Fantasy Darkness Falls (Characters)

[John RipFist]

Name: Pharris Grey



Character Image:

Spoiler: Pharris

(Essentially this, but his armor is dented, rusted and dirty.)

Nicknames: Elder, Grey, Nub





Character Description: Pharris stands moderately shorter than most of his companions at 5'6. His demeanor is gruff, jaded and angry. His hair and beard are almost constantly dirty and disheveled, though the white of his hair shows through easily. His armor is dented and rusted, showing years of poor care. The old warrior is covered in wrinkles and scars, his most notable feature being his missing right arm, earning the nickname Nub.





Gender: Male





Age: 47





Personality: Pharris was once a paragon of the Light, constantly spouting prayer and thanks to the Light, before he lost his arm eight years ago. Since suffering the defeat of the 6th Crusade, Pharris manages to keep sane by avoiding the people shouting for the Light, and keeping his face in a drink. When not drinking or hiding from the religious, the old warrior is agreeable at best, however, memories of the last Crusade haunt him still. Since losing his arm, Pharris has adopted a major inferiority complex, leading him to pick up a punishing training regime in order to keep up with fully capable warriors.




Backstory: Pharris was born to a Priest of the Light and his wife, though his mother did not survive childbirth. As a child, Pharris was always the most attentive when his father would speak of the Light, and the day the Dark would be forced back by Crusaders, taking the sermons to heart. His mind was filled with visions of greatness and glory. He could be the one to save the world! All it would take is faith and a sword. A priest may have faith in abundance, but a sword takes more than donations.

And so, young Pharris picked up a stick, and he swung that stick from dawn to dusk, every day until he was old enough for an apprenticeship. He became apprentice to the Sanctuary's blacksmith, and worked the forge every day, all day. What was once a wooden stick became a hammer for the anvil. When the Crusaders saw the young man working himself to exhaustion, and then training himself at nightfall, they took pity. The boy had devotion, but needed formal training with a sword.

One of the traveling Crusaders, Aldia Hatcher, chose to take the boy under his wing. Pharris was amazed, he had the opportunity to become a Crusader! He was released from his apprenticeship and began training with Aldia at the ripe age of 14. As the years went by, Pharris continued his training, continuing to learn and master the art of the greatsword. Pharris was 17 when his master, Aldia, was taken from him. While he wasn't a formal Crusader, Pharris had learned much from Aldia, and was broken by this loss.

Pharris was formally inducted into the Crusaders upon turning 18, and spent over a decades mastering his art, waiting for the Crusade to finally begin, preaching the words his father had taught him, and training the younger recruits. The man had become a beacon of light to some recruits, and was an old codger to others. When the Crusade finally began, no one was thrilled like Pharris.

In the final battle, Pharris fought alongside his fellow Crusaders with all the zeal and fury he had. Wraiths were demolished by his mighty sword, one after the other. He knew he could reach the Necromancer. He was so close. Then he saw.

Aldia, his former master. The one who had trained him for years, who truly let him become a Crusader. Aldia's body moved in sudden jolts towards Pharris, who seemed to be frozen in place. All the warrior could do was raise his arm in defense. The Wraith's claws sliced clean through, completely removing the limb. A warhammer smashed Aldia's skull, and Pharris blacked out.

Pharris woke to the morning sun, a few familiar faces kneeling next to him. They explained that a Blessed had been able to stop the bleeding and infection in his arm, but they couldn't put it back. When he asked about the Necromancer, he was met with silence. The Necromancer escaped him, and in his current shape, he would never be able to face down the monster. Why had the Light forsaken him? Why had it forsaken his master?

Upon returning, Pharris buried himself in distractions. Drinking, training, yelling at people in the street. However, upon hearing rumors of a new Crusade being assembled, Pharris assembled what old gear he had, and set off to finally finish his duty.




Skills and Abilities:

Weakness: Pharris only has one arm. This comes with all the normal disadvantages of not having two arms.

Strength: After nearly a decade of training to handle his greatsword with one arm, Pharris has amassed incredible strength in his left arm and, while it does strain him, he can handle his greatsword with his left arm alone.

Veteran: As a veteran of the prior crusade and longstanding member of the Crusaders, Pharris is hard to break, mentally and physically. While he may experience night terrors and his bones are a bit more frail than they once were, the warrior has spent decades training to be able to take the hardest hits.

 

[Kazanna]

Name: Remington Ahimoth

Character Image:

Nickname: Rem, Moth (Though he hates it)

Character Description: Remington is 5'11" and weighs around 240lbs, little of his body is fat, as his profession has disallowed him time to grow much. His frame is built in a way where his muscles are like cord drawn taught and despite the scars across his arms, legs, back, and chest, he is still as of yet, uninjured in his own mind. His eyes are an emerald green with flecks of nearly gold bronze, a distinct family trait. His hair is almost entirely white, which he keeps tied carefully behind him, as it reaches just below the nape of his neck. His grizzled old face shows a mixture of warmth and old battle-scars that are more internal, than external.

Gender: Male

Age: 49

Personality: For all intensive purposes, Remington is outwardly a jovial person. Within any community he's found himself to be a part of at the time, he's ended up as the funny uncle to almost all around him. He displays constant exuberance in all tasks, and tries to look at every situation in a positive light. On the field of battle, his personality at first seems the same, however, once he's put to the task of killing, or rather, re-killing the creatures risen against the living, his madness shows clearly. Remington is, in actuality, quite damaged mentally, and while it doesn't impair him personally, it has been shown to terrify those who have gone to the field of battle with him.

Backstory: There were those with gifts, and those without, there were those who could control the light and the dark, and those who could not. When Remington was a boy, he was one of the civilians, one of those who was not blessed, had no abilities, which, coming from his family, was a slight shock at first. But rather then let this handicap slow him down, Remington instead pursued studies in metalcraft. He learned of the forge from an early time, forged his first blade when he was only eight years of age, the weapon still resides on his hip to this day. But he didn't stop with just learning weaponcrafting, he traveled from one sanctuary to the next, harvesting knowledge, any smith, or forge who would have him for a time of study, he would work for and learn everything he could from them. From weapons, to armor, how to cleanly mix two metals together, to reinforce steel and alloy into unheard levels of durability and sharpness.

It wasn't until he was in his late twenties that Remington's abilities manifested, while working in the forge, he took up a project to forge a blade for a crusader that was part of the same caravan he was within. The man had brought him a pile of armor, that of his foes, demanding that they be melted down and forged into a horrific blade to let him continue the crusade. Remington had agreed, having used salvage many times in the past, he began the process. Melting down the steel was simple enough, and creating the new weapon wasn't much difficulty either. It was as he began the final moments of the forging that the problems started. It was as though the steel itself was filled with the darkness, the unholy manifestations of the necromancer's latent power dripped from the blade and the thing suddenly began to roil and writhe with darkness.

Remington, being unversed in how to deal with the darkness itself, but not one to back down from a challenge, struck the blade back into the forge, applying more heat to it's form, trying to burn away the darkness. As the blade began to take the heat, Remington watched as the darkness simply turned the flames back. But not to be daunted, he pulled harder on the bellows of the forge and inwardly compelled the blade to burn itself clean of the dark manifestation. It was then, at the core of the blade, that Remington's long silent Blessed ability sprang to life. Deep in the molten core of the sword, holy power blossomed, and rippled outwards, consuming the darkness in a brilliant flash. The steel was cleansed in a magnificent burst of light, and Remington inherently knew what had awakened within him. The steel itself conformed to his will as he began to shape the blade once more, and as he worked, he poured more of his own energies into it. As he finished the project, the blade rippled with energies of the light, and Remington fell to his knees, exhausted. He had imbued the blade, without even the knowledge of how to do so, with the light itself.

When the crusader who put him to task came to collect the weapon, he found to his surprise that the blade was beyond expectation. It felt light as a feather in his hands, and could cut through nearly any material. In addition, it still held the heat of the forge, which beyond it's scabbard, let it burn through most materials as well. Remington became known after this, but the process of forging such weapons was draining on him, and it took him several days to recuperate from the process. As a result, he has forged few of these weapons, and of them, he has only seen two of them ever again. One returned to him by a caravan lead, it's wielder fallen defending the caravan they protected, the other, he watched borne by a man wreathed in flames, seeming to be enhanced by the blade itself.

While Remington has made many blades for others, he has imbued few of them to the extent of the first blade, and he has only ever imbued a single weapon for himself. A massive bearded axe, it's blade as long as its haft, with a curious mechanism that allows it to become a sort of long spear or horse felling blade. After the first weapon was forged, Remington continued his personal education with metal working and craftsmanship. It was several moons later when he found a real passion to invest in, and to him, it was what he had been pursuing his entire life. During one of the caravan trips he ventured with, he met a young woman who was skilled in metal work herself. However, while he was a smith, she was an artisan of machinations. Remington instantly took to her trade, begging her to teach him of it's wonders, and within a few weeks time of learning from her, he had not only risen to her level of expertise, but he had also surpassed her by a grand margin.

Engineering, as it was still in its infancy, became an obsession for Remington, he tinkered with various weapons and armors, implementing various design strengths and oddities to make them have secondary functions to the original purpose. His axe was one of the first tools he created in this fashion. He imbued its steel with the fire as he had done so before, and altered the head of the weapon. The shaft itself was reinforced to take extra load, and it's head was fitted with a mechanism that was reinforced several times over to prevent weakness. The head of the axe was sharpened on both sides and became a truly terrifying weapon. When extended, the blade of the axe would reverse and arc outwards, like an odd, long handled sword, or a peculiar spear. At the twist of the handle at a certain point, the weapon would close itself like a trap, slicing anything in it's path in half, creating a wieldable guillotine.

Remington had asked several crusaders to attempt to wield the weapon in battle, but none were able to wield the awkward thing, as it's weight was truly meant for Remington's hands alone. As such, when the next caravan he was in came under attack, rather then hiding as many of the merchants and craftsmen might have, he took to the field of battle, and was terrifyingly proficient at rending the creatures before him with his odd weapon. The battle did not leave him unscathed however, as he was still unskilled in combat, he took a number of injuries, but was credited with saving the caravan as a whole, as while he had taken injury, none other had, as his furious assault upon the creatures had lasted until morning found them, and he had killed more then five times that of any man. Due to his size and strength, Remington was a natural on the battlefield, his skill and prowess grew with each battle, though he rarely returned from the field without a few minor injuries.

As time passed, Remington continued his trades, and honed himself in combat. Now, as his youth slowly begins to fade, he has found that rare is a fight he comes away with more then a scratch, and that any steel within his hands is as pliable as tin for shaping, crafting, and engineering. His array of weapons, armor, and devices are truly terrifying, and while he isn't one to brag or gloat, he bears a certain reputation in many sanctuaries, as a man wielding a holy weapon, with hands that can turn the gears of fate to his own design. Though, his humility prevents him from it, Remington's skill within the forge is surpassed by very few, and he has never found armor or weapon he couldn't repair, or duplicate, and he has never found steel as light or durable as his own.

Skills and Abilities:

-Forgelight- Remington's latent ability with metalcrafting imbues his creations with fragments of his own power, giving his weapons a keener edge, and a latent burning flame that burns through most material, from cloth, to armor. His armors have also been told to have turned back the darkness of lesser enemies, and lessen the blows of others.

-Burning Blade- Remington's control of the flame within him is limited to needing an instrument so to speak. He can channel his power into metal, but cannot manifest it without. This may be a mental block, or simply that Remington knows no other way.

-Flames Will- As Remington crafts a weapon, or creates a new device, he is able to control the heat of the forge much more carefully then another smith might, perfecting the heating and cooling of his creations, which not only makes his creations more durable due to less imperfections, but it also reduces his time in crafting them by huge amounts of time.

-Fireheart- Perhaps the only thing that truly makes Remington terrifying on the field of battle, he is, for all intensive purposes, immune to fire, in addition, his body temperature rises when he wills it, so much so that when his blood is spilled, it has been reported to burst into flames, this also gives him a great defense against the chilling lichborne magics of the darkness.

Extra: While Remington is skilled on the field of battle, he is also quite mad, and as unpredictable as fire itself. He has been known, to on occasion, turn his blade towards allies that he has little association with, and finds that when he has yet to develop a deep bond with someone, he can rarely adapt to them on the field. However, in the reverse, once he has a sort of synergy with someone, he is able to fight alongside them with a greater deal of prowess and spread his abilities to them, not only from his Fireheart, but also his Burning Blade skill. This does however require a proximity of around fifty feet in any given direction, and the more weapons he imbues with the Burning Blade, or the Fireheart he wills upon someone, the weaker he becomes as both of these skills sap his strength. Remington has trained himself to enter a meditative state to act as a groups empowering beacon for a time, but it leaves him vulnerable to do so.

 

[Tedronai]

Name: Isobah Thorn

Description: Isobah is a gnarled, old man. To say looks as though he’s had a hard life might seem a little trite, but considering the harshness of life for everyone in Vime, to he looks rough enough compared to his peers to draw comment is telling. White bone white hair and a permanently unshaved face yet never quite what could be called a beard add up make him appear at least a decade older than his age. He lost his left eye a long time ago, hiding the scar behind a patch, but takes an inordinate amount of pride in still having most of his own teeth.

He is small but tough, like a steak cooked too long the nightly encounters with wraiths having being the heat that stewed him. His clothing and armaments are far heavier duty than his slender frame can comfortably support, but the loss of manoeuvrability is of little concern to him as he isn’t a fighter; instead he sits near immobile in his driving seat, his only task to keep the caravan moving forward so that they don’t get overrun.

Gender: Male

Age: 47

Back Story: Isobah was a scrawny, sickly child and, in the unforgiving land that Vime had become in the half century before his birth that ought to have sealed his fate at an early age. He survived these early years by making himself useful to others, those who were better suited to weather the harshness.

This usefulness continued into his adolescence and adulthood, leading him to his calling as a caravan leader. In Sanctuaries where death was a heartbeat away, and everything to delay the inevitable in dwindling supply it dawned on his very early that someone needed to transport these necessities from place to place. The strong were forever preparing for the next crusade, and so it fell on the weak to fight a different type of battle.

Personality: Isobah is a natural optimist, and though he is known for driving hard bargains it is only because he wants to see that the wares he peddles go to good use, and sees to it that the profits he generates are put back into replenishing the dwindling supplies at the less fortunate Sancturies.

Yet the long life of hardship and loss have hammered much of the generosity and niceness out of him, what little remains is now encased within a toughened shell. He still has a particular fondness for those who remind him of the weak, sickly child he was, but only those who are trying to overcome their weaknesses; those who seem content to suffer them are considered dead to him, because it’s only a matter of time.

Skills and abilities: An excellent negotiator, mainly trade but he has been known to mitigate many an argument between the scared, angry warriors he employs to guard his caravan.