Nichatus Von Trier
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:37 am
Player Name: Jeremy…..again
Name: Nichatus “Nic” Von Trier
Age: 27
Race: Human
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 157 lbs.
Physical Description: Nichatus is a handsome man, with noble looking facial features and a medium build. His hair, always kept cut just at brow level and parted perfectly down the middle, dark almost brown shade of red. His eyes, while technically considered gray, are more a faded blue color. The only visible scarring on the man is a small (about one inch long and the width of a pen tip) one running horizontally under his left eye. He does bare many more, however, on his back.
Possessions: Aside from the regular gear of a battlemage (the unadorned armor, the black leather bodysuit, and the red gloves) Nic owns few things. Most of these items are kept in a small chest within his quarters. Enclosed are various items of clothing which he occasionally wears over the bodysuit in place of his armor, a cheaply made black cloak with a red swirling pattern along its borders, and an extra pair of the plain leather boots he wears.
The only possessions that Nic is proud of in any way are either kept out in the open or on his person. These include a few books on runes and basic magic that he is allowed to privately own and his two black bladed push daggers that he keeps tucked into a belt around his waist.
Powers or Strengths: Von Trier has a powerful mind. He had no form of education (besides the one from the school of hard knocks) until he was in his late teens, but can now hold an intelligent conversation with scholars. He is also a manipulative person and very good at “reading” people, and uses that to his advantage whenever possible. Most of his strength lies in his magic however.
Mind Reading: By sending out “tendrils” of psychic energy Nichatus can connect to the minds of the people around him and pick up the information therein. He has met a few people that can hold his grasping brain at bay, but most people without some psychic training would not know he was in their head, let alone be able to stop him. One thing he is yet to learn the technique for is unlocking memories repressed by his target. The only other limit that he has discovered to this power is that he can not read the minds of more than three people at a time. Trying to do so can either become so taxing on his focus that he looses all of the connections or develops an intensely painful migraine headache.
Sensory Manipulation: In addition to gleaning preexisting information from peoples’ minds, Nic can also alter a person’s senses. If the target is within his line of sight he can exert some control over one or both of the weaker senses (smell and hearing). If he is within speaking distance taste and sight are added to the possible senses. Within arm’s reach and he can alter all of them to the point that the person can be made to believe they are in any situation Nic can imagine. He can only implant these illusions into one person at a time. The complexity of the illusion (detail involved, number of senses altered, etc.) effects the amount of time he can maintain the illusion and the amount of sleep required after for “recharging.” Full strength use of this power can last for eight minutes and Nichatus will then be required to take a full night’s sleep. Use of the power for any longer at this level (or equivalent overuse at a lower level) can and most likely will render him unconscious.
Sensory Manipulation Part II: -NOTE: This is not a separate power, but a part of the sensory manipulation power that I was told needed a more in depth explanation.- Beyond the ability to control all five senses at once there is another level of power that Nichatus is capable of putting into his illusions. With skin-to-skin contact, and the proper illusion, it is possible for him to elicit fatal results. The only illusions he can successfully do this with are variations of drowning or being suffocated. He must maintain the illusion and a firm grip on the victim for the same amount of time that it would take a real drowning or suffocation to kill them, which more often than not results in Nichatus falling unconscious next to his dead victim. If the use of the power at this level does not knock him out, or he wakes up before his body has been at rest long enough, he must sleep for ten hours. Most people with a strong psyche (i.e. player characters
) can shake off some of the illusion’s power or hold out against it long enough that Nic will simply fall unconscious before they die. Due to these limitations, the battlemage rarely uses this level of strength in his illusions.
Madness Glyph: In his studies of rune work and magical symbols Nichatus discovered a glyph capable of absorbing some of his power and then releasing it on command. After learning how to do it properly, he drew the glyphs in the palms of his gloves. By placing the glyph on the intended victim’s head and speaking the command word he can release the power to temporarily (only lasts a few minutes) overload their senses with a cacophony of noise and flashing bright lights. Some people say that there are no limits upon the glyphs, but they are simply looking in the wrong places. Firstly, the glove must be on Nic’s hand for the spell to function and the head is the only place that it will cause the desired effect, anywhere else and the body part being touched receives a mild tingling sensation. The glyphs are also limited by the fact that they disappear and must be redrawn after every use. The creation of the glyphs is a limit in its self. The output power of the glyphs is hard to quantify, but it would probably be somewhere around 1/8 the power they are fed. As such, it takes nearly the same energy to get the glyphs to their regular level of power as it would to perform an all out sensory manipulation. It is a fairly steep cost by the standards of many, but Nichatus views the slight advantage in battle as irreplaceable.
Weaknesses: The main weaknesses to be spoken for are those in battle. He is not a very skilled combatant, and often must rely on his mind reading to pick up his opponent’s next move and dodge it (in most, if not all, cases he must dodge as he is not skilled enough to parry and/or counter the attack). His preference for short weapons also puts him at a disadvantage in many situations. As for his powers, his glyphs and illusions are the only ones that would provide any real help offensively, but he has to get in close to use those to much effect as well.
The man has weaknesses outside of battle as well. He is obsessive and a perfectionist in the extreme. As a result he has often becoming lost in study for days without taking sustenance or sleep and has overlooked things of importance simply because they didn’t seem connected to the task at hand.
He is also fiercely loyal to the judges. People who speak ill or think too harshly of them while he is in their mind often end up dead on the spot or with a battlemage knocking at their door in the near future. It is even common for him to force penitence upon himself for failing them or thinking any thought that might contradict their law. In short, if the judges told Nic that he had committed a crime and needed to be executed, he would accept the sentence then go erect the gallows and tie the noose himself.
History: Nichatus Von Trier was born in Shim to a poor blacksmith’s apprentice and his wife. Though they were struggling to get by, the home looked happy, from the outside. On the inside, however, it was the kind of place that warps the minds of children. Natalie Von Trier was an extremely sheltering mother (think Bobby’s mom from The Waterboy) all but beat the idea that no one would ever love him other than his parents and leaving home would surely kill him. His father, too, presented problems, as the man had anger issues and would often slap Nic for being “too womanly and clingy” when the boy attempted to show him affection.
Nic’s powers were discovered at an early age, him being only seven when they first manifested. It started off with the boy answering questions that his parents had only thought rather than asked out loud. They soon became suspicious of this, and put him to a test of sorts to see if he was using some sort of magic to read their minds. When they discovered that he was, in fact, reading their minds they instructed him never to use the powers in very harsh words. The few times that he inadvertently used them and then spoke without thinking, which allowed his parents to catch him in the act, he was beaten for it.
After a handful of these beatings, Nichatus decided that it was time to put the theory that the outside world would kill him to the test. So, after sneaking out of the house late one night, he managed to mount the family’s only horse, lead it out into its small pen, and attempted to get it to jump the fence. He shouted at the horse in anger, only succeeding in waking his parents and drawing them outside. Then, in a panic, Nic discovered his power to toy with the senses. The horse, being the target of this accidental mental attack, went wild, throwing Nic to the ground outside the pen and trampling his parents to death.
The boy was taken in by one family after another for months before it was discovered that he had an uncle living in Marn. The man turned out to be a worthless drunk, and would often leave Nic at home or in a dark alley by himself while he went to drink in one of the city’s taverns.
It took the boy ‘til the age of ten to attempt to use his powers again, and his target this time was his uncle. Due to a lack of control and focus the illusion he pushed into his uncle’s mind was short lived, but the punishment he would face for his actions was not. Now that the drunk knew of his powers he was forced to sit in the streets from dawn until late at night panhandling. He would read the people’s minds and show them exactly what they needed to see in order to part with their money, and should the boy not bring home a suitable amount of money, his uncle beat him mercilessly. These beating became so regular, such a thing of habit, that Nic would often punish himself for coming up short before his uncle even got a chance to lay hands upon him.
After five years of begging in the streets, near daily beatings, and self imposed punishment Nic finally got up the nerve to leave his uncle’s home while the man was passed out drunk. He stayed anywhere he could find shelter by night, and looked all across the city for work by day. Any time he was turned down for work another scar was added to the web-work of others upon his back, the pain helping him focus and washing away the anger and sadness. He eventually found steady work cleaning the shop of a kindly old blacksmith named Dannas. He had originally wanted to become an apprentice like his father, but the man wouldn’t have him in that position. The pay wasn’t great, but it allowed him to move into a room in a run down building and keep himself fed.
His life once again settled into a routine, until the blacksmith decided to help Nic celebrate his eighteenth birthday. The celebration, which was not much more than a small feast with drinking and singing, was held at Dannas’s home. While there he met Dannas’s daughter, Mariah, and became infatuated with the girl. It became mildly clear that the feeling was mutual when she began finding excuses to come to her father’s store while Nichatus was working there, and would spend most of her time in the shop talking to the young man while he worked. After weeks of these visits Nic asked Dannas’s permission to court Mariah, fully expecting to be denied due to her being nearly three years his junior. Dannas actually approved of it and for some reason raised the young man’s pay.
After happily surviving the usual obstacles of young love for over a year, the two approached the blacksmith with another request, marriage. He again went against what Nic thought would happen and agreed, raising his pay yet again. The two were wed in the spring and moved into a small house in the outskirts of the residential district that Dannas bought for them.
Three years later Dannas and Nichatus were surprised by a crying woman bursting into the shop. Mariah had been killed by a horse spooked by an old drunk, an old drunk that Nic happened to know. The man had taken away much of Nic’s childhood, and now he had taken away the only person he cared about. Thoughts of revenge settled into his mind. Wicked thoughts of bloodshed and torture. When he revealed some of the milder of these thoughts to Dannas, he learned that the man was of like mind. “I’ve seen you read minds, son, and there are people in this city that might value such a skill. If you were to be put into a position of power like that, surely your uncle would find his way into a lockup.” Was the advice Dannas gave.
Nichatus submitted himself to the judges, and disappeared from the lives of those that knew him for some time. The next time any of them saw him he was kicking in the door of hi uncle’s home. The man sprung from his drunken stupor and began questioning Nic about his reasons for being there. “You remember how you threatened to turn me over to the judges, Uncle.” He asked the man, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Well I did it for you.” The drunk’s eyes bulged in horror as Nic slid his hands from their hiding place at his back to show the red leather gloves that he now wore.
The younger man tore off a glove, rushed his uncle, and held the man against the wall by the throat. His uncle’s mind was filled with the horrible scene of himself being dragged to the bottom of the ocean by some evil creature. This illusion was only meant to be a form of torture before Nic ran a sword through him, but as the now battlemage watched his uncle struggled for breath, his mind believing his lungs to be filled with water and refusing to let them take in more.
Some time early the next day he was awakened by the city guard. Someone had found him lying next to his dead uncle and reported the incident. Upon seeing Nic’s gloves the guard dismissed it as a justified homicide and released him. From that day forth he would dedicate himself to study and serving the judges with every fiber of his being.
Name: Nichatus “Nic” Von Trier
Age: 27
Race: Human
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 157 lbs.
Physical Description: Nichatus is a handsome man, with noble looking facial features and a medium build. His hair, always kept cut just at brow level and parted perfectly down the middle, dark almost brown shade of red. His eyes, while technically considered gray, are more a faded blue color. The only visible scarring on the man is a small (about one inch long and the width of a pen tip) one running horizontally under his left eye. He does bare many more, however, on his back.
Possessions: Aside from the regular gear of a battlemage (the unadorned armor, the black leather bodysuit, and the red gloves) Nic owns few things. Most of these items are kept in a small chest within his quarters. Enclosed are various items of clothing which he occasionally wears over the bodysuit in place of his armor, a cheaply made black cloak with a red swirling pattern along its borders, and an extra pair of the plain leather boots he wears.
The only possessions that Nic is proud of in any way are either kept out in the open or on his person. These include a few books on runes and basic magic that he is allowed to privately own and his two black bladed push daggers that he keeps tucked into a belt around his waist.
Powers or Strengths: Von Trier has a powerful mind. He had no form of education (besides the one from the school of hard knocks) until he was in his late teens, but can now hold an intelligent conversation with scholars. He is also a manipulative person and very good at “reading” people, and uses that to his advantage whenever possible. Most of his strength lies in his magic however.
Mind Reading: By sending out “tendrils” of psychic energy Nichatus can connect to the minds of the people around him and pick up the information therein. He has met a few people that can hold his grasping brain at bay, but most people without some psychic training would not know he was in their head, let alone be able to stop him. One thing he is yet to learn the technique for is unlocking memories repressed by his target. The only other limit that he has discovered to this power is that he can not read the minds of more than three people at a time. Trying to do so can either become so taxing on his focus that he looses all of the connections or develops an intensely painful migraine headache.
Sensory Manipulation: In addition to gleaning preexisting information from peoples’ minds, Nic can also alter a person’s senses. If the target is within his line of sight he can exert some control over one or both of the weaker senses (smell and hearing). If he is within speaking distance taste and sight are added to the possible senses. Within arm’s reach and he can alter all of them to the point that the person can be made to believe they are in any situation Nic can imagine. He can only implant these illusions into one person at a time. The complexity of the illusion (detail involved, number of senses altered, etc.) effects the amount of time he can maintain the illusion and the amount of sleep required after for “recharging.” Full strength use of this power can last for eight minutes and Nichatus will then be required to take a full night’s sleep. Use of the power for any longer at this level (or equivalent overuse at a lower level) can and most likely will render him unconscious.
Sensory Manipulation Part II: -NOTE: This is not a separate power, but a part of the sensory manipulation power that I was told needed a more in depth explanation.- Beyond the ability to control all five senses at once there is another level of power that Nichatus is capable of putting into his illusions. With skin-to-skin contact, and the proper illusion, it is possible for him to elicit fatal results. The only illusions he can successfully do this with are variations of drowning or being suffocated. He must maintain the illusion and a firm grip on the victim for the same amount of time that it would take a real drowning or suffocation to kill them, which more often than not results in Nichatus falling unconscious next to his dead victim. If the use of the power at this level does not knock him out, or he wakes up before his body has been at rest long enough, he must sleep for ten hours. Most people with a strong psyche (i.e. player characters
) can shake off some of the illusion’s power or hold out against it long enough that Nic will simply fall unconscious before they die. Due to these limitations, the battlemage rarely uses this level of strength in his illusions.Madness Glyph: In his studies of rune work and magical symbols Nichatus discovered a glyph capable of absorbing some of his power and then releasing it on command. After learning how to do it properly, he drew the glyphs in the palms of his gloves. By placing the glyph on the intended victim’s head and speaking the command word he can release the power to temporarily (only lasts a few minutes) overload their senses with a cacophony of noise and flashing bright lights. Some people say that there are no limits upon the glyphs, but they are simply looking in the wrong places. Firstly, the glove must be on Nic’s hand for the spell to function and the head is the only place that it will cause the desired effect, anywhere else and the body part being touched receives a mild tingling sensation. The glyphs are also limited by the fact that they disappear and must be redrawn after every use. The creation of the glyphs is a limit in its self. The output power of the glyphs is hard to quantify, but it would probably be somewhere around 1/8 the power they are fed. As such, it takes nearly the same energy to get the glyphs to their regular level of power as it would to perform an all out sensory manipulation. It is a fairly steep cost by the standards of many, but Nichatus views the slight advantage in battle as irreplaceable.
Weaknesses: The main weaknesses to be spoken for are those in battle. He is not a very skilled combatant, and often must rely on his mind reading to pick up his opponent’s next move and dodge it (in most, if not all, cases he must dodge as he is not skilled enough to parry and/or counter the attack). His preference for short weapons also puts him at a disadvantage in many situations. As for his powers, his glyphs and illusions are the only ones that would provide any real help offensively, but he has to get in close to use those to much effect as well.
The man has weaknesses outside of battle as well. He is obsessive and a perfectionist in the extreme. As a result he has often becoming lost in study for days without taking sustenance or sleep and has overlooked things of importance simply because they didn’t seem connected to the task at hand.
He is also fiercely loyal to the judges. People who speak ill or think too harshly of them while he is in their mind often end up dead on the spot or with a battlemage knocking at their door in the near future. It is even common for him to force penitence upon himself for failing them or thinking any thought that might contradict their law. In short, if the judges told Nic that he had committed a crime and needed to be executed, he would accept the sentence then go erect the gallows and tie the noose himself.
History: Nichatus Von Trier was born in Shim to a poor blacksmith’s apprentice and his wife. Though they were struggling to get by, the home looked happy, from the outside. On the inside, however, it was the kind of place that warps the minds of children. Natalie Von Trier was an extremely sheltering mother (think Bobby’s mom from The Waterboy) all but beat the idea that no one would ever love him other than his parents and leaving home would surely kill him. His father, too, presented problems, as the man had anger issues and would often slap Nic for being “too womanly and clingy” when the boy attempted to show him affection.
Nic’s powers were discovered at an early age, him being only seven when they first manifested. It started off with the boy answering questions that his parents had only thought rather than asked out loud. They soon became suspicious of this, and put him to a test of sorts to see if he was using some sort of magic to read their minds. When they discovered that he was, in fact, reading their minds they instructed him never to use the powers in very harsh words. The few times that he inadvertently used them and then spoke without thinking, which allowed his parents to catch him in the act, he was beaten for it.
After a handful of these beatings, Nichatus decided that it was time to put the theory that the outside world would kill him to the test. So, after sneaking out of the house late one night, he managed to mount the family’s only horse, lead it out into its small pen, and attempted to get it to jump the fence. He shouted at the horse in anger, only succeeding in waking his parents and drawing them outside. Then, in a panic, Nic discovered his power to toy with the senses. The horse, being the target of this accidental mental attack, went wild, throwing Nic to the ground outside the pen and trampling his parents to death.
The boy was taken in by one family after another for months before it was discovered that he had an uncle living in Marn. The man turned out to be a worthless drunk, and would often leave Nic at home or in a dark alley by himself while he went to drink in one of the city’s taverns.
It took the boy ‘til the age of ten to attempt to use his powers again, and his target this time was his uncle. Due to a lack of control and focus the illusion he pushed into his uncle’s mind was short lived, but the punishment he would face for his actions was not. Now that the drunk knew of his powers he was forced to sit in the streets from dawn until late at night panhandling. He would read the people’s minds and show them exactly what they needed to see in order to part with their money, and should the boy not bring home a suitable amount of money, his uncle beat him mercilessly. These beating became so regular, such a thing of habit, that Nic would often punish himself for coming up short before his uncle even got a chance to lay hands upon him.
After five years of begging in the streets, near daily beatings, and self imposed punishment Nic finally got up the nerve to leave his uncle’s home while the man was passed out drunk. He stayed anywhere he could find shelter by night, and looked all across the city for work by day. Any time he was turned down for work another scar was added to the web-work of others upon his back, the pain helping him focus and washing away the anger and sadness. He eventually found steady work cleaning the shop of a kindly old blacksmith named Dannas. He had originally wanted to become an apprentice like his father, but the man wouldn’t have him in that position. The pay wasn’t great, but it allowed him to move into a room in a run down building and keep himself fed.
His life once again settled into a routine, until the blacksmith decided to help Nic celebrate his eighteenth birthday. The celebration, which was not much more than a small feast with drinking and singing, was held at Dannas’s home. While there he met Dannas’s daughter, Mariah, and became infatuated with the girl. It became mildly clear that the feeling was mutual when she began finding excuses to come to her father’s store while Nichatus was working there, and would spend most of her time in the shop talking to the young man while he worked. After weeks of these visits Nic asked Dannas’s permission to court Mariah, fully expecting to be denied due to her being nearly three years his junior. Dannas actually approved of it and for some reason raised the young man’s pay.
After happily surviving the usual obstacles of young love for over a year, the two approached the blacksmith with another request, marriage. He again went against what Nic thought would happen and agreed, raising his pay yet again. The two were wed in the spring and moved into a small house in the outskirts of the residential district that Dannas bought for them.
Three years later Dannas and Nichatus were surprised by a crying woman bursting into the shop. Mariah had been killed by a horse spooked by an old drunk, an old drunk that Nic happened to know. The man had taken away much of Nic’s childhood, and now he had taken away the only person he cared about. Thoughts of revenge settled into his mind. Wicked thoughts of bloodshed and torture. When he revealed some of the milder of these thoughts to Dannas, he learned that the man was of like mind. “I’ve seen you read minds, son, and there are people in this city that might value such a skill. If you were to be put into a position of power like that, surely your uncle would find his way into a lockup.” Was the advice Dannas gave.
Nichatus submitted himself to the judges, and disappeared from the lives of those that knew him for some time. The next time any of them saw him he was kicking in the door of hi uncle’s home. The man sprung from his drunken stupor and began questioning Nic about his reasons for being there. “You remember how you threatened to turn me over to the judges, Uncle.” He asked the man, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Well I did it for you.” The drunk’s eyes bulged in horror as Nic slid his hands from their hiding place at his back to show the red leather gloves that he now wore.
The younger man tore off a glove, rushed his uncle, and held the man against the wall by the throat. His uncle’s mind was filled with the horrible scene of himself being dragged to the bottom of the ocean by some evil creature. This illusion was only meant to be a form of torture before Nic ran a sword through him, but as the now battlemage watched his uncle struggled for breath, his mind believing his lungs to be filled with water and refusing to let them take in more.
Some time early the next day he was awakened by the city guard. Someone had found him lying next to his dead uncle and reported the incident. Upon seeing Nic’s gloves the guard dismissed it as a justified homicide and released him. From that day forth he would dedicate himself to study and serving the judges with every fiber of his being.