Car'mael's Cohorts

[Car'mael]

So, this is where my CS lie...

[Car'mael]

Name: Terhon the BlackSilver (truename)
Aka: The Harpy, The Platinum Death, The BlackSilver Death-Angel

Age: 1763 years (all adult Mara are above 1000 years)

Gender: Male

Race: Nightmare / Mara (Adult) / Death(-Angel)

Build: 6’7” tall, lean but whipcord build.

Hair: Platinum-white with black tainting the ends, shades into darker and darker grays in the shadows but lightens in sunlight and moonlight, long to mid-back and feathery around face.

Eyes: Ice blue, inhuman, glow in the dark.

Distinctive Features: . If bared to the world, his face appears human, elegantly-fine of cheekbone and jaw, dark lashes around ice-blue eyes, with long black-tipped platinum-white hair. The skin that hides beneath robes and armor and cloth is almost death-pale. Usually his wings are hidden beneath the robes, but when they are fully extended, it’s clear that his feathers are not made for flying—they are metal. Said wings prove to be more silvery in daylight, the black “dripping” off those metallic feathers. His hands are clawed with 3 – 5 inch talons per finger, and his feet are likewise clawed, though his foot is designed more like a bird or dragon than human (one toe back and four forward).

Clothes: A black-silver (more black than silver) robed figure that generally stands in darkness or shadows, he’s not eager to be seen. He’s taller if he wears his feathered bird-like mask (which has horns). Beneath the robes he wears a scale-mail hauberk of the same substance as his own feathers, and plate gauntlets and “boots” to protect him from anything those claws care to grip, black pants and shirt beneath the armor.

Weapons: Generally, he carries but one weapon, for his razor-feathered wings and claws are enough—a twelve-foot polearm (glaive) whose blade and shaft are made of his own metal feathers.

Strengths:
Wings: Only adult Mara (“Deaths”) have wings, but these feathers are like the scales of a dragon in their strength and sharp as blades, capable of cutting into stone like an axe into wood. They extend in flaps of slashing, shredding death, individually or together, yet they are as mobile as a second pair of arms with feathers instead of fingers and can be swung to pierce a target with the tips like a row of spears. They can be furled about him in a protective cocoon if he crouches. They drain what they cut into.

Talons: 3 - 5 inches long, they are the primary means of “feeding”. They drain what they cut into.

Spearwielding Skill: 12’ long, made of the same metal as his feathers, sharp as a razor, he whips the glaive around with the speed, precision, and ferocity of a sword-dancer... only a lot more deadly. Two-handed swings can cleave boulders, scythe big trees like wheat. One-handed swings slash at half that strength. A regular thrust would drive the glaive two feet deep into stone. One with his body weight behind it can go four feet deep, more with momentum. The glaive drains what it cuts into.

Armor: His own sheddings were made into the scale hauberk he wears, as well as the plate gauntlets and boots he wears, and the mask he occasionally dons. His armor can save him from physical harm but is destroyed by one all-encompassing fireball or diving through a fire-shield, then needs energy for repair (takes 2 posts to recover enough energy from a source by draining it, and simultaneously 3 posts to “heal” his armor as that’s a bit slower than his draining ability). His wings act as a second such protective barrier, equal to that of his armor if he sacrifices them in self-defense.

Draining Life-Force: Terhon uses the life-force he “eats” to sustain his own life and heal/repair, at a 2:3 ratio of drain:heal. Draining is only possible so long as his metal (talons, feathers, or polearm) remains touching flesh and has drawn blood—aka in a wound or while cutting through someone—and weakens the target, an imbedded talon killing an average human in roughly 3 posts if not removed from the wound. They can drain magical energy out of spells and possibly out of other sources like lightning, though this does not help him physically heal or repair his armor or wings. Also, drained power taints his black blood, so he can use drops of his own blood to disrupt shields and magic wards, though this weakens him for about 2 posts.

Invisibility/Levitation (Robes): The black-silver robes Terhon wears (like all Mara) are woven from his own life-force, his spirit-energy and shadows, adjustable at will like mental mist. When he uses them to become invisible, he fades completely out of sight in the blink of an eye if completely covered by them, and any sound beneath is contained by them as well, but he must reappear just prior to a strike at a foe. Because of the spirit-energy involved, they let him float/levitate and glide around like a ghost (with much the same speeds)—his preferred method of locomotion. Most Mara will not touch a talon to the ground for decades unless on purpose in a battle. Otherwise, he is a very heavy creature and leaves deep talon-marks in the ground, feathers ringing like distant bells.

Telepathy: He can speak with heavy, powerful telepathy—either with such a broad-range force that it can stagger a creature, practically vocal to even those without any telepathic skill, or softly and privately with another telepath.

Special Attributes/Weaknesses:
Speed/Strength/Senses: Mara are inhumanly fast (the blurring speed of a ghostly shadow RL) and demonically strong (they like to chuck foes into walls, leaving a crater or impression). They have nightsight, and hear with the acuteness of a hunting cat or elf.

Weaknesses: Mara are Shadow creatures—Healing spells, holy water, mage-bolts, normal fire, and similar attacks are equally dangerous to them, resulting in normal-style burns, and is as effective against his armor and feathers as on his flesh and talons. Black robes are as physically protective as mist, aka no physical protection at all. Crossing running water is uncomfortable; wading a stream being as tiring as swimming the length of a pool 10 times is for a human. Enough damage will make a Mara lose hold in this plane and leave, Banished 100 years. They can be Summoned and Bound and Banished like any creature from another plane, though these require serious bloody magical rituals that take at least 2 posts just to set up, let alone perform (and a Mara will not hold still to let you do it).

They tend to be unemotional equal-opportunity feeders (dragon, man, cow, cuddly cat, tree, they don’t care). Conflicts of others mean nothing to them normally, and they are as un-inclined to get involved with people (or even socialize most of the time) as they are to be involved in the conflict of Light and Dark forces. Combined with their predatory nature, the result is they make few friends.

Adult Mara sufficiently starved will drain anything they can find—driven mad with hunger, this can include someone it calls a friend. This need to drain life does not endear them to clergy and thus earned the adult Mara (known to most mages as “Deaths”) the term “Death-Angels”.

Personality:
Terhon is not of this plane, and so doesn’t think along normal human paths. He much prefers to observe than act, especially as his love passed away and there isn’t much to make this plane endearing to him anymore. For all his kind tend to seem dispassionate, aloof, and uncaring of human activities, Terhon has a compassion and empathy for people, though he doesn’t show it often. He particularly feels for children, perhaps because he watched his love grow up before they bonded. There is sentiment and sadness about him.

Background:
Terhon is an adult Mara, or Nightmare. They are creatures descended from angels and demons who refused to fight anymore, and removed themselves from worldly conflict to the Shadow Planes, wanting nothing more to do with Light or Dark. Their neutrality has left them as an elemental sort of creature, born to resemble a human and fostered in the mortal world until puberty--and talons--arrive. Then, as fledglings, they learn to hunt under assigned mentors, as once a juvenile they cannot sustain themselves on anything but life-forces anymore and are brought to the Shadow Planes. Few true adults exist, as to achieve adulthood—and their wings—they must consume one of their own kind. Once in the Shadow Planes, they rarely visit the mortal world unless summoned magically.

He did what is unheard-of for his kind: he fell in love with a human woman, a kindly Adept Mage named Carmen Belladonna. No mage would believe she had befriended a Mara, let alone an adult (also known as a “Death”), and that she managed to convince him to stay (Deaths rarely even visit, let alone stay for a period of time, because they do not like this plane). Thus, and because of his appearance, most mages in the world think he is but one of the near-extinct Harpies.

Feared as a Harpy, creatures of legendary evil that haven’t been found in generations, Carmen magically Bound Terhon to a plain platinum ring to make other mages think she somehow controlled him. Since then, she has passed away of old age (though, with him, she managed to extend her life a good 500 years, a secret some mages might kill to have!). This ring binds him to this plane, and makes him somewhat obedient to its wearer—IF the owner has strong enough will to overcome Terhon’s stubbornness.