Eneia: A Story of Aether and Chaos - OOC and Characters

Name: Gallivan
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Class: Mercenary

Appearance:
gallivan.jpg
Hesitant to show his body as it has been mutated in some parts by the effects of the chaos magic he has been tainted by. Most notably his right leg, his face and his right arm.

Equipment: Rations, leather armour, adventurer's pack with the essentials, a spyglass, paper and charcoal.

Personality: A clash of overprotective and precautious as his trauma mixes with his usual nature. Otherwise amicable especially after a drink.

History:
During a hunting trip in Chaotic tainted lands, Gallivan found himself covered in wounds inside the mouth of an enormous beast that killed the rest of his party. After stabbing it from the inside, he found himself trapped and marinating in the beast's blood for a while.
Freshly tainted by Chaos, he unleashed this newfound power in an attempt to survive, but in doing so mutated quite a bit. His sword merged with his arm and his body has several growths in some places.
Gallivan's youth isn't a very interesting one. He grew up with a handful of siblings on a farm near the borders of The Marath Papacy, Zarai and the Wildlands. Since lone animals would periodically wander onto their estate, his family would often find themselves having to fend off these unwanted intruders. While usually a good "shoo" would scare off the offending animal, sometimes they'd have to resort to violent conflict, most notably with animals tainted by Aether or Chaos.
Gallivan took a liking to this sort of action and eventually left home in search of adventure. Most of the upcoming experiences were exciting to him, but uneventful in the grand scheme of things. That is, until the day that would shape the rest of his life.

His group was hired to cull the population of Chaos-tainted animals in the area to lower the risk for neighbouring settlements. Their job had sent the party into the Wildlands and Gallivan acted as their scout. While they were hired and trained to confront these mutated animals, it would benefit them greatly to keep the initiative in the coming fights.
How exactly it happened, Gallivan can't remember. Most of his memories of that day are vague at best. A beast, mutated and enlarged beyond recognition, attacked them out of nowhere. It towered over the party and seemed more than capable of swallowing each of them whole. The party instinctively drew their weapons and trained them on the new threat, but it was clear from the moment it raised one grotesque claw that they were no match for this beast.

With one swipe it cut a fully armoured man to shreds, or crushed another underneath its weight, or whatever else it did to his unfortunate friends. Gallivan didn't know what befell his comrades as he had taken off in a sprint the moment they encountered the beast. The sounds of metal splintering under enormous forces drove him forward faster than he'd ever moved before, but to think he would get anywhere was laughable in hindsight, and the only reason he'd gotten as far as he had was because the beast had targeted him last.
Only a few seconds had passed before a shadow covered him. Looking behind, Gallivan saw a mouth close over him, swallowing him nearly whole. Its teeth tore through his right leg at the thigh and his sword in the middle, while his right arm and face received several gashes from an extra set of teeth that had grown inside the beasts mouth. Even just inside the beast's mouth, Gallivan could already feel digestive fluids starting to burn his clothes and skin. In a desperate attempt, the doomed man lunged his broken sword upward.

Broken as it may have been, it was still effective and cut cleanly through the roof of the beast's mouth and into its brain. It died without so much as a whimper, but left Gallivan stuck halfway inside its throat, bleeding out and trapped underneath several times his own body weight. Naturally, he struggled, but as his prison began filling with blood and he started losing consciousness from his own blood loss, Gallivan had lost all hope of surviving. At the very least he'd avenged his party. And himself. He was content with this.
Then he felt a surge of energy. A fire coursing through his veins which refused to let him fail. Somehow he managed to push himself up and by steadying himself on his sword, he even managed to crawl backwards. It was a miracle that he managed not to drown, another to get out through the two sets of teeth without losing another limb, and yet another that he was still alive. By clumsily crawling back through the two sets of teeth, however, Gallivan had given himself another gash along the length of his arm. Through tears and blood, he stared at his exposed flesh with a morbid chuckle, assuring himself that this wound would definitely be the end of him. He had gotten far, but was clearly pushing his limits and his luck. The man had accepted his fate before, it was easier the second time around. But as the seconds passed he saw his bleeding slow and the wound close shut. Utterly baffled by this, Gallivan could do nothing but laugh.

What urged him to look for the lower part of his leg, Gallivan doesn't know. Which insane recess of his mind told him it was a good idea to slash open the stump that had grown on his wound and attempt to reattach the lost limb, he couldn't fathom at the time. And yet, it worked. The skin grew back together and he could feel that same fire again, pouring through his blood as flesh healed and senses returned to his leg. For a moment, everything was good.
But good things never last. While he had taken a moment to rest, he also had time to think and eventually he returned his gaze to his arm, to the gash that had healed in mere moments and up to the hand that should have been holding his sword. Instead, he found it enveloped by a growth. A growth that covered the hilt of his sword and had some strings of flesh growing up the length of the blade.

Gallivan freaked out and struggled for several minutes to remove his sword from this growth, but the more he struggled, the more it seemed to get stuck in his mutated arm. The only way to get it out, he thought, was to cut off his arm. His wounds had healed up before, they would certainly do so again. Unfortunately all he had was the broken off top half of his sword. There was no way he could perceive to cut through his arm without cutting off another part of his body. Instead, as a joke he placed the two halves of his sword together. He chuckled until the sword reattached into one piece, then he cried.

By this time, Gallivan had figured the blood of the Chaos-tainted beast had spread this taint to himself and thus, he also figured, to undo Chaos he'd have to taint himself with Aether. It took a day to find an aetheric tainted part of the land, another to find a beast he felt sufficiently tainted to undo his own.
A large deer, with horns that were larger, sharper and more plentiful than on a normal deer, readied itself to charge the intruder on its land. Gallivan accepted this challenge. He noticed an opening between the horns that he guessed he could jump through and as predicted, he managed to slip in-between its lethal weaponry with minimal injury, while the deer did not fare so fortunate. A sword driven straight through the skull ended its life swiftly.
This foe wasn't as large as the previous, so Gallivan cut open the belly of the beast and crawled inside, hoping to recreate the scenario that led to his initial taint. Not a minute was he in that carcass before a voice called out to him.

A bloodied figure crawled out of the poor deer's dead body. An elf had noticed him wander through Aetheric tainted land as she soared on the winds, but his bloodied figure and strange stagger had made her hesitant to approach. When she saw he was about to be attacked, she hurried to his aid, but as he stood before her now, she was less willing to help. The man raised a sword and she readied herself to smite this lunatic, until tears cleaned the blood from his face and he uttered a weak cry of help in-between sobs.
It took several hours for the elf to return with an entourage of elves to aid Gallivan in his plight. In this time he had taken a bath and calmed down somewhat. Intrigued by his predicament, they offered to return them to their home to help him. Their attempts at removing the blade from the arm revealed two things. One, the blade had become part of his body and two, both his arm and the sword regenerated thanks to the chaotic magics in him. They offered to cut off the sword, but told him that he would not regain a working hand. Gallivan nodded, he had grown somewhat accustomed to it and found that he was better off with his sword than without it.

Aetheric magic couldn't help him, and Gallivan later found that the Arcanic could not reverse the effects of this Chaos either. If nothing on this world could help him, then something from another might. His last hope was the Labyrinth Below.
 
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@Majem

I neglected one thing I just remembered ><
What sort of magic does he use?
 
@Majem

I neglected one thing I just remembered ><
What sort of magic does he use?
Uhh, rapid healing in stressful situations. His incident was recent, so he doesn't have a lot of experience with his new gift. I'd say it's all subconscious.
So at the moment it's less of casting magic and doing combat like a Spellsword and more a heavily tainted warrior-type?
 
@Majem

I neglected one thing I just remembered ><
What sort of magic does he use?
Uhh, rapid healing in stressful situations. His incident was recent, so he doesn't have a lot of experience with his new gift. I'd say it's all subconscious.
So at the moment it's less of casting magic and doing combat like a Spellsword and more a heavily tainted warrior-type?
Yeah, I figured since he kinda has magic that'd put him in the spellsword category, but he's basically still just a typical guy with a sword. I changed it to mercenary.
 
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Speaking of mati, can't seen any of the pictures in that cs
 
At work myself
 
Oh, nice nice! Feel partially like I could in theory post too, but is fine.

Also, I might have changed Ari's backstory, but not edited it. Unsure if I should or not
 
Do what you feel is best, Batsaikhan is, and will always be, a fish outta water(frozen tundra)
 
A penguin out of tundra?
 
I forgot to check if this was up. Just now read.
 
Welcome back!
 
Ahhh, I shouldn't try to write when I'm listening to the Cars. Made my post a whole lot more angsty than I meant it to be. RIP Ric Ocasek. Paulina, you're still heart-wrenchingly beautiful. So sorry for your loss.
 
Feel like my post slowed towards the end. I debated doing the voice of Marath in my post, but figured the words of a god should be something reserved for the GM to do. Also, assumed warforged don't eat since they're made of metal. It wouldn't really make sense for them to. I guess I didn't really answer the "is it sleep or a recharge" question in my post. I'm sorry.
 
Batsaikhan: "...news sisters are so dour."