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

Name: Scutigeryx Obitus “Outroboros”
Species: Psychopomp
Gender: Male-Identified
Color: Deadly

Description: Outroboros is uncharacteristically personable for an entity whose eternal career regularly dealing with the recently dead. You get to learn a lot about him – what is his favorite season (winter), favorite dessert (koliva), and other petty things that most celestial beings would find beneath them. Outroboros kind of gives an impression of an elderly man who is desperately trying to be “hip” with the cool kids, especially with the name he deliberately chose for himself and his tendency to overshare. You may think of him as particularly “un-hip,” but it might be deliberate social-engineering on his part. After all, an eldritch spirit is far less intimidating when they are spouting internet memes three years too late and the recently deceased are far less recalcitrant to being escorted by someone who is as dangerous as an embarrassing grandpa (at first impression, anyway). Being the un-coolest thing on the planet is a small price to pay for the safety of souls and Outroboros genuinely cares about the well-being and safety of them. Overall, a generally decent guy.

If you can get over the fact he resembles a man-sized nightmare centipede anyway. What a guy.

Abilities: Outroboros is of middling rank in the psychopomp hierarchy. While he does not really get the cool gifts of his far more powerful peers (mortal guise, ambient church music, et cetera), he is not exactly small potatoes either. He is scarily strong, fast, and can climb any surface, however physically impossible. His exoskeleton is sturdy enough to withstand most mundane weapons. However, his keystone ability is unlimited access to any world’s “Liminal Zone.” Liminal Zones are basically boundary thresholds the dead must cross before going to their deserved afterlife. Liminal Zones can take the form of dismal rivers or tunnels with golden light at end, but usually take the appearance of the physical world, only monochromatic and reversed (i.e. souls who were right-handed in life will be left-handed in this dimension). Outroboros exploits this access to essentially give himself short-ranged teleportation in the physical world or recuperate if the going gets tough but under certain conditions and with discrete judgement, Outroboros could bring the dead back to the world of the living. But oh, the implications. The implications!

It’s not a task to take lightly and without much reluctance. Outroboros knows that.

Biography:

SpoilerShow

“Do you think death is necessary?”

Outroboros could not hide his bemusement as his master, Scutigeryx Moritus, a stern-looking woman currently in the process of escorting a wisp to their next life, looked up in annoyance. Sure, that question was a deliberate incitement on his part but he was feeling particularly thoughtful at this very (monotonous) time and from his experience, serious contemplation should always be accompanied with a whimsical attitude, sort of like a sugar coating on a pill. He clicked his mandibles.

“Outroboros,” Moritus sighed, her form unfurling into a centipede just as frightening as him, if not more so. “Death does not exist.”

“Oh?”

“The mortal grows old or ill. The mortal dies. But people keep the mortal alive by putting them into things. Inanimate things like photos, statues, and funeral urns. Animate things like their children’s names and long-lived organizations. Sometimes things that are neither inanimate nor animate – dreams, thoughts, and other transient things. The body is weak but memory is strong.”

“Ah, mortals are powerful then.”

“So are we. But there are some things neither of us can avoid.”

“What is it, then?”

“Change. Fortune, for good of ill,” she said. She made a surgical incision into the fabric of reality and slipped into the opening. Outroboros soon crawled after, but not before waiting until she managed to get her entirety through the tear like any apprentice worth their salt would do. “Everything changes over time. Nothing ever dies but nothing ever stays the same. It is inevitable, unavoidable –”

She reared her head, her antennae wriggling imperceptibly.

“ – so the best we can do is adapt to it.”

Username: Dragon Fogel
Name: Drey Gan-f O'Gall
Race: Demonic Extradimensional Entity
Gender: Beyond definition; allows lesser beings to use 'he'
Text Color: This one, for reasons

Biography:
"You will tell me all you know."
Drey growled, and futilely clawed against the edges of the pentagram. He'd gotten careless, and he knew it.
Any other world's bindings would have fallen apart by now under his power. But no, he had to show off. Had to march right into the guild that was still hunting him to grab their promising new prospect.
Not that he regretted the plan, of course. It would have been well worth the risk if he'd succeeded. What he was upset about was underestimating old Griv.
Of course she'd known he'd come back. Of course she'd been ready. The latest prodigy had been bait, and he'd walked right into the trap.
"I was contacted by an entity of great power," Drey said, when he couldn't hold off the command any longer. "I was to select a champion for a contest. A battle to the death, across worlds. If my champion won, I would be richly rewarded."
Griv scowled.
"You're withholding details."
And it was more than a little painful to do so. But Drey was determined to resist as much as he could.
"What does it matter to you?"
"It doesn't matter to her," said the young prodigy. "But as your master, I find myself quite interested in what this reward is. Tell me how to contact this being."
That was the greatest humiliation in all this. It would be one thing if Griv bound him; she was the Archmagus, after all. But no, the youngster, with less than a year of formal training, had done the deed. Griv was interrogating him, but it was the youth's orders forcing him to answer.
He could only watch on in disgust as this child declared him "my champion in your contest".
And the host, much to Drey's annoyance, agreed.

Description:
Drey looks like a fairly typical demon. Ugly face, large wings, an aura of evil energy surrounding him.
Drey dislikes pretty much everyone and everything, but especially mages of all varieties. This was before he was bound to one and entered in a battle he had previously been looking forward to watching for bloodsport.
He'd be perfectly happy to vent his frustrations by killing everyone and everything regardless, except that he doesn't really have a choice in the matter.

Weapons and Abilities:
While Drey has access to dimensional travel and a few other extremely powerful abilities, the apprentice currently binding him has ordered him not to use any of his extradimensional powers. He's limited to what he could do as an ordinary demon, before he escaped his world's boundaries.
That's still potent - he can fly, control dark energies, and tempt mortals - but there's another condition.
He's not allowed to harm innocents, even indirectly. If this happens, he suffers intense pain from the binding spell, proportional to the harm he caused. If he willfully kills even innocent, the feedback would be enough to destroy him.
Drey is not happy about this arrangement, to say the least.

Biography: Jacinta’s interest in the curative magics started early. One of her earliest memories was of a day at the park where she fell from a climbing frame and landed badly. Her arm ended up out of socket, her leg was all cut from hitting some sharp corners on the frame, her head pounded, the world was hazy and indistinct and there seemed so much blood. She lay on the hard concrete and sobbed as the world went dark, all sensation fading except for pain; seemingly infinite excruciating pain.

Jacinta was dead for only a minute or so, luckily there had been a saluturge visiting the park that day too. They had come running at the sound of the small girl’s cries and healed her with nothing more than a couple of whispered words. In moments Jacinta healed, the pain faded without a trace, and though shaken she felt no worse than she had when she had arrived at the park. Her mother thanked the saluturge and vowed not to come back to this deathtrap of a playground again. Jacinta would ask to hear the story again and again as her fascination grew. Knowing how easily she had been brought back from the brink of death she began to believe that there was nothing that the curative magics could not achieve.

This of course wasn’t to last. As she grew up she gradually learned more and more the limitations of saluturgy. She learned that there was no practical way to reattach a lost limb, no way to stop or slow down the inevitable aging and wear and tear of the body, and even diseases infused with malicious magics that saluturgy simply couldn’t touch. She learned that although yes it was possible to resurrect the dead in very specific circumstances there was a hard and short time limit on how long someone had been dead before it was no longer possible, and how there was simply no chance if, for example, the patient’s heart had been too badly damaged, or the body was too badly burned and so on and so forth.

Jacinta was not satisfied with this truth. Despite what she learned as she trained to be a saluturge she still remained firm (if quiet) in her conviction that there was so much more that the magic could do if only it could be used in the right way. Eventually she graduated from St. Adara Carmine’s School for the Magically Inclined. She got a position at a hospital using her abilities to help those in need and in her spare time she devoted herself to studying saluturgy further. She was a fixture at the St. Carmine’s library even after her graduation, though she soon exhausted their supply of relevant materials and sought out prominent scholars and saluturges alike whose private collections she might peruse. She’d practice the obsolete runic forms of the healing words, and occasionally experiment with minor alterations, or new words entirely.

It took her years but finally she cracked it, a method by which she might cure anything, her own limitation her own ability to carry it out. It was a triumphant day, her innovations were going to change the world forever. It was at this point in time she was plucked from her home world by a being of some considerable power.

She found herself in a Victorian era study seated across from a figure comprised of a human shaped cloud of neon green smoke. They had a glass of wine in his hand and introduced themselves as A Samaritan. Jacinta demanded to know what was going on, where she was, what they were and that they let her go. A Samaritan tried to be calm and placating, they explained that they’d brought her here because they wanted her to resurrect seven individuals who had died in impressively final ways. Until they had learned of Jacinta’s work A Samaritan had had little hope of reviving these individuals even with their impressive powers. A Samaritan reassured Jacinta that this was all they wanted and that after she’d completed this minor task she could return to her world in peace. Jacinta tried to push for more information on just who A Samaritan was but they insisted that it was not her concern.

Jacinta didn’t like it but she didn’t have a lot of options, she begrudgingly agreed to do it. They travelled together to seven different worlds and Jacinta used her magics to revive the individuals in question, always aware of her duty to return to her homeworld and pass on the breakthroughs she had made to the world. Eventually after she had revived all seven, Jacinta and the seven patients she had revived were plucked from A Samaritan’s grasp by a being of even more considerable power.

Items/Abilities: Jacinta is a master of saluturgy, a kind of magical art that uses words of power to heal. These words are effective in either written or spoken form but can be dangerous if not drawn/pronounced correctly.

Furthermore Jacinta is a creator of a brand new branch of saluturgy. This technique has almost limitless healing potential allowing the user even to resurrect the dead no matter how long it has been or how badly degraded the corpse. To do this the saluturge must channel their words with their own life energy. By doing this they temporarily infuse their patient with their own life energy, this is necessary to essentially kick start their system and after a sufficient amount of recuperation on behalf of the patient the saluturge’s life energy will return to them.

The main limitation of this technique is that it limits how many people someone can heal at one time; the more they spread their energy between multiple people the less effective and the longer it takes to recoup their life energy.

An unexpected side-effect to this technique, one that may not be fully understood just yet, is that if any one of the saluturge and the people currently infused with their life energy were to die then they would all die. Jacinta’s life energy is currently spread across all seven of her patients.

Description: Jacinta is in her late thirties, she’s tall with prematurely greying hair tied into a long braid that goes halfway down her back. She has amber eyes and pale brown skin. She has reading glasses, stern half moon spectacles that don’t suit her, but she only brings them out when she needs them. She’s either found in the plain white robes of a saluturge or in her spare time she mostly wears very casual comfortable clothes in muted colours. She was at the time of her abductions wearing a pale orange sweater and faded jeans.

Jacinta is very driven, when she has a task she’ll stick at it with an impressive amount of dedication. She’s kind of shy however and doesn’t engage with people very well. She cares a lot about helping people, though sometimes she can get swept up in whatever goal she has in mind and kind of forget about the reason behind it.

Text Colour: #376A71
Gender: Female
Species: Boring human
Name: Jacinta Caduceus
Username: Ixcaliber

Username: Agensqueeze
Name: Tro Sertin
Species: Human
Gender: they/them
Color: bland

Descriptron: Oddly enough, they turn up where they are least expected. Unobtrusive, unnoticed. They are nondescript, almost to a fault. But they are always interested in what you are saying; they are always kind and a good listener. They're just not very sociable. Forever an acquaintance, never a friend. Grey eyes, grey hair, too young to be so lined, but quiet, certain eyes. Somehow, they seem folded intro themselves, a little. Distant in a way that makes you know, deep down, they belong in the quiet places, away from this, away from people, away from all of you. Yet they are there.

Items/Abilities: Never the volunteer for an idea, they turn others' words around. It is only tro survive, they say, pocketing the money from the bank, a "charitable donation" diverted from a rich man's slush fund; no one will miss it. The words turn and turn in their hands, and the world makes their way straight for them. They do not care for others' feelings on their introference much. They can always make you feel how they want. It is a kindness, in a way.

Biography: They had just come from the boneyards, where the interred came away as blocks of calcium. They had convinced the overseer to give them a cadaver, one he would never miss; the corpse would be a handy source of words like "dead", for a start, which they could leverage intro all sorts of handy situatrons.

Carrying the corpse, they came across a conversation, between two enigmatic bystanders. Strangely enough to an outsider but not to the Sertin, the corpse drew no notice, nor did Tro themself, not until they came between the two:

"So I said to the commissioner,"

"I know exactly what you mean."

"Oh, good morning, stranger-" A friendly wave.

"Is that a dead person?!" End of conversation.

Then, the turning. They grasped the sentences, rewording each turn of phrase around the vertices of where they wanted things to fo.

"Oh, good."

"That is a dead-"

"Mourning. Strange."

"You know that person."

"That is the commissioner!"

"I mean exactly that."

"Dead?"

"Dead."

Somewhere in the region of two days left!

Username: inidriM

Name: A Swarm of Ten Times Ten Twens

Species: Lissotriton Trahendum

Gender: Presumably Complicated, More Research Needed

Colour: Glow

Description: Lissotriton Trahendum, as the name may imply, closely resembles Earth's newts at first glance, though it grows to iguanan proportions. One feature that sets it apart (other than its discovery on an expedition some six hundred light-years away from Earth) is the striking blue bioluminescence exhibited by the organism when it is agitated or otherwise exerting itself.

Lissotriton Trahendum is also noteworthy in that its social structure seems to be hive-based, vaguely analogous to Earth's beehives or ant colonies. In the gigantic rainforests of EI-2581-II they serve as a sort of pollinator, darting across the vast and thick canopy to gather nectar from the blooms that permeate the local foliage before returning to their colonies. The colonies themselves are built within trees, with Lissotriton Trahendum digging them out using purpose-suited claws. This does not seem to harm the trees themselves, so there may be some form of symbiosis at work.

They also seem to be omnivorous, as researchers have observed them making an occasional meal of (often chihuahua-sized) insects with their frog-like tongues and powerful jaws.

Weapons / Abilities: By far the most astonishing thing about Lissotriton Trahendum is its namesake, an innate ability to warp gravity in a localized area. When faced with imminent danger--whether in the form of an unwary foot, a steep fall or a pouncing predator--Lissotriton Trahendum gives off an extremely bright glow and emits a localized field about 1' in diameter that flips gravity turnways (Note: We need to come up with a better way to phrase this) in order to either divert the threatening object or jettison the organism itself out of harms' way. Researchers have begun to colloquially refer to it as a 'Twen' in a fit of unfortunate wordplay.

Though only observed once so far, it appears that when Lissotriton Trahendum is swarming and threatened, their fields amplify one another to encompass areas of up to 1 cubic kilometer. The swarm observed was comprised of around 50 organisms, and the area produced experienced g-forces sufficient to uproot any Earth forest.

Biography: Some goofball thought it'd be funny to stick 100 small-dog-sized gravity-fuckering burrowing salamanders into their battle as a contestant. They were right.

You know what would've really sold this theme? If I'd posted who won the awards before the profiles even got written. Failing that, here's how things'll be apportioned appropriate-after the fact:

Outroboros wins Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award, and also the Lucky VII All-Rounder Award thanks to the character's interesting power set, and a presented personality that immediately evokes how much fun this noodle will be on an intergalactic murderromp.

The Thomas Packston Elementalist Award is awarded to Drey Gan-f O'Gall. Invertebrates and twisted takes I anticipated, so "Gentleman shoved into a battle" was an entertaining direction.

Jacinta Caduceus wins the Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery. It's also subverting the general concept of 8-folks-selected-for-a-battle, but 8-people-enter-8-or-no-people-live is exactly the kind of weird that suits the Kitchen Sinkery prize.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup goes to Tro Sertin. Their power should make for some really good interactions, especially with a contract-bound demon and a centipede who can pull him into inverted realms where their words might end up even more sinister.

Finally, The Twens win the GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding because boy howdy do I love me some weird dogs

Also Jacinta wins the First Five Eighths prize. Why am I mentioning this now? Look into your hearts and you'll know why

Primary Narrative Entity: Dragon Fogel
Name: Byrian Smytch
Gender: Cycles between he, she, they, it, thunk with every pronoun usage
Race: Ziverdorian Flyggwyath
Text Color: #489BAD on #09D6BF, bolded/italics/underline in that order.

Biography: Byrian Smytch only came into existence once the battle was announced and was created solely to participate in it. However, Byrian Smytch was created with an extensive false backstory, which any narrative entity other than Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity can contribute to.

Description: Byrian Smytch is a bearded Ziverdorian Flyggwyath with a large sword.
Beyond that, Byrian Smytch has no predetermined personality or traits. All narrative entities other than Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity may describe traits, which Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity is bound to follow.

Weapons and Abilities: Byrian Smytch is competent with a sword. All other abilities are to be decided by narrative entities other than Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity.
Byrian Smytch also has a significant weakness. If Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity makes a spelling error, grammatical error, pronoun error, formatting error, or continuity error, Byrian Smytch will be immediately destroyed as soon as someone notices the error.
Byrian Smytch is wholly unaware of this weakness.
In addition, Byrian Smytch must be described as either Byrian Smytch or have the correct pronoun used in order to survive. Byrian Smytch's correct pronoun switches every time Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity uses a pronoun.
Other narrative entities are not bound to Byrian Smytch's pronoun cycle. However, Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity must follow up the most recent pronoun used to describe Byrian Smytch with the next pronoun in the cycle, or Byrian Smytch will immediatey perish.
In addition, when the actual battle begins, Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity must use Byrian Smytch's name and race at least once per post, must use pronouns to describe Byrian Smytch at least twice per post, and must not refer to narrative entities. These restrictions do not apply to this profile.
Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity must also use appropriate text colors and formatting for other characters with assigned colors. Again, any errors in color usage or formatting will result in Byrian Smytch's immediate death.

Chief Botanist: ICan'tGiveCredit
Name: Peach
Gender: Female
Species: Prunus persica
Text Color: Peach

Biography: Peach grew from a peach tree in Iran, where peach trees are commonly grown, and was harvested from its tree late-summer. The omnipotent consciousness of the universe then decided to transport it to a different dimension for a brawl the likes of which the multiverse has never seen. Peach was indifferent about this because Peach is a peach.

Description: Peach is a peach with a fuzzy, orange-yellow outer layer, yellow flesh, and a radius of 3.5 centimetres. Peach smells tantalizingly good. Peach's seed is reddish-brown, oval-shaped and is 1.7 centimetres long. Peach is not sentient.

Weapons/Abilities: Peach cannot move, speak, or perform any action besides not doing anything at all as a peach. Peach's seed is extremely dense and cannot be ingested, digested, degraded, destroyed, be made part of any other thing or being or removed from all of existence. This property of Peach's seed is hereditary for all of Peach's offspring, should Peach's seed be planted in soil rich in nutrients, an area with moderate rainfall and chilled at a temperature between 0 and 10 degrees Celsius for approximately 500 hours, as would be required to cultivate any ordinary peach tree.

Username: Ixcaliber
Name: Thrillseeker
Gender: Female
Race: Human, mostly
Text Colour: #8A0707
Description: Thrillseeker is tall, athletically built with tan skin, amber eyes and a gaudily dyed blood red pompadour. She typically wears glossy black lipstick and aviator sunglasses with white frames and cherry red lenses. She wears fairly casual clothing that allows as much mobility as possible. She was at the time she was taken for battle wearing a black t-shirt with a white logo of a lantern, a worn, and in some places a little bloody, denim jacket, fingerless gloves, a miniskirt and black leather boots. She has a lot of tattoos, the only ones immediately visible are those on her legs which are nearly covered in obscure iconography.

Thrillseeker tends to be kind of guarded when around unfamiliar people or in unfamiliar situations. Though she’s a woman of very few words her emotion is often written clearly in exaggerated body language. She tends towards caution, having suffered badly for recklessness in the past, but is willing to make a mistake if she thinks she can learn something from it. She has no hesitation when action is called for.

Items/Abilities: Thrillseeker is accompanied by a modified Public Homunculi Vat (known colloquially as a Cauldron). A PHV consists of an upright human-sized translucent cylinder filled with a viscous liquid (in this case blood red) and an attached control panel utilizing touch screen controls. Thrillseeker’s Cauldron has been significantly modified; it has been fitted into a primitive chassis which contains a mobile generator and sits atop a set of hydraulic robotic legs.

Back before the merge PHVs were used to create disposable servants to perform menial tasks and at a low low cost, thanks to the work of the Lanterns the Cauldrons now serve a different purpose. It is possible to use a Cauldron to create a genetic and mental imprint of yourself which will activate should the user happen to expire whilst still within the Cauldron’s range, decanting a homunculus with the consciousness of the user. Furthermore it’s possible for someone who finds themselves in that kind of situation to recreate and reinhabit a copy of their physical body using genetic data stored in the PHV and a consumable bundle of genetic materials. Thrillseeker has a handy stockpile of these.

Additional functionality modded into the Cauldron via a transdimensional beacon is the ability to either summon and decant the consciousness of another user from another dimension into a temporary homunculus or to offer a version of your own consciousness which can be used the same way. This functionality allows thrillseekers to engage in some good spirited teamwork, however it is important to remember that not all thrillseekers are benevolent in their intentions.

Thrillseeker carries a flask of Rapid Growth Formula (known colloquially as Lifeblood). This is the same liquid from the Cauldron’s Vat and when consumed provides a very temporary healing effect. Thrillseeker’s flask contains enough for only a couple of uses before she’d have to return to the Cauldron to refill it.

Thrillseeker has a couple of different weapons available to her, but her primary one is the Scythe of Iaoael. This weapon was forged from the essence of Iaoael the Rancorous, an animalistic phantom that had slipped free of the White Labyrinth when Thrillseeker encountered it. Much like the phantom from which it was made the Scythe of Iaoael is jet black with a faint purple shimmer across it. It is ornately carved, though the pattern of eyes is difficult to discern in the blackness of the scythe.

Biography: Some come to Ilmire to fight the Night, or to try to understand them. Some come to scavenge what little remains of the decrepit city’s incredible technologies. Some come to peer into the void or to try to tame its powers for themselves. Thrillseeker came to this wretched place just looking for a good time.

KEEP CLOSE YOUR WALLETS AND YOUR NAMES,
FOR THE DREADED MERCERNARY TAMERFEIGN
WHAT DAMNABLE DEEDS SHE HAD DONE
IN THE NAME OF HER KINDRED AND HER LOVE?
BUT HER HISTORY REMAINS A MYSTIC LORE,
HER EMBLEM SCREAMS RED AND NEVERMORE.

PEOPLE FEAR TO NOTICE TAMERFEIGN
HER ANGER, HER FURY, HER ABSOLUTE SHAME
RAM-HORNS BEDECK HER WICKED FACE
AN INFERNAL CORE, HER TRUSTY MACE.
MASSIVE WINGS THAT BLOT OUT THE SKY,
JAGGED WITH FEATHERS, SHARP AS KNIVES.
SHE’S FILLED WITH RAGE AND INDIGNITY,
NOTHING IN HER EYES BUT ABSOLUTE CLEAR,
STARRY DARKNESS, IT’S OKAY TO FEAR.

SHE’S USED TO COWARDS, CAN YOU SEE?
FOR THE CURS SHE THOUGHT THEM BRAVE,
SOLD HER SOUL FOR POWER THEY CRAVE.
SHE TOOK THEIR BLOOD, AND HER REVENGE
BUT A PRICE AND A LOSS, SHE CANNOT AVENGE.
HER FAITH SHATTERED, HER HUMANITY LOST,
SHE MUST WALK THE EARTH, THAT IS THE COST,
ALL WREATHED IN FLAMES AND IRON-RUST.
WHICH MAKES HER ARMOR AN ABSOLUTE MUST
FOR IF SHE DEIGN TO SHED HER SKIN
THE COLD WILL COME, DEATH WILL WIN.

IF YOU SEE A FLAG, BLOODY RED,
KEEP CLOSE YOUR LIVES, KEEP CLOSE YOUR HEAD.
KEEP YOUR ARMS TIGHT, KEEP YOUR HEAD LOW,
THERE’S NOTHING FOR YOU BUT ABSOLUTE WOE.
FOR THAT SYMBOL, IT CAN ONLY BE CLAIMED,
BY THE FALLEN PALADIN TAMERFEIGN.

Username: Agencaptor
Name: Manhook
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Color: door grey

Description: Manhook has a hook for a hand, a man with a hand, a man with a plan. Manhook was a man with a hand, but the hand was a hook! And this plan was grand. The hook was a hand, the hand was unplanned, but the door was hooked upon the man's hand! The children screamed, man! Man hook car door man door car hook hand!

Items/Abilities: Manhook has a door, a door from a car, a car that was hooked upon his hook hand, and the hand had a hook, and the hook had a door, the door was handed in this man's hand. Manhook also has a gun.

Biography: CAR DOOR

Username: Predating the workshop-studios
Name: Amplifire, V-of-the-two
Species: Second-gen Inpheral
Gender: Deafening laughter
Color: Avalanche

Description: 12 metres tall and ready to rock, Amplifire is a hulking construction of metal coated in glittering permafrost. Amplifire lacks a face so much as a grilled front, vaguely amphitheatrical, from which you hear a many-layered clicking, and its hunched upper surface sports speakers each the size of a tractor tire. It balances on two sturdy legs, thick pistons attached to downward-pointing railspikes giving a little more balance to its top-heavy silhouette. From the front of its underside, a curtain of inch-thick cables dangle and sweep the ground.

Despite appearances Amplifire is actually pretty chill if you're not trying to invade his homeland. Even then, he'll settle for dropping several thousand tons of snow ahead of you rather than on top. Due to hardware limitations, a lot of his mental "processing" is made audible; this sounds a lot like headphone cables being pulled from and plugged into the jacks of still-powered speakers.

Biography: Amplifire's three granddads are colossal mechanical brains that survived a thaumonuclear catastrophe and decided "well we better make some hands if we're gonna keep doing our jobs." So they did and then those hands were actually robots. Or Se'anvil Also they were like fifty metres tall because the limiting factor in their construction sure wasn't a lack of material to work with. One of those Templar' was something designed to keep not-robots out of the bitterly inhospitable mountain passes granting entrance to their even bittererly super-inhospitable iron plateau, and it decided it could do its job more efficiently with at least a couple of underlings.

And that's how we got Amplifire!

Items/Abilities: Amplifire was built to prevent trespassers in snowy mountain ranges, and does a damn good job at it. The constant clicking is a form of echolocation, letting it build a mental map of its surrounds and notice if anything's out of place. This would of course render it blind when introduced to a completely new environment, or a particularly chaotic/hectic one, but that's totally not gonna be an issue at all where Amplifire's going.

In order to actually stop intruders, Amplifire uses the back-mounted loudspeaker system. A single one of these directionally-designed amps is large enough to trigger avalanches several miles off; the whole lot in concert will easily cause permanent hearing damage if it doesn't bring the nearest building collapsing on you. Of course, no amount of omnidirectional speaker technology is going to stop avalanches from occurring right where our large metal friend is standing, hence the giant hydraulic leg-cleats.

Amplifire's not specifically built for combat, beyond incidental traits like the massive bulk, solid-state hard drive, sonic repulsion, and a faceful of steel cables that would make quite an effective flail.

This week's theme is TANGLE

Name: Vildrus Kanive
Gender: Male
Race: Giant Spider
Text Color: #CC0000

Biography: Three damn years.
It had been three damn years since Vildrus set his eyes on Dor's seat at the Royal Court. Three damn years of spreading rumors indirectly, forging incriminating messages, slipping them into the right pockets, and worst of all, sucking up to the other courtiers to seem like a natural successor.
But tonight. Tonight, at last, it would all come together.
The best part was that Dor would be the architect of his own demise. From the beginning, Vildrus knew he'd done something to be ashamed of; but, without the rumors and sabotage, Dor would have been able to weather the scandal.
But now. Now, everyone was ready to believe the worst of Dor. When the truth about his manservant came out, it would serve as a ready excuse to remove him.
There was little doubt. Tonight, Dor would confess, resign, and Vildrus would take his place on the Court.
Of course, there was more work to be done after that. The court had its own share of backstabbers, after all, and its own hierarchies. But all of his future plans depended on holding that seat.
He sat in the gallery, resisting the temptation to rub his forelegs together. That would just give him away. No, all he had to do for now was wait.
But he never heard the announcement he was waiting for, as he suddenly vanished from sight.

Description: Vildrus is a tarantula about the size of a human. He's not sensitive about this, coming from a world where everyone is a human-sized animal of some description.
In terms of personality, Vildrus is a schemer through and through. Of course, it's never a good idea to present yourself as a schemer, so he always tries to come across as enthusiastic and naive, in order to lure other schemers into trusting him to carry out key parts of their schemes.
When that doesn't work, he improvises.
Vildrus is very ambitious, and willing to do anything to get what he wants. He's also patient enough to wait for years if that's how long it will take to acquire it without too much risk.

Weapons and Abilities: Being a spider, naturally Vildrus has the ability to create webs, and to cling to walls and other surfaces to climb them.
He's about as strong as an average human, and very cunning. Primarily, he specializes in fooling people - usually by earning their trust, but if he can't, he won't let that stop him.

Username: Agenfresh
Name: Francis l'Oranje-Flavoire
Species: French
Gender: French
Color: French (actually vive la france)

Description: Francis is a noble formed from the intermarriage of living interpretations of the Netherlands and France. The slurry from such incestuous couplings in between countries have given rise to many other beings that stalk this strange and metaphorical world, but none so fresh and tasty than this spindly, pink man-shaped scion of France. His robes are green and orange, the noble colors, and weave in patterns on the hems suggestive of grafted tree branches, with the sleeves hanging low on his arms. A kindly aunt, Elizabeth Tibbets O'County, a daughter of California, granted him that particular gift, as well as a set of orange-shaped cufflinks that smell delicious.

Items/Abilities: Francis knows oranges, everything about the plant, the color and the concept altogether, a preternatural talent earned from his ancestry and a gift from his doting aunt. Under his hands and his name, oranges of every breed and every type come blooming forth from the ground. This talent has lent itself to rumors that Francis may in fact be an incarnation of the Principality of Orange itself, though we may never know the true taxonomy of the Orange line: the ancestries and couplings involved create a web that we may never be able to unravel in this metaphorical context. But back to the scion.

Francis personally prefers oranges with a low-to-middling acid content, to add a little tang to the taste, but not too much. He has a liking for navel oranges, especially those his aunt sends him. He wishes everyone else would like oranges as much as he does.

Around him bloom orange groves, and around him the smell of ethylene fills and ripens the air. They must have his blessing, thematically and literally, for his breed of orange are the sort that do not brook refusal.

Biography: The fact is, Francis is little more than a boy, a little less than a man, and definitely not ready for his duties and investigations. His parents, if they can be called that, care little for micronations or the interpretations thereof, and most children of such unions are sent into the less metaphorical world, sans metaphorical power, to make something of themselves. But Francis has a powerful ally in his aunt, and has been given far more power than he should have been. It's a good thing all he wants to do is breed oranges.

Name: Hamhock and Cheez (not their real names)
Gender: Both dudes
Race: Two-headed Alien (Kereberon)
Color: Lock and Load

Biography+Description: The Planet of Tartarus is known for many things: their grey, dismal climate, the hallucinogenic gases, and other peternaturally unpleasant things. However, the most famous quality of Tartarus is the multicephaly of their fauna. In other words, (nearly) all the native creatures have multiple heads. However, the wolf-like Kereberons are sort of a strange variation of that ecological rule. At birth, they are born as singular-headed entities – most live, love, and die like that. However, in an occasional but not uncommon case, a miracle happens. Xenobiologists had attempted many explanations: physiological, environmental, and other science-y things, but the truth is, you cannot fully know the intricacies behind two people making an irreversible choice based on intense romantic feelings and mutual understanding.

In this case, this choice makes a two-headed anthropomorphic wolf clad in leather and spikes. Hamhock and Cheez (most definitely not their real names) are two separate entities sharing half of one body who love each other very much. Hamhock is the left one and makes a great poker face. Cheez is the right one and never rejects the opportunity to do terrible wordplay. Sometimes they pretend to be the other for shits and giggles but the ruse is often short because they burst out cackling. You get the impression they are both terrible but they are great for each other.

Ability: Hamhock and Cheez are hardened mercenaries and their competency is validated by the impressively large resume in the XENOMERC database. Hamhock and Cheez specialize in a Tartarusian weapon called the Othrusian Rifle – a strange, two-pronged weapon that’s more like a ballista than a speargun. The ammo generally is a net of interconnected cords with weights at end, designed to capture entities of interests. While there are exotic variations (stunning weights, glass-covered cords, et cetera), the ammo is actually fairly easy to manufacture by hand if you know how (like Hamhock and Cheez). The Othrusian Rifle is extremely heavy and takes a lot of skill to shoot and clean, but the two handle it deftly.

You can say it takes two…to tangle.

Name: Elspeth Yates
Gender: Girl
Species: Human (dormant Chaos elemental)
Color: like her hair, y'know?

Description: Elspeth is a slightly chubby, average-height, near-sighted glasses-wearing Scotch-Irish-looking 20 year old with curly ginger hair that is constantly escaping from a tight bun. She has an irritable, micromanaging personality that she still hasn't grown out of yet. She's slightly unsociable, since people don't tend to get along with her, and she resents that. She's also very driven.

Biography: In Elspeth's world, magic is real. Weakened elementals who find themselves high-and-dry sometimes shed their energy and powers onto nearby young physical forms. Sometimes it's an insect or a larger animal that suddenly has superpowers and is incredibly dangerous. Sometimes it's a human child. Usually, the signs start showing themselves in childhood or the teenage years. That is, if you don't have any self-control I guess. Is what Elspeth would think, if she knew. Of course, it also helps if you have a really stupidly obvious element like “oh look fire is coming out of my hands,” and not some abstract bullshit.

For most of her life, Elspeth has been dogged by small things going wrong. Shoelaces tangle, her hair's always tangled, machines break, things slip people's minds, and things just don't work the way they're supposed to. It is a testament to her determination that she worked through this and came out the other side with her hands full of color-coded file folders and post-its and highlighters. Elspeth realized very young that things go wrong in life, and that it would fall to her to correct it.

She might also have realized something was odd if she had studied any magic or magic theory. But she's too busy for that. She's majoring in English as her pre-Law degree.

Powers: Chaos works its magic around Elspeth. Things that had a low chance of happening can happen, and things that had a good chance of happening might...not. She has no conscious control over this, since she has no idea it's going on. And if she did, boy, would it piss her off. But pushed into a deathbattle, and under more stress than she's ever been in (even including finals), she might start to have a few epiphanies about herself.

Username: Schainzer
Name: Torch-Tower
Gender: Tenuous
Species: Altar/Avatar/Parasite
Color: Foundation and Tether

Description: A mist-shrouded tower in miniature, standing five feet tall and about one foot wide at its base. Carved from an unidentifiable blood-red mineral to resemble an upward-coiling cluster of pillars and pipes, its design sports three lines of symmetry and three particularly large hollow spines crowning Torch-Tower. The base of the tower is carved out into a pavilion, with twelve pillars supporting the structure above. In the pavilion occupies a burnished disc like an upturned cymbal, shifting symbols inscribing its rim, too large and curved to have possibly been slipped between the pillars.

Biography: The Torch-Tower is some manner of deity given physical form; records as to the circumstances of this manifestation lost to time. Torch-Tower itself was one of those slippery abstract gods, the kind who crawled from the woodwork once a more sensible pantheon had been laid out by mankind and the only market share left was in the more abstract domains, personified and elevated to godhood by the machinations of ambitious cults.

Torch-Tower's world lies barren, drained, abandoned, washed-out fragments of once-reality all that remains for the deity to dance with. An outside force - pulling it to new worlds - offers Torch-Tower a fresh start, a new fertile ground of connections to capnostigate.

Abilities: Torch-Tower was the personification of connections - whatever is offered upon the zill is subsumed and all its connections plied by Torch-Tower. A leaf is linked to its tree, a pipe to its carver, metal to the its mountain and the picks that mined it and the coals which wrought it and the blood spilt by it. Once Torch-Tower has its smoky tendrils in a connection, it can bolster it with its own reserves, acting as a bridge for Torch-Tower to extend its influence even further.

Inanimate objects cannot maintain the depth of bond people can, so Torch-Tower is hindered until it can draw a being with which to create a primary connection. Non-essential nodes can have their links swamped by Torch-Tower's influence, ultimately reducing them to mere threads when the deity withdraws its support.

Those drawn into Torch-Tower's influence have no direct way of influencing its actions; the personalities of those who become its primary nodes - or prove to be a connection-dense auxiliary - have a way of shaping the deity's morals, such as it may have them.

Username: Mrdnii
Name: Firippa
Gender: Gal
Race: Kl’sayut
Text Color: Punch

Biography: The Kl’sayut of the Sayut Highlands are renowned throughout the civilized world for their martial expertise: Tales of babes barely out of swaddling able to bring down a lowlander soldier are told in many a tavern. While that much is pure stereotype, Kl’sayut culture is very much based around their gyms, tournaments, and a respect for physical prowess.

Kl’sayut that cannot or do not want to devote their lives to the pursuit of strength can choose from or be assigned to a wide variety of administrative or scientific positions. The relative unpopularity of these career paths mean they offer little prestige, but promotion prospects are good and they are generally respected as people who keep the nation functioning by society at large.

While working prosthetics did exist, Kl’sayut research had yet to produce ones able to match Kl’sayut limbs in strength or speed. Firippa lost both her legs in a childhood accident, and her family as well as many of her friends assumed she would pursue one of these careers upon entering adulthood. Firippa didn’t agree.

On the eve of her 13th birthday, Firippa stole away on a caravan to go seek the help of a lowlander sage, rumors of whom had reached even the famously isolationist Kl’sayut. Those rumors suggested they were a master craftsman, though none obliged to specify where exactly they could be found.

About a year later and on her last legs—quite literally, as she had outgrown her first pair and purchasing another that fit a Kl’sayut burned through the most of the lowlander coins she’d swiped from the communal pool—Firippa did manage to find the sage.

It took several trials and a fair few years of tutelage following that for the sage—quite ancient, and looking for an apprentice—to agree to Firippa’s request, but agree she did. Four years after she’d arrived the sage passed away, and Firippa headed back to the Highlands richer a splendid pair of magic-infused prosthetics as well what skills the sage had managed to teach her.

Firippa returned home to a mixture of shock and joy from her family, having failed to write for five years out of a mix of forgetfulness and the (correct) fear that her mother would cross half the lowlands to drag her home. Her return was viewed with suspicion by some, but Firippa took the classic Kl’sayut route to respect of challenging anyone who so much looked at her funny to combat. All of which she won.

It was only a short while before Firippa continued to prove she had not slacked on her training while out in the wilderness by winning a local combat tournament. Traditionalists were dismayed, decrying her sweet gams as constituting an unfair advantage. The judging panel disagreed, noting that the Code had nothing to say about prosthetics and that any Kl’sayut worth their salt could smash through wood at least as thick as Firippa’s (admittedly robust) legs.

On the eve of her contesting the junior national championships as a dark horse favorite, Firippa vanished just after practice at her local gym. Her detractors claimed the pressure had proven too much, that she’d run away again like they’d said she would all along. Her burgeoning fan base cried foul play. They were sort of correct.

Description: Firippa is a Kl’sayut, a bipedal Leporine race famed on their plane for their martial prowess. The average Kl’sayut stands somewhere between 6 and 7 feet tall, and their fur tends to conceal the significant proportion of their body mass devoted to musculature. Kl’sayut ears are long and stretch down the back of their necks, while their paws exhibit opposable thumbs. Firippa is 6’8’’ with her prosthetics, and has grey fur peppered with white splotches. Her prosthetics are carved wood, enhanced to be supernaturally flexible and strong by a type of artisanal magic pioneered by her former teacher.

Firippa is headstrong and always ready for a fight, more now than ever. She prefers to evaluate others by engaging in sparring matches with them, and likes to taunt her opponents into making mistakes (like engaging in a sparring match with her). She’s not good at making friends, mostly due to a lack of social skills stemming from mild ostracism in her childhood and an adolescence cooped up with a rad old hermit lady. She got a decent amount of street smarts from her year on the road, while the four years of intense vocational tutelage thereafter means her literary education is somewhat lacking. Her spatial, critical and mathematical faculties are top-notch, however, and being able to debate, say, the presence of bias in historical records is thankfully not something that comes up often in Kl’sayut society.

Weapons/Abilities: Like most Kl’sayut, Firippa is in the lifelong process of developing her own martial art. In her case, it relies on a mixture of throws and grapples, the potency of which are enhanced by her prosthetics’ resilience when it comes to standing her ground. She’s also somewhat trained in the use of a variety of hand-to-hand weaponry, though she prefers hand-to-hand combat if she can get it.

Firippa is also a master craftswoman, though her mentor could not teach her everything she knew before she passed. Specializing in the construction of ensorcelled wooden objects, Firippa can also work metal, earth and some liquids into many useful tools using shaping magic. Her specialty, of course, is prosthetic limbs, but she has the ability to craft a range including drills, siege weapons, and cookware.

TANGEL AWADRS

Thank you to all the entrants for your submissions and for your gracious patience. Let's run through our battlers!

Vildrus Kanive is a man-sized tarantula, which may be terrifying to some, but Vildrus doesn't want to liquify your insides and suck them out, he just wants power. And then maybe the other thing? As a schemer and a deceiver, Vildrus could pour venom into the ears of the more headstrong battlers, and would probably fit right in with the court intrigue that Francis l'Orange-Flavoire is used to. As such, Vildrus Kanive is awarded this week's Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup.

Francis l'Orange-Flavoire has a very particular set of skills, or should I say, compétences? His species? French. His gender? French. His color? You'd better believe it's French. With such a solid grounding for the essential flavoire of this character in the first five lines, Francis's mastery of le tang is just icing on the cake. This week's First Five Eigthths Sportsball Award goes to Francis l'Orange-Flavoire.

Hamhock and Cheez are just a pair of rowdy, dirty boys. Their love for each other was so strong they decided to tangle up their very bodies, resulting in the best space mercenary this side of Samus Aran. As well as tangling being their very essence, it is also their primary means of attack, with their cool customizable net gun. Love these boys! Thomas Packston Elementalist Award!

Elspeth Yates just wants to get on with it, and doesn't have any time for this magical tomfoolery. If there had been more entrants, I probably would have given the Lucky VII All-Rounder Award to Elspeth, because she's just a real solid character. I'd love to follow her adventures, even in her original setting. Back there, she's still got conflict with her society, her self, and maybe some magically-supercharged bears or something. No need for a battle! This week's GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding goes to Elspeth Yates.

Torch-Tower has a lot going on. It's a god, but from what I can glean from the profile, not a very anthropic one. More of a force of nature? It's got three horns and twelve pillars. It can desiccate worlds, or learn, perhaps, to love. I have no idea how Torch-Tower's involvement in a battle would play out, but it would be sure to be interesting and destructive on a planetary scale. Torch-Tower gets this week's Fishbowl.

Firippa of the Kl'sayut will kick your ass. She'll kick your dog's ass. She'll kick her own ass. I appreciate a battler who is ready for a foight, it's easy to fall into an aimless malaise so some spirited fisticuffs are always welcome. Firippa is not malevolent though, so could have ready (if awkward) team ups with other battlers, and has the magic and craftsrabbitship to deal with the rare situations where MMA is not the most effective solution. Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award goes to Firippa!

Theme this week is sanguine.

Username: two
Name: Orok
Species: Biomechanical construct
Gender: Irrelevant
Color: The need for blood does not stop

Description: An articulated statue of a saintess in brass, porcelain, and gilt, clicking ratcheting joints segmenting cunningly wrought limbs. Behold the sculpted fingers delicate enough to clasp eggshells, a face a white mask of beatific peace, the tick and click of sanctified clockwork motors hidden beneath the drape of red silk robes edged with yellow gold. Behold the manifold metal calipers that serve as its legs, propelling it smoothly in all directions as if gliding. Behold also the discreet needles on jointed armatures that unfold from beneath its robes, linked by tubes to the complex array of glass vials and bulbs the saintess wears about her navel like a crystalline womb, treated painstakingly with anti-coagulant agents and antibiotic brews.

This is no heartless automaton. Mainly because there’s a heart in there. There’s also a brain and a spine (because miracles require a central nervous system to perform), at least four eyes, one book lung, two livers, and three kidneys.

Give it your blood. It’s in safe hands.

Biography: Blood is your lifeblood. You need it to live. The Church of Ydanius needs it too.

See, Ydanius is a valorous sort of god. He fights on behalf of humanity against the beasts of the Outer Night. With his sword and his bow, he protects the world from those who would predate on the tiny things that live on it, the nightmare legions from between the stars to whom humanity is but a candle to be snuffed out.

Ydanius has fought for humanity since the dawn of time. He is fighting now. He will never stop.

Ydanius is a mighty warrior, but the beasts he fights are mighty too. Ydanius bleeds from a hundred wounds, and every day he takes a hundred more. It’s fine, though. Ydanius doesn’t mind.

But every drop of blood Ydanius sheds makes him weaker. Every scratch he bears is a curse. The beasts of Outer Night cannot prevail against him in a single, mighty battle, but they hope to kill him by degrees, to bleed him dry and then step over his pale corpse to eat the world.

Ydanius needs blood. Ydanius needs your blood. The Church of Ydanius exists to gather blood for him, to restore the strength he loses daily. It’s a reverse transubstantiation, only without the wine.

The Church, of course, has all manner of bloodletting rituals. But as of late, church attendance has been going down. The priests blame all manner of factors -- the youth these days, the commercialization of worship, etcetera. The technicians offer solutions.

Enter Orok and its ilk.

To call them traveling vending machines would be disrespectful, but not too far off the mark. Have a cavity that’s troubling you? Want to do well on your exams tomorrow? Hoping to get that job you’re angling for? Go to the Offerants. You tell the Offerant your desire, you offer the Offerant your blood, and the Offerant uses a proportion of that blood to perform a minor miracle on your behalf. It’s blood magic and blood money in one handy package. The remainder, the Offerant takes to the banks for the priests to use in their rites.

Orok is one such Offerant. It’s seen three years of operation and four service upgrades to its underlying technobiomancy. In that time, it has drawn blood 10,063 times and collected roughly 750 gallons of the stuff. Its roster of performed miracles includes restoring hearing, curing colds, removing tattoos, and in one case smiting a small termite infestation with unerring small-scale divine retribution. It is programmed to help, and to be calm and deferential.

Ydanius needs blood. Please give some to Orok.

Name: Falachar mac Morchroi

Gender: Male

Species: Vampiric Fey (Blood-Talker)

Color: Predictable but appropriate.

Description: If you took a brief glance at Falachar, the first thing you will notice is how beautiful he looks. The second thing you will notice is how beautiful he makes himself look. From the plumed hat delicately alight on his head to the distractingly open shirt, it is almost easy to ignore his capillary-like antlers and the blood-red fetlocks of a horse that he stands on. You see, Falachar is a Fair Folk, a Fuath of the liquid mortality called blood.

If you spend time around Falachar, you will realize he is a bit of a troublemaker. He is quick-tempered, mercurial, and a bit of an incorrigible flirt. Despite his roguish demeanor, Falachar is genuine and gallant, eager to right wrongs (and write poems). While he would defer being called “a hero” (as Aos Si cannot be categorized as good or evil and he does not want to give the wrong impression), he wants to do good, inspired by the good and beauty in others. His personality is infectious. It is not so much fairy magic as his sheer earnestness, which gives everything he does a charismatic veneer. Even his hot-headedness is oddly inspiring in the right light.

Ability: Falachar is not seen without two things: a dundeen pipe and a hurdy-gurdy. The pipe is just for show. The hurdy-gurdy is for use, a means to project his fairy magic. Falachar can “talk to blood,” his performances having supernatural influence over blood and viscerally positive emotions. The songs never result in direct offense, but the results can be quite profound. For instance, he can sing blood back into a dying man or make a person weep with joy at a good memory long thought to be lost.

If all else fails, Falachar is very capable of fighting. He is incredibly strong. Not exactly superhuman but he is definitely strong enough to bend pipes into horseshoes, all backed behind an elegant mastery of broadsword he would rather use to dramatically flourish than to end a life. After all, you don’t really get a lot of romance if you keep off chopping heads.

Biography: The Fuath are a category of fey strongly associated all aspects of water. The endless expanse of the sea, the serpentine grace of rivers, or the tranquility of pristine lakes, the aspects can be large. Or at least used to be. The rise of Man had a considerable impact on the Fair Folk. While the realm has not become diminished in any way like they feared, things had certainly changed and with the Age of Technology, the Otherworld had certainly became more complicated.

Falachar is a Fuath who manifested with a “modern” aspect of water. The narrow (and too earthly) nature of his aspect ensures that he will never reach the levels of his more primordial kin, not that Falachar cares. The relationship between them is as frosty as the first inklings of winter. Falachar never really believed them, that he was unlucky and “weak.” However, Falachar did believe in fate, that there was a place in the world for him and it was definitely not in the Otherworld which is nothing if hostile. Indeed, there was no love lost between them as he left the Otherworld to find his fate in the realms of Man.

In the preceding centuries, he still had not found his fate, but his shenanigans and the occasional heroic exploit had allowed him to find a holistic balance in life. Perhaps, he will find his destiny one day but for now, he will just enjoy himself. The journey is just as important as the end, after all.

Name: Smiley
Race: Blood Demon
Gender: Male
Text Color: Blood red, what else?

Biography: Blood Demons are artificial beings crafted through dark magic. The process is, in essence: get a bloody corpse, by whatever means necessary, then use the blood as a conduit to summon a dark spirit into it. This does not produce a reanimated corpse, however; instead, the corpse changes form into a hideous blood-covered monster.
If you conduct the ritual properly, the monster will obey your every command. However, errors in the ritual will cause the spirit to take full control of the Blood Demon. This usually leaves you with a bloodthirsty monster that destroys everything in sight.
Sometimes, a more cunning spirit will take over, and rather than going on an immediate rampage, it will behave obediently, sometimes for years, before one day turning on its supposed master.
Then there's Smiley.

Description: Smiley looks like a ferocious monster covered in blood, except he's constantly smiling. It's not a cruel smile, either; he's genuinely enthusiastic and always greets everyone he meets, no matter who they are, with "Have a nice day!"
Smiley has no apparent motivation beyond spreading joy throughout the world. Of course, sometimes people need cheering up, and when they do he's only too happy to help. He'll do his best to help a friend however he can, and he makes friends very easily.
The problem comes when two different friends ask him for conflicting things. Then Smiley doesn't really know what to do, so he just tries to hug both friends until the problem goes away.
Usually this happens very soon after the hug. Smiley's hugs are not especially safe.

Weapons and Abilities: Smiley has immense strength, even though he's not much bigger than a human. He also has the power to manipulate the blood he's covered in; he can even leave it somewhere and move it no matter how far away he gets.
He generally uses this power to leave bloody smiley faces around and transmit messages to his friends through them.