Post by Nether on Dec 26, 2009 17:40:43 GMT -6
TECHNICAL
Username: Nether
Character Text Color: CC0000
Profile Type: Faculty
THE BASICS
Name: Kazimir Nil
Nicknames: Professor Nil. Unsurprisingly, nobody so far dropped nicknames such as "Kaz" on him
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 13 December 1985
Current Age: 27 years old
Western Zodiac: Sagittarius
Place of Birth: Prague, Czech Republic
Nationality: Czech
APPEARANCE DETAILS
Appearance: A tall man of artificial, almost unnerving, beauty: his pale skin contrasts sharply with his black hair, kept long and straight, locked in a tight, low ponytail that hangs between his shoulders.
His eyes are black as well, though examination performed at distances closer than what's comfortable might reveal small specks of dark red.
Some might say he'd need some extra exercise out in the sun and open air.. a comment to which he'd answer with a smirk, and a comment on the wonders that lifting heavy, leatherbound books all day can make for your muscles.
His thin lips, sharp features and high cheekbones combine to give him a rather stark look, not helped by the fact that he rarely shows any emotion stronger than mild amusements.
On the right side of his neck and on his right wrist there are what appear to be the edges of what might be a larger tattoo.
(There is, in fact, a tattoo: it covers almost his whole upper-right part of the body.. as for the shape, it's not something on which someone would want to focus more than necessary: it would appear to be a tribal, with hints of sharp, not-fully-euclidean geometric patterns and the occasional rune. To make matters worse, both the colors and the shape appear to change slightly when you're watching it with the edge of the vision)
Clothing Style: Has a talent to make whatever he's got on look like it was specifically cut for him; he usually dresses formally, wearing suits with the nonchalance that usually comes only with being a lawyer.
When he's not wearing a suit it's usually for practical reasons, so he favors clothes that allow the kind of mobility (or protection) that the situation warrants. As far as colors go, he tends to dress with tones of black and dark red.
Special Accessories: Usually wears, but is being shown not really needing, glasses: small rectangular things with a thin silvery frame.
PERSONALLY
Over-all Personality: Calculating, cold, sarcastic. He can be fun to be around, if he so chooses, but it's rarely because of an honest feeling.. or perhaps it is, but he loathes to admit it to himself: he's surprisingly bad at understanding people, for how good he is at manipulating them.
Nether has only one word, but will not give it easily: he'll treat every promise as a binding contract, and you can be sure he'll have half a dozen loopholes ready in it.
He's very cool headed, and reacts to the most bizarre situation with logic and, usually, a contingent plan already in motion.
Of course, that is only in regards to small things such as life-or-death encounters with thought eating cthonic demons: teaching can be much worse, and this is a first time trying it for him.
He's rarely flamboyant or showy without purpose with his magic, he prefers a more pragmatic approach unless he's going for a specific objective.. for example, big explosions work wonders at intimidating people.
That being said, he's not shy with his magic, either: if spellcasting has a chance of helping him get things done faster or better, expect him to have no qualms about using it, especially at T'zenshin, where it won't attract (as much) attention.
Likes:
-Shadows
-Ravens
-Cats, especially black ones
-Learning in general, and thick leathery books in particular
-Cold
-Coffee
-Magic
-Quietness
Dislikes:
-Bright sunlight
-Heat
-Loss of control
-Having to deal with kids, as he's soon to discover ;P
-Crowds
Fears:
-Powerlessness: the idea of not being the one controlling his own fate terrifies him. Not that he lets it show or anything
Habits:
-Smirking and staring right through people: not really a pleasant fellow when he does that.
Sense of Humor: Sarcastic
Goals:
-Getting lost in the school's library
-Sneaking a peek at a few "being human" lessons
-*cough*conquering the world*cough* I mean, raising fluffy kittens
SCHOOL/OCCUPATION
Faculty Form
Subject: Physical Gifts (As soon as there's enough room for specialization, he'd probably try to keep only the "magic and spellcasting" part)
BACKGROUND
History: His history is the history of two, and neither of them is especially happy.. on one hand, we have a guy, a poor sod without the slightest hint of magical talent, but with a burning thirst for arcane knowledge.. he never considered it "true", but the subject had always been a fascinating one to him. So he studied history and religion, visiting the oldest and most fascinating cities of Europe.. in his future, a quiet life, probably as an history teacher in some backwater town, barely making enough money to scrape by month to month.
On the other hand, a.. something. A demon, to some. A formless entity of shadow and magic made flesh, a slave yearning for freedom, a slave brought to challenge his own lord by his hubris.. and by that hubris, cast down, in a swirling nimbo of nothingness between this world and the others.
Connecting them, as always is, an act of violence.
A mugging, maybe.. or perhaps just a poor tourist caught in a fight between rival bands. Knives were drawn, and from knives, guns, in an escalation of violence. Innocent blood was spilled, and a name with too many consonants was cried, in a desperate call for help.. or vengeance. You don't need talent to break the barrier between worlds when the will is so strong: you don't need formulae, you don't need skill, you don't need control. You only need emotion, you only need a burning desire.. and a willing entity on the other side.
Chance provided all those, and as a man's last dying wish was for vengeance, all of the others soon followed him to oblivion.
The creature itself, exhausted its bloody purpose, found himself locked in a prison of flesh, unable to return.. not that it tried so hard: this seemed to be more interesting than the eternal nothingness that was the alternative. Occasionally, a flash of memory from the once living man allowed him to better understand this strange new world, and, in time, allowed him to settle in. But he needed something more. He needed knowledge, and he needed strong allies and servants, should his old master notice he was still "alive", so he started searching.
In a few years, this led him to a certain school on a certain island, a promising place to start his research..
This is the version of his story that he tells when he's in the mood for terrifying curious people to death.. otherwise, you're free to believe his curriculum, a curriculum that tells the story of a well learned young man that found himself having a knack for reality-altering feats while searching through dusty old books.
Ask him which one is true, and he'll just smirk.
Since fair is fair, and I kind of like the confusing version of his story, I'm going to add a more realistic rundown with some sort of timeline and extra explanations. Yeah, it's going to have some informations that have not been hinted at before. I was keeping them saved for juicy roleplaying bits, diary pages or something similar.
Very Well, let's start:
In december of the year 1985, a boy named Kazimir was born somewhere in Prague, from an exceptionally.. average.. family, owners of a shop that sold various sorts of overpriced tourist traps. As he grew up, he displayed no remarkable talent of any sort: Just another boy, too thin and scrawny for his own clothes, too lost in his personal dreamland to make many friends. Still, he trudged onward through a life he considered bleak, a world he felt not completely his own.
High school came and went, a blur of superficial acquaintances and the usual crushes. He dated a bit, because that was what was expected of him, but never managed to really feel any real enthusiasm for the student life. He never managed to get anything higher than average results, though not for lack of intelligence: he never really felt the need to apply himself seriously over schoolbooks, and it's actually a wonder he never completely failed anything.
Meanwhile, his little dreamworld grew, becoming more complex: he began collecting books on occultism and esoteric matters. Of course, most of his reading materials were junk, written by scammers looking for some quick cash. Still, it did something to douse his thirst for strange knowledges.
In college, propelled by his personal interests, he studied a weird mishmash of compared religions, history, philosophy, literature and anthropology. His studies never got farther than the first half of the third year, though, when he decided things were too boring and started travelling.
He was 22 at the time.
His first aim was Turin, Italy, where he lived for almost a year, doing an interesting variety of odd jobs to sustain himself and learning the language while taking the occasional long weekend trip to visit this or that fascinating city. After Italy, he spent some time in London, Paris, and just about every other big city he could get to one way or another.
It wasn't an exceptionally fulfilling life, but it was fascinating, and he liked it.. even if it meant he occasionally had to skip more than a few meals or sleep under the rain.. especially since a lot of the money he should have spent on food still went on books: he was beginning to become a connoisseur, and starting to recognize some patterns in the occult writings from very different traditions, and that excited him: he was beginning to think he wasn't a complete loony for wanting to believe.
Of course, living like a hobo can have unpleasant consequences, and some of those consequences take the shape of violence hungry gangs of idiots looking for an easy target.
He died that night, at age 25, a curse on his lips as he tried to stop the blood from escaping his body.
Of course, occasionally God does play dice, and probably cheats as well, so his last cry for vengeance did work in calling through a nameless entity from beyond the veil.. only to find itself trapped in the body of the man after its bloody work was done.
It could have escaped, probably.. forced its way out, but had its own reasons for not wanting to do so.
Therefore, to the world, Kazimir continued to live.
In time, flash after flash, memories of the past life of its host became known to him, and merged with a completely alien consciousness. It.. he wasn't aging, or at least aged so slowly that time became a meaningless concept, and ate, slept and drank more for habit than for a real bodily need.
Almost one year had passed, a year spent hiding, with mundane and magical means, and, most of all, understanding the world: while the "demon" had very clear understanding of what made men tick, what was needed to manipulate, trick and convince them, that didn't mean he had the same understanding on human society as a whole.. and the memories of his host helped only marginally.
After finally getting a rough idea of what was going around in the world around him, he had to decide what to do. He needed power, and he needed allies, to challenge his old master again.. and he also needed to keep a low profile, in case the same old master was still searching, determined to end the job.
He spent days wondering. Politics? Too flashy, and that wasn't the power he needed. Commerce? Why bother? Prowling the world palm to palm, waiting to find people with useful abilities? Too long to be useful, and could expose him.. if only someone else could do that sort of dirty work for him..
Maybe someone actually did: it was at that moment that an old depliant came to mind, Kazimir used it as a bookmark, in the hopes of someday actually visiting the structure.
T'zenshin, eh?.. maybe it was time to finally buy that ticket..
Secrets: Apart from his whole life, you mean?
Gift: A mage and spellcaster of amazing talent, displaying an exceptional knowledge and control over the strands of reality. Completely unrelated, but he also happens to have a knack with languages: Other than his first language he also speaks italian and english without an hint of accent, and can manage a few smatterings in more than a few others.
RELATIONSHIPS
Marital Status: Quite single
Best Friends: None
Relatives: Lost contacts
