Name: Rauk “Flint†Skovik
Age: Roughly 30
Race: Post-Human
Hair: Black
Eye: Hazel
Height: 5’10â€
Weight: 260 lbs.
Personality
It is perhaps too kind to say that Rauk has long been a complicated man. In truth, most of his acquaintances - having experienced his penchant for stoic, brutal callousness – would call him a fiend. Those that call him friend or ally would find even this too kind - those few know that he feels empathy as keenly as a saint, but willfully ignores it.
Those that call him friend know he is not stupid, but reticent – not cocky, but eerily self-assured. They have seen firsthand his outward numbness to fear, his incisive command over the spoken word, his menacing charisma.
Those few call him monster.
There is only one person who sees anything beyond that, and Flint counts her as his only true friend. One can only guess what she sees in him, but the simple fact that she sees anything at all has been transformative.
Flint is becoming something new. Whether this new Flint will be better or worse for Althanas as a whole remains to be seen.
Appearance
Flint is typically the brawniest human being one has ever seen. He is exceptionally deep of chest and thick of limb, with broad shoulders, a bullish neck, and a hulking back. When he’s sure he swaggers. When he’s not, he looms tensely. Between his width and athletic bulk, he cuts a striking figure.
He fastidiously shaves his head bare, and grows his beard in full and black and cropped at an angle following his jaw. There is some suggestion of the attractive young man he might have grown up to be: an old soul carrying empathy and wisdom in his gaze. To notice it, one would have to overlook the severity of that gaze, with the lids typically pulled back in a fierce and unblinking stare.
Consumption of the enigmatic Swaysong has begun to work changes in the brute. His once Salvic-pale skin is now usually sun-warmed to a swarthy tan, and where once there was a network of scars and faded brands the skin is now unblemished. He has begun to grow noticeably taller while maintaining his stout proportions, and his musculature continues to grow larger and more defined.
Flint has a habit of dressing as a thug might, favoring leather in black and brown. Recently he’s been favoring a more utilitarian, almost paramilitary style. Always he strives to leave his arms bare, and he is never without a pair of bulky, black, metallic vambraces, which armor his forearms up to the elbow.
History
Origins
Rauk was born in Andvall. When he was a boy, Rauk was tricked into service as a child soldier by a reaver called Kentigern. After many months under Kentigern's unkind tutelage, Rauk was abandoned to a band of slavers, who in turn sold him into servitude as a gladiator. He spent a majority of his life in fighting pits and arenas, learning to fight and kill for the amusement of Salvic nobility across the continent. He endured a remarkable amount of strife and humiliation at the hands of the upper crust, and this in turn fostered an unspeakable hatred in the boy now called Flint.
It also made him strong.
In a bloody uprising, Flint escaped slavery and entered into a life of crime, sedition, and revenge.
Child of Darkness
Eventually his travels saw him in Alerar, caught up in Swanra'ann's criminal empire. The brute was tasked with the delivery of a magical substance called Swaysong to a mysterious buyer, later revealed to be the scribe Luned Bleddyn. When the delivery went wrong and the Swaysong was stolen, Flint had little choice but to try and retrieve it in order to avoid Swanra'ann's ire. It was then that he and Luned crossed paths and endured a horrific adventure in the sewers of Ettermire, where they discovered all manner of mutated and murderous creatures. If not for the unlikely intervention of the tiefling Aurelianus Drak'shal the pair would have certainly died, and as such they were individually indebted to the half-fiend. Likewise, Flint earned himself the enmity of Swanra'ann herself - a frightening prospect even for him - and he is solely responsible for the death of Ezura, the mother of Helethra, a dangerous mutated child.
Ultimately, however, Flint escaped Alerar with his life, a vial of the mysterious Swaysong, and the friendship of Luned.
The Journey to the North
Feeling troubled and conflicted after his adventures with Luned in Alerar, Flint set off on his own in the city of Radasanth. There he came under the employ of a mysterious trio: gluttonous Bor, enigmatic Shasande, and charismatic Talus. They tasked him with being their bodyguard during a party among Radasanth's elite. What should have been a simple job proved otherwise when the party turned mad, and spilled out into the city streets. By morning Talus was found dead in bed with his best friend's wife - bad enough made worse by the fact that this friend was brother to the commander of the City Watch. Bor, Shasande, and Flint were forced to flee the city with little more than the clothes on their backs. Flint begrudgingly led the strange pair north and east toward Akashima and suffered a variety of adventures, facing down bandits, circus folk, and an oni assassin sent by Flint's old mentor and personal boogeyman, Kentigern.
Ultimately, Shasande and Bor revealed themselves to be fallen angels of a sort - far more alien and troubling in person than any romanticized ideal. For his part in keeping Shasande safe while wearing his human disguise, the insectile celestial gifted Flint with an otherworldly pair of mechanical vambraces and prophetic advice, and then returned to his - its - cosmic swarm.
The Wandering Isle
When Flint's exploration of Akashima came to an end he returned to Salvar and fell in with the bastard noble Fet, already engaged in guerrilla warfare with the nobles of Salvar. During that crusade, Flint received word from Luned: Aurelianus had returned to her to collect his debt. Fearful for her safety, the brute returned to Radasanth with the help of the fae Agnie Lar. Fortunately, Luned was proven safe. During the visit, however, the old scribe Bleddyn offered Flint a job escorting Luned on a mission of some importance - a task he accepted. Flint joined Luned on a voyage to unknown waters on a relatively small ship, joined by a motley crew of misfits like Captain Aeril Esgarel, the dwarven cook Blue, and Luned's brother Muir. Despite his best efforts, Flint found himself becoming attached to the crew - Luned not least among them.
There were many threats on that journey: deadly sirens, crushing storms, a bloody visit from Aurelianus himself, and otherworldly dangers on the isle of Carcosa, but all paled before the leviathan that hounded them as they attempted to escape the isle. It might have killed them all - in a way, it did kill them all - but Flint revealed that he still had a vial of Swaysong when he drank it in order to save Luned and his new-found friends. Suffering an incredible transformation that threatened to kill him even as it gave him godlike power, Flint overcame the leviathan after a titanic struggle. Luned, her own powers enhanced by Carcosa, worked a spell that undid all the death and devastation visited upon their friends and family. Even that power could not undo what Flint had wrought upon himself and his relationship with the scribe: he had betrayed her by hiding the Swaysong, and had doomed himself by consuming it. It was only Shasande's gifts that saved him, piercing his veins and perpetually filtering the Swaysong out of his blood.
Likewise struggling with her new gifts, Luned traveled with Flint in tow through one of Agnie's doors in order to confront Aurelianus. She overwhelmed him in a show of unnatural power, cruelly punishing his tireless defiance. Flint was prepared to let her execute the tiefling, believing that doing so would make her as cold and cruel as he, but when she turned her wrath on Agnie, a friend, Flint relented. Using a tool given to him by Bleddyn, Flint sealed much of Luned's new power away within her. At that moment, Agnie lashed out in revenge, teleporting them far from her home. She soon realized that they had not arrived where she had intended to send them. Flint and Luned were lost.
Murders and Marriages
Flint and Luned found themselves in the snowy wastes of Andvall - Flint's childhood home. It was there that she began to learn who, exactly, her companion was, and it was there that they finally admitted the growing attraction between them. (Ongoing)
The Gaol Occulta
No one can earn the ire of a country and escape its wrath forever. Flint was eventually apprehended and, due to the Swaysong in his veins, was sent to the Gaol Occulta: a monolithic prison for rogue magicians and magical creatures, run by dehlar-clad Swayist zealots. With the help of the half-mad witch Salome Shestova, Flint engineered his escape. (Ongoing)
Skills
- Streetwise across Salvar and certain cities in Akashima, as well as in Ettermire and Radasanth
- Wilderness survival
- Highly literate polyglot
- World-class master in hand-to-hand combat
- Shrewd, persuasive, and manipulative
- World-class, albeit animalistic, intellect
Abilities
Strength: Flint’s physique is functional, and he is capable of great feats of strength. He has shown the ability to lift up to four hundred pounds with one arm, push or pull carriages laden with goods as effortlessly as a horse, and squeeze the life out of steel-clad human beings dumb enough to get caught in a bear hug. He can strike with enough force to shatter simple steel and dent plynt. He can leap from the ground onto a common single-story rooftop without momentum, because he doesn’t neglect leg day. He is the standing arm-wrestling champion in all the best dives from Knife’s Edge to Radasanth and back again. (x8)
Speed:
Flint’s musculature is capable of putting out incredible amounts of force, to such a degree that his strength counteracts his own natural weight, bulk, and resistance. He parries, dodges, and strikes faster than most people think. Most remarkably, this is NOT a measure of reflex – Flint rarely, if ever, reacts to stimuli instinctively. It is possible that he has become swift enough that mechanical reflex has been rendered obsolete. (x6)
Endurance: Flint’s body is powerful and superhumanly efficient. His tissues only begin producing fatigue poisons at the point where even a horse might expire from exhaustion, and his body extracts nutrients from food and the environment with plantlike efficiency. He can jog at a brisk pace for twelve hours straight on an empty stomach before slowing, shrug off the energy-leeching effect of moderate pain and blood loss, and struggle for hours on end before running out of breath. Even poisons, venoms, and unnatural toxins take longer to incapacitate him, and only the very worst can threaten his life. (x8)
Agility: As Flint comes to see value in the fighting styles of other cultures, he has begun training himself to become more flexible. While he is by no means superhumanly dexterous, his ability to parry and evade incoming attacks from all directions is notable. He can twist, turn, lean, climb, and slide fairly quickly without losing his balance. He’s more nimble and spry than you might expect, but he’s no master thief or world-class gymnast. (x3)
Ain’t Got Time to Bleed: Thanks to the effects of Swaysong, Flint is now a post-human creature, rapidly evolving to better survive the deadly environments he puts himself in. Since he has a tendency toward horrific bodily injury, his physiology has begun to adapt to keep him whole. His bones are almost iron-like in durability, but also disturbingly flexible – bending and springing back when they should easily break. His skin is as difficult to split as boiled leather and, most disturbing of all, his muscle tissue has begun to develop a fluid shell of organic metal. While the interior cords can still tear due to strain, the outermost thews prevent foreign objects from passing through the bundles of tissue. This effectively means that Flint has a form of armor under his skin, which becomes more difficult to penetrate when he flexes. Long story short? It’s really difficult to incapacitate him with damage. (x7)
Seethe: As Flint’s physiology iterates upon itself, his basic biological functions steadily improve beyond what should be humanly possible. His ability to heal, for example, has progressed from fascinating to disturbing in short order. Given a week’s time, he can recover from wounds that ought to be mortal, and deep penetration wounds or broken bones can be made right in a day or two. Swaysong is tied inexorably to adrenaline and testosterone in Flint, and so feelings of aggression and stress also enhance his ability to heal himself. If given a free moment to simply seethe in rage, Flint can heal minor and moderate wounds in a matter of minutes, or at least recover enough to staunch bleeding and repair frayed nerves so he can go on fighting.
Juggernaut: If Flint can take five steps while Seething, he gains Momentum. While under the effects of Momentum, Flint becomes extremely difficult to stop, impede, or harm. His thews tense into a nigh-impenetrable metal shell beneath his skin which render most attacks into flesh wounds, and since he is actively Seething those flesh wounds are rapidly closed. Under the effects of Momentum, Flint charges at up to thirty miles per hour in a roughly straight line, and he can only deviate from that path very gradually. He can stop himself in under three seconds (though he may slide depending on the surface he’s running on). While charging, the brute is capable of plowing through physical barriers without slowing. Common wood walls stand no chance, and he can barrel through reinforced wooden barriers up to four feet thick. He can pierce anything steel or softer at under five inches thick, though it will temporarily slow him. Anything thicker, or harder, will dent or splinter but not break, and Flint’s charge will end. With Momentum, Flint is able to weather attacks that might otherwise injure or kill him without suffering their normal effects – he plows through most common attacks at or below his level and heals some or most of the damage he would have incurred. Attacks from people above his level might slow or damage him, though the harm would be lessened. Anyone three levels or more above Flint might be capable of stopping him or overcoming his healing factor with stronger abilities, but a person would need strength ten times greater than that of a normal Althanian to stop him by means of physical might alone. Nothing stops a juggernaut, except a juggernaut.
Protean Trance: In moments of great physical or mental duress, Flint can momentarily overwhelm his vambraces and allow the Swaysong to act on him unimpeded. While the vambraces are "rebooting," Flint enters a savage trance wherein his mind and body are in flux, superhumanly adapting to the situation at hand. His muscles, bones, flesh, and tissues all warp and rend and then heal again with disturbing alacrity, and he works through mental challenges with machinelike efficiency. Outwardly, this manifests as an ability to recover from grievous wounds near-instantly for a period of two minutes, returning him to a hale and healthy state. It is, effectively, a healing ability, and does nothing to combat fatigue: once the vambraces fully reboot, Flint is fully healed but no less exhausted. He can only overwhelm the vambraces once every six hours before risking grave consequences to his mind and body.
Adrenaline Rush: The biological mechanics that govern Swaysong and adrenaline are closely entwined. Even with his blood being filtered, Flint's adrenaline rushes are a bit more intense than that of a normal human being. Twice per battle, Flint can take advantage of his adrenaline rushes to perceive the otherwise imperceptible and react with incredible speed and skill in order to dodge or intercept fast-moving attacks or projectiles. This essentially negates a single physical attack from a character at or below Flint's level, and may mean the difference between life or death when facing down an attack from someone slightly above Flint's skill level.
Superstition: Flint's overwhelming mistrust and disdain for magic physically manifests as a resistance to it, perhaps due to the Swaysong in his system, or perhaps it is a pure manifestation of his will - there is no way to say. All magical spells and effects cast directly upon Flint - helpful or harmful - are reduced in effect or duration by 40%.
I Am Fear: Flint is smart, cold, obsessed, and stubborn. Willpower is just another muscle to him, and he flexes it constantly. As such, he finds it slightly easier than a normal human being to stick to his guns in the face of common manipulation or persuasion.
Equipment
Shasande's Gift: A pair of bulky metallic vambraces worn on the forearms. They are clearly of alien origin: no smith of Althanas could produce such clean, straight lines: thousands of individual parts interlocked almost seamlessly. They are gunmetal grey or black, depending on the light, and if one looks close one will see fine whorls and ridges in the metal, like the surface of a fingerprint. The vambraces both hum quietly, and sometimes whir and hiss, and there is little doubt that some delicate hidden mechanics are always at work within. They are warm to the touch, but rarely hot, and though they are heavy Flint has grown accustomed to their weight. They are as hard as prevalida, and indeed that metal was probably incorporated in their construction as they glow subtly in the presence of magic. They are not wholly of that metal, however, as evidenced by the fact that the vambraces recover from scratches, scrapes, dents, and cracks just as a biological body heals a wound.
When Flint ingested liquid Swaysong, it immediately set to work transforming his body. The first alteration made to the brute's physiology allowed him to produce more Swaysong endlessly, a process that can never be stopped or slowed. This would certainly have killed him if not for Shasande's foresight in creating these vambraces, which pierce Flint's forearms at the wrist to draw blood directly from his veins, which is subsequently purified of Swaysong and pumped back into his body. This unfortunately means that Flint can never take off the vambraces. To do so might give him a surge of godlike power, but would also ultimately kill him in one of the most agonizing ways imaginable. (Awarded here)
Soviet Ushanka - Flint found this strange hat in a bunker on the wandering isle of Carcosa. He doesn't know what the symbol on it means, but it's a warm hat well suited to the cold of Salvar, and it suits him. The nice thing is that he just can't seem to get rid of it - any time he loses, misplaces, or destroys the hat, it ends up right back at his side as if nothing happened. Other than that, it's just a great hat. (Awarded here)
A Strange Glyph - A "gift" from Aurelianus Drak'shal. The demon-blood wants it back, which gives Flint the slightest bit of leverage, and might just keep the brute alive when it comes time for the anarchist to collect the debt owed to him. If it has any magical properties, Flint doesn't know about them. Frankly, considering where it came from, Flint doesn't want to know. (Awarded here)
Magic Paper - A sheet of enchanted paper, gifted to Flint by Luned Bleddyn. It allows him to communicate with her over great distances - anything he writes on his sheet appears also on its twin kept with Luned, and vice versa. (Awarded here)
Changelog
- Flint is taller and heavier due to Swaysong, and is a little older and wiser. Some would also argue that he is not entirely human anymore.
- Updated the wording in personality and appearance, added small updates.
- Added definitions to his physical stats (Strength, Endurance, Speed, Agility). Made "Speed" a subset ability of "Strength." Everything but agility increased.
- Changed "Damage Threshold" to "Ain't Got Time to Bleed" and defined it. It increased as well.
- Added "Seethe," which is a healing ability triggered and enhanced by rage. It's to further justify his tankyness and ability to take punishment, not an excuse to ignore attacks or regenerate lost limbs instantly. Not sure what wording I might need to add to convey that.
- Added Juggernaut, which is sort of three abilities in one if you count Seethe. I realize that at first glance this is going to seem grossly overpowered. My intention is to put a Flinty twist on teleportation: he would go THROUGH things instead of disappearing and reappearing. I'm not sure if I conveyed it well enough, but the intent is that typically people will just be able to move out of the way since Flint commits to a straight line. It is to be loud, crude, and blatantly telegraphed. Flint is resistant to damage while charging because he's essentially soaking damage instead of dodging it the way a teleporting character would be. If I need to add additional limitations or provisions to the ability let me know.
- Flint is slightly more resistant to magical and elemental attacks and abilities.
