Neloth

Appearance

Neloth possesses shapeshifting abilities. These abilities are bounded by what is naturally possible for a kobold to look like, with one exception: He cannot alter his eyes.
When they're disabled, willingly or not, he will assume his normal appearance.

His scales are a solid silvery gray. Neloth's build is, strangely, reminiscent of an otter; slim and lithe with large eyes, framed by heavy ridged eyebrows. Tahr-type horns, short and thick, curve backwards from above small bat-like ears.

Info

Personality: Neloth is full of paradoxical traits. Childish in some ways, mature in others; his real personality rarely sees the light of day, often disguised with a mask for one reason or another; seemingly so open and eager to speak his mind, seemingly so closed off. The line between illusion and reality has long been lost. He is the mask and the wearer. Is there an end to the masks? Is there a mask at all?
Likes/Dislikes: Does not appear to have real, meaningful likes or dislikes outside of fundamental, animalistic traits - like the need for food and freedom - or childish tendencies.

Backstory

Neloth was born without form, without thought, and without a name to call his own.
Neloth was born a tool, without sentience or cognition itself.
Neloth was born beneath even the lowest beasts of the earth.
No life, no death; being deprived of both, there was no rest for him.
Back then he was only a nameless spirit.

The creator is long since dead and dispersed. The creator went to the rest which the spirit was denied, long before the current age. He left the spirit to wander the earth. And wander the spirit did, leaving a trail of chaos and destruction in its wake.
It could be killed, but not forever. At some point or another the spirit always returned to wander once more. Legends of a mad djinn can be found across Eiyora; ancient legends. Knowing the age of it is impossible. Maybe it's been here from the start, wandering, rampaging, dying, and reforming in perpetuity.
This could not go on forever.

It was the winter of 772 AE, temperatures in Northern Eiyora were nearing some of the lowest ever recorded. Severin Seioul, 30 at the time, was part of a cursebreaker group en route to deal with a recently unearthed tomb. While en route, Severin and his group encountered an "unknown compelling force." This would later be identified as a demon.
Several of the group perished in the ensuing chaos before Severin was able to seal the demon into himself, saving himself and the rest of the group. The seal was deemed stable when inspected by other experts. After the quarantine period, he was cleared to go home. They never caught the fault in the seal.
Within the containment of the seal and the magical structure it gave, the spirit was fundamentally altered, it began to think but also, it had access to all the memories of it's host.
It was the summer of 776 AE when Severin Seioul or, more accurately, the demon inside him was incarcerated into Cerberus Keep. The demon took control of his body, killing his wife and—at the time, it was presumed—his infant daughter.
17 years later, he would break out during the fall of Cerberus Keep. He has evaded recapture ever since.

After his escape, he wandered without direction. Maybe, to anyone on the outside looking in, that's what he's always been doing. He did whatever he wished whenever he wished, unchained by law, morality, or sometimes even sense. He has no plans to change that any time soon.

✦ Magic Name: Chasing Eternity

Overall place in type triad: Defense

¶ Elemental Properties:

Dark || Bone (Earth) || Underworld
Obdurate (Conceptual, Earth & Underworld)

¶ Description

Obdurate is the element of unchanging, stability, and permanence.
Neloth started on the path to realizing it within a scroll stolen from the Hawthorne library, and he found what he had been chasing from the moment he'd gained sentience. He found what he'd had all along.

Neloth's expression of Obdurate is bounded by several rules:

• Spells using Obdurate consume their entire mana cost before the spell is cast.
  If the spell is interrupted and fails, the channeled mana is lost.
• Spells using Obdurate cannot be "dismissed" or ended prematurely.
  Spells with a continuous drain are impossible because they would kill the user.
• Obdurate shares the same Planar Elemental matchups as Underworld, as it composes part of Obdurate.

¶ Techniques

» Meshokyo (Self || Dark)

Translated literally as "Presence Erasure", this technique has been closely protected by the Akerr government for many, many generations. Now it's in the hands of a demon.
Meshokyo has two forms, "Primary" (this one), and "Major". Primary Meshokyo functions as such: Neloth can hide his magical presence from B+, borderline A- rank sensory abilities. This effect is so potent he can maintain it while using other magics; this depends on how much energy it expends. Subtle magics will avoid disrupting the effect, while more grandiose acts will dispel it entirely.
µ Meshokyo: Major (Self || Dark, Earth)

» Immolation (Self||Bone)

Neloth's ability to create and manipulate bone. It is most potent when using his own skeletal structure as a catalyst, however, he can create bone from the earth itself if he so chooses. Both manipulation and creation have a maximum range of 12 meters, in a radius around his heart. The manipulation of foreign living skeletal structure is impossible, because the latent mana within rejects his control.
Foreign dead bones do not share this, but hold the most power when used within the context of ritual magic.
µ Dead Devil Barrier (Defense || Bone, Obdurate)

Neloth concentrates for three turns before stomping and channeling Obdurate into the ground. Six bone spikes rise from the ground in a circle, covered in runes. The resulting barrier is cylindrical, up to 9 meters in diameter and 9 meters tall, with a roof but no floor. There are two possible configurations: whatever side of the barrier the spikes are on is considered the "hard" side.
The hard side is the protective side. The opposite, "soft" side is permeable to magic and physical objects alike.
The barrier is indestructible so long as all six, relatively fragile, bone spikes persist, weakening with each destroyed spike. So long as 5 or less spikes remain, the barrier is destructible. When all 6 are destroyed, the barrier will cease to exist; if the barrier is destroyed directly, any remaining spikes will turn to dust.
If the barrier is allowed to remain, it will crumble by itself after 8 turns.

**µ **

Gear