Thar Shaddin

Player Name: Danal Church
Name: Danal Church
Age: 22
Race: Undead
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 145 Pounds

Physical Description:
Once Human, Church is now Physically frail yet very resilient. Dead, pale-yellowish, leathery skin. Visible bone in joint areas such as the elbows and kneecaps. Retained a full head of matted down hair. Thin and somwhat lanky. Slightly hunchbacked and empty eyesockets. His skull is close to the surface of his skin but not quite. No skin on his hands or feet

Possessions:
"Guard" Defense Mace- A mace issued to Church by a human military order in the Americas that has long been annihilated. The mace was made to assist him with his skills in healing magic which he can no longer tap into.

"Guard" Healers Armor (Legs and Breastplate)- Like the mace, this armor was made specifically for Church for easier and less time consuming spell-cast healing. Church has had to break down the armor considerably just to move around.

Pre-war currency- 4 stacks of notes promising payment of a currency that no longer exists


Powers and Strengths:

Rage- Rage is probably Church's only power. Finding the body of his dead brother and all of his comrads beside him, having lost his ability to cast any significant magic to defend himself and having no knowledge as to what is going on in the current world. This drives Church to keep himself alive, at any cost, to get answers.

"Guard" basic combat training- Church was taught the basics of survival from his former military order. This is what keeps Church alive in the Americas.

Lone wolf- Church has always worked more efficiently alone.

Intelligent- Church was and is a highly logical and intelligent being


Weaknesses and Flaws:

Lone wolf- Church has always worked more efficiently alone, however, that is becoming increasingly impossible in this new world

Slow, physically weak, and emotionally drained- Everything Church was has now been put into this walking corpse that is who knows how many years old. His newfound hunger leaves him increasingly weak and exhausted.

Easily corrupted- The morales Church once had seem to have dissipated within with this new curse that has been brought upon him. Although nothing has corrupted him yet, the temptation may arise..

Undead- A deep gaping hunger for human flesh plauges Church and others of his kind. But feeding is always a choice, if an undead refrains from feeding it will always have the memories and desires it once had as a living creature. If it, however, chooses to feed it will complete the undeads transformation and it will become an immortal human predator. Being an undead without feeding has its powers, but, Church has no knowledge of any power at this moment and, for all he knows, he could just fall to pieces any second.

History:(I'm not sure of the time-line here so maybe a story-teller can fill me in. Until then I'll just say "several years ago.")

Danal Church was raised in a small town in the Americas called Walton, he lived with his two loving parents and his amazing older brother, Carlyle. Carlyle was not like most older brothers who would otherwise pick on or torture(playfully) there younger siblings, instead, he looked after and raised Church with their father. Because of this bond throughout their child and teenage years Church developed a love soo deep for his family, his brother in particular, that it became unnatural.

One memorable event occured when Church and Carlyle were twenty years old. It was a fishing day for the Church family, a day which occured twice a month and was always assigned to both brothers. Carlyle was the best and most talented fisher and when his spear missed his intended target Carlyles ego took over. He waded deep into the lake after the fish that escaped from him, but Danal knew better. The deep lake was infested with poisonous freshwater snakes, only the mile-or-so stretch of shallow water was safe for fishing.

Sure enough Carlyle was bit by not one but three snakes, a wound which was certain to kill him in no more than three or four minutes. After dragging him out Danal realized his brother was going to die, but in that moment a foreign instinct washed over Danal. An instinct filled with love, hope, wisdom, and power. The instinct urged Danal to touch the wound and focus, when he did this the poison was devoured and the wound dissappeared.

Magic was completely illegal in Walton aside from military use, and after that incident the Church family decided to inform authorities of Danals strange healing incident to keep him from any trouble in the future. When the authorities heard the story they found it sketchy and inprobable due to the fact that magic in that time was only known for attacking, not healing. So the authorities ordered that Danal be examined by a military Scribe. Scribes in Walton determined the powers that their military personel possessed. After meditation on Danal the Scribe found him to have a direct connection to the Astral Plain and that he did indeed possess a never before identified type of magic that seems to heal wounds.

Danal was immediately inscripted into the "Nation Guard" to hone and master his new ability and to assist in future military operations. Carlyle, naturally, enlisted with Danal and for two years Danal and Carlyle fought and trained side by side. During that two years, under heavy schooling and training from the very best scribes from all over the nation, Danal learned to expand his unconditional love to all of human-kind. This gave Danal the ability to heal any man or woman and, over time, he could heal more severe wounds with no assistance and in some cases heal multiple people at once. With soldiers being able to be healed in battle the Nation soon found itself to be a thriving military force. Treaties were, at last, able to be made all due to the man named Danal who could heal any wound for any soldier.


It was during this time of peace that Danal met a designer by the name of Heather Frodrick. Church entered her tailoring shop one afternoon to get the marks of the Nation Guard repainted onto his shoulderplate. When they saw each other they quickly became enamored and immediately found out they had alot in common. Heather quickly realized that Danal was very awkward and nervous around women, she couldn't help but laugh when Danal apologized for possibly smelling foul after working all morning and not bathing. Noone entered the tailoring shop for the rest of that afternoon and with Danal having no further duties that day, He and Heather talked and talked as the hours past and the sun set. Danal and Heather had their marriage only five months after that afternoon. Carlyle never ceased to be an amazing brother due to the fact that when the marriage was sealed he cheered and clapped as loud as he could, not caring who was there or who was listening. Danal now had the perfect life, a month after marriage Heather became pregnant and Danal was promoted by the Nation Guard so that Danal could provide a very wealthy life for their family-to-be. What could go wrong now, Danal thought.

On the tragic day of 696 BCE, Danal and Carlyle were laughing and joking about the local fishing boats when suddenly a massive army of an unknown race was seen, not marching, but vaulting on all fours in the location of the nearby city of Bradshire. The same city that held his wifes tailoring shop, Danals unit, including Carlyle, was the first group of soldiers to arrive. Danal immediately rushed to Bradshire's marketplace which held Heathers tailoring shop. When he rounded the corner he saw a pregnant Heather across the street running desperately to him. As he ran to her one of the vaulting abominations jumped from the roof of a building and tackled her to the ground. Danal continued running toward her, screaming in desperation. Carlyle entered the same street from the opposite side Danal was on and got to Heather before he could. Carlyle ripped the creature off Heather and shoved his sword through the creatures face. Danal picked Heather up and embraced her tightly, he quickly wrote a note addressed to a Western Shore Pirate he knew that could get Heather to Europe. Danal told Heather he would come for her but to run now to this pirate, get to Europe and not look back. "Go, now!" Danal said, and she left. These merciless, knashing, screaming, corpse-looking creatures were too much for any one human to bear and Danal soon found himself using all his healing strength to keep each soldier alive.

After hours of combat Danal was exhausted and Nation Guard soldiers began to fall in the masses. Danal passed out from overexcertion and the last thing he saw was Carlyle directly in front of him fighting and being ripped to pieces by these zombie-looking humanoids. The unknown invading army slaughtered the entire nation by force and by poisonous gas and, now awake for some reason, Danal Church finds himself in the middle of a wasteland that once held all of the people he once loved and knew, his powers have been stripped and humanity seems to have been completely wiped out not that any human would likely accept the new deformed, zombified Church anyway. A battle wails within Church of his great loss and denial of the monster he has become. With questions unanswered this is where the legend of Church will begin

Hello and welcome to Thar. I want to start off by thanking you for submitting an application. Now before we move on to the approval process, I would like to ask a few question/make a few suggestions that may help you to better fit this character of yours into our setting.

First of all, what sort of undead creature are we talking about here? At the end of you history it mentions zombie-like beings, is he a zombie? Is his body rotting and his skin falling off? Does he have to eat people or living animals to stay alive? I would like to see the physical description and well as the weaknesses expanded on to give us a better idea of what he is and what kind of downside there is to being undead? Can he be killed in some way? How has he been able to survive for some 120 years since becoming an undead creature?

Is there a reason why he lost his magical powers when he died? Or was dying and coming back to staining on his body that it left him too weak to preform magic?

You mention that your character comes from the Americas, we call them Ayana (North) and Tzlxochitl (South). I'm assuming Church comes from Ayana as Tzlxochitl is covered in humid rain forests and the people there live in rather primitive tribes where still worship the sun. You mentioned that the town he is from has a ban on magic, why is this? Thar Shaddin is one of the only places on the planet that goes to the extreme of imprisoning and executing magic users but it consists of only one small city and a tiny farming village way out in the middle of a desert where nobody would travel if it didn't so happen to fall along a trading route between Eyropa and Tiag Xia.

You mention wars in your history and though there has been no large scale war since the time of the Changers Wars, there could be small scale military action in Ayana. I would pretty much bet that some fighting goes on between all the power-hungry vampires, the shifters, dragons and who knows what other types of magical creatures that go unchecked there.

In addition to this I would like to see the strengths and weaknesses expanded on to reflect more of a personality of the character. I want to know how he has taken to this new life of his. how does he cope with the death of everyone he has ever know? How does he deal with walking around looking like a monster? How do other people treat him? Has he come to terms with what he now is or does he wish that he had died alone with everyone else?

I'm sorry if this seems like a lot, I just really like to feel like I have a good understanding of a character on a very personal level before I approve them. If you have any questions/suggestions of your own or if you make any changes to your character, please leave a reply in this topic and I will look back over this character again. You can also contact me in chat or by PM. Again, thank you for submitting your character and have a nice day.

Thanks for your reply and, no, it isn't too much I appreciate the feedback.

-To answer your first question, yes, his skin has died but it is not falling off. His bones are visable only at his elbows and kneecaps.

-He doesn't eat or sleep

- I will go into more description on his physical appearance.

- He hasn't been alive for 120 years what I was trying to get the reader to understand was that he was dead 120 years ago. Now , out of the blue, he rises again in the present day of your world. This actually helped me in the sense that I don't know much about Thar's present day so being able to tell about his history BEFORE the "Changers War" gave me the flexability to write and not risk a more modern history where I might contradict some place or someone

- In regards to his loss of magical powers, he attained his powers from a direct connection with the Astral Plain( which apparently is very hard to gain access to now), and from a compassion he felt for past humanity, which is all gone for him now. So to keep his powers alive he needs that compassion for humanity again AND he needs a clear line to the Astral Plain.

- The brief description of Thar on your website that I read before I submitted my APP led me to believe that humans mostly live in Europe and Asia now and the Americas, more or less, is more like a wastelend that could have once held settlements of humans. I figured I could incorporate a Nation that had once thrived but has been destroyed and forgotten now. Again, this gave me the flexability to write my history AND start my character off in this world with nothing but memories. If this is not okay I can rewrite a history, it'll just take some time.

- The wars I wrote about were timed BEFORE the Changers War. I did this to avoid any contradiction in Thar's current history.

-I will expand on Church's feeling and personality for you. Thanks again, and tell me if I need to change anything.

I would also like to understand how you see him participating in the setting.

Well, I've never wrote in this type of setting before so my plan was to just write a few stories of his survival alone while, at the same time, reading other peoples articles and getting acquainted with how character interaction works.

But after that there are several things I could do with Church

I mean there are a million things I could do, it all depends on what I'm allowed to do and if you guys think that this character would be appropriate or not.
I think this gives your world a variety and, in addition, it gives other Characters here another reason to possibly add in some adventure time.

I added a few things to the plot that might help you connect with my character a little bit, look at the description of the undead under the "Weaknesses" tab and look at the history again and you'll find an extra paragraph and a little extra right before he died. Let me know if it's okay or if I need to take a hike, lol.

A few things.

You should call the americas either Ayana or Tzalxochitl because they're completely different places with different politics. Ayana is a madhouse bested only by the weirdness of Tzalxochitl, but speicifics about who the big players are haven't been laid out yet. I don't know about desolate but you're right in that it hasn't organized itself to a 'civilized' nation like Eyropa and Tian Xia have. The setting you've described could only be found in Ayana. And when you think about that setting I have to stress that even following its colonization by Eyropans, it wasn't colonized by the same Spanish/French/British empires mix and the people would be more mixed European ancestry.

I don't think it's likely that one healer would turn the tide of politics in Ayana or anywhere else. Magic is not that rare. It's rare in Thar Shaddin, and certain regions with puradynic ideals, but Tzalxochitl is described as teeming with magic: http://www.tharshaddin.com/setting/worl ... ochitl.php
They would have many healers, and destructive mages, if they chose to wield them. Surely the natives have plenty of tribal, spiritual magic evolved from their culture.

And finally, the Changers' war was 2000 years ago, so for him to have existed back then, he'd be ancient. And that complicates him being in Ayana to start with, because it wasn't settled by white people at that time.

Finally, I have no problem with zombies, but you also have to be clear that 'the undead' is not a race. It's a descriptive term for reanimated dead things, and they can be all kinds, some who want to eat your brains and some who don't.

Approved.