a skeletal basic info post

[doubtfulknight]

[OOC]

Player handles: Lark (also), Cee
Contact: PM this journal; Plagueheart#0051 on Discord; larketype[at]gmail[dot]com
Timezone: CST/CDT (GMT -5)
Active hours: Early mornings and later evenings.
Tagging speed: Highly variable--I'm a grad student and can sometimes have no time/energy for tags for several days in a row. Let me know if you need me to focus on a plot-important thread and I will do everything in my power to get you at least a tag/day.

[IC]

Demographics:

• Name: Larkspur Plagueheart, neé Dawnherald
• Sex: Male
• Species: Undead blood elf
• Class: Death knight
• Age: ~250 prior to death; 8 years post-resurrection
• Languages: Thalassian, Orcish, Common (badly, due to a misfired language-implant spell), Scourge/The Language of the Dead, some Nerubian

First impressions:

• Physical: Short (5'8" at the top of his head; 6' at the top of his ears), broad-shouldered, heavily muscular. Very obviously dead, with bruise-gray skin that darkens to the color of old pooled blood in his extremities. Ligature marks around his neck. Hilariously long (and mobile) ears that are tattered at the ends, whisker-like eyebrows. Long gray-silver hair that exists in two states: neatly braided or Everywhere. Has empty eye sockets. Mouth is full of more sharp teeth than should be possible, yikes. image, image
• In motion: Generally skulks from place to place, keeping his ears down and limbs close to his body; it makes him seem smaller than he is. Has two modes for emoting: Not at all, or extremely over-acted, with broad gestures and exaggerated facial expressions.
• Voice: Low tenor to high baritone with an uncanny echo. Largely flattened affect and much reduced inflection on questions unless he's really trying. (Think Vin Diesel as Riddick, but More So.) Tends to omit his personal pronouns and speak in clipped sentences when uncomfortable; much more loquacious when drawn into conversation with someone he likes. Can be oddly poetic now and again.
• Scent: Decaying flowers, old bone and fresh blood, with a faint tinge of fresh rot.
• Magical presence: Extremely dead. SO dead. Super duper double dutch dead. His soul is tattered all over and doesn't even seem properly attached to his body. Characters who can sense life-force as well as death would notice he is harboring a lot of little, insect-sized lives on him.
• Mindscape: Don't dead open inside. Characters reading his mind will find it is (a) wide open for anything they want to go diving around for and (b) not comfortable to inhabit since he is in some degree of pain at all times. It just feels uncomfortable for living psychics to probe, with a lot of ugly lingering damage from having been forced open at some point. Also, lots of disturbing intrusive thoughts and an undercurrent of ~the Hunger for life~. Enjoy!
• Allies: Generally accompanied by at least one (and usually a lot more) big, colorful moths riding around on his person.

Abilities and proficiencies:

• Undead: Not subject to the frailties of the living (e.g. needing to breathe). Uncommonly durable and uncommonly strong because pain means nothing to him. Can be temporarily slain, but will gradually reconstitute and eventually resurrect unless entirely destroyed and his soul unbound from the mortal plane.
• Scourge necromancer: Trained in raising the dead for service, whether it's the temporary sort like ghouls and skeletons, or longer-lasting greater undead like death knights (though those take a hell of a lot more work). Also tolerably okay at necromancer chores like stitching limbs onto abominations.
• Rune magic: Can use runes, either imbued on his runeblade (more powerful) or sketched onto surfaces (much less powerful), to case darque majikks and enhance himself and his allies. He draws primarily from two death knight disciplines: Unholy and blood.
  • Disciple of the Unholy: Magic to manipulate disease and raw unholy energy. Disciples of the unholy focus on raising and binding undead to their will and inflicting deadly plagues on, well, everything that gets in their way. Delightful. Also the school of nullifying or silencing enemy magic. This is Larkspur's strongest specialization.
  • Disciple of Blood: Magic to manipulate blood and life force. Allows the disciple to steal the life from his enemies and use it to renew his own, or that of allies. Blood runes can be used to heal the living but it feels disgusting and foreign, so is Not Recommended. Also allows the disciple to strengthen himself to better endure blows, i.e., blood death knights are tanks. Larkspur is moderately proficient at blood magic but it's not his go-to unless he has to be punched in the face a bunch to protect someone else.
  • Disciple of Frost: Lark is very, very bad at frost magic. About all he can do is temporarily summon chains of ice to bind an opponent and freeze water so he can walk across it.
• Necromantic miscellany: Larkspur can bind weaker-willed undead into his service and shift partially into the realm of death for a few instants (on a long cooldown) to move faster or escape from being snared. He can construct death gates that allow near-instant transit through the realm of Death (the Shadowlands) between any location and Acherus, the stronghold of the Knights of the Ebon Blade. With intense time and a lot of sacrificed life, he could bind another end point for a death gate to his use, but he's doubtful it would work right. Also, can talk to spirits.
• Heightened senses: Totally blind to the physical world but able to see things that are purely in the realm of death. Preternaturally keen hearing and sense of smell; has trained himself to echolocate on the move in lieu of seeing. Can sense air currents with his goofy eyebrow whiskers. Attuned to magic; perceives different types as different tastes.
• Moth-souled: Has a constellation of big, colorful moths that are, for all intents and purposes, externalized chunks of his soul. Can borrow their senses (as much as moths have) to perceive what they perceive, allowing him to use them as a kind of distributed spy network. Additionally, as long as his moths survive, he can (theoretically) resurrect himself even if his body's destroyed, by taking over another corpse. (He is unaware this is possible, meaning he effectively couldn't do it.)
• Combat trained: Proficient in combat with a two-handed axe, a two-handed sword, or a sword and shield. Also has a host of support abilities that go with a life in the military: Serviceable armor and clothing repair, weapon maintenance, making and breaking camp, etcetera.
• High elven nobility: Has had an appropriate classical education for a man of his station, as well as several decades of military training and service. He doesn't remember all of it anymore, but can sometimes recall it at need.
• Herbalist: He's good at recognizing plants and knowing what they're used for.
• Animal handling: Knows how to ride and care for several different types of animals routinely used as mounts on Azeroth, though he's most familiar with raptors and proto-drakes.

Weaknesses:

• Blind: No eyes, blindy-blind-blind. Can't visually perceive anything that isn't a disembodied spirit or wholly existent in the land of the dead. Totally unable to do anything that requires reading, color perception, etcetera.
• Undead: Subject to anything that can bind, abjure, or injure the undead or other creatures animated by unholy magic. This may apply erratically even to things that don't come from his world, if the person using them knows that it works against the undead; e.g., Warcraft undead typically can't be warded off by salt rings, but if that method works on in your reality, it can work on Larkspur. Additionally, wounds made by aversive (holy or life magics; blessed water or weapons) sources require him to cannibalize something to heal them; otherwise, they are permanent and crippling.
• Sensitive hearing: Things that are Too Loud hurt and confuse him, and temporarily ruin his ability to echolocate.
• Sensitive nose: Can be overwhelmed by strong scents and even driven off by really strong ones.
• Hungry: Always hungry, all the time. Needs to consume A Lot of organic matter to keep the mass of insects and plague anchoring his soul and doing his cognition for him alive and in good form. Will decline rapidly if deprived of food sources for more than a couple of days. Additionally, has a psychic requirement to kill sapient beings regularly or suffer from increasing pain and agitation. Merely sentient beings (e.g., animals) ease this hunger but do not quench it.
• Shattered soul: Kill his moths and you destroy parts of his soul. It takes a long time to regenerate and his magic will be much weaker. Kill all his moths and disenchant his runeblade and he'll be dead permanently.
• Bug (and friends) brained: Is, on some level, a thinking biofilm and therefore sensitive to things that can kill or poison the blob of microorganisms and insects infesting his corpse. He won't be out-of-action permanently if a lot of them are destroyed, but he'll be Extremely Dumb for a while until they grow back. Additionally, spending too long in hot environments can lead to a biofilm overgrowth and consequent mania characterized by poor decision-making and trying to eat everything he can stuff in his mouth. Yikes.
• Open mind: Has nearly no defenses against mind-reading or mind-control; the only thing he can do in the latter case is try to kill himself before he loses control entirely.
• Abhorrent to life: Most animals will be alarmed at or flee his presence. Prolonged contact with him can lead to death for fragile organisms: Non-woody plants and the unborn are in the most danger.

Abbreviated personality:
"You are terrible at death, but damn fine at knight."

A very uneasy mix of Scourge sadism and ruthless pragmatism with the love, hope, and charity one expects from a true paladin of the Light. Cares deeply about the dead and certain among the living alike; follows an ethos of duty and loyalty, tenacity and compassion and respect that makes him struggle to treat others with kindness in spite of his malevolent instincts. But, also, driven to kill, prone to making inappropriate jokes, and all too ready to stick things in his mouth that he shouldn't. Occasional cannibal (because he can't regenerate bad wounds without it), feels guilty about that. This baby can fit so much self-despite in it.


Abbreviated %*#&post background:

• Born in Quel'thalas to Iolan Dawnherald and Dionaea Dawnherald, neé Sunwatcher, of the noble house of Dawnherald.
• Dad dies when he's twelve, Mom leaves most of his early education to tutors and/or his older half-brother.
• Childhood mostly okay; raised with the expectation he'll enter the high elven military once he's of age to.
• Mom starts getting creepy and weird at him once he's closer to his majority?? donotlike.jpg; enlists pronto once he can.
• Decides he's more suited to be a knight than anything so pledges to the Knights of the Sunwell; takes oaths of obedience and poverty since they'll be a cinch to obey when he doesn't own anything himself.
• Spends a lot of his early military history fending off Amani troll raids, like you do.
• Orcs invade Azeroth?? Yikes. Doesn't get much action during the First War; definitely gets some during the Second War.
• OH $*@) IS THAT SOME SCOURGE
• Spared, somehow, when the Sunwell and 90% of the high elven population are destroyed.
• 100% you betcha follows his Prince on the epic journey to get some help for Quel'thalas and a relief for their magic addiction.
• Branded a traitor, imprisoned in Dalaran, nearly magic-starves to death, goes to Outland to become a part of Illidan's mutant elf coalition...
• Signs on to be a blood knight when that's possible because he already has an affinity for it; doesn't think draining a naaru is a...great idea...but he's also Theologically Angry like everyone else and it's fine, this is fine.
• Becomes a lot less fine with it over time as the draenei genocide starts in and Kael'thas gets...increasingly concerning...
• Somewhere in here, performs a miraculous healing to save another Sunfury grievously injured in a magical reactor explosion in Netherstorm. Turns out he might be connected to the Light?? Alarming.
• However, when he just happens to be in Voren'thal's unit when said unit presents itself at Shattrath to surrender to the naaru (and then defect and become the Scryers), Lark hesitates--then quietly departs to return to the Sunfury Legions, because while he thinks his people need saving, he can't abandon his prince.
• (A'dal asks him where he's going. He explains this logic. The naaru offers reassurance that if he stays on the path he's on, everything will come out all right.)
• Things are IMMEDIATELY NOT ALL RIGHT when he walks a badly wounded Colonel Embersong home and finds out the spellbreakers are going insane and killing anyone who tries to heal them with stolen naaru magic.
• yikes.jpg
• Things continue being less all right; Kael'thas sends the Shadowsword elite (demons?!??!) off to steal Mu'ru from Silvermoon and Lark finally, belatedly, takes the option to defect once the naaru's out of the way.
• Immediately gets tried as a traitor because Silvermoon is Pissed and needs scapegoats.
• Pretty sure he'll be fine; he's nobility and has valuable information and will probably just get exiled because he really did do it all for Silvermoon and the sin'dorei.
• Right?
• Wrong: His mom tells him to commit suicide to erase the blotch on their family name.
• He, of course, refuses and is hung as a common traitor the next day.
• rest in piss
• Or the Dead Scar, as it happens. Turns out when you leave paladin corpses in the Dead Scar the Scourge REALLY like that...
• ...and they've been way more active lately...
• ...though it takes them long enough to find him that some gnarly brain rot has already set in...
• Resurrected several weeks later in Acherus; immediately kills every other blood elf recruit he can set hands on in an all-consuming half-blind fury. Literally half-blind: His eyes don't work great anymore.
• Until a senior elven death knight named Krenyn Bloodflame challenges him and lays him out on his ass.
• Okay now he's gotta kill THAT guy..
• He doesn't end up killing that guy; they go through Light's Hope together and join the Ebon Blade instead.
• Lark tries being morally abhorrent to deal with his own overwhelming misery and sense of betrayal from all sides (ruining his family name? Also a bonus). He's good at it for about six months and then goes back to being very bad at death but a damn fine knight.
• Also he hooks up with a bunch of people, Krenyn among them.
• And gets his eyes stolen by the mafia after he helped kidnap a friend of his out from under their noses.
• Somewhere along the way finds out he's gradually dying due to irreversible brain decay because the idiot asshole necromancers who thought it was a great idea to file his teeth while he was dead ALSO botched his resurrection.
• thisisfine.jpg
• Getting help for his condition involves a nine-month detour through being the mind-controlled puppet of a Crimson Hand Inquisitor, nearly killing a bunch of his friends, and eventually stealing the organs from a plagued wolf infected with his blood to save himself.
• Also Deathwing blew up the world somewhere in here.
• Oh, and Mu'ru redeemed the blood elves and the Sunwell was reignited so...it really did turn out all right in the end...
• Then the gang went to Pandaria and that was awesome but also put a strain on his relationship with Krenyn.
• Then they all went back in time to Draenor which was awesome in a different way except for the near-miss with the mind-control fungus because he stuffed a giant spore in his mouth as a joke.
• Then the Legion invaded and now he's pretty sure Azeroth is screwed but at this point fighting to defend it is a comfortable habit so why not keep going with that?
• Also, he has somehow made friends...very good friends...with an Alliance paladin named Simon Ashlock and like hell he's gonna let his new bestie go off and die to demons alone.
• (And, all right, maybe he has an overabundance of chivalry and really wants the best for the dead and the living alike, but that can't happen if the WORLD IS DESTROYED.)