[hider=Character Sheet: Alexander Orlok]
Name: Alexander Orlok (The Face Dancer)

Race:  Metatyutem

Gender: Genderless (Originally male)

Age: 24

Place of Origin: Din Ghulda, Tel-Narra 

Appearance: Given his Metayutem nature, most of the time Alexander doesn’t have a set appearance, and regularly changes it to suit his needs. When in his “natural” form he takes on the appearance a youthful man, with a lithe athletic figure and standing about 5,9 in height. Due to being a Metayutem, he is entirely colourless when not shapeshifting, so is completely marble white from head to toe, with not even his eyes being spared. He has what might be described as delicate, angular features, with high cheekbones, and a cruel looking mouth often twisted into a mocking sneer of contempt. This is assisted by a slightly curved scar beginning at the left side of his mouth, which makes him always look like he’s laughing at a private joke or planning something devious. His hair is short and unstyled, giving him a vaguely rugged look. His arms are covered in scars, along with a few on his upper body, he is also missing his little finger on his left hand, which he lost when completing a contract on a noble in the High Republic.

His clothing tends to be whatever suits the occasion, but underneath he generally wears leather armour, and several cross-chest throwing knife belts, along with a larger blade which can be hidden on his person. Above this he tends to wear a black leather longcoat and a long white hood and scarf which hides his face from view. He generally carries a collection of old ceramic masks across his chest, a mocking jest to his ever shifting character, and sometimes goes masked when assassinating someone who has a contract on them. Usually he carries a collection of smoke bombs and poison vials with him as well when he is making a hit, along with lockpicks and other tools of the trade. When he doesn’t have his hood up, he usually covers his face with a scarf and wears an old, slightly singed brown leather tricorn hat.

 Personality: Alexander’s personality could be summed up in one word: sardonic. He is not easy to get on with and has no intention of changing that, so talking with him is usually highly sarcastic and snarky affair, coloured with cruel jibes wherever he can implement them. He has a sadistic sense of humour which he utilises to his enjoyment of making people stupider than him suffer, mostly because he thinks they deserve it, but also because he thinks it’s funny. Whilst he has every capacity to be disarmingly charming and friendly, he discards it as soon as it becomes unnecessary or when the requirement for him to act pleasant is no longer needed. He travels too frequently to settle down and make any friends –even if they could get past his unpleasant personality- and largely views anyone he knows as an unwelcome acquaintance rather than a valued companion. Also if it suits his means, he’ll happily screw someone over for a considerable profit, or just because he hates them with a passion. Despite his ignoble origins he exerts a highly refined character, and is quite intelligent, which might be considered surprising for someone who could be described as a “glorified cutthroat”. Also, despite being a backstabbing snake, he overall won’t go back on a contract deal, not even for offers of money from the victim, mostly because nobody would hire him if he did it without good reason. He also tends to take tokens from his numerous contracts to remember them by fondly.

Class: Assassin (Face Dancer)

A Face Dancer Assassin is one who has given themselves over to what they view as Metayutem’s true path, to manipulate, undermine and kill for their own benefit. Utilising their races natural abilities to change appearances, they use this skill to murder and assassinate, or otherwise negatively affect the target on behalf of their employer. Utilising a fine array of short blades, poisons, distractions, and illusion magic, along with agility and stealth, they tend to be an agile and beguiling foe, with a silver tongue to boot. Some Face Dancers show interest in more obscure magic than illusions, and look into more unorthodox and darker magical powers, Alexander included.

Stats:
STR: 13
END: 8
INT: 13
WIS: 10
CHR: 14
AGI: 14
LCK: 8

Background: Born to a human mother and a Metayutem “father” Alexander spent the majority of his life being persecuted as the son of a monster by the rural villagers of his home town. Because of his mother’s undesirable choice of husband, they were forced to dwell on the dangerous outskirts of the village, bordering a wolf infested forest, and were universally loathed and feared for what they were. Alexander’s first memory as a boy was being clasped close to his mother staring on in fright as villagers, spurred by a wild animal attack on some youngsters sent out to collect firewood, burned his father alive under the false belief that he was the cause of the beast attacks.

After this he and his mother became even more secluded and isolated and Alexander grew up bitter and spiteful, as he was repeatedly bullied, harassed and beaten by the other boys for being the son of a “monster”, despite looking perfectly human. Due to his peasant social station he couldn’t escape the brutality, and with nobody to teach him words he remained near illiterate for a considerable amount of his life. Forced to rely on an ever decreasing yield from the few anaemic fields they owned, they lived on the knife edge of subsistence, his mother died when he was fourteen due to a localised famine in the region, leaving him in charge of a near desolate farm and increasing his workload exponentially. By this point in time he started noticing changes in his physical appearance, especially once his fifteenth birthday arrived. He became paler and paler, and less human looking than before and more and more like his father, eventually learning how to change his appearance and mimic the local villagers perfectly. At first he started out by simply stealing food from his neighbours by changing form, but years of persecution quickly lead to an escalation of his bitter hatred… and an ability to fight back without suffering repercussions was only too tempting.

Knowing that they’d impose the same death upon him as they had done to his father for being an “aberration”, he decided it was better for him to make a move first, rather than wait for a calamity to occur and to be lynched for it. Moving from house to house, he imitated members of the local families and instigated a blood feud between them, slowly ramping up the tension by moving behind each other’s lines and sabotaging grain supplies and stealing their valued commodities for himself. Eventually he built up enough conflict in the community and it promptly tore itself apart, with family killing family in an all out bloody struggle for supremacy. In the end next to nobody survived, and when Alexander emerged from hiding he found the majority of the villagers dead or badly injured. Taking a rusted knife from the hand of a dead peasant, he promptly slit the rest of the townsfolk’s throats in revenge and looted what remained of their possessions, burning down the village as he left with what little gold and useful items he could find.

After spending several days on the road, he eventually reached the nearest city, where he quickly established himself amongst the cities vagrant population. Learning the ways of the street he became an agile and nimble street thief, and further honed his abilities at shape shifting. Utilising his abilities, he stole himself an education at a school for nobles by taking the place of lazy students and sitting in on the teaching, eventually learning to read and write, as well as knowledge of the world and its history. It is also here he learned some of the refinement and culture he adopted into his character, developing a charming and gregarious exterior, and furthering the development of his manipulative abilities. He proved to be an apt student and learned incredibly quickly for someone who’d lived in such deprivation, showing a natural intelligence far above his fellow students and his own years. On the side of this he quickly became hired muscle for the various violent criminal gangs, but found that they took ill advantage of his skills and mostly scorned his contributions. Eventually he decided to become an independently contracted assassin, working for no one but those who paid him and rising quickly in status as he moved from murdering shopkeepers to assassinating top members of the aristocracy, building him a name in the process, as well as providing monetary incentive to continue. Eventually he became a much sought after hired blade, assisting those with enough coin to make him pay attention and assassinating some of the highest figures in the city, with little care for what damage or good he caused. Still, he yearned for something more fulfilling, and not just to be the local best assassin, so he went out and began to attempt to make his fortune in the wider world.

Over the next six years Alexander crossed most of the known world, taking contract after contract and killing and assassinating anyone to further his own means. It didn’t matter if the person was evil or good to him; he’d kill them all the same. Morality had no issue in his job, and he chose instead to simply enjoy the little things; Like strangling fat human merchants to death in their bathtubs with his bare hands. Over the years, he’d begun to exert a dark view on the world and all the people in it, becoming a sardonic and sadistic, and generally becoming more and more violent and unsavoury. He joined a few assassins’ guilds, but quickly left after a few months, preferring the freedom that being an independent contractor allowed him. After five or so years he’d racked up a small reputation in the criminal underworld, and had plenty of wild tales to tell of the contracts he’d pulled over the years, some of them highly audacious.

Most recently a contract in Thanadan has struck his interest in the city, he is to assassinate an elderly lord of that city when he arrives, and is preparing to launch off from a boat from Din-Ghulda towards his target. With a sardonic smirk on his face, and with his hands unconsciously juggling poisoned throwing knives, he prepares for an easy kill, followed by a night of debauchery in a city he has never had the pleasure to visit before.

He’s never been happier.

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