The Grand OC SII: The Re-OCening: Week 29: UNINTELLIGIBLE!

Username: Come on and slam
Theme: Commute+Thrall
Name: Alain Wisteric
Gender: Male
Race: A compelling argument for rigorous necromantic education
Text Color: Higan-bana

Description: Alain sits a comfortable 16 hands at the shoulder, astride a mount roughly 13 hands tall. His "horse" is actually a many-legged mess of several animal skeletons, with all the tendons and musculature replaced by bundles of soulvine. Moss manages to grow where the underlying tissue doesn't flex too much; the sporecaps on the moss glow like foxfire in low light. The skull is mostly obscured with an explosion of spider lilies; the stamens twitch whisker-like toward interesting smells and sounds. The skulls of a couple smaller animals sitting at the base of the steed's neck sport a similar infloresence.

Given the mismatch of leg bones it's picked up, some of the longer ones started bending to accomodate, giving it a tarantula-like gait. It normally ambles along, but can pick up speed if it senses Alain panicking.

Alain is in slightly better shape, though the soulvine has worked its way through most of his lower body and torso. When he closes his eyes, he sees the coil of spider-lily petals on his eyelids. He wears the official dark green cloak of apprentice necromancers, and his hands and lower arms are wrapped securely in Silk-of-the-Veil. Only his fingertips are exposed, and these have pale rootlike hairs that wave around when he places them near his mount.

Weapons+Abilities: Alain can control the steed's movement by placing his fingers on it. It can accept instructions like moving toward a specified location/person that Alain knows, or walking toward more abstract concepts like safety or sanctuary.

Alain also has a hunting knife at his belt, and a bow and quiver strapped within arm's reach to either side of the steed. He's got about a dozen arrows left, and knows how to use 'em. Neither Alain nor the steed are much good at close combat, though the soulvine has a habit of engulfing and strangling whatever tries to assault it, then stashing the remains in one of its multiple rib cages for digestion.

The soulvine has replaced a fair bit of Alain's muscle mass. If he cut himself free he'd have perhaps an hour or so of free movement before the severed vines began to dissolve into shadow. On the upside, he's slow to tire or hunger and can sleep sitting up straight on his mount no problem.

The steed is powered by a Dying Wish, the energy signature produced by particularly powerful mages when they die.

Biography: Alain should've had another twelve years or more learning the necromancy trade from his father, but some bandits cut his education short. His father's last words were to take Rattan, their cart"horse" sunning itself by the nearby pool, and run.

There was so much Alain had yet to learn. Of soulvine constructs, he'd learned the fundamentals and the few basic do's and don'ts to stay safe around them, but only as stern commands and not with any kind of deep theoretical knowledge.

He'd been told not to tack up Rattan for long durations without gear lined with Silk-of-the-Veil, had been too distressed and exhausted and fallen asleep in the saddle and the one thing he remembered when he woke up stiff was that soulvine never hurt as it absorbed its food. He had to tear his arms free, wrap them in Silk to make sure they wouldn't stick more permanently.

When a cold wind struck his back and Rattan's skull was aburst with flowers, Alain knew his father was dead. He's been wandering the wilderness since, a scared abomination, with little hope of finding someone who could safely disentangle him.