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Abomination
03-09-08, 03:46 AM
Updates in red. Old thread: Here. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=8500) Gonna do a bit of restructuring.

Name: Homun Culus
Age: Unknown
Race: Homunculus
Hair Color: Chin-length, blonde
Eye Color: Crimson
Height: 5'9
Weight: 146lbs

Personality Level 0: Blank, this character starts with no discernible personality traits and relies on instincts at first, but quickly adopts any personality traits he observes. Has an intense drive to learn and experiment with his newfound knowledge. His primary objectives are survival and learning.

Level 1 and onwards: Homun's personality is that of an unstable mental patient whose obsessions and delusions eat away at himself and others (literally). He will often go to any length to quench his thirst for assimilations and power. He's very unpredictable, and often only his memories and their advice keep him from killing anyone he sees.

~|Assimilation Archive|~
(1)Originally genderless, after his first victim he adopted the physical traits of that person. While not completely assimilating his male victim's attributes, he gained the male gender, some hair in the form of a colorless buzzcut, and a white iris in his eyes. As far as age is concerned, he looks like a man in his 20s. He has a slight build, but his body is very thin.
(2)After assimilating Demonica, his skin color darkened so as not to be considered pale, his facial features gained form, and all his teeth turned into sharp, carnivorous fangs. 1/2" Dark Brown spiky hair, Blueish-gray eyes.
(3)After assimilating Luc Kraus, he gained 3" Dark Brown spiky hair, Grayish-Emerald eyes, and from slightly earlier he had a coat, pants, shirt, and boots.
(4)After assimilating Teric Bloodrose, he gained 4" Silver spiky hair, Blueish-Emerald eyes, and his clothes turned black except for his shirt which turned crimson.
(5)After assimilating Ifrit Obsidian, he didn't gain any outward features, but he gained The Virus. It later took over his body and created the current Homunculus.
(6)After assimilating Jacob Zachary Buhrkheardt, he gained his current appearance. His bone-based features are more or less normal like Jacob's but slightly less skinny (muscle mass, he still appears very skinny), but the rest of his appearance is so changed that the two don't resemble each other. It might go without saying, but he has Crimson eyes with rings of exhaustion around them, long blonde hair that is parted on the side so only one eye is visible, short but sharp nails, sharp carnivorous teeth, and his skin turned pale.
(?)After assimilating Toy Soldier's red wagon, he did not change in appearance but gained a new ability Detachable Limbs (not going to add this until Level 2)

He also has an hourglass-shaped scar on his upper left thigh.

History: He was lying in stasis in a large capsule when an earthquake surfaced remnants of the underground lab he was contained in. This caused his capsule to crack and for his genderless, vaguely-humanoid body to fall out. A lumberjack had been surveying the area and noticed him and tried to help, but the homunculus responded by awakening and devouring him, gaining some of his basic attributes. He does not know anything, only conditioned reflexes from the lumberjack, language, basic understand, and hunger. His hunger satiated, he mindlessly walks deeper into the woods to find his next meal, even though his body does not actually require sustenance after the first DNA assimilation. Wandering through the forest, he wandered into an abandoned building and attacked the demon girl, Demonica. After assimilating, he found that absorbing her illusion powers had backfired on him and in a panic, he escaped back into the woods. Much has happened since then, and now The Homunculus roams the world, searching for power to quench his insatiable hunger.

---------Skills---------
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~Non-Physical Abilities~
Summary: His smarts! This section is small.

The Tomes: Memories of those he assimilated. He has extremely limited access to this, usually in the form of memories shared by multiple minds a.k.a. 'common sense'.
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~Physical Abilities~
Summary: The natural abilities of your friendly neighborhood Homunculus! These are mostly attributes that increase through the act of assimilation.

Homunculus Regeneration Level 1: Homun has a highly-advanced system of healing that heals small cuts, burns, and punctures in minutes; severed limbs, organ destruction, and body mutilation in hours; and severe body mass loss and complete loss of functional body parts in less than a day. Not only that, but he is able to function without major organs for upwards of an hour.
[[NOT ACTIVE UNTIL LEVEL 2]]Blood Compression Level 1: Due to his body's ability to store, replace, and utilize blood to form virtually any of his body parts and functions, Homun possesses twice the amount of blood of any normal human.
Homunculus Strength Level 1: Homun has 2x the strength of the average human. He's also able to fight in a primitive fashion, although sometimes he's able to pull a move or two out of an assimilated memory.
[[NOT ACTIVE UNTIL LEVEL 2]]Pain Tolerance - Innate: Homun is able to ignore the results of stimulated nociceptors. The longer the battle, the more Homun can resist the urge of physical behavior that seeks to end the painful experience.
Weapon/Armor Integration Level 1: Homun is able to absorb equipment into his body and compress it so it's unnoticeable in a specific place. Helmets integrate into head, chest armor integrates into chest. Armor that is integrated lies just under his outer layer of skin, offering that second layer of skin the same quality of protection as wearing that piece of armor. Weapons that are integrated do not offer any protection, but they can be forcefully (and bloodily) expunged to produce a projectile effect, or softly (still bloody) ripped out to use as a weapon. He currently only has the ability to integrate weapons and armor up to steel quality. He still has to buy/acquire them in order to integrate them. Oh, and if you manage to stab through his skin to reach the armored skin, it's the same sound as actually hitting real armor.
----------CURRENT LIST OF WEAPONS AND ARMOR INTEGRATED-----
WEAPONS: Two steel swords under each arm. One Steel dagger in center of chest. One Steel dagger in center of back.
ARMOR: A pair of Iron gauntlets in hands. Steel chainmail in chest. Iron helmet in head.
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Stretch Armstrong Level 1: Homun's body parts can stretch like rubber at a slightly faster speed than his normal movement and up to 15 feet away. He can control these stretched limbs with precision, curve them, and have them wrap around his targets like a coiled snake.
Target Vision Level 1: The process by which Homun determines potential assimilations. Aside from a feeling of apprehension and hunger, he can see faint to bright white outlines around his targets. Especially powerful targets have a bright white glow radiating from their center. This only occurs outside of assimilation.
[[NOT ACTIVE UNTIL LEVEL 2]]Night Vision Level 1: Homun sees in the night 1.5x better than a normal human.
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~Assimilation~
Summary: The bread and butter of what makes a Homunculus tick. These skills pertain specifically and only occur in the state of assimilation. There are three phases and the abilities relating to the phase are listed directly under them. In all the phases of assimilation, Homun can use lower-level versions of the abilities of those he assimilates.

First Phase: Started through the physical contact of The Homunculus with a target of his choosing. When a Homunculus wants to assimilate, its body becomes like a metaphorical sponge and accepts various types of genetic data: ranging from skin contact, hair contact, and even clothing and equipment contact currently used by the target. If there are multiple targets, and they all touch Homun simultaneously, it is random which genetic data is accepted, but only one can be accepted in the end.

Rapid Repair Level 1: An ability that only occurs in the first phase, this is essentially Homunculus Regeneration on crack. In the first few seconds, any damage The Homunculus sustained is repaired up to and including severe damage. If there is significant damage, some of it may not be repaired, especially if the physical change from the genetic data interferes with the regeneration.

Shapeshifting Level 1: An ability that only occurs in the first phase, Homun can choose to keep his current appearance, have a partial change in appearance to look something like a cross between the assimilator and the assimilated, or have a full change in appearance to look exactly like the assimilated. The two things he can't change are the exhausted-looking rings around his eyes, and his carnivorous sharp teeth. He tends to only have a partial shapeshift so he can be more comfortable using his enemy's abilities but not tip them off to the assimilation.

Assimilation Overload - Innate: In the first phase of assimilation, if Homun assimilated someone two or more levels above him, he has a chance of partially or completely losing his free will until the end of the assimilation.

Second Phase: The main meat of the assimilation. This is the where 99.9% of the time in Assimilation is spent.

Assimilation Permanence Level 1: Which is to say, the permanent gain of abilities/memories/appearance/personality of the assimilated target. This process occurs in the second phase, in which Homun must satisfy two requirements: The original target of the assimilation must be considered equal to, stronger or otherwise more powerful than Homun. The other condition is that Homun must utilize the memories and/or abilities of the one he is assimilating in a meaningful way i.e. to kill someone. Only in the second phase is Homun even able to use abilities of other people, and whether or not he can recall any of their abilities after assimilation is yet to be discovered. Some evidence suggests he can use even high level abilities while he is unconscious.

Convenient Knowledge Level 1: If his assimilated target shares memories with previous assimilated targets, Homun can tap into that well of information to his advantage.

Third Phase: The end of the assimilation. Stuff like Target Vision starts to return, the untold access to memories and abilities is lost, and Rapid De-Repair occurs.

Rapid De-Repair Level 1: In the third phase of assimilation, Homun's appearance returns to normal and any bodily stress or exertion he experienced during the assimilation is magnified several times. It's like getting the wind knocked out of him, and in some severe cases it can come close to forcing him unconscious, depending on how damaged he is and how much he exerted himself during the assimilation.
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Equipment: Black boots, black cotton pants with a thick belt, a crimson t-shirt, and a long, unzipped black coat whose sides extend down to the knees with a closed collar. Also, a steel short sword with a matching sheath placed on the left side of his belt. His clothes are a part of him and can be regenerated in the same manner as his flesh.

Cyrus the virus
03-09-08, 01:51 PM
Rather than really dive into this for now, I'm going to ask you limit the updates to about 2-4 not-terribly-powerful upgrades, including new abilities.

Abomination
03-09-08, 10:06 PM
Yeah... I'm sort of pushing it aren't I? How about if I save Night Vision and Blood Compression for the next level?

edit: If that's not enough, if you want, I can provide links for every thread where these abilities were gained. Everything under Assimilation I've been using since day 1 and has evidence in every thread. I wasn't aware that I needed to request them as spoils in their respective threads.

Cyrus the virus
03-09-08, 11:15 PM
Even if they were all gained legitimately through questing, the transition between levels allows for more updates depending on which level you've reached, so at level 0 you're only getting a pretty meager update, you know?

The assimilation stuff I see as more of a character device than something you're going to abuse, so don't worry too much about that.

There are two things about it that I don't like though - first is rapid repair. How about you make it so that after it occurs, Homun is (for some reason) incapable of participating in any physically exerting activity (such as battle) against another player without permission? At least for ten solid minutes, or something like that. That's kind of a mouthful.

The second is the wealth of knowledge that he has at his disposal from people he's absorbed. I encourage you to only use this as a writing mechanic and not a tool for finding people's weaknesses (unless you guys have worked that out OOC, of course).

As for the abilities besides assimilation, there are a lot. Enhanced healing, strength, pain tolerance and 3 new abilities (only 2 of which matter, really) is a lot. How about you eliminate 2 of those 5 things, and we'll go from there.

Yeah, sorry for the mouthful, I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts here :p I'll take another look after you've edited and I should have a clearer picture then.

Abomination
03-10-08, 12:08 AM
Okay, how's them changes, boss?

Cyrus the virus
03-10-08, 12:24 AM
Bit hard to read, but that'll work. Naturally I trust you not to be a cheap nard. Apprizzled.