Puck

by **Puck** June 12th 2014, 9:06 pm

Puck
Changeling Extraordinare

Basic Biography

Real Name: Aspen October
Renegade/Hero/Villain Name: Puck
Title: (technically) Knight of Lady Sancara, Crazy Changeling
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral with Good tendencies
Age: 20 (Approximation)
Gender: Male
Race: Changeling
Hair: Jet Black
Eyes: Sapphire Blue
Height: 5' 4"
Weight: 130
Blood type: Fey Positive...he probably shouldn't donate blood.

The Looks

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(Piercings are gold loops, not studs)
Aspen is not at all "handsome", or masculine for that matter. He is an unabashed pretty boy, his face and body forged in the strange energies of Arcadia, his bright blue skin disguised only by his glamour-worked piercings. To accentuate his looks, Aspen is always, always trying to make a statement with his clothes. He loves tripp pants and colorful belts, but he's just as liable to walk around in rave gear, glowing kandi included, as he is to dress up in very convincing drag or pretty much anything that'll grab attention, as if to dare anyone to say something about it. He almost never takes out his piercings however, mostly because of their very useful enchantment.

Aspen never wears a costume or anything like a costume...unless he does, usually for the specific purpose of pointing how how sexist female superhero costumes are sometimes.

The Legacy

Personality:
Aspen is a creature of desires and emotions that are only sometimes constrained by silly things like politeness or conformity. He feels emotions with greater intensity because of his fey nature, and has a little difficulty keeping his impulses under control - his first instinct his to do what he wants, regardless of what anyone else thinks, but he's better at not acting on that instinct than he used to be. The fact that his empathetic abilities sometimes bleed others' emotions into himself can make it harder to control himself, particularly if those emotions are aligned with those he's already feeling. Even when he's perfectly polite however, he can't stand feeling obligated toward others through a debt or having to respect and follow authority. He's not anarchistic, in the sense that he doesn't actively try to tear down authority, but instead just wants to be left to his own devices. He understands why cops might want to arrest him after he does something blatantly illegal, but he nonetheless thinks they should just leave him alone because he hasn't killed anyone, so what harm was done? Aspen can still cooperate with others when he needs to, but he has to feel that he is in control and is not compelled or forced to do anything. Despite this, he has few qualms about using his abilities to control others, usually in pursuit of what he wants. He has yet to register the hypocrisy of this.

Even though Aspen is pretty much ruled by his whims, he still has a conscience. He sometimes regrets lapses in self control and he doesn't like to hurt people who haven't done anything to hurt him. He does have friends who he is kind to, though he's loathe to admit any affection for anyone because it is, in his mind, a weakness to be exploited if the Fey come back for him.
History:
Aspen October was once known by another name, raised by a normal family somewhere where the people spoke English with an American accent. He barely remembers that time, his memories of it eroded by the time after, the time when he was brought to Arcadia. At perhaps around the age of ten, Aspen was running through the woods...somewhere. Someone familiar was calling a name he recognized, and he tried to run back home. But as soon as he turned, the forest had changed; the young, sparse trees had been replaced with towering giants that blocked out the sky. The ground, the plants, the air itself seemed to take on a surreal, dream-like quality, and yet seemed to stand out more sharply than before. The colors in the flowers around him were suddenly more vibrant, almost glowing with their intensity, and the plants themselves writhed with minds of their own. Poor Aspen didn't know much then, but he knew he wasn't home. It was only later he'd learn he was in Arcadia.

Suffice to say, Arcadia is not a pleasant place. It is a world of extremes, where the sensations and aspects of the real world are stretched to terrifyingly beautiful proportions, everything making the senses ache. Pain is not pain there, but instead an addictive agony, and little pleasures are instead heroin poured into one's veins. The Fey who reside there are ruled by their extreme natures, with some being totalitarian dictators of their little sections of Arcadia and others being the masters of hedonism and sadism. What they share in common is their hunger for emotions - as humans eat and drink, they sip on the emotions and sensations experienced by mortals, drawing from it the power that makes up Arcadia and themselves: glamour. Whatever they do, no matter how insane or nonsensical or bizarre, they do in order to harvest more of this precious substance.

Aspen was brought to Arcadia - he did not stumble into it by accident. The Fey that ruled the lands here was Sancara, A Lady (A high rank among the Fey) of otherworldly beauty that entrances and evokes powerful emotions from her victims. She ensnared the young Aspen easily, and proceeded to torture him in every possible way to squeeze every ounce of glamour out of him before he went mad. Sometimes she would treat him to unheard of kindnesses - months spent in crystal palaces, filled with living art that brought the boy to tears, food of unimaginable flavors, and beds so soft that brushing against the sheets left him hopelessly entranced. Other times, she would show him unmatched cruelty and brutality. Beating him within an inch of his life only to heal every wound by hand, murmuring pleasantries in his ear that made him forgive the sadism, or making him kill innocent, beautiful creatures over and over and over just to drink in his despair and self loathing.

But the Lady made a vital mistake, one that gave Aspen a chance to escape. She decided, after many cycles of abuse, to teach the boy how to fight. This was naturally just another way for her to eat his emotions, as she planned to make him addicted to blood lust, but it did not happen that way. Perhaps she underestimated the boy's resilience, or perhaps he had somehow subconsciously been aware of what was going on, and finally saw a chance to rebel. Regardless, he was trained in an arena that must have been as large as a small country, fighting insanity-inducing creatures like a surreal gladiator for years and years. The boy was lost to blood lust for sure, and yet he learned to fight, to be as graceful and deadly as the greatest Fey warriors. And then one day, as the Lady tried to congratulate him for another excellent, artful performance, he stabbed her through the chest - not a mortal injury for the Fey, but a shocking one. It was a moment of clarity he would never feel again, as just for a moment all the enchantments on his mind grinded to a halt, and then suddenly he was running, running faster than he ever had before...

And suddenly he was back in the woods he had been playing in forever ago, though the trees were older and stronger now. He found a stream and saw his reflection, and no longer was he the boy he once was. He had skipped over his childhood and was now a young man, with a face that was just a little too pretty to be fully human, and bright blue skin that marked him as property of Lady Sancara. At first he hid in the woods, as they were the only thing that seemed even remotely familiar, but the Lady did not come. Then he slid into the town nearby, his inhuman grace serving to help him stealthily steal what he needed to live, but still the Lady did not come.

Aspen eventually made up his own name, from the name of a street and the month he had come back to Earth, and for years he worked to find his humanity again. Aspen may have left the Fey, but the Fey hadn't left him, and the scars he gained from Arcadia made adjustment more than a little difficult even as he found other changelings to share his troubles with. He was plagued by alien emotions and desires, from a sudden urge to eat everything in the trash to an unexpected rage at having failed his driving test. Worse of all however, he had also been infected with the Fey's unique hungers, and now had to eat emotions like the Lady that took him along with normal food and drink.

It took years of work, but Aspen is now closer than he's ever been to actually feeling sane, with only a few hiccups in his self control hinting at the mad Fey inside him. He kind of has a steady job, only occasionally gets in trouble with the law, and has even had a relationship or two (though they weren't long lived). Overall, things are going well, which means things must get much much worse very soon. And he knows the Fey. His Lady will come for him, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow.

But she never forgives, and she never forgets.

The Powers

Power 1: Due to his time under the "care" of Lady Sancara, Puck's body has been radically altered from it's previous form. Beyond the obvious (pretty, always in shape, blue skin...), Puck has been endowed with both the Fey's grace and their resilience. He is supernaturally agile, able not only to contort his body in usual ways but also able to move exactly as he plans to. Every movement he makes is nearly perfect in it's execution so long as other factors (like getting hit) do not get in the way, and he can react to danger with blinding speed. His physiology is also far hardier than a mortal of his size and apparent health, able to brush off blows that would knock out or kill a person like him. He's similarly resistant to disease, poisons, drugs, aging, pain, and fatigue: he can take it all like he was 300 pounds heavier and eating super organic nutrient paste all day. Puck also heals a couple times faster than a normal human...which isn't actually all that fast considering, but it does mean that wounds that would take a week to recover from take a day or two, and that it's difficult to make him bleed out because he scabs over relatively quickly. (FS 7, Dur 5, Abi 2)

Power 2: Though he's only modestly talented at it, Aspen can use the glamour he harvests from emotions to create expressions of emotion that inspire others. When poured into his words, he can make his voice crack with thunder or glacial ice to inspire fear, or somehow make his voice remind others of a pleasant summer day, the scent of lavender and nostalgia in the air. He can similarly apply this to works of art like paintings or when he sings, infusing it with power that gives it an otherworldly, terrible beauty. The effort is more tiring than the activity in question would normally be, meaning a long song could exhaust him both of his physical and Fey resources if he puts too much effort into it. These effects are a sort of mental manipulation, and while the layman is easily entranced by it, anyone with a strong will or even just some experience with such trickery can easily ignore the foreign feelings that are forced on them. (Abi 4, requires permission)

Power 3: Just as his Lady could, Puck can feel and feeds on the emotions of others. At about ten feet, he can register the intensity and nature of the emotions experienced by others, appearing in his mind like orbs of light. He can also draw in the energy given off by these emotions, drinking it in from the air and converting it to glamour. He doesn't actually take anything away from others when doing this, but merely feeds on the "radiation" that emotions give off. At about twenty feet, he can get a vague impression of the type of emotion (sadness, anger, ect.) but not specifics, and the energy given off is rather diluted. Puck is only good at registering these emotions where there are just a few people in range, as more than that is too confusing. Moreover, Puck is somewhat affected by the energy he feeds on, causing him to feel some of the emotion that he takes in. (Abi 2, requires permission)

Power 4: Due to some of his experiences in Arcadia, Aspen has developed an odd relationship with gravity and other such forces that has carried over into the mortal world. For whatever reason, Aspen can bend the rules of physics in his favor. This basically results in him being able to move like a martial artist in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: He won't break the surface of water when he steps on it, can leap far higher than his own strength should allow him to do, falls like he's always wearing a small parachute (and never gets hurt from falls, no matter how high), and can stand on the thinnest branch of a tree with it barely bending under his weight. (Flight 1)

Weaknesses: Puck must absorb the energy given off by emotions in order to survive. He needs glamour like he needs to eat, sleep, and drink, and it is a vital component to some of his powers. He expends some glamour in just being awake and active, but it is mostly his empathetic expression which drains his resources, along with some of his equipment.

Puck is also weak to cold iron, though not as much as the true Fey. Contact with the material is unpleasant but not harmful; attacks however cut through his flesh like he was a chump mortal (acts as if his dur is 3, not 5).

Grid
Intelligence: -
Occult: 5
Strength: 2
Speed: 2
Durability: 5
Ability: 2/4/2
Fighting Skills: 7
Magic: -
Spells: -
Flight: 1
Wealth: 1

by **Forceaus** June 15th 2014, 6:01 pm

Approved until stated otherwise

Puck

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