GraveWyrm

GraveWyrm

Scholar of Decay
"We are but cinders cast from a great inferno eons ago, carried across our reality by the winds of time, pale echoes of the flame that bore us, our heat fleeting and ephemeral. Yet our light shames even the radiance of the sun when cast upon the darkness of the cold void that draws out our essence, hungry for our light and desperate for the inevitable end when all embers are extinguished. We are the spawn of the single greatest act of defiance reality has ever endured, and within The Black, we find that which all things yearn to return to: a blissful abyss."
Discord	lheisse
Reddit	Competitive_Snow1989
Wiki User	Juice
Metatype	Human
Street Cred	0
Notoriety	0
Public Awareness	0
CDP	0
D.O.B.	2018-11-19
Age	68
Folder	https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1exq20w-SPoK_rTWX0undjTwE-6bbVgI_?usp=sharing
Priority	Metatype - E Attributes - B Magic/Resonance - A Skills - B Resources - E
#Max IGs/Ascension	1
# Optional Infected powers allowed	0

Character Information

Summary

GraveWyrm stands out among the ghouls of Seattle. Born a mage, forced into becoming an infected, and a Necromage by choice, he has endured years of fruitless struggle in the realm of hermetic scholarship and academia, only to be rewarded with infection and disgrace. Though he has regained a sense of self through willpower and focus, his mind remains singed by delirium inflicted by his illness, morphing his personality from the meek mage he was before to something far more sinister. GraveWyrm is part scholar, part philosopher, and part acolyte; ravenous for both flesh and knowledge in equal measure and has entwined his study of death with his dark appetites.

GraveWyrm is unusual for his disturbing and calm demeanor as compared to many ghouls who are made rough by the harsh life of the streets or succumb to becoming feral. On the surface, his mind and mannerisms are uncharacteristically sharp, but this belies the true effect of the disease on his psyche. Though still scholarly and astute, he is eternally unsatisfied, ceaselessly devouring knowledge and information in an effort to stave off mental degradation, resulting in his fanatical devotion to The Dominion of The Black. Through its ways, he has come to understand the state of perpetual decay that is his existence. He sees himself and other infected as embodiments of The Black, and has determined it is his duty as a mage to further its influence upon the physical realm, wielding its power to further deterioration and decay.

GraveWyrm is cold, calculating, and impassive with a non-confrontational demenor, seeing no merit in the act of killing and destruction alone, preferring instead to study the natural effects of ruin upon the realms both astral and physical. However, this passive demeanor is not to be confused with gentleness, as GraveWyrm lacks common morality, striving to become as cold and brutal as the force he worships and studies. When met with violence or obstacles, GraveWyrm channels the power of The Black to snuff out the lives of those in his path, conjuring spirits of pale flame to scour and destroy that which he deems no longer necessary to persist. He pays no credence to politics or the machinations of society; he swears allegiance to no organization, yet he finds solace in speaking with those who find themselves brave enough to engage with him and his philosophies, his unique inversion of nihilism that drives him to yearn for understanding and purpose in The Dominion of The Black.

Many mages study to pursue power, striving for personal gain and honing their magic to embolden themselves, but GraveWyrm has no delusion of personal power, having long ago undergone ego death. Now, his growing power is a byproduct of his obsession with studying the primordial force of decay. To GraveWyrm, it is more than a study; it is his purpose, it is what allows him to cling to the last vestiges of sanity and logic, it allows him to understand the squallid mode of existence he is now forced to endure.

Goals

• Study the natural and mystical forces of decay
• Further the influence of ruin within the world
• Retain sanity and logic despite mental deterioration
• Discover the truth of what existed before existence itself
• Abjure unnatural influences upon the cycle of life, decay, and death

Background

It is said that eons ago, there was a brilliant eruption of energy that tore through the darkness of the void before light and life, and that from this singularity, everything that would ever come to be tore itself from nothingness and came into the universe in a cosmic scream that gave rise to nebula and stars. This cold, empty expanse of dust and light would be the womb in which life would gestate for billions of years until the innumerable barren worlds gave way to one stone that churned with heat, water, and carbon. From this, organic matter would rise and begin its toil to perfect itself over millions of years, shedding its simple yet impossible forms in a ceaseless march for perfection. This has been the study of scientists and philosophers since the conception of all humanity would come to call the existential. The ugly truth, however, is that the singularity bore not one child, but two, a twin to the chaotic light that is ingrained in the psyche of every morsel of matter, its touch inescapable by even the brightest of stars. This is decay.

Saz Levet was unremarkable. The world is rife with mages such as he, eager for conformity, community, and opportunity afforded by the power that he was awarded on the whim of probability. He was born to an unremarkable family in an unremarkable home and lived an unremarkable life that he was eager to escape with his remarkable talent. He toiled away with study and practice, the hermetic life rigorous and grueling, yet its structure gave comfort in a chaotic world, soothing in its ritual and unyielding calculus. He lived six decades, he yearned to be special, he devoted himself to study, he shouldered responsibility, he toiled, he never found love, he never found fame, and he tried his best. Then, his life as he had come to accept it ended. In his struggle to be special, to be known, he had fallen upon a dark path. He wanted so desperately to prove that magic was a living thing, that spirits, spells, and magical manifestations were all functions of a single astral superorganism, an evolving thing whose biology has been unwittingly studied by his fellow Hermetics over decades.

Curiosity and desperation lured the aging man down dangerous paths. He started cautiously, as any responsible Hermetic would. Studies, papers, dissertations, and seminars piled up, results were novel, yet like him, they remained uninteresting. The creeping dread slowly came to evict ambition and hope, repossessing their position in his motivation. He feared he would die before he could finally prove himself, that he would be forgotten the moment he became a gravestone. This is what drew him to disease. If magic were an astral organism, then it would stand to reason that it could bear infection, that microorganisms flourished in the astral realm, and there was no greater modern evidence of this than HMHVV. He delved within his study, but the trideos and documents could only convey so much. If he wanted to study the virus, he needed to feel it with his astral senses, to study it with his own eyes. The facility he worked so hard to gain clearance for was supposed to be safe; they hadn't had a crisis in nearly a decade, but that didn't stop the breach of containment, the yellowed teeth from sinking into the flesh of his arm, it didn't stop him from fleeing into the dark streets of Seattle in a desperate attempt to hide his exposure, it did little to prevent his feverish search for a spell that could undo his growing affliction, that didn't prevent the rot from setting in, and it most certainly did not stop him from succumbing to the disease, curling up in a disgusting alley where he thought he would find an end to his suffering. Unremarkable.

He was rotting from the inside out, his mind melting to mush as much as his flesh. He clawed desperately at his face, he begged and pleaded to unseen beings for mercy or respite, and madness spread as quickly as the decay of his body. Through it all, however, he clung to one single thing to keep himself from sinking into the depths of feral depravity; he kept studying. He charted every symptom; he typed every feeling, every agony and torment, and when the darkness consumed his vision, he rasped his notes into recordings on his commlink between fits of psychosis. After years spent in feverish analysis and a haze of rotten corpses and delirious atrocities, his madness was slowly drawn to one single concept, giving way to something at last profound. Purpose. He found purpose deep within the voice logs he could never remember taking; hidden beneath his words was meaning he could finally understand. He was saved at last, saved by The Black. He finally realized this was what he had been searching for all along. Magic was indeed alive, just as he was, just as the universe is. Life is not limited to beings with brains or cells, but is rather awarded to everything that possesses energy. Like the dense, searing cores that churn within stars, essence boils within humanity and metahumanity, storms on distant worlds rage for millennia with violent and chaotic force, and meteors collide to form great spheres of bubbling magma. But there is a force that pulls at all things, one that collapses stars, that weakens the bones and sags the skin, one that extinguishes even the most infernal of molten rock. This force is slow and insidious, ever silent in its ceaseless march to return everything to a time before time, when all was still.

This force is The Black, the snarling hounds that pull the sled of rot and ruin across the cosmos in distances measurable only in eons and corpses. This paradigm shift allowed Saz to chisel free, inch by inch, from his prison of madness and emerge reborn. He spent his life toiling in the pursuit of being remarkable, but he finally understood that he is, has been, and will forever remain insignificant, that he will one day disintegrate into dust and detritus, and be ground to atoms and stardust when the planet grows cold and barren, and that even this dust would grow cold and still, dissolving into nothing as the universe would finally gasp its last dying breath. For the first time, he felt comfort in this impermanence. Through willpower and agony, he is now able to stand and gaze upon the astral realm with his empty sockets as a scholar once more, only now, his focus is not upon life, but on its long and cold shadow in which he now dwells. Saz zealously scours for knowledge and understanding of this force that fuels the engines of destruction and decay with a fervor that borders on religious fanaticism. With no possessions or resources to his name, he has turned to the criminal realm to sell his freshly unearthed powers of death to those who have need and the means to inflict it upon others. In doing so, he obtains the necessary finances to perpetuate his existence and pursue his feverish study of those inscrutable twins born at the beginning of time and their inevitable fate to destroy each other and at last return reality to the silent peace of nonexistence.

Narrative Significant Qualities

Negative

• Distinctive Style - GraveWyrm has a unique manner about him that sets him apart from the majority of ghouls who succumb to their disease. When one meets the bizarre magician, the find it hard to forget the encounter.
• Pie Iesu Domine. Dona Eis Requiem - In his study of destruction and decay, GraveWyrm finds himself participating in feverish rituals that often involve self-destructive aspects. He has learned to find meaning and purpose in the pain and suffering he has endured as an infected, and will often inflict pain upon himself while studying to heighten his awareness and involve himself in the act of destruction.

Run History

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Affiliations

Contacts

Contact	Connection	Loyalty	Archetype	Profession	Aspects	Chips
Fiendest	2	1	Fixer	HMHVV Fanatic	Wanted, Infected Organizer, Lavawalker, Terrordome, Darkdweller	Even

In Character Information

Matrix Search Table

Threshold	Result
1	Rumors of a bizarre ghoul circulating the matrix, strange encounters with an eerie infected lurking in the Redmond Barrens that seem to elicit a general unease among scavengers.
3	Even more chatter about strange happenings in the Barrens at night, green flames and raspy voices on the wind that cause gangers and scavengers to encourage each other not to go alone at night. Many seem to think a magician is calling upon dark spirits, possibly a toxic magician.
6	More detailed reports from scavengers who have had a run-in with a "ghoul magician" if it can be believed. They report the figure as often nonsensical and eerily well-spoken, but ultimately harmless if you go the other way. Whatever it is he is doing, he seems to appear after the gunfire dies down in the wake of gang skirmishes, doing things to the dead that go beyond simple consumption of the flesh, but nobody sticks around long enough to try and find out what exactly he is up to.

Shadow Community Table

Threshold	Result
1	GraveWyrm is most certainly an infected, there is no doubt. What there is doubt upon is his methods and motives. He seems reliable and level-headed, surprising most of the people he works with, but there are whispers he may dabble in some off-the-deep-end magical practices, and fewer claim he is a toxic magician and should be kept at arm's length.
3	The rumors of GraveWyrm being a toxic mage are unfounded. More magically inclined runners identify his practices as the Necro tradition, a fairly ominous tradition in its own right, but not one that would warrant distrust on its own. He is a capable magician, possessing some experience in most magical practices, and is cited by the rare few who engage in deep conversation to be quite knowledgeable, if slightly deranged.
5	GraveWyrm walks the line between a dedicated scholar and fanatical devotee. He will do anything to get his claws on even the slightest morsel of mystical knowledge or profane secret. He is mostly nonviolent, but it is obvious by all reports that killing is a talent of his he has no qualms using. He possesses destructive and ruinous spells and control over powerful Palefire spirits that are capable of doing real damage when necessary.

Assensing Table

Threshold	Result
1	Typically injured, Awakened
2	No cyberware, Full Magician
3	5 essence, 6 Magic, HMHVV, Mental Degradation
4	5 essence, 6 Magic
5	physical deterioration beyond HMHVV, undergoes brief yet frequent periods of psychosis

Appearance

GraveWyrm is a ghoul, but his habits render his visage particularly nightmarish among his peers. In a fit of rage and anguish years ago, he ripped his useless eyes from his skull, leaving empty sockets in their wake that give him a skeletal appearance that would give even the most seasoned gangers a reason to pause. He has a habit of inflicting wounds upon himself, whether it be through physical or magical means; he claws at his face, rots his own flesh, and invites decay upon himself, contributing to his disturbing form. His jagged, broken teeth reveal exactly what he is, an infected who has has embraced the ravages of his affliction.

Clothing

GraveWyrm is not one for ostentation, and is most often seen wearing simple, tattered cloaks and garments worn down by the rough environs of the Barrens, which he wanders frequently in search of corpses and ruins. Occasionally, he dons a simple mask to obscure his alarming visage for modesty's sake the rare times he has to engage with others. The only consistent aspect of his clothing is the belt he wears, his vault of ages, which contains pouches that contain his alchemical creations, which vary from engraved skulls to more abstract and profane effigies used to channel The Black.

Matrix Persona

His Matrix persona is as unassuming as his attire, taking the form of a figure cloaked in tattered robes, where a face should be is only shadow and two small, green orbs that mimic eyes.

Character Plot Hooks

Here are characteristics of the character that GMs may take advantage of to add complications to runs, or to otherwise use when in use. If you want to use them in unrelated to runs, please ask first.

Aspect	Information	Related Run(s)
Infected	GraveWyrm is an infected, and as such anything that effects the larger infected community concerns him, as he has a small measure of pride for his status as an infected.
Scholar of Decay	Anything regarding The Black, apocalypse, destruction, or ruination is something he wants to know and study, and he will stop at nothing to obtain traces of such knowledge.
Hermetic History	When he was Saz, he was a Hermetic Mage of some small repute, and thusly has an interest in the Hermetic tradition and its way of thinking and holds a slight preference for Hermetics and anyone else that views magic as an academic study.
Dark Zealot	Unlike most practitioners of Necro magic, GraveWyrm holds a near-religious fascination with the Dominion of The Black, worshipping the forces of decay and ruination as much as he studies them, stemming from his madness inflicted by his disease, his obsession with The Black being the sole thing keeping his mind intact. As a result, he often gives deference to those more versed in such powers than he is.
Crushing Isolation	Even in his former life, Saz suffered from severe feelings of isolation and loneliness, and as GraveWyrm, these feelings only fuel his madness and dark delirium. He yearns for another he can exist with in the dark and share his obsessive philosophies with, someone who can help quell the visions and agonies of oblivion.