the Reaver would tell the mage that she didn’t find any bones within the dragon’s lair, only the treasure. She would ask the mage if she fought the right dragon. The mage only refuttled her concerns and told her that she killed the right one, telling her that her only concern was killing monsters, not asking pointless questions. It was then she realized that she was tricked into killing the dragon so the mage can steal the dragon’s treasures. The Reaver knew she couldn’t do anything to the mage as he had ties to the academy and any act against him would also be an act against her masters. She quietly accepted his reward, which was far fewer than he promised, and left.
It wouldn’t be the first time she was called in to fight against monsters that she would find were not a threat as many would tell her. From being called into to exterminate a goblin tribe due to humans encroaching on their territory. Being tasked to capture selkies and sirens so the perverse nobles can have them as their wives and sex slaves, to even capturing faeries and spirits to be enslaved by arcanists and alchemists alike. She was ordered to do such tasks but unlike before she had the choice to save these creatures if she could, often by claiming that she was forced to kill the creatures she was tasked to capture or lying about their deaths after convincing the creatures to leave the area. But in some of those occasions she was forced to kill to save the creatures from a fate far worse.
When she isn’t being forced to hunt down creatures that many view as monsters she herself was seen as a monster. It isn’t too uncommon for Hex to have service refused to her because of her appearance or for some foolish people to try and slay her, such as the bounty hunters sent by the noble who still believed her to be the murder of his daughter and not the fae who possessed and used her body. However attacks are rare as most would see the Reaverium claymore and monstrous features of her body and know to not enrage a Reaver. Only those who are intoxicated, insane, arrogant, or lack knowledge of what a Reaver was would attack her directly, and even those that try to use poisoners and marksmen would find that taking out a Reaver with such methods aren’t guarantee to succeed, infact most failed to kill her.
In another mission that would play a major role later in her life was when she was tasked to hunt down a rogue war golem made by the Commonwealth during their war against the Maunkang Khanate that invaded the lands of the Commonwealth. The golem was an experimental warmachine that the Robaiziche branch of the academy made to aid in the war and while the golem succeed in killing large swaths of the invading horde the golem had a fatal flaw, that it needs a mage to control it. This control was lost when the mage who commanded the golem was killed by a bullet fired by a khan marksmen and without the mage instructing the golem the construct went rogue and started attacking everyone.
The path of destruction left by the golem made it easy for her to follow it and when she found the metal monster she found much to her great concern that one of it’s arm was a massive cannon. However even with that weapon she choose to fight the construct, less it finds its way to a village and massacre everyone in there.
The fight between the construct and reaver was long and bodily. As Hex was forced to weaken pieces of it’s armor before she can start to inflect real damage to the construct, all while avoiding the numerous cannon balls, chemical weapons, and explosives sent by the golem as well as the bladed weapons it had as well as its own feet that tried to crush her. However in this long and drawn out battle Hex would show the superiority of organic fighters as she was able to strike down the core of the golem and destroy it.
The general that hired Hex was impressed and try to convince her to join in the war on the Commonwealth’s side but she refused the offer. With her being paid for her services she would venture away from the battlefield.
In all of these she would get pieces of clues on the whereabouts of the lycan pack that attacked her village. She often found dead ends but in some cases she would find great leads that would lead her to the pack
In one such mission she would discover the carcass left behind by the lycan pack and would venture into the woods to find the pack. In her search for the woods she would find a campsite made by burly men and women who resembled more of pagan barbarians then werewolves. Of the campsite she would find the leader of the band, a man who calls himself Cornell. She would spy on the band of barbarians for the whole night until they all went to sleep. Once they all went to sleep she would sneak into their camp and find the hut that Cornell was asleep in.
The Reaver would try to assassinate the man in his sleep but the man would roll away from the strike and grab a hold of his war hammer. Both she and the barbarian leader would fight within the hut and outside as the rest of his tribe would gather around them. In the duel the barbarian would change into a hulking lycanthrope before her.
Looking down at the woman he would recount that her scent was familiar to him before he realize that she was the same runt he mauled back on her home village. Realizing that she found the werewolf that nearly killed her years ago she would become more relentless on trying to take him out but try as she might Cornell would be as swift as her, dodging and blocking her attacks.
The commotion would cause several spirits in the woods to interrupt their fight, Hex fending off the spirits while the lycans flee. By the time she was done with the spirits the lycans have fled. Hex swore to find Cornell and kill the man.
Throughout the years she would continue to perform her job even as monster hunting was becoming an increasingly decline profession. To make up for it she became a hunter of both wild animals and criminals to earn some money. But as many Reavers fret over their future and what will happen to them should their purpose no longer exist Hex was given an opportunity that many Reavers would kill to have.
A cabal of nobles from both Carmina and the Commonwealth hired her to guard their chosen representatives in scouting the Shadowlands to gather information about the mysterious land and to find it’s economic value. She was hired to guard these scouts from the threats within the Shadowlands. She joined not because of the money, though it did play a role in making her agree to the deal. No, she joined because she heard from them that lycanthropes were sighted in the area and she is hoping that among the lycan packs she will find Cornell and his pack in the dark woods. In this business venture she is hoping to finally get her revenge, even if it causes her life to do so.
Theme Song: Cloak and Dagger
Reason: Publicly she is a hired bodyguard sent over to protect some people. In truth she venture in to find a lycan pack and their leader so she can avenge both herself and the people of her village.
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