Denalik Hystere

[Blitzkrieg]

Ha! Finally, I have my very own character with a real last name!

I know ninja's are cliche, and it probably doesn't help that there's another ninja awaiting approval, but I've been preparing to put this bad boy on here for a while, so I have dibs. Or something.

Anyway, here's my big mysterious character and his freaky-tastic race and backstory. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
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Name:
Denalik Hystere

Age:
32

Sex:
Male

Species:
Human/Raven Hybrid

Appearance:
Denalik is very tall for a furry, being about five and a half feet in height, mostly due to his human heritage. He is physically fit, and possesses some of the disproportionate aspects common to furries: large hands, feet, and head, in comparison with the body. Denalik’s general build is that of a human’s, however he is completely covered with purple-black feathers, including his face, and he has wings on his back, roughly three and a half feet tall when folded up and with an overall wingspan of about six feet. Denalik has bright, piercing yellow eyes, and his teeth are melded together inside his mouth, similarly to a beak. He has no hair; instead there is an array of long, slicked-back red feathers cresting his head, most of them shoulder-length. His nails, both finger and toe, are black, elongated, and sharp, similar to the talons of a bird.

He generally wears a black t-shirt with holes for his wings and loose red cargo pants, made specially to reduce noise from friction. He wears black toeless boots that reveal his toe-talons, and he always wears a purple sash in lieu of a belt, fastened by a broach engraved with an eight-pointed star. The broach can be opened to reveal a hidden lockpick and a pair of shuriken. Denalik has a number of small leather pouches tied to his sash, both front and back, in which are contained his weapons. Over his plain black t-shirt Denalik wears a black leather jacket (polished to perfection to reduce noise from friction), with wing-holes and the image of an eight pointed shuriken embroidered on the right breast and the back. He also wears a pair of leather weapon belts strapped across his chest in an X pattern, and a foot-and-a-half-long kunai is strapped to each. Oftentimes when in public he replaces his jacket with an extremely long unmarked hooded trench coat that hides his form entirely.

Personality:
Denalik is a very bitter and pessimistic man, and it shows. He desires nothing more than a totally unrestricted life, where there are no prejudices or hatreds based solely on one’s heritage or appearance. He despises with a passion those people that hold prejudices, especially against him. He has no problems whatsoever with killing people who displease him or who he doesn’t like, and he feels no guilt from the most brutal of murders. In fact, some might say he had a sadistic streak, loving to find new and crueler ways of killing. He is by no means opposed to the idea of working together with others so long as it serves his purpose, but he feels no ties of loyalty towards anyone (save for his father and sister) and would not hesitate to slaughter his own teammates if it advanced his goals. His sole true desire in life is to destroy the structure of society as we know it and plunge the world into a state of anarchy, a state in which no minority would be oppressed by a majority, and all social and cultural prejudices could be abolished.

Family:
Father, Denalex Hystere, age 62, human. Current Residence: Void Dojo in Pumpkin Hills, north of Station Square.
Sister, Aislyri Hystere, age 26, hybrid. Whereabouts Unknown.
Mother, Aislyn Hystere, deceased, raven.

Weapons:
Denalik carries thirty three-inch shuriken (throwing stars) with him at all times, all eight-pointed instead of the usual four. He also carries ten six-inch kunai (throwing knives) with him at all times as well, and he keeps two elongated foot-and-a-half-long kunai strapped to the belts across his chest (for melee combat). Denalik is accurate with shuriken at up to fifty feet and can throw up to eight at a time (though the more shuriken he throws the lower his precision), though since they are so small they are not good for bringing down an enemy, only harrying them; they aren't even capable of puncturing bone, flesh and muscle being about the strongest thing they can pierce. He is accurate with his kunai at a rough maximum of twenty feet, and they pack a much greater punch then the shuriken, though they still won't do as much damage as a bullet, and a one-hit kill or even one-hit paralysis is very unlikely.

Biography:
Denalik Hystere was born into a world that hated him. From the second of his conception, all of society hated him. For the entirety of his life, he could never go anywhere around anyone without cruel words being whispered behind his back (and some times in front of it too) and hate-filled glances shot his way. He suffered this hatred his entire life, for no fault of his own. Why was he so hated, you may ask? Because, quite simply, in the mind of the public, he was an abomination.

Denalik’s father was a human, and his mother was a furry, specifically a raven. They fell in love despite the fact that it broke every social taboo, and they had two children. The moment word got out that a furry was pregnant with the child of a human, a tremendous amount of hatred and prejudice was directed towards the unfortunate parents. People whispered that the child would be hideously disfigured, a vile freak of nature, and that he would be dumb as a brick to boot.

To make everything worse for Denalik, his father, Denalex, was the last surviving user of a powerful magic known as Void Control, and a ninja on top of that. When people found out their initial hatred was compounded by fear. Void Control was a hereditary ability, and it was well known that furries had a greater aptitude for magic than humans. So what would happen when a furry was born with a powerful magical ability like Void Control? The idea frightened and appalled the public, and spurned them on to even greater levels of prejudice, abuse, and hatred towards the sad couple and the child they would soon have.

Denalik’s life was torture for him. No school would accept him, so he had to be home schooled, hidden away from society (like society wanted). He had no friends; in fact anyone who ever saw him would react negatively, everything from cringing at his peculiular appearance to running away to shooing him like an animal to threatening him with knives and guns and once even a hand grenade. Through it all, he believed that some day he would be accepted for who he was, that someone somewhere would meet him and not run or cringe but instead welcome him as a friend and get to know him. He kept this ridiculously optimistic attitude towards life and his future until he was nine. At the age of nine, his destiny changed forever.

On Denalik’s ninth birthday his mother, Aislyn, had gone out to do some grocery shopping for the family. Generally she did this with Denalik’s father, locking Denalik in the house for safety. Nobody would mess with Denalex, because it was common knowledge that he was a ninja and could take down most thugs, even most mobs, with ease, and his Void Control was just icing on the cake. However on this day Denalex had fallen ill and could not go with her. The family was out of food and needed to feed their second child, Aislyri, who was only three at the time, so their mother had to go alone. This was a tremendous mistake. A gang of particularly violent thugs had heard that Aislyn, weakest of the Hystere family (without any fighting skills or magic of her own), was out alone, and they wasted no time finding her. She was dead within minutes, but the beating didn’t stop for over an hour.

When poor Denalik found out that his beloved mother was dead, the mother who’s feathers had lined his crib, the mother who had cradled his head in her arms when he had had a nightmare, the mother who had loved him and cared for him like no one else in the world… well, as you can imagine, he was completely crushed. His heart turned cold as stone that day, and his optimism quickly turned pessimistic. He just couldn’t understand why people could be so cold blooded as to kill an innocent woman for something as trivial as who she had had kids with and who her children were. Matters were only made worse at the trial of her murders, in which each and every one of them was found completely not guilty, despite the glaring evidence. Nobody said it, but Denalik could see it in the eyes of the jury, the hateful statement that simmered beneath the stoic court proceedings.

“She deserved it.”

When their father had fully recovered from his illness, he took Denalik and Aislyri away to the dojo where he had grown up as a boy, where he had learned to harness his Void Control powers and learned to be a ninja, taught by his own father. The family dojo, where generations of Hysteres had been trained. It was called the Void Dojo, and it was hidden securely in the furthest reaches of the Pumpkin Hills, just north of Station Square. There Denalik and Aislyri spent their lives in hiding from society, quietly training as ninja and practicing the Void Control abilities they had both inherited from their father. As it turned out the townsfolk did have something to fear, as the two half-furry siblings did indeed become far more powerful with their Void Control magic than any of it’s human users before them.

During this time Denalik brooded on his ill fate, on what society had done to him, his sister, his father, and most importantly, his poor deceased mother. He thought of one thousand and one ways to reap his revenge, thought of exactly who he would kill first, thought of exactly how he would kill them. He invented new torture techniques, one for each of the people he hated the most. He brooded and planned for years, until finally his burning rage settled and he thought about it a little more clearly. It was then that he realized what he had to do.

It wouldn’t do to kill the people he didn’t like. A thousand more ignorant, prejudiced pigs just like them would crop up in their place. No… society had destroyed him, destroyed his family, destroyed his mother. So he would destroy society. Not man-by-man, no, but instead he would find a way to plunge the world into anarchy, an anarchy in which he would rule through an iron fist, in which there would be no prejudices, no taboos, no hatred. It would be perfect. He set out for Station Square on his 32 birth day, with sinister plans already forming in his mind. Alliances would be made. Enemies would be slain. The world would fall into turmoil and despair, just as he had lived his life.

And he would do anything and kill anyone to achieve that dream.

Moves/Combat Style:
Denalik is a combat ninja. This means that his abilities are tailored for both espionage and for direct combat. He is fairly strong and has excellent reflexes, making him fairly skilled in melee combat, not to mention the fact that he can use his wings (which are in fact quite strong) as an extra set of limbs in combat, capable of lashing them out to strike enemies behind him and to his sides, or to block attacks. He is extrememly skilled in melee combat and he is quite proficient in armed combat, especially with his kunai and shuriken, but his real strength lies with the mystical power of Void Control, of which he is one of three known surviving users in the entire world. The Void is a “world between the worlds”, an area of infinite nothing. However, though the Void has no native matter of its own, matter from the real world can pass into and out of it easily. It also contains a tremendous amount of pure energy, which, with the proper power and training, a user of Void Control can bend to their will, directing the energy in powerful attacks or manipulating it into lethal defenses.

Denalik’s Void Control powers include (In order of skill and power required, lowest to highest):

- Void Portal: Denalik opens a hole into the Void itself. This move alone is the basis for all of his Void-based abilities, and as such it is the most important. It is also the only one of his techniques to solely use his own natural energies, without the aid of the power of the Void. Denalik can make the portal as large as 10 feet in diameter with enough energy and concentration (though he averages at about six feet), but he can only have one portal open at a time. Denalik opens a portal by waving a hand in the direction he wishes to open it, using his mind to target the exact point. The portal starts as a pinprick in midair and grows as he opens it, and he must stand/sit/hover still for the length of time it takes to open the portal (to maintain concentration). The length of time required to open a portal depend on how large he wishes it to be: the longer he concentrates, the larger it is, the maximum length of time for a full-sized portal being roughly twenty seconds (2 posts) . He can stop concentrating at any time during the opening to stop and leave the portal at it's current size. A quiet, dull humming is emitted from a portal, so even as a pinprick it is possible to identify it's location. A portal can only be created within his line of sight, and he cannot create a portal within a solid or liquid object, only in open air. Not only that, but a portal can only be opened within ten feet of Denalik. (One portal can be opened per post, and one portal can be closed per post, though a portal can remain open for an unlimited amount of time.)

- Void Warp: Denalik can step within one of his own portals and, inside the Void, open a portal to somewhere else, as long as it within twenty feet of his entry point (in the real world) and he can clearly visualize the image in his mind. He cannot visualize clearly enough any place he hasn't seen in over twenty-four hours. He can then pass through the second portal, in effect warping. He can also toss people and objects into the Void and toss them out through a different portal, all within the real world. Any object, living or inanimate, that enters the Void can only remain in the Void for a maximum of five minutes, and should that time be exceeded the Void itself will expel the object(s) in question at the real-world point of their entry. (An object (including Denalik) can only remain in the Void for a maximum of one post, that is, it can enter in one post but must exit in the next.)

- Void Saw: Denalik can summon the energies of the Void into his hand to create a spinning disk, up to a foot in diameter, which can be thrown as a weapon, capable of cutting through most materials, including most metals. It begins losing size and power at roughly fifteen feet, and dissipates completely by thirty. That range decreases with each object it cuts through, for example slicing through a wall would drastically reduce how long it could go before dissipating. Once thrown Denalik has no further control over the saw, and he cannot create a new portal until it dissipates or hits something it can't cut through. (This counts as a portal while it is in existence, so Denalik cannot have two active at a time, and he cannot have a portal and a saw at the same time.)

- Void Tendrils: Denalik can summon the energies of the Void out from an open portal, and he can shape them to take the form of lashing tendrils. These tendrils of energy can be one large and bulky bludgeoning weapon, or many thin and sharp whips, and everything in between. The tendrils can only extend to a range of five feet from the portal maximum.

- Void Duplication: Arguably Denalik’s most powerful and useful Void technique, he can duplicate an object currently residing in the Void (including living objects) exactly through use of the energies of the Void which, upon the object's entrance into the real world, Denalik can control. The duplicates come into existance the moment the object duplicated exits the Void through an open portal (not through expulsion via the five-minute rule) and the fake objects will have the same momentum as the original upon it's exit of the Void (for example, if a kunai were thrown from the Void and duplicated, the duplicates would fly at the same speed and angle as the original, wheras if the kunai simply dropped out of the portal the fakes would fall too). The duplicate will have none of the item’s special abilities (e.g. a fake bomb would not explode, a fake Denalik could not use Void Control), however a duplicate knife would still be sharp, and a duplicate person can still physically fight like the original. Usually a hard blow or a large number of small blows can cause the duplicate to dissipate, and in general a duplicate object will dissipate on it's own within five minutes of it's creation. Only three duplicates of any given object can exist at one time, with each duplicate up to three costing more energy to create. (This technique requires that the object in question has been in the Void for one post.)

Skills:
Denalik has a variety of skills, including tremendous skill in espionage, assassination, and stealth (as per a ninja, of course). He is also a torture expert, and he has amazing skills of memorization and a photographic memory, skills that complement his espionage skills excellently. Denalik can also use the wings on his back to fly, capable of gliding easily and acending to fair heights (roughly 10 stories maximum) in decent time, though because he isn't exactly aerodynamic his acension time is substantially longer than what a purebreed bird's would be. He can also hover in place for fair periods of time, roughly fifteen minutes in one place maximum.

Strengths: Denalik’s fighting style is a balance of close range and mid range combat. His Void Portals can make him incredibly unpredictable, and he can even redirect his opponent’s ranged attacks to some extent. This makes him a very potent fighter. His flying is also an advantage over most enemies, allowing him to go places they can’t and do things they wouldn’t predict. Not only this, but his ninja training has braced him against pain, so as to better resist torture when captured, and when applied to combat it means he can go longer with more terrible injuries than the average person could.

Weaknesses: While physically fit, Denalik’s body structure is fairly weak. He can’t take a lot of heavy hits, and he doesn’t wear any armor so he has no defense against sharp weapons or bullets except his (albeit fast) reflexes and his portals. Also, while he can fight with his wings if he must, if they are damaged then he is incapable of flight. Normally he keeps them folded up tightly to prevent this, but when flying or fighting with his wings they are more exposed. Denalik’s biggest weakness however would have to be the Void itself. While creating portals doesn't take up too much energy, he is vulnerable while concentrating on opening them. His other Void techniques tax him substantially more, with Void Duplication being the most exhausting technique. As such, using more advanced techniques in rapid succession (less than thirty seconds between techniques for everything up to Void Saw, less than a minute for anything more advanced) can quickly cause exhaustion, tiring him and eventually leading to inability to use Void Control. Also, as it requires a large amount of concentration, he cannot use any ability more advanced than a Void Saw in mid-flight.

[Yolanda Riona]

Approved by Nail and Jodie.