Kain

❄️ Look closer, look closer / I'll never hide my eyes / I'll never look away ❄️

• A coldhearted man who travels the world with his childhood friend Glory. He calls himself a scholar and a scientist, and though he's already a skilled magic-user, he has a bit of an obsession with the inner workings of magic.
• Appears every so often and leaves as quickly as he comes, but wherever he goes, something strange seems to be  happening, usually related to curses and magic. Says he’s studying things of this nature.
• Seems emotionless, but is just really good at downplaying his reactions. The emotions he displays most often are annoyance and intrigue. 
• Has ASTRONOMICALLY bad vibes for some reason. There’s a disconcerting aura always radiating off of him, even if he isn’t doing anything.

Kain’s origin tale is The Snow Queen, or Snedronningen by Hans Christian Andersen. It's about a young girl, Gerda, and the adventure she has to go through to find and save her best friend, a young boy called Kay, who was stolen away by the Snow Queen. Kain takes his inspiration from Kay.

• Outwardly, Kain is collected and analytical, with a tendency towards perfectionism and a love of reason. He usually seems restless, always searching for something more, and nothing's been good enough for him yet.
• He represses most of his strong feelings and thus tends to come off as cold; he hasn't cried since he was a child, and he rarely gives a genuine smile. Even so, once you've been around him long enough, it's clear that he is actually very expressive, with an enthusiasm for things that fascinate him, an annoyance with things he sees as deeply flawed, and a bit of a maniacal streak. 
• The emotional repression doesn't come from any desire for approval; he actually couldn't care less what others think of him. If they don't like him, that's their problem. He chafes against people trying to tell him what to do, and he will follow his own whims wherever they take him.
• He is very clever, especially in the academic sense, and he loves to flaunt it. Glory is similar, though much less in-your-face about it. Though both generally competent, their preferences fall in different areas (Glory is more of a humanities person, while Kain is powerfully STEM), but they're both deeply curious people who want to know things on a deeper level.
• The idea of knowing things on a deeper level is one he's infatuated with. He wants to understand everything, to find the answers to every question, the solution to every problem, to take things apart so he can put them back together better. There's emphasis on the take things apart part. He's a bit of a mad scientist; his methods are a little eccentric and often lack regard for his own safety, but he's good at his work and is a genius engineer of magitech.
• He's very observant; he can pick up on the little things others might not. This extends to the behavior and nature of people as well, but unfortunately, he always interprets what he sees in the least charitable way possible, and he doesn't hesitate to tell them to their face. To him, the world is filled with problems and needs to be repaired; it's a problem to solve.
• Despite all this, he doesn't like hurting others unless he sees it as necessary. His desire to fix things comes just as much from genuinely wanting to help others as it does from his negative perception of the world, but he tends to distance himself from others to avoid distractions. 
• Doesn't particularly care for gods; if he met one, he'd just demand answers about why the world is the way it is. And in general, he's extremely skeptical. If you tell him something, he'll try to find it out himself and see it with his own eyes.
• As a child, Kain was a headstrong and cheerful boy. Rather than repressing all his emotions, he only chose to ignore the negative ones, seeing them as inconvenient and not worth the effort. 
• He was just as adventurous and just as unafraid of death or gods as his adult self, and his friendship with Glory played a massive part in pulling her out of her shell.
• A bit of a rebel, he enjoyed playing pranks on others. He was one of those gifted kids who would skip class because he knew he was already doing good.
• Due  to his confidence, he got along with the other kids fairly well. He had  friends beside Glory, but he loved her the most, and none of them could  see through him like she could. He was very protective of her.
• If he was confronted with a problem, his first instinct was to try and find a way to help. Despite his rebelliousness, he was always reliable when he felt it necessary, and he had a lot of compassion.
• He wanted to grow up as fast as he could; being an adult just sounded so much better than being a kid, and you can actually do things as an adult.
• Deep down, though he's so fixated on the flaws in the world, he's not actually a natural cynic. He's always been an idealist, and his heart is deeply kind.
• The reason he comes off as cynical is that his idealism consumes him to the point where his ideals are so high that he can only see the things that don't match up to what could be, but this very fixation is why he strives to make things better in any way he can. However, even he isn't exempt from his own ideals, which is why he tries so hard to control himself.
• His deepest fear is of being bad. And to some extent, he believes he's already inherently bad. He wants to make himself his own perception of perfect, but he might never be able to measure up.
• Between him and Glory, he's the more selfless one, strangely enough. He completely ignores his own feelings and wants desperately to make things good for everyone else, and he focuses on the things he feels he must do over what he wants personally.
• While Glory pursues happiness for herself and others, Kain pursues perfection for himself and others.
• When he gets upset, he tends to direct it outward. He focuses on the thing that's making him feel bad and seeks out a way to deal with it rather than letting himself feel and seeking out emotional support.

• Snow and frost. It's interesting how nature can create such mathematically perfect things, isn't it? Besides, snow is clean and cold and quiet. It's relaxing for him to be out in a snow-blanketed environment.
• Puzzles and riddles. Kain likes things that he can solve, and he likes things that stretch his brain. Playing with rubix cubes isn't dumb shut up.
• Math and numbers. What? They're interesting and exact and you can model almost anything in numbers alone. And even when they're not exact, they're inexact in an interesting way whose rules you can figure out.
• Machinery. There's so many possibilities for what machines can do. He prefers the delicate and fine type of machinery; it requires a great deal of precision to produce the effects you want, and that's fun for him.
• Magic. The greatest mystery in the universe! He wants to unravel exactly how it works. He feels similarly about magic as he does about machinery, and he likes to mix and match them, trying to get things just right.
• Glory. She's his closest and oldest friend, and he cares for her more than anything else in the world

• Though his diagrams are neat, his handwriting is just awful. He can write neatly, but he doesn't usually show people his personal notes, so he takes that as license to scrawl to his heart's content. Nobody can read it save himself and Glory, and neither of them see why others can't read it.
• His favorite color is and has always been red. He just doesn't wear it anymore because he doesn't think it looks good on him (and because he's too devoted to the monochrome aesthetic). Gerda is trying to get him to wear it again.
• His body is always very cold. This is why he tends to layer up; it's inconvenient to be asked about it, and it can mess up readings.
• He actually prefers wearing his hair longer, like he did in his younger years, but he keeps it short so he can keep it out of the way more easily and because he thinks it makes him look more mature.

• His zodiac signs are Capricorn sun, Aquarius moon, and Sagittarius rising.
• His MBTI is INTJ.
• His enneagram is 1w9.
• His (sighs) Homestuck god tier title is Seer of Time, and his dream moon is Derse.
• His D&Dverse version would be a hexblood divination wizard.

• Can do all sorts of magic, like all people in his world. Also like all people, there are areas he's better at than others.
• He kind of conceptualizes magic by breaking spells down to their essential building blocks or functions, and he uses that knowledge to put them together in new ways. 
• He's good at making magic do very specific things and creating new spells. However, when just blasting, he likes ice.
• He's also good at manipulating space to an extent. He often teleports and floats rather than walking, and he's created a pocket dimension to store his equipment in and occasionally retreat to when he needs rest.
• He can see and sense things others can't. Is especially sensitive to curses.

TIDBITS

• Playlist
• Pinboard
• Voice headcanon (Hunter Foster as Victor from the Frankenstein musical)

• The Moon (vs the Sun)
• Death (vs Life)
• Winter (vs Summer)
• Snowflakes (vs Flowers)
• Thorns (vs Roses)
• Devil (vs Angel)
• Numbers (vs Words)
• Seeing (vs Hearing)
• Science (vs Art)
• How (vs Why)