Specter, freelancer and cosmic mage

[Nascent]

(OOC: Yes... before anyone says anything, the character does look like a Sonic fancharacter; no, I'm not going to play him that way. This is a reboot of a character from my earlier days of roleplaying so please forgive any awkward elements, such as the clearly fancharacter-y appearance. I promise this won't turn into some sort of badly written fanfic experience, as my endeavors on SotE should help to prove. That said, let's get this character rolling!)

T H E M E   M U S I C

__________________QUICK STATS
Name Specter
Age Uncertain
Gender Male
Species Uncertain (see history*)
Ethnicity N/A
Height 3' 6"
Occupation Freelancer
Residence N/A

__________________IN-DEPTH STUFF

Physical Description

Although Specter's species may be undefined, his appearance certainly is not. Standing a good bit shorter than the average human, Specter's body is predominantly a very dark, almost midnight-shade of purple interrupted with a few areas of light brown and -- rather strikingly -- bright azure blue "tattoos" of various designs on his head, hands, arms, feet, legs, his whole body with the narrow exclusion of his face. These markings radiate power, glowing faintly regularly and increasingly brightly when Specter is using his powers; it can be surmised by an expert in the arcane that Specter's body is, somehow, designed to be a living conduit for magical power. The glow from these marking can typically be hidden well enough as long as something is worn over them.

Despite his slightly canine features Specter's species isn't clear; it's even possible that he is the only one of his kind due to whatever circumstances, or at least the only one in this galaxy. His standard outfit includes a dusky purple overcoat and a navy blue neck-wrap cape; leather gloves and boots bound with a strap of metal at the mid-sole work with the coat and cape to give a sense of purpose to an otherwise indistinct ensemble of gray khakis and a dark gray-teal shirt.

Personality

In spite of the cold and hardened demeanor he sometimes projects, Specter is in fact deeply curious, caring, and to a certain extent naive. He firmly believes everyone should have a chance to prove themselves trustworthy once he knows them a bit -- one chance, however, is usually where he draws the line. Once you have earned his trust, however, it would take a major act of betrayal to break it and he is fiercely loyal to those he feels can be trusted. He is still very much learning about the galaxy, its peoples, technology, places, and traditions; his innate curiosity, mingled with his desire to understand his own origins, means that he is often willing to go places and do things that other people would shy away from. Wanderlust is a common issue for him; if he stays in one place too long he becomes increasingly uneasy, often without the ability to explain why. Similarly, Specter craves cerebral stimulation -- if he isn't out seeing new places and experiencing new things he generally occupies himself with reading, puzzles, riddles, philosophical questions, just about anything that forces him to think intently. One of his chief subjects of study is, unsurprisingly, the arcane arts, since his own magic power is something he doesn't truly understand. If neither travel or mental exercise is available to occupy him Specter will resort to physical exercises or meditation. Such intent desire for activity may seem overboard for anyone... until you realize that Specter very rarely needs to sleep (perhaps once a month for an average of three to four hours).

Specter has a fairly unusual moral compass. The majority of people either operate under the impression that most or all moral issues can be cleanly, sweepingly divided up into 'right' and 'wrong' or, coversely, see morality as tones of gray more often than black and white. Perhaps owing to his appetite for mental exercise, Specter takes a markedly different viewpoint that seems almost to combine the two different positions. His view of moral quandries is most easily compared to elaborate dot art: although at a distance the image may seem to have sweeping shades and hues, a closer examination reveals that there are distinctions that can be drawn. In other words he rejects both sweeping generalizations and apathetic disengagement in favor of fact-finding and breaking an issue into its component parts, good or ill as they may be. Under ideal circumstances he would pick apart an issue until he understood all the underpinnings of it -- practicality, however, often gets in his way and not every situation can be diffused long enough to be understood. Like being shot at, for example.

Equipment

War Scythe: A weapon Specter picked up during his travels, the war scythe is a tactical tool with myriad and diverse uses. Far stronger and more dangerous than it looks, the scythe is a rare, possibly unique design that was custom commissioned from a source that Specter prefers to keep anonymous -- and for good reasons. The metal blade and spear-tips of the scythe are a composite of steel and graphene, giving it the ability to reliably cut into most other metals and go blade-to-blade with energy swords as well as psionic or magic based melee weapons. Perhaps more impressively, the shaft of the weapon is a rod of pure spiral-rolled graphene coated in black rubberized plastic, making it nearly unbreakable (and guarding against nasty electrical shocks to the wielder). The cost of such a weapon is by no means insignificant -- its design would require it to be fabricated from the molecular level up and while the equipment to do that doesn't come cheap the skill to create large-sheet graphene is vastly more expensive. However Specter came by such a weapon and whoever designed it, the price tag would have been enormous.

Traveler's Cloak: A simple hooded navy blue cloak, slightly tattered around the edges. Specter wears this when he's trying not to draw attention to himself; though it doesn't always help as much as he'd like it's better than having people staring at the glowing runes and markings on his head.

Magic/Abilities

Void Walker: Whatever kind of being Specter actually is, some things about his physiology just seem to defy reason. Despite having mostly the same body parts as other humanoid races he clearly operates on entirely different principles at a very basic level. For one thing, he is able to survive in the void of space for extended periods of time; it's not certain if there is a limit to this or not, but hours on end in the cold vacuum don't seem to affect his body at all. Similarly he can survive in hostile environments that would kill most other lifeforms. It's as though his body switches to entirely different sources to sustain itself when the normal conditions life needs to exist cannot be met. Interestingly, he can also go a very long time without needing food or water -- it isn't clear how this is possible, either.

Basic Elemental Magic: Having learned some of the basics of more "classical" magic on his travels, Specter can cast fist-sized fireballs, shards of ice, or balls of lightning with ease. These are not very powerful attack spells however, typically unable to do much against armor, force fields, or even the weakest magic or psychic barriers.

Spatial Magic: Specter's core magical powers rely upon a rather unusual gift that lets him bend space around him. This is not 'space' in the sense of the dark black star-speckled void, rather 'space' in terms of the actual fabric of the physical universe. At a glance this may seem to be a godlike power -- however, Specter's spatial magic is not a cheat code to control the universe so much as it is just another way of bending the rules, like most forms of magic. Its possible applications and limitations are described in the sub-sections below:
[Flight / Levitation]
Gravity is believed to be a result of mass, by its very presence, bending space -- the ability to suspend this effect or alter it naturally results in the ability to move through space at will. In laymans terms, Specter flies by simply telling gravity to ignore him. Beyond just effecting himself Specter can also cause other people or objects in his area of awareness to levitate and defy gravity, moving them around as he pleases. The problem is that he can only do this with a single person, object, or 5-ft wide area at a time and not while flying. The heavier the person or objects(s) being levitated the more effort must be exerted to move them; anyone or anything that could generally be described as 'huge' or 'massive' is typically beyond Specter's ability to make levitate.
[Slow]
There are two ways Specter can use spatial magic to slow down a person or object. The first uses the same principles of Flight / Levitation, but in reverse; instead of nullifying the bend of space that results in gravity Specter uses his powers to amplify. This version only works on single targets -- individual gravity fields -- and results in a sense of heaviness for the target that's like having weights strapped to their body, making it difficult but not impossible to move. The second approach is an area-of-effect spatial magic whereby Specter creates a zone of "stretched" space up to 30 feet wide. Anyone entering this 'stretched zone' would percieve the world outside the zone as having sped up to about twice its normal speed; conversely, to an outsider anyone or anything within the zone would be moving at half speed. Only physical objects are effected within the stretched space -- energy, magic, and psionic power are immune to time dialation due to not possessing mass. Specter can sustain a Slow effect for no more than two minutes and needs several minutes to recover before casting any spatial magic again.
[Haste]
By creating a conduit or area of compressed space Specter can move himself, others, or objects of small or moderate size at double relativistic speeds -- this is essentially the effects of the 'stretched zone' described above in reverse, meaning that for anyone within the compressed space people and objects outside the compression will seem to be moving at half their normal speeds. Either as a conduit or area-of-effect Haste can only create a compression zone up to ten feet wide -- in the case of a conduit (essentially a compression wave) however the effect can follow the caster or target, allowing for rapid movement over short or moderate distances. Specter can sustain a Haste effect for no more than two minutes and needs several minutes to recover before casting any spatial magic again. In very short bursts, however, it can be used in tandem with Flight, allowing Specter to pull off some quite impressive aerial maneuvers.
[Item Summoning]
Rather than carry around his scythe and other gear, Specter simply uses his powers to tuck the items he needs into a small fold in space -- effectively an invisible pocket in the universe itself -- and pull them back out when he needs them.
[Shockwave Strikes]
There is an artistry to what is possible with spatial magic, a fact Specter is constantly reminded of. By combining the seemingly mundane with one angle or another of his powers some quite remarkable effects can be created. Take a punch, for example. Any object moving through a gas (air) or liquid (water) medium creates ripples and shockwaves in the medium. With a punch through air this results in just the slightest movement of air, barely worth noticing... until you combine it with a tight spatial compression wave, at which point you have a physical shockwave. At very close range this gives Specter's melee or scythe strikes brief but intense impact; at very close to moderate distance this can mean a disorienting blast of windforce hitting anything in a general direction. One more reason not to underestimate a short guy in a fight.


Relationships
Business Partner / Teammate: Daniel "Fieryone" Cain

History

Specter's history is a tangled web of questions and uncertainties. His earliest memories are of waking up in the cold void of space, just a naked body drifting amongst a debris field, the light of a nearby star cascading across the void and slowly, ever so slowly, drawing everything towards it. It was the light and heat of that vast celestial fireball that first stirred his mind and body to wakefulness, very slowly pushing back the all-pervasive cold and filling the lost creature with a quiet warmth... with energy, vitality, and power.

Specter has no idea how long he lingered there, just floating and watching the debris tumble, the star burn, and the vast sparkling cosmos shimmer like diamonds in a sea of ink all around him. Hours, days, months, maybe even years -- he's not certain. But the still, death-like drifting was at last interrupted as a scavenger ship entered the system and began to pick through the debris field. This large construct of metal was the first sign of life Specter had witnessed since awakening in space, and his curiosity led him to try to move around as it did. At first it was impossible -- his body barely knew how to move and, even so, there was no way to advance through the void as it did... but gradually will became reality and, through powers he didn't even know he had, Specter glided through space towards the ship. He was eventually pulled inside by the ship's tractor beams, having been caught in an area where the ship was salvaging scrap en mass.

Away from the light of the star, Specter's energy began to fade and he found himself with no way out of the cargo bay. Fortunately, the salvagers' next stop wasn't far off: the refugee colony of Haven. When the ship stopped there Specter stole out of the cargo bay and into the colony itself, doing his best to avoid notice while taking in all the strange new sights around him. Like a child he had no concept of this "world" of people -- he was scared but intrigued, and so hid himself from notice for years on end while silently watching, learning, making sense of everything around him. He ended up imitating a lot of what he saw the colonists do, and in so doing learned the taste of food and water, what it was to wear clothes, the meaning of speech and writing, the basics of technology, and so much more, scavenging what was discarded by the colonists to do so. And then a day came when he learned something else:

To fight.

Falsely thinking Haven to be easy prey, a motley crew of space pirates descended upon the asteroid colony and attacked. He watched from shadowed corners and dark places as the people he had seen live peacefully together met these violent strangers in a pitched battle. As the inhabitants drove off the enemy, the scenes they left behind them taught the otherwise-naive being not only what combat and weapons were... but what death was. What grief and mourning were. That not all people wanted to exist together -- that some were more than willing to do terrible things to take from others what they had. The injustice of it stung his until-now innocent mind, and when he watched one of the fleeting privateers swear to return, purpose began to burn in his heart. He knew this place was a refuge for those with nowhere else to go, people who for one reason or another were shunned by society: runaway experiments, political dissidents, augmented soldiers who wished never to return to the battlefield. He knew that these people just wanted to be left alone... and that in some ways -- despite none of them knowing he was amongst them -- he was very much the same as these people.

And he wanted to defend them.

As it turned out, it wasn't pirates who returned -- word of the raid had reached the dark underbelly of the criminal underworld, and a notorious slaver syndicate decided it could make a small fortune capturing and selling the people of Haven to the highest bidder. When next Haven was attacked it was by the syndicate... and unlike the pirates, they came prepared for the fight that awaited. The Siege of Haven went on for over a month; in that time the population's improvised militia began talking about a "ghost" that was harassing the syndicate's forces, often striking from the rear as they advanced and then vanishing. The few reliable reports spoke of a small, almost tiny figure shrouded in a tattered cloak, fighting with a spear, a laser pistol, and some unusual powers. When the "ghost" attacks began happening more and more frequently Haven's guardians came up with a name for their phantom ally.

The Specter.

It was only when one of the syndicate's advanced squads managed to wound him that Specter went from becoming a rumor to a reality, limping into a camp in the middle of the night and collapsing. The first to find him was a young pyrokinetic by the name of Daniel Cain; because of him the nameless creature -- later confirmed to be the helpful Specter -- got the medical attention he needed in time. The two quickly found respect for each other, laying a handful of ambushes for the slavers in the weeks that followed. Shortly afterwards the syndicate, deciding the operation had become too costly, withdrew and the "war" ended. However, life on Haven never quite went back to the way it was; the colony had lost too much and too many, and the damage done was too severe. The salvage and merchant ships willing to trade with the colony began to dwindle, with rumors that some leftover syndicate forces were raiding the trade lanes in an effort to recoup their losses. The colony of Haven was slowly abandoned. Daniel and his family were amongst those who moved on, drifting from colony to colony while looking for somewhere to call home. Not knowing how to move on as the colonists did Specter stayed behind, doing his best to make a home of the halfways destroyed colony and dealing with the occasional salvager or pirate incursion as he saw fit. In time, though, the loneliness and desire to be amongst people again took him back to the stars. Using data from the Haven computers supplemented by knowledge he got from the colony's would-be looters, he amassed as much knowledge about the rest of the galaxy as he could and then paid off a salvage ship in scrap materials to take him where he wanted to go.

Years passed. Specter grew -- not in stature, but in knowledge, skill, power, and understanding. He wandered from place to place, never staying too long and trying -- not always successfully -- not to attract too much attention to himself. When next he caught up with Daniel the intrepid mercenary was going by the nickname of "Fieryone", making his way in the galaxy with whatever work was available. Throwing in his lot with the young man who'd once saved his life, Specter determined to see where next his uncertain path would lead him... and perhaps, in time, learn the secrets of his own mysterious past.

__________________THREAD TRACKER
Current Threads ---

Complete Threads ---