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 Post subject: Dusk-Walker
PostPosted: Sun Oct 27, 2013 3:02 pm 
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Full Name: Dusk-Walker the Living Shadow, personal retainer to the Grand Boss of the Four Clans

Species: Nezumi

Gender: Male

Age and Place of Birth: 21, Scorched Fen Warrens

Appearance: Sporting a coat of jet-black fur, a wild mane of hair which reaches past his shoulders, and a set of sharp features which are only exaggerated by his already unwelcoming demeanor, it's no surprise that most decent folk tend to avoid Dusk-Walker for one reason or another. While his body is slight and sickly like many other Mire-Shadows, he carries himself with a dangerous confidence that hints at his uncanny strength and murderous inclinations, even among those he considers allies. As he enjoys intimidating others without taking direct action, it is a rare case indeed when someone is not unsettled by his presence.

Dusk-Walker conceals the lower half of his face behind a mask and wears segmented strips of tightly bound black cloth along most of his body. On his wrists, ankles, and forearms are rigid armor plates designed primarily to deflect blows and catch arrows, while his hands, feet, and chest are largely unprotected. Although he almost never finds the opportunity to do so, he has a specific preference for wearing long, free-flowing robes when making social appearances, usually while impersonating other Nezumi or openly serving as Cinder-Fur's retainer.

Family: A mother and father from his old home and three siblings. His memories of any of them are vague at best.

Friends: Cinder-Fur, although he's extremely poor at showing it.

Enemies: None, save for a few childhood tormentors with long-forgotten identities.

Likes: Observing fear and panic, hiding from others regardless of the reason, fireworks, imported meat.

Hates: Undeserved respect, being held back, excessively bright lights, poets and scholars.

Fears: Losing his master and his power. He's become quite attached to both.

Strengths: Unnatural muscle strength and agility, highly perceptive.

Weaknesses: Especially susceptible to disease and other physical afflictions, easily provoked and prone to excessive focus, lacking in formal education.

Equipment:
Wakizashi: Designed as a backup sword for warriors with considerably more honor than Dusk-Walker himself, he nonetheless finds that the blade's relatively short length strikes a perfect balance between penetration and maneuverability without making it a nuisance to store on his person.

Kama: Often wielded alongside his sword, this wickedly curved sickle commonly finds its use in catching enemy blades and delivering unexpected strikes to vulnerable areas. Dusk-Walker has been known to throw the weapon to devastating effect in the past, but he dislikes retrieving it and possess an irrational fear that it will one day stick into an opponent who survives long enough to escape with it.

Tail Blade: A small, sharpened piece of metal tightly bound to the end of Dusk-Walker's tail. Intended as a last resort, the weapon is mostly dangerous when unattached and wielded separately, or when targeting an opponent's exposed weak points like the eyes. He does possess enough dexterity in his tail to strike at enemies with it, but such strikes possess only a fraction of the strength and precision that his other limbs are capable of delivering.

Climbing Claws: A set of cylindrical plates which wrap around one's palms, decorated with small hooks. The hooks protrude outwards and may be used to cling to vertical surfaces without a proper handhold. If necessary, they may also serve as crude improvised weapons.

Fukiya: A simple blowgun used to quietly deliver darts laced with lethal, paralytic, or hallucinogenic poisons from short distances.

Smoke Bombs: Modified by the addition of dried flakes of blood to the gunpowder mixture inside each capsule, these bombs allow any Mire-Shadow of sufficient skill to effectively teleport both a majority of the smoke produced and anything caught inside of it across short distances. The smoke itself is also quite capable of obscuring vision and acting as a coughing hazard if necessary.

Hand Grenades: At Cinder-Fur's insistence, Dusk-Walker carries a small quantity of equally small hand-held bombs which are similar in design to those gifted to his predecessors for their cooperation in the Gunpowder Revolution. As they are quite loud and too weak to reliably kill, the ninja prefers to use them only as a distraction, if at all.

Training:
Ninja: As a member of one of the Greatmire's two ninja clans, Dusk-Walker is trained in the arts of stealth, deception, and assassination. He is capable of moving silently, hiding in unconventional locations, and using his environment as a weapon when forced into direct confrontations. While the emphasis of his training lies in subterfuge, he is also fluent in several styles of armed and unarmed combat, if not as thoroughly as a dedicated warrior.

Mire-Shadow: Like any member of the Mire-Shadows, Dusk-Walker possesses a limited understanding of blood magic. At their basest level, the rites which allow him to practice this magic have strengthened his body and enabled him to detect and locate - but not easily identify - nearby sources of life with sufficient concentration. His interest in the craft has allowed him to learn a scarce few techniques from the clan's shamans, with their council's sanctioning.

Teleportation: The first part of this ritual involves a long and elaborate incantation performed upon a small container of blood, usually kept in the form of dried flakes for the sake of convenience. Once completed, a short phrase is all that is required to transport everything within the immediate vicinity of the material elsewhere, instantaneously and regardless of any obstacles in-between. Larger quantities of blood require more time and effort to prepare, and in higher concentrations, allow objects to be moved further away. The destination of a teleport performed in this manner is not drawn from memory or Dusk-Walker's ability to visualize a location, but rather from an intuitive measure of direction and distance. For this reason, it is possible for him to move objects into potentially occupied spaces, often with destructive results. Although a skilled practitioner of this ritual is able to control what is and is not moved by the teleportation, Dusk-Walker lacks the control necessary to accomplish such a feat.

Transmogrification: A complicated and painful ritual which requires a sample of blood from a sentient creature. If performed correctly, the caster permanently takes on the physical appearance and characteristics of the creature, such as the sound of its voice and any scars or other defining traits it may possess. The accuracy of these details is dependent on the skill of the caster and their familiarity with the creature they are attempting to become; for instance, it is extremely unpleasant for a Nezumi to become anything other than a different Nezumi, and the end result is likely to be far less convincing. As the changes to the caster's body are actual rather than illusory, it is not possible to detect magical influences on the caster once the ritual is complete, no effort must be expended to maintain its effects, and a separate casting of the ritual is required to return the caster to his or her original appearance.

Minor Pyrokinesis: The most basic delayed-activation ritual Dusk-Walker knows. With little more than a single drawn mark, one word, and a moment's concentration, Dusk-Walker is capable of producing small sparks of flame near distant targets. These fires are nowhere near large enough to cause meaningful harm to a person, but may be used to ignite cloth or, more commonly, gunpowder.

Light Step: A ritual infamous among the Mire-Shadows for its widespread use. Casters are able to drastically reduce the weight of their bodies and equipment, allowing them to leap massive distances with little effort and land silently even on fragile surfaces. Once activated, they gain control over their weight, allowing it to be returned to normal and reduced again as many times as they wish. Easily the most well known effect of the spell is its ability to allow the caster to stand on water as if it were solid ground.

Character Biography: Born into a family with no status and no money in one of the Scorched Fen's disease-ridden underground warrens, the Nezumi who would become Dusk-Walker was never given much chance at what others considered a "normal" life. His childhood was spent picking the pockets of surface-dwelling fishermen who could barely afford to support themselves better than he could, fighting other children over scraps of food, and hiding from roving underworld gangs. Throughout it all, the young rat adapted by becoming as harsh and unforgiving as his environment, rejecting the fear that plagued his family and eventually leaving them to visit the surface permanently, where he would only need to provide for himself. This led him to discover the merchant caravans which regularly traveled through the area in order to supply it with necessities like cheap food and water - things which were always in high demand in such a desolate place. Where the fishermen saw their salvation and an essential part of the village's livelihood in the caravans, however, Dusk-Walker simply saw a target.

While the traders were used to desperate beggars attempting to steal food from their carts, their more valuable goods were rarely a target in the Scorched Fen, where things like weapons, fireworks, and spices were luxuries that the impoverished had no use for. The caravan guards were often forced to devote their undivided attention to less valuable wares simply to ward off packs of street urchins, which created a perfect opportunity for Dusk-Walker to escape with whatever they turned their backs upon. Alone, the things he stole were mostly useless to him - the occasional sharp weapon or comfortable piece of clothing he would keep, while the rest were sold for a pittance to any merchant who would take them. He made a living in this way for several years, always taking advantage of other thieves' efforts by either using them as distractions, or if that failed, stealing from them directly after the caravans moved on.

Dusk-Walker's string of successes finally met its end when the merchants, deeply feeling the loss in profits he had caused them, chose to tighten their security and put considerable bounties on his head. Hunters began to visit the Scorched Fen looking for the locally infamous thief, and found no shortage of willing cooperation amongst the people he had slighted. At the same time, the act of robbing carts became considerably more dangerous, as the guards grew in both number and familiarity with him and his methods, forcing him to leave empty-handed on far more occasions than he could sustain himself through. Faced with the reality of a place quickly uniting against him, the thief did the only thing he could - he disappeared, taking what few possessions he could carry with him and trading the rest away for just enough food to travel on. Some of the better prepared bounty hunters were ready for just such a contingency, leaving traps and sentries on all conceivable paths out of the town, but for all their effort, they caught nothing.

In truth, Dusk-Walker had played directly into the hunters' waiting hands, and was only alive by the grace of a Mire-Shadows recruiter. The ninja, posing as one of his newfound enemies, had taken steps to capture him well before he encountered any real traps, and snuck him out of the area without raising so much as a stir. This assistance was not given freely, however, as he had merely exchanged one captor for another. He was offered a simple choice, to either undertake a trial that would qualify him for service in the clan, or be killed and serve them through the collection of his bounty instead. Even having lived in such a remote location, Dusk-Walker was familiar with the name of the Mire-Shadows, and knew to take the offer seriously. He accepted the ninja's task without hesitation, both to preserve his own life and out of a legitimate, if naive, desire to share in the power that he knew they possessed.

The task, as it so happened, was to assassinate a bandit warlord operating within the Mirelands from the ruins of a long-abandoned fortress. Only upon reaching his destination did Dusk-Walker learn that his target was actually a paranoid ex-samurai, and that the fortress had been repaired and placed under constant guard. Raiding parties would leave during the day and return late at night through a locked gate, while patrols manned the dilapidated outer walls in shifts. Dusk-Walker's first attempt to reach the keep was made through a collapsed wall segment, but this proved to be a mistake as it was both difficult to navigate and kept under diligent watch, resulting in him being chased off by the bandits before he could reach the other side. His next two attempts proved even less successful, as the guards were aware of the his presence and expecting him to return. It didn't take long for the aspiring killer to realize that some manner of innovation would be necessary if he had any intention of surviving the entire ordeal.

A week later, the nightly raiding party returned to find the fortress gate locked and both guards manning it dead, with their throats slit and weapons sheathed. When they finally managed to enter the keep, they did so with the help of the Nezumi manning the nearby wall, who were completely oblivious to what had transpired. Another pair of bandits were ordered to watch the gate during the next day, and met the same fate around the same time. A day later, and the gate was left untouched while the then-sparsely defended walls were targeted instead. Either out of patience or spite, their assassin made no efforts to advance into the inner keep, always returning at some indiscriminate time of night to claim another life and leave without so much as seeing his real target. In truth, Dusk-Walker was acting out a war of attrition, using the setting sun as a cover to blind any onlookers as he crept through the elongated shadows of the trees, an act which would later earn him his namesake. Once he reached the walls, he would slowly climb their least defended areas and wait for patrolling bandits to pass overhead. When even traveling in pairs proved ineffective against his methods, the bandits began to fear him, which was exactly what he wanted.

For the next stage of his plan, Dusk-Walker began to set off fireworks and stashes of gunpowder stolen from the bandit's own stockpiles throughout each night. These served the dual purpose of denying sleep to the keep's inhabitants and creating distractions which made it all the easier for him to separate and kill stragglers as their kin investigated the noise. To the bandits, each moment of calm silence felt no safer than the chaos of a recently raised alarm, which quickly wore down upon their minds as they struggled to remain conscious throughout all hours of the day. Eventually, the tension became too much, and a few of the fearful Nezumi betrayed their leader by binding his arms and legs with rope and carrying him outside, where they walked unopposed to abandon him on the only road leading away from the fortress. He sat there raving for several hours before Dusk-Walker became convinced that it wasn't part of a trap, and killed him.

The Mire-Shadows were very pleased with their newest recruit's performance, and he soon meet their liaison again to be led into one of the clan's many hidden sanctuaries located throughout the Mirelands. Upon his arrival he was seated in a wide room, lit by candles and choked by incense, where he met three aging Nezumi who formally welcomed him to their ranks. They named him Dusk-Walker in deference to his actions, handed him a small bowl, and told him to fill it with his own blood. When it was done, they divided it equally amongst themselves and began a low chant, but by that time Dusk-Walker had already lost focus of everything except an intense and invasive feeling of unease, as if he were being drowned in a substance which inspired revulsion at even the slightest touch. His first reaction was to resist - to move, or whatever possible equivalent existed within the confines of his mind, but this only provoked a searing pain which worsened as his struggling continued. Eventually, he surrendered to the feeling and lost consciousness.

Dusk-Walker awoke feeling weak, sick, and disoriented, but his body was stronger than it had ever been before. While his mind was convinced that it would be nearly impossible for him to move, he discovered that he was capable of walking around almost effortlessly, and soon became lost wandering the sanctuary's cavernous halls. It was nearly an hour later that he was discovered by one the three Nezumi that handled his rite of initiation, who was shocked to see him moving around so soon after what he had been through. The shaman, an elderly woman with graying fur and poor eyesight, wasted no time in escorting her clan's newest recruit to a bed, where she insisted that he stay until he had properly recovered. While tending to his needs, she attempted to answer his questions as best she could, even going so far as to demonstrate some of the magic that their clan was rumored to possess, but this only begat an even greater curiosity that was beyond her ability to satisfy. The most she could do was promise the young rat that his training would teach him everything that he wished to know, before leaving him to fall asleep.

When he became well again, Dusk-Walker met the Nezumi who would serve as his master for almost seven years; a former ninja who went by the name of Black-Nose. Although he had retired following the recent end of Cinder-Fur's great revolution, Black-Nose's skills remained sharp, and the first thing he did was explore his pupil's limitations through a series of grueling trials. For an ordinary creature, these tasks were nothing less than unthinkable; they demanded strength, agility, and reflexes beyond what a rat even in peak physical condition could ever hope to achieve, yet Black-Nose accomplished them all without difficulty, and in time, Dusk-Walker found that he could as well. Once he became reacquainted with the capabilities of his body, he was taught to meditate, and discovered that he could sense living things with enough concentration even in a void of sound, light, and substance. From there, most of his days were spent learning how to fight, move and kill silently, hide from sight, and use the unorthodox tools of his clan. On some rare occasions, his stubborn insistence would even earn him an audience with the shamans, where he passionately studied their complex chants and rituals in the hopes that the power of blood magic would grant him an advantage over his peers.

By the time that Black-Nose had run out of things to teach, his student had already become recognized among the Mire-Shadows for completing his missions with brutal efficiency, using both magic and his own skills to spread fear and chaos wherever he went. While others killed out of a sense of obligation, or because they feared the power that the clan held over them, Dusk-Walker needed no such excuses. He derived enjoyment from his bloody work, and wished only for its continuation until the end of his natural life. The young rat's single, twisted ambition was to gain some measure of independence from his clan's restrictive laws, and when the Mire-Shadow serving as part of Cinder-Fur's retainer finally succumbed to magically accelerated aging, he saw an opportunity to realize it.

The Patriarch of the Gunpowder Dynasty was a powerful figure, and it was said that power fell from his robes like fruit from a flowering tree. Nezumi from all stretches of the Greatmire fought with each other constantly to earn a permanent place at his side, and the Mire-Shadows were no exception. When Dusk-Walker appealed to his clan's council as a replacement for their lost comrade, he was one among dozens of other ninja who wished to serve Cinder-Fur for reasons of their own. To resolve this conflict, the elders summoned each applicant to a sanctuary beneath the foundations of Black-Rock Citadel itself, in order to participate in a demonstration that would help them decide who was most qualified for the position. What they did not reveal was that the Patriarch himself would be present to judge his would-be servants personally.

Dusk-Walker prided himself on his ability to toy with the minds of his targets and move through the swamps unseen; two things which were nearly impossible for an observer to quantify. His comparatively weak martial skills were easily outdone by many of his peers during the demonstration, and while Cinder-fur found his mannerisms "amusing", he looked like a fool for even attempting to compete with the more experienced members of his clan. It was only when the ninja were asked to duel each other that Dusk-Walker found an opportunity to prove himself, and only through dubious methods did he succeed.

The young rat's first opponent was a veteran of countless battles during the Gunpowder Revolution, who had seen more than her share of open combat. Her skill with a blade - even a wooden training sword - far exceeded his own, and he was put on the defensive from the very beginning of their fight. Although he was able to dodge and deflect the woman's attacks for a time, she left no openings for him to retaliate through, and he ultimately lost both his balance and the match in a single deft strike. This quickly proved to be a recurring trend, as each enemy Dusk-Walker faced was a superior combatant, and only through a combination of luck and misdirection was he able to win a mere two out of seven fights. This was by no means enough to suit his own ego, and during his eighth and final match, he blatantly cheated by deploying a smoke bomb in the middle of the arena. While surprising, the tactic seemed completely ineffective until his opponent entered the smoke and promptly disappeared, leaving Dusk-Walker alone and victorious.

The council was furious. Cinder-Fur, however, was extremely pleased. He insisted that Dusk-Walker serve at his side, and after much deliberation, they reluctantly agreed under the condition that his servant first be adequately "prepared" for the position. In truth, they wanted little more than an opportunity to interrogate Dusk-Walker, which they took immediately once he was alone. Fortunately for him, he had not used any magic that was strictly forbidden and his opponent had simply been displaced rather than killed, but neither of these things were enough to spare him from a severe punishment at the council's hands. They told him in no uncertain terms that he owed his life to Cinder-Fur, and that any further disobedience to the clan would not be overlooked.

Dusk-Walker now answers only to the Patriarch himself, with all ties to his own clan strained to their absolute limits. Despite his apparent lack of loyalty to the Mire-Shadows, however, he seems to genuinely enjoy carrying out Cinder-Fur's orders and is clearly motivated by something other than the very real threat of death hanging over him.


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