Maldrem "Wight"

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Maldrem [break] AKA "Wight"

[attr="class","appsubname"]a new path to be carved

[attr="class","appheading"]GENERAL INFORMATION

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[attr="class","appheading"]PERSONALITY

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Playful, flirty, and deceptively easygoing, Maldrem is extremely capable of lightening a mood and making sure others don't take him too seriously. Even in spite of his being a Tiefling, a race reviled by many in Fortuna, he is skilled at approaching others with a jovial aura, putting them at ease. He loves flash, fun, and good times, and will often encourage his fellow shipmates into getting as rowdy as possible when drinking because it's more fun that way. He loves to laugh, and it isn't hard to make him do so.[break][break]

Maldrem is always ready with a joke, making light of any situation, and he is often also ready with a pickup line, interested in flirting with practically anything that moves as long as they're just a little pretty, or cute, or beautiful, or handsome, or... well, you get the picture. And he is quite capable of charming any number of creatures right out of their pants, dresses, tunics, or anything else applicable.[break][break]

He prefers that people don't take him seriously, but this only makes him more effective at his job. He is skilled at weedling information, catching tiny details, picking locks, and sneaking around. Nothing feels quite as great as putting the thorns to someone who wrote you off as inconsequential, and having the last laugh. To be frank, he hates to be considered as worth less than others, hates being looked down on, hates the aversion people have to him just because he is a Tiefling. But he'll never let it show; it's much, much more fun to get payback with a smile on your face, and to let them know they couldn't get to you.[break][break]

If given the option to kill Markus Woodrow, or blow him a kiss while leaving him stranded on a buoy, he'd probably pick the second option.

[attr="class","appheading"]APPEARANCE

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Maldrem stands at a modest 5'7", somewhat short for a male of his kind. He possesses a lithe build of tightly-packed wiry muscle, with graceful features that he puts to good use: he's very light on his feet and physically coordinated.[break][break]

His natural hair is black, and his eyes are normally completely red, with no sclera or pupil. At a young age he learned a nifty magical trick to change his hair color, and as he grew older he started using it to change his eyes as well, attempting to stand out more with the hair, but normalize himself with the eyes. As such, he is usually seen with a head of white hair, while the red of his eyes is shrunk down a bit to appear more human-like. He also has a pair of curved horns on his head, which he adorns with decorative rings, and wears two black hoop earrings in each of his pointed ears. His lips are a naturally darker color than most, being a fleshy purple, and he also has a black birthmark under his left eye that trails down, looking almost like a tattoo. His canines are noticeably sharper than a human's. He has a long, pointed tail as well, but he often keeps it wrapped tightly around his waist, only using it when he needs an additional pseudo-limb - it's fairly strong, and can lift small objects. He has also been know to be very... "creative" with it, in the bedroom.[break][break]

Maldrem is fond of clothes that are either tight and somewhat revealing, or loose and light, and either way he requires that they be easy to move around in as well. His shoes, kneepads, and his short sword are all part of a set, which was pilfered with his first pirate crew. He treasures them as fancy armor and a fancy weapon, and takes very good care of them. He also likes to adorn himself with things like bracelets, either metal or cord, decorative strips of cloth, and other superfluous (but light) accessories, to give more flash to his look.[break][break]

His style of dress often leaves people wondering if he gets cold when visiting northern climates, but as a Tiefling, he runs rather hot inside, and only really minds more extreme colds.

[attr="class","appheading"]HISTORY

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Maldrem's history begins with his mother Matilda. She was a Tiefling from which Maldrem inherited his cursed blood. However, she was also a skilled illusionist, and she used this power to disguise her appearance, making herself appear human. Despite this, Matilda was actually a woman who was not ashamed of who or what she was - her illusion act was meant to prove a point. She would make people like her for who she was as a person, and when she revealed her true shape to them, she would thus prove that her race had no bearing on her personality. But unfortunately, a small hitch came up; Matilda enjoyed a night of passion with a human man whom she was only considering pursuing a relationship with, aided by the inhibited judgments alcohol provided. She wound up pregnant. The pregnancy more or less made her decision for her, and she stayed with the man, seeing no reason not to; he seemed genuine enough, claimed to love her, and though she'd been burned in the past by similar claims, she had also built a thick skin towards it, and was willing to give him a chance. But the timing just never seemed to be right to reveal to him what she was, and the longer the lie kept rolling, the harder it became to tell the truth.[break][break]

The truth came out on the day she gave birth, as she was  no longer able to maintain her illusions under the strain of the act, and even if she could, the baby boy who was born would reveal the truth regardless. Maldrem's father was horrified by what he saw, and even the doctors were so shocked and appalled that two of them walked out immediately. Only one had the decency to stay behind and see to his duty, not caring what Matilda was, and he instructed her husband that he should support her, that this was still the woman he claimed to love. But the husband did no such thing; he shook his head, claimed this was wrong, that he'd been deceived; he looked at his son and called him a bad dream, a nightmare, and he renounced all bonds to the two of them. He claimed that he had every right to see to it that they were killed for the lies Matilda had pulled on him, but whether or not that was true, he also said that he would do her a service in simply abandoning them. "Sparing them", he called it.[break][break]

The doctor, left alone in the hospital room with the icily silent Matilda, asked her what she would name the child. Matilda told him that her former husband had already given him a name: Maldrem, the bad dream. She would see to it that Maldrem owned the name, and that he would destroy any negative association it had. The doctor was kind enough to see to it that she and the boy were cared for long enough for her to get her strength back and take care of them herself, and she vowed to never forget his service. From then on, it was just the two of them, a Tiefling woman and her bastard son with no family name to call their own.[break][break]

Life was tough, but Maldrem always smiled through the hard times just like his mom taught him to. He learned, like she did, to build a thick skin, to not let the taunts of others get to him, and to be proud of himself. Matilda went back to using her illusion magic on herself in order to get work, so she could provide for them, and Maldrem was so excited by the idea that he eventually learned to use magic for his own looks as well, giving himself a fancy dye job and happily showing it off to his mother. Her pride in him was exceptional. And he always remembered what she told him: the world was going to see him as a monster, as a problem. He needed to prove them wrong and be proud of who he was. And because he took that to heart so firmly, he questioned her.[break][break]

When he was old enough to properly utilize his illusion magic, his mother was prepared to teach him how to hide his appearance. But he questioned it, asking why he needed to do that if he was supposed to be proud of who he was. Why did she do that?[break][break]

"Because Maldrem, by making them see me as their 'normal', I force them to know me for me. Then when they meet the true me, they realize how normal a Tiefling is."[break][break]

"...But mom, doesn't that just make them think you're a liar?"[break][break]

The question gave her pause. Maldrem admitted she had a point, but even doing things the way she was doing them would just make a good number of the people she met think she had deceived them once she revealed the truth. Just like Maldrem's father had. Maldrem felt that if he really wanted to prove people wrong about  him, he needed to show them the real him - give or take a few cosmetic details, at least. Matilda found it inspiring. She stopped using the illusions. Maldrem was also inspired, and as a teenager he stopped using his necromancy magic to change his hair and eyes. And then, one day, Matilda met her ex husband again.[break][break]

Apparently, his generous offer of mercy towards her and Maldrem only extended so far as he never had to see her again. So when she showed up in front of him one day, with his grown son, purely by happenstance, he became enraged. He also, unfortunately, had become a high-ranking law officer in the King's Fiamont, where they were living, and called several of his underlings "to deal with a problem". The man was corrupt; he would pin whatever crime he wanted on Matilda, and his lackeys would back up the claim. Matilda and Maldrem fled, pursued, and eventually they were caught. And Maldrem watched, horrified, as his mother was cut down in front of him. The worst of it was that he could see the indecision on his father's face, the warring conflict there before he swung the sword; he still felt something for Matilda, and he knew it, and yet he'd still somehow  been able to kill her. Maldrem didn't understand it. He fell to his knees, seemingly having given up, too shocked to do anything but let silent tears fall from his eyes, too floored that someone could have so much hatred in their hearts for a tiefling that they would even kill the woman they loved.[break][break]

His father approached him next, a look of disgust on his face.[break][break]

"This piece of trash... time to end this bad dream once and for all."[break][break]

Maldrem sprang to his feet, overcome with anguish, and tackled the man to the ground. He stole the sword from his shocked grasp and drove it into his heart. Tears fell like a torrent from his eyes and onto his father's cheeks as Maldrem watched him die, and in his final moments before his death, even the man, whose name Maldrem never learned, shed tears.[break][break]

He let go of the sword and collapsed, his body feeling like jelly. His father's men spoke amongst themselves urgently, and Maldrem wondered why they weren't just executing him. He was a tiefling, they were disgusted by him, and he had just killed their superior. He got his answer when he looked up and realized that more officers had appeared on the scene... no, not officers, soldiers. Palace guards had apparently been drawn to the commotion, and the officers were wary of acting illegally in their presence. Maldrem was arrested.[break][break]

He was not allowed to attend his own trial, and was merely informed that he'd be serving a life sentence, or else shorter if the King, any of the princes, or even the Warlord decided to execute him. This could happen any week, as Balfour was known to routinely trim the numbers of life-sentence criminals in the Fianese jails with random selection. Maldrem was certain death would come for him sooner than later, given the stigma against his kind. Warlord Balfour could easily pick him out of a crowd. But when he thought of it that way... it left a rotten taste in his mouth. His mother had already been the victim of hatred and prejudice. He would not let himself go the same way, not when he still had a job to do.[break][break]

Prove them wrong.[break][break]

Maldrem broke out. He was rather adept at picking locks, a skill he'd picked up to impress his mom when he was younger due to her always forgetting her house key, but he wasn't really sure he could do it with a prison door. Turns out, a prison lock wasn't all THAT different from a normal one, and his dexterous tail worked its magic. While he had been locked up, he heard of other prisoners who had been unjustly imprisoned; corruption in the police force was common at the time, and was part of the reason the Palace Guards had been getting more involved to begin with. Maldrem considered that any one of those prisoners could be lying to him, but if he couldn't give them the benefit of the doubt, how could he expect the same? He freed them too, skillfully picking their locks. He and his motley crew made their escape aided by the clever decoys Maldrem conjured of himself, allowing them to get the drop on guards, and eventually they tasted freedom by liberating a ship from the palace itself.[break][break]

Maldrem was glad he had freed his companions, because he didn't know the first thing about driving a ship. On that day, they all renounced Fiamont and its crooked police, and vowed to start new lives for themselves as rogues of the sea. And Maldrem's companions saw him for exactly who he was - just another one of them. As the years passed, Maldrem perfected his lock-picking talents, and his visual decoys became more and more convincing. He became a specialist at breaking and entering, at deceiving and disappearing, and at infiltrating deep into strongholds. He also started dyeing his hair again, making his general features more pale-ish to aid his look, and between that and his talents, people started calling him by the nickname "Wight", as he was truly like a phantom. He rather liked the name.[break][break]

When news surfaced that other pirate crews had been sunk by the rising, infamous SSPB, a law organization dedicated to stamping out piracy once and for all, Maldrem's crew naturally gained an immediate hatred of the group. They no longer trusted the law, and so when they came across another ship, another crew called the Defiled Grail, who offered a olive branch of friendship and unity, who claimed that the only way they'd beat Markus Woodrow was by banding together, Maldrem's crew looked to him for what to do. And he decided that joining up would be exactly what they'd do.[break][break]

Besides, the captain was pretty hot.

[attr="class","appheading"]ABILITIES

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[attr="class","appability"]➢ Minor Necromancy[break]
Maldrem can use Necromancy magic to drain the pigmentation from his hair, and shrink the melanin in his eyes. This results in his signature white hair and his slightly-more-normalized eyes, and his skin is a little more pale than it would normally be as a result as well. He can also put himself into a fake death state when necessary, as a last resort when captured, and can pause - but not cure - illnesses for himself or others - seaborne illnesses being a specialty of his.
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[attr="class","appability"]➢ Illusory Decoys[break]
Maldrem can conjure body doubles of himself to deceive foes. These doubles have no physical substance, but they can fool sight and make sounds. If he tries really hard, he can even give them a smell, but this is tiring, as he is not a skilled illusionist like his mother was. If he just needs to hide, he can also conjure an illusion of a wall in front of himself while standing in front of a real one, as an attempt at camouflage.
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[attr="class","appability"]➢ Lock-Picking[break]
With his skilled and dexterous tail, Maldrem can pick an extremely wide variety of locks with ease. Magical locks are a problem, but perhaps due to his Infernal Legacy, they aren't impossible to penetrate. He thinks maybe his necromancy eats away at the magic of such locks, hence why he can get it eventually.

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[attr="class","appability"]➢ Skilled Dance-like Combat[break]
He has become quite adept with the short-sword he liberated from a fancy armory, which he wields more like a dagger in a reverse grip. His movements are graceful and agile, and he fights like he's dancing.
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[attr="class","appheading"]Fortuna-RPG