Xaanik (Legacy Profile)

tl;dr

Xaanik wants to help. And he wants to feel things. Unfortunately, he’s a mess, and is liable to take both of these things way past healthy extents. Also, he’s problematic as all hell.

[Examine]

Xaanik immediately strikes you as very cheerful, and very polite—if eccentric. He smiles a lot; speaks in an upbeat, formal tone, and makes use of dramatic gestures. He doesn’t seem to know how much to talk—he comes off as either very aloof and quiet, or he rambles so much it’s impossible to get a word in. He's not shy or lacking in confidence, but his thoughts seem scattered when he's in the presence of people he doesn't know well. He also doesn’t seem to have much of a grasp on humour—some jokes go right over his head, and he has trouble picking up on sarcasm.

He seems to wear his heart on his sleeve—laughing easily, sharing his joys and troubles; quick to open up or to become affectionate, even with relative strangers. In fact, he shares his emotions so readily it can be a bit tedious… though at least it’s normally in a calm sort of way?

He doesn’t seem to know what personal space is, constantly dishing out friendly hugs or casual touches—it’s a habit you notice him consciously trying to reign back so as not to make people too uncomfortable. He seems very enthused about experiencing being alive—if there’s something to feel he’s going to want to feel it, to its fullest extent. He seems to crave and savour sensory and emotional input of many kinds, even things that don’t seem pleasant. He’ll spend five minutes fondling a nicely textured coat in a store, or running his hands over a prickly shrub. He’ll pick leaves off things and crush them in his fingers to see what they feel and smell like. If he accidentally hurts himself he'll pause to focus on the pain. He’ll get so absorbed in art and music and feeling he’s content to stay for ages and just appreciate it. Anything at all, painful or pleasurable or just neutral, seems enchanting to him. He'll take minutes out of his day to just… be, and take everything in. It’s evidently something very calming and important to him. If he can feel things in company, all the better—his empathic perceptions count just as much.

He’s clearly much more at peace when he’s alone, or in a small gathering with people he knows well. In crowds, you notice his cheerful demeanour is gone, replaced by a blank, glassy look and mechanical speech and motion.

It’s easy for him to come off as overbearing: too cheerful, too sentimental, too intense. His open-book emotions make him appear weak; his rambling speech and constant emotional input are strikingly self-absorbed. His mannerisms give an odd impression of naivety. It’s easy to look down on him… something about him makes you really want to stomp on him.

Indeed, there’s something meek about him. He seems so desperate to please and to give his all. He seems to need constant reassuring that what he’s doing is right, too—it’s like he doesn’t trust himself. It’s... tedious.

But he is sweet, and caring, and very, very genuine. He genuinely cares about your day, and genuinely wants to listen to your flights of fantasy or your rants. He seems to truly love every living thing, and it shows. He’s kind wherever it’s remotely possible, and will go out of his way to avoid doing harm where he can, be it to people or animals or insects or plants. There's usually a kind of reverence in everything he does... he's not entirely without humour, but Xaanik definitely brings a bit of gravitas with him wherever he goes.

In all, he seems very genuine, and very gentle, and very kind.

[Examine in CLOSELY]
[rewriting—more detail to come]

...Wait, seems? It’s not that he’s ingenuine in his kindness. Indeed, he has no ulterior motives. But this doesn’t mean he is as good or as kind as he thinks.

Simply? He’s shockingly bigoted.
The only glimpse you’ll normally get of this is his reaction to necromancers, which is (seemingly) uncharacteristically brutal, regardless of any circumstances. For Xaanik, Justice absolutely overrides any sense of mercy; he’ll use it as an excuse to downright abuse even the friendliest vampire or most harmless death mage. You'll see the ugliest side of him; his unrelenting sense of righteousness, and the hypocrisy that comes with it. It’s frankly sickening, especially if you see this side of him only after you get to know his ‘‘usual’’ self. The truth is, even as an ex-angel of Death, Xaanik sees himself as a sword of divine justice, charged with the upholding of natural laws of mortality. And while there aren’t many cases he feels it’s necissary to dispense said justice, in the few he does, he is... horrifying.

Still, if you’re not a necromancer, or someone who goes to unnatural lengths to avoid mortality, you’re unlikely to get trouble from him; in this way at least.

[Examine in EXCRUCIATING DETAIL]
[rewriting—coming soon ;w;]

For now, know that there’s reasons Xaanik keeps supplicating himself to unkind people, and why gravitates to violence despite his gentle nature. After everything he’s been through, he just doesn’t know how to function when he’s not being hurt. It's tremendously sad, and, potentially, tremendously dangerous. For both himself, and others.

Being an ashfiend, Xaanik is fairly impressive both physically and magically... by human standards, at least.

Physical Stuff

Xaanik already looks pretty tough what with his imposing stature, but he's even stronger than he looks. He's also surprisingly agile—his spatial awareness and body-control are uncannily precise. His movement is digitally accurate... it's kind of spooky.

He can change the form of his body, in almost any way he wants, provided it's structurally feasible and can contain a good amount of the blood which houses his consciousness—but the process is very slow, and requires that he has access to all the chemical building blocks he needs. Any shapeshifting can only occur at his healing rate; He heals very quickly by human standards, but it's still slow. It might take him a week or two to regrow a limb, which looks just as gross and awkward as you'd imagine.

He's effectively unkillable by conventional means; it's not impossible to kill him, but you need the specific magical knowhow and equipment. Without a particular rite, Xaanik can heal from anything, theoretically. Even if you were to just annihilate him into molecules, he'd slowly, slowly reform over months and months.

Magic Stuff

Psychomancy

His magic is definitely the most impressive of his skills. Xaanik can't bend the fabric of the universe to his will as some mages can, but his magic is still incredibly formidable. He can mess with your mind.

While he can't control your thoughts, or subject you to specific illusions, Xaanik's psychomancy can influence someone's perceptions in very powerful ways—mostly by multiplying an existing state. He can make a tiny scrape feel like agony, or make terrible wounds feel like little more than a caress. He can subdue or exaggerate any mood; turn annoyance into rage, sadness into desolation, happiness into rapture, apprehension into panic, anything into numbness. He can also use his magic to force lapses in people's attention, and can even use it to put people to sleep. He's capable of replicating or counteracting the effects of many different psychoactive drugs, too. Hmm. Party time.
He doesn't have direct control over anyone's will, but... subject anyone to enough fear or pain or delirium or numbness and you can get them to do anything, right? And with psychomancy as overwhelmingly powerful and finely-honed as Xaanik's, just about anything's possible... It's a good thing he's benevolent enough not to abuse these powers. Only the vastest or most heavily-shielded minds are safe from magic like this.

Emery Transfer & Spellbinding

Xaanik's nature as an ex-divine means he has a ridiculous amount of magic at his disposal. He can bind magic energy or even whole spells to certain objects, most usually seeds or crystals. It can be handy to be able to squirrel away some energy to use later, or be able to bust out a spell while having done all the hard work beforehand.
He can also transfer some of his magic to another person—useful for if they needed an extra boost for a demanding spell, or if they needed something to help recharge them after some strenuous magic use.

Still, magic isn't something you want to overdo, even when you're an overpowered pseudo-immortal. If Xaanik pushes it too far, he'll get physically and mentally weary, and will eventually lose consciousness. It takes time for magic to replenish itself, so if he does some heavy arcane lifting, he will need a break afterwards.

Other Skills

Combat Experience

Yep Xaanik was an actual war dog (well... war harpy) in an exciting fantasy inter-dimensional conflict back just prior to WW1. He got some really quick 'n' dirty training, and a hectic few months of actual (albeit very unorthodox) combat experience. Honestly the Horrors Of War were a regular workday back when he was an angel of death, so this apparently didn't faze him.

Xaanik technically knows how to use various firearms and explosives, and hes acquainted with the nitty gritty of... being a keystone in a weird all-mage stealth mission into biologically hazardous enemy territory? Not sure how applicable that is. But yeah that's something.

Medical Experience

Xaanik's caring and diligent nature, useful magic & iron stomach lend themselves well to nursing—which is exactly what she did post-Demon War. She's (yeah, Xaanik took female identities at the time) trained and worked as a battlefield nurse and, later took similar roles in peacetime.

Xaanik's medical knowledge is woefully outdated, but he should still know how to basically look after someone. And there can't really be anything worse than what he's already seen. His bedside manner is still bizarrely ominous, but he's helpful, cool-headed, and relatively competent.

Hypnotism

Xaanik's skill with hypnosis is kind of interesting but it is actually just literal real-world hypnotism—nothing magical at all. It ties into his psychomancy well but it's a totally different thing. If (and only if) you're willing to co-operate, he knows how to guide you into a trance-like kinda state and impress your mind with suggestions or commands that will affect you afterwards. He's used it in an actual medical context, mostly as a replacement for anesthetic and numbing psychomantic magic when supplies of both were running low. Also, hypnosis can make for some... cool party tricks?

Memory

Xaanik's ashfiend mind isn't like a human brain;—it's perhaps more like an ultra-advanced supercomputer. He picks up all empirical knowledge he learns, and it gets neatly stored—and can be neatly retrieved later. 300 years of data is a lot. As such, Xaanik can appear very smart. In reality, he just has a lot of knowledge... I certainly couldn't accuse him of being too intelligent :')

Uhh I gotta rewrite this, I think; stay tuned. His art and the boxes to the right should convey enough to work with for the time being.