Name: Malakai Yinta (mah-lah-kai in-tah)
Age: 26
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Power: Low Variation. (1-5, more on this later)
Closest power comparison: Channeler/Shaman
Timeline: Medieval AU
Race: Human
Appearance: While being 5'11'', Malakai is indeed, physically frail. He sports a sub-athletic build and medium length gray hair. His hair has been grayed by the constant psychological stress that his channeling puts on him (More on this later) His features are mostly normal and his eyes are a dull green with tints of hazel. He also has a circular tattoo on his scalp, but it is covered by his hair and three scars that were caused by his own fingers on the lower lift side of his chin.
Personailty: Malakai has the same personality as that of a con artist, only caring when something directly effects him or his well being. His constant switching of personalities has left him uncaring and calculating with a bit of sarcastic tone in his voice. He holds nothing to be truly serious and frequently runs away from problems. The only thing that truly irks him like nothing else is the physical contact of anyone on his person or the touching of his masks. His second mask after Dalaiah, Sirios, was cracked when an attack hit it. He was saved, but the mask was lost forever. Since then, he realized that the masks are non-replaceable as there was only one of the magical beings in each mask and that he had to protect his only weapons and "friends".
He always tries to avoid fights, but if the battle is inevitable, he may try to run or hide. Only when he is cornered does he give way to Mephisto. Mephisto is his split personality, braving the mind destroying properties of the masks. Mephisto is a far cry from Malakai as he is more confident and even better at goading his unfortunate opponent. Mephisto himself is an alter ego, though different than the masks in that it only changes his mindset and not his voice or body or strength. When being possessed by Mephisto, Malakai will use his weapon, Kishuran [kee-shoo-rahn], to defend himself. The shift between Mephisto and Malakia only occurs when one gives up on the present situation such as if Mephisto has overtaken Malakai's body and is presented with a math problem, he will let Malakai take over again. This change can happen only once per hour, any longer and Malakai risks losing even more of himself.
Malakai is truly a bastard in the sense that he will use the environment and innocent people to his advantage. In such a way that if he needed an apple, he would cause a piece of rubble to crash the shop in and take the apple in the midst of the confusion. He is also without remorse or a sense of guilt as he will plead, "Don't kill me! It was the mask!" to his captors and then attack them while they have their backs turned. The only way to convince him to not leave is if he thinks someone is in possession of a mask. Sirios was his favorite and he is constantly in a state of denial about it's destruction. If one found a ruby dog mask, then he would follow them to retrieve his precious.
Powers: There are four masks in total (five originally), Daliah, Richter, Kaori, and Tao-Tsu. They each have their own powers, and I'll go over them now. There are three common weaknesses of the masks, when each mask is broken it is gone forever, the mask has to be taken off by the wearer, and the mask cannot be removed if Malakai or Mephisto is unconscious.
-Daliah: The Bloodeyed Demon. Blood Vision (Non-offensive): Upon wearing this mask and channeling the powers of the demon, Daliah, Mephisto/Malakai can see the world in blood vision, which allows him to see the blood flow of anything that can bleed and has pumping blood. While crucial to finding people or targets, it obscures his field of view and reduces it to what is within an 80 degree FOV. The mask can be worn for a maximum of two hours before it begins to try and take over. If it is not removed within one minute of surpassing the wear time, it will seal itself to Malakai's face and he will give rise to the demon herself. this is the case for all of his masks. This mask only makes the wearer talk battle tactics to themselves and spout demonic army jargon at times.
-Richter: The Cursed Bat. Upon wearing this mask, Malakai's exposed face will be engulfed by the mask's bat maw. Powers include echolocation and a sonic attack. The attack has very little external potential, but can wreak havoc on the target's internal organs. The mask is attached via chinstrap, but it has a thing black veil that impeded the eyes. His echolocation can be used at any time, but it only tells where an object is, not what it is. The mask can be worn for a maximum of one hour, any longer and Richter will draw flying animals to the user, ensuring a long, painful death. Richter is a sound mask, so to protect its wearer, it pins itself against the wearer's ear, removing their ability to hear. All perception is based on touch and sight from here. Only Malakai will be effected by the singer's personality and will randomly burst out into destructive song when prompted by a specifically strong emotional presence. (i.e. if someone is crying, he will sing the Ballad of Tears, Laughing, he will sing, The Golden Sparrow and so on.)
-Tao-Tsu: The Betrayer of Time. When worn, Malakai will experience a dream-like euphoria, effectively diminishing his battle potential, during which, Tao-Tsu will replace one of his eyes. Once the replacement is complete, he will experience time in a slowed state, reaction speed is increased as well as general foot movement speed. The mask can be worn for a total of Half an hour. Any longer and time will speed up at an exponential rate until the user rots to death, while still conscious of their state of being. The weakness of this mask is it's own user. The stress of moving through time so seamlessly will put massive strain on the user, tearing their muscles and sometimes skin at an incredible rate. The air itself becomes palpable as well, so moving is almost like wading through syrup. The result is wast movements to outsiders, but a near impossible position to attack with melee weapons or skills except for Kishuran who's attack power is halved while in this mode. Only Mephisto is affected as he will begin to produce existential sayings and proverbs along with several scatted bouts of insane laughter.
-Kaori: The Clever Fox. When worn, Malakai will cease to breath for one minute as the mask reaches into his nasal passage and secures a footing in his sinus. Once this is complete, Malakai will endow a nose so powerful, it can smell a flower from a field thousands of miles away and an extensive knowledge of tricks and traps to use against the opponent. The mask can be worn for one and a half hours before it forms the actual fox, intent on killing the thief of its mask. Weaknesses include anything smell related will immediately overwhelm the senses. These can include paprika, pepper, or an unwashed ass. The smell sensitivity can be mentally dialed down, but it can only be done with a neutral mind (i.e. OUTSIDE OF BATTLE). Both Mephisto and Malakai are affected by the mask's fox mind. They will frequently break off of target to seek out fruity or meaty smells. They may also fall asleep during battle. It is also the only mask that can disconnect while Malakai is unconscious.
-Sirios [BROKEN MASK]: Sirios, Scorcher of the Earth. Sirios was the first mask that Malakai acquired after Daliah and it was broken when he first awakened its power on a hapless bandit. The bandi had assaulted Malakai and Mephisto torched the offender, but not before the bandit's knife slit the mask. AS he tried to pull the mask off, it broke in half, one half on his face, the other, shattered in his palms. The pain was unimaginable. The sheer feeling was enough for him to rip the mask from his face before it disconnected and scar him. As far as he knows, the bandit had stolen the mask somehow and so he searches for it.
[I will add a few more weaknesses, but I'm doing this very carefully. As careful as juggling china in fact.]
Character History:
-Malakai: Malakai was born into a sect of "God fearing and worshiping ninnies" as he calls them, who felt that their god, Unitos, had chosen him for something incredible. In honor of such an occasion, they tattooed his scalp as an infant with Unitos's sign. Every single day of his young life was filled with the informants of the other sects, telling him and asking him what he wished. He wished to be left alone.
He was 17 when the sect leader decided to pass the torch to the young Unitos and let him lead a long, full life as Grand Seer. Everyday, he was asked what to do, where they should be, what should they learn, and soon, Malakai discovered that no matter what, he didn't want them to bother him. In a fit of rage, the young man told them all, "All of you go to hell!"
And it was so. the young Unitos had told them it was to be, surely he was right. And so, people stormed him, the surrounded him and cried at him and tried to reason with him, why he would think that they all would be damned? "People like you shouldn't even be ALIVE" The crowd stopped. They looked at each other and began to tear up. they had angered the son of Unitos and so, they each grabbed what they could, and apparently destroyed themselves during the night. When Malakai woke up, he ran through the village, he checked every hut, every shed, every trough. All of them, bled out in the village church.
The statue of Unitos loomed over the piles of men, women, and children who had died. Not a single soul was left. What made this picture even stranger was Malakai, with his hands and feet covered in the villagers' blood, crying and staring intently at his hands. Had he done this? No it was them, all them, all that he hated, all that he knew.
His tears were still streaming down his face as his sobs soon turned to a sickening cackle. He had no idea what had happened, what he was thinking, but suddenly he felt a euphoria come over him as he started to carve a pattern into the ground with the blood of the slain villagers. The patter grew more and more complex and his laughter became more and more intense. "I wanted this, I WANTED THIS!" He stood in the center of the carving, panting and looking around. What had he done? What did he carve? It took him a full minute to recognize it. The very symbol carved into his head, the very symbol he grew up knowing, all he saw, all he knew. It was the symbol of his god....Unitos.
He walked back to the church, he needed to see the pile one last time. He looked up at the sightly statue of Unitos, but something was amiss. Something was on its face. Malakai scrambled up the bodied of the villagers and reached out to the blood covered face of Unitos. The minute his hand touched the stone, it cracked off. He tumbled off the stinking pile and landed near the god's face. As he cradled it in his lap, he wiped off the blood, little by little. Soon a face was appearing, it almost looked...Happy. He uncovered more and more of the head and he saw that what was on it was a mask. He saw the mouth turned up in a grim smirk with a look of utter disregard in its eyes. It was then that he realized that it was his face. He lifted the mask off the statue and looked at its front and back. As if controlled by some outside force, he put it on. It was a perfect fit. There was a scream outside the church and he ran out to investigate. It was the villagers.
He saw that they were killing themselves, using daggers, shears, even shovels on themselves in an effort to kill themselves. Malakai fell looked in his hands and in one was the bleeding neck of a child and in the other, a blood splattered knife. There was a bright flash and he found himself screaming on the pile of bodies in the center of the village. There was something in his pocket. It was a piece of blood stained paper that read in jagged letters, "Thank You" and a mask with a jagged grin across its face and two red eye slits curved upwards. The mask on the back read "Daliah" in the same letters as the note.
-Mephisto: Mephisto is the split personality that Malakai created to help him cope with many thing that happened to him, including the assisted massacre of his sect. Mephisto was originally the first mask in his possession, but it had attached to his face and in fact, become him. That why Mephisto can only come out when Malakai gives up, or chooses not to participate.
Equipment:
-Daliah: The underworld was a house to many great and powerful demons. One of them was Daliah. Her power was not to attack, but to perceive. She would be the support for many demons in their conquests against the holy, spotting them before they could even see the demons themselves. However, an angel managed to infiltrate the demonic fortress in which she was housed. He walked up to the sleeping demon and slit her mouth, ear to ear in a single swipe. He told her "Scream demon, do it, it will be the last words you utter!" She clamped her teeth shut against the pain. It was then that the angel's backup had arrived and so the fortress soon fell to their holy dominion. As punishment, Daliah was forced to be executed via Iron maiden, with her eyes being gouged out first. With her dying breath, she focused all her rage and powers into the faceplate of the iron maiden. It is not known how the mask had arrived in the Human world, only that it needed a catalyst of both the desire and the rage to end the lives of hundreds of righteous beings in one fell swoop.
-Richter: A born musician, Richter Frankes spent his entire life devoted to the musical arts. He mastered many instruments such as the piano, the sitar and even vocal music. His music pleased everyone, but inside, he knew that he would be forgotten, for the next ten years of his life, he worked tirelessly on a song. On the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, he made a pact with a demon to produce the song for him. The demon obliged and wrote his vocal song, The Sonata of Feathers. His song was scheduled to be played in the town square to be enjoyed by everyone and the hermit once again stepped into the spotlight. It would be short lived however, the songs notes and chords were constructed to play such a beautifully sad song, many of the adults had killed themselves the next day out of sadness and Richter was chased from the town. He wandered the Earth, filled with regret and agony over the massacre he caused when a distinguished king asked him to sing the sonata. No matter how much Richter pleaded, the king wanted his sonata to be heard by his royal court. Richter was forced to sing and in a desperate attempt to avoid the mass suicide he knew that would come, he ate rock salt before he performed. It was horrendous. The king, ready to execute the defiant Richter was interrupted by the swarming of bats and ravens upon them. The entire court screamed in agony as they ripped them apart until the animals dissipated. All that was left of them was the bloody mask of a Bat's Maw. Malakai acquired this mask based on a rumor that their current king had a vast wealth hidden in the locked doors of the royal court. Only by breaking into the court did he find the dried blood of the court and the mask.
Tao-Tsu: In the far east, there was a great Temple filled with many men who had overcome the restraints of the physical world and even reality themselves. They were the Tao Priests. They were a diverse, but closed sect devoted to discovering the magic of the world and many of them had succeeded. Those who had discovered their new abilities were dubbed with the title "Tao" and lead the rest of their lives shaping the outside world. One such sage was named Tsu-Hun, who was still discovering the ways of the sages. In his many exploits, he had stolen many scriptures that were not to be seen by the lower members of the sect and so, out of foolish debauchery, he read them to the last line. He learned a massive amount of techniques that could be used to bend space and reality, but not time. He had wondered why time was such an elusive magic. Tsu-Hun set out to master the lawless beast that was time and so he searched for way after way to influence it. He found that with several talismans and scroll, he could slow the passage of time to half it's speed, but only for a short amount of time. The years of searching for the solution and coming up empty-handed had begun to take a toll on him. He was stressed beyond belief and his body was pushed to his limits. One night, in the cold stillness of the autumn air, he was approached by death itself. The god was angry with the sage who threatened his dominion and sought to strike him down. The sage in a desperation lunched at the god and ripped off its hood. The angered god stepped forward to retrieve his hood when the sun shone on its pale face. It screamed in agony as the light burned its exposed head and it shrank to the darkness.
Tsu-Hun saw this as an opportunity and proceeded to try and make a deal with death. He told it, "If you grant me eternal life and the dominion of time, you shall have your hood back!" The Death agreed and granted the sage the powers he so desired. The next day, Tsu-Hun woke up and submitted his power for approval by the sages. He slowed the passage of time to catch a snowflake mid drop and place it on the head monk's linger tip, he ran across the lake in their small garden and showed them the magnificent creations he could conceive with such a power. The monks, quite impressed with the display, gave him the tile of "Tao" and so Tsu-Hun became "Tao-Tsu." But, death is not a fair creature and in the dead of night, Tao-Tsu was confined to a mask. A mask in the likeness of the left half of the human skull with a sunken yellow eye in the socket. He had control over time, and eternal life, but not when he was a human. Malakai acquired this mask in a tomb high in the mountainous regions around the Tao Sage resting places. It was attached to the withered body of a man, found in a position of great meditation.
Kaori: In the distant Northeastern lands, lay an ancient ruin that depicts a young girl in a field of flowers. The image continues to show the girl thorough her life as time passed, but after the teenage years, her posture begins to slump over and further to the ground. Her nose becomes longer and more defined along with the sharpening of her teeth. At the end of the image, there lays an indentaion, in the shape of an animal's head. This is the story of Kaori.
Kaori was a girl who was born into a small hunting village in the north eastern lands of the planet. When she was born, it was said that a fox had come into the hut and dropped a red and white flower on the child's feet. The shaman of the village had seen it as a threat from mother nature itself, giving a red card of sorts to the child, and he warned the parents of his misgivings about it. The parent promptly ignored the crazy shaman, and instead, her parents named her for the scent the flower had left. Years went by and Kaori, the girl, had grown into a beautiful young woman, her skills with the bow were unmatched in the village and she had bested many of the men in combat. One man, Keisuke, was so perturbed by his defeat, that he sought a way to defeat her. He thought, “If I cannot beat her in strength, perhaps I can beat her in wits!” He issued a challenge to Kaori in a guessing game. The rules were if she could find the bean under the right cup three times, he would accept defeat. The next day, Kaori showed up at the man's doorstep, ready for the challenge. After three tries, the man failed to outmatch her wits, and he was forced to accept defeat. Out of anger, he followed her to her house and spied on her. Late into the night, when the moon was at its fullest, he found her chanting spells unto a small round box. She carefully lifted the lid and inside it was the red and white flower. She inhaled it deeply and resumed her position, except that she began to chant in a strange language, one he had not heard of before.
IT was then obvious to him what she had been doing. She was a witch, a demon, bent on making fools of the village's men, but not today, today, it would stop. Keisuke waited until dawn to get into her home and steal the flower. But, in the midst of his escape, he saw Kaori. He eyes were filled with a rage that he had never before witnessed, She leapt for the flower that he was gripping, but before she could retreive it, out of desperation, Keisuke crushed the flower. Kaori shrank to the floor, gripping her face and screaming in agony. Keisuke stood over he writhing body and told her, “Now you will pay, witch!” He raised his hand to strike her down, but he stopped as he noticed the fluffy orange and white ponytail she wore, grow into a full sized coat in a matter of seconds. He backed up and dropped the flower in fear as she began to transform into a golden fox. Keisuke fell backwards and looked in awe at the beast and began to cry. Never before had he seen something so beautiful and so frightening at the same time. It would be his last sight though, as when the villagers came to investigate the screams, they found only the blood of Keisuke on the walls and a pure white and red fox mask.
Sirios [Broken]: Long ago, in the southern lands of an ancient empire, there lived a great city who had their very lives ruled by the gods that created them. One of such gods was Sirios. He was a dictator who burned those that disobeyed him, and tortured those that dare even insult him. Truly, he was a menace, and a mortal for the time being. After twenty long years of tyrannical leadership, he was finally slain, not by blade, and not by divine power, but by his own clumsiness. He had recently exited his royal steam room when there was a puddle of cold water that a slave had left on the ground. He slipped and cracked his kingly head upon the fine marble surface of the palace floor. But that was not his end. Though the people celebrated his death, one seer was frustrated by such an ordeal. He needed to be in control once again, and what better way than to call the king back and control his power? His soul was sent back to his rotting body and he rose from his shallow grave, not to follow the seer's orders, but to seek revenge on those that killed him. Little did he know that it was gravity that had ended his life and so, he killed the seer by way of flame and as his body burned to ash, the unspeakable fury that was his burst out into the very flame. He found that in death, he shed his mortal shell and had become the fire god once again to burn his city to the very ground. The gods found his actions as an affront to their omnipotence and out of embarrassment of having one of their gods killed by their own clumsiness, sealed his power away in a dog like muzzle to symbolize his dominant features. The mask was passed around the hall of power for centuries until a brave shaman housed the relic in a far off desert land. Malaki killed said shaman for the mask and took his fatigues because they were comfortable and they fit.
Nbutu (Nuh-boo-too) Shaman Fatigues : These Grey and Black rags only appear when Malakai is channeling spiritual or demonic energy. They are the result of the glitched disconnect with Sirios. The clothes were sealed into his body as his mind split into two personalities (Malakai and Mephisto) and now only appear when one is channeling. They house a large amount of impressive talismans and most importantly, provide an inter-planar “storage” for his weapons and masks (Except for Daliah).
Kishuran (Kee-shoo-rahn): A 21 inch (16 in blade/ 5 in handle) long slicing weapon. It weighs approximately 1.7 kg and is made of standard tempered steel. There is no historic past about this weapon as it is originally a harvesting tool used by peasants working in the fields. The only modifications that have been made to the weapon is the rag binding on it's hilt to improve grip and its sharpened edge. It can slash and pierce, but no armor breaking capabilities. The reason why Malakai carries this weapon is because it is the easiest to swing while in Tao-Tsu's Crono-Sever mode.
