[hider=Wormwood]
[b]Name:[/b] Wormwood, the Star of Bitterness, Blasphemy of Despair

[b]Species:[/b] Fallen Angel

[b]Alignment:[/b] Light/Dark

[b]Partner:[/b] Multiple - see "Abilities"

[b]Faction:[/b] The Infernal Legion

[b]Sex:[/b] Sexless 

[b]Age:[/b] 5961 years, 2 months, 14 days, 19 hours, 44 minutes, 35 seconds

[b]Appearance:[/b]
[i]"Human" Form:[/i] Wormwood appears in this guise when attempting to go incognito, or deceive foolish humans into making a Soul Pact with him. He appears as a decrepit old man with a wide forehead and a gimlet eye. Wrinkles, liver spots and other signs of old age cover his face. The rest of his body is swathed in clothing; in olden times, it has been rags, a cloak, a plague doctor's suit. Now, it is a wide black cloak that flares outwards, with large obsidian buttons. An old, rusted pocket watch, filled with glimmering green liquid, hangs from his belt, along with an assortment of vials and syringes.

[i]True Form:[/i] When Wormwood adopts his true form, his skin cracks and splits open, and his black coat merges with it, turning into flexing bracket fungi that flare out from him, webbing over his body and acting as plate armor. His toadlike eyes widen, turning into blazing suns of radioactive white. Where the light from his eyes falls across his body, his fungi dissipate like shadows, revealing beautiful pale flesh underneath. More fungi threads through his bone and muscles, artificially reinforcing them to become thicker and stronger, changing him from a hunchbacked old man to a wrathful demon covered in both shadow and light. His lips bubble with an endless waterfall of glowing acid, spilling out constantly from his mouth. His pocket watch vanishes in a flash of mana, reappearing as a fluid, shifting water clock tattoo upon his broad chest, extending tubes down his arms, drawing intricate patterns onto his arms. They even extend partially onto the gruesome stumps of what were once angelic wings, still trickling thick ichor centuries after they were severed. Finally, his cracked fingernails sharpen and elongate into claws of polished bone, stained dark with poison.

[b]Aura:[/b] Wormwood's aura is best described as a cycle of life. As he uses his magic, his aura flares into a bright, poisonous green that seems to flood the area around him, acidic and malicious. Over time, it swirls and dries and decays into a bitter gray, growing smaller and smaller. As this happens, it starts to develop black spores, spiralling around and through him, more and more appearing every second. When the spores finally take over the gray fluid, it shrinks into a tiny black core before exploding out into bright green again.

[b]Personality:[/b] As in the Bible, the main defining trait of Wormwood is bitterness. The bitterness that caused him to turn away from the Celestiarchy is still festering and rotting within him. He can't bring himself to completely shed his angelic form; no matter how many times he tries to eradicate his wings, he always stops himself at the last second. Stuck, like in a hopeless abusive relationship, Wormwood directs his anger and hate towards the enemies of the Infernal Legion, clawing his way up the ranks of the demons in the hope that he can find solace in comfort - solace that he has so far failed to find. Perhaps his obsessiveness with old age and the notion that all things must die is what keeps him from falling off the cliffs of madness - it anchors him, keeps him grounded. Wormwood keeps time with a clockwork device gifted to him by Belphegor - over time, he has made it into his soul shard, and disruption of its steady beat destabilizes him, causing him to explode in a fit of uncontrollable rage and hate until it's recalibrated.

[b]Biography:[/b] As an angel, he was Mariel. A quiet, scholarly angel, he was sent as a missionary to preach the word of God. It is not known where he was sent, save that it was in a climate "harshesst ande moast revulting to Manne" - speculation ranges from scorching deserts(perhaps the very same desert that Satan attacked Jesus in) to barren icelands, or even to more alien locations, like a desolate wasteland, an empty place void of mana or magic. Regardless, it's indisputable that his assignment there changed him. For centuries he preached, for centuries he tried to save everyone, and watched them die instead, inexorable and inevitable. 

Mariel did not have words for the feeling that nestled within his heart then, but we now know it as Despair. Not two weeks after he returned to Heaven dejected and depressed, Lucifer visited him. At length he listened to the Shining One talk, and over the course of time his heart grew harder, and that despair twisted into hatred. When Lucifer finally declared war against the Celestiarchy, Mariel was one of the first to join Lucifer, taking the name Wormwood and rallying behind him, believing that Lucifer could quench the bitterness in him.

But when the followers of Lucifer abandoned Heaven rather than fighting, that despair only grew stronger. Wormwood saw himself as exiled to the pits of Hell, cast aside like garbage. It was in Hell that his bitterness rose again, and Wormwood declared that Lucifer had abandoned him, cursing the world and all its angels. He dedicated the rest of his life to spreading his bitterness and despair to others, in the hopes of emptying his heart of those traits, but they seemed endless, and he could not rest. 

And so Wormwood turned to the Blasphemies, the terrifying enforcers of Hell. There, he is able to unloose his poisonous mind upon the enemies of the Legion. He currently walks the human world, a loyal servant of Hell, seeking to find every place in the world that is good and beautiful and transform it into that barren climate where he once preached the Word of God. 

[b]Skills:[/b]
[i]Long-Lived:[/i] After living for nearly six thousand years, Wormwood has an extremely large collection of knowledge, from technical skills to magical lore, as well as combat ability. Although he scoffs at knowledge and seeks only destruction, a certain amount has soaked into him from simple experience, over the years. In general, if it is reasonable for an average human to know or be able to do, Wormwood almost certainly knows it as well.

[i]Forked Tongue:[/i] Although not nearly as proficient as the Prince of Lies, Wormwood is adept at squirreling out people's insecurities and fears and using them as weapons. His whispers and hisses have driven many mortals to suicide or self-harm. Not for nothing does his maw brim with poison. 

[b]Abilities:[/b] 
[i]Infestation:[/i] Wormwood can order the fungus that grows on his body to infect an area with microscopic spores. These spores take root in all living things and extend tiny roots into them, feeding off their magical energy. Over a period of two or three hours, the spores grow into more fungi. The land will be blanketed in black fungi, while any living things foolish enough to remain in the area will have their flesh torn apart by roots and spores. Even worse, the excess magical energy absorbed by the fungi is fed into Wormwood, making him stronger as he infests more areas. 

Wormwood also uses the Infestation ability to sustain his presence in the mortal world without a spirit partner - after forcefully forging a Soul Pact with magically dense individuals, he simply covers them with spores and extracts their magic. He usually keeps a few dozen infected slaves locked up in order to maintain the large amounts of magical energy needed to engage in serious combat. 

[i]Poisonous Cascade:[/i] An endless waterfall of green and black poison flows forth from the stumps of Wormwood's wings and from within his mouth. This extremely lethal poison is absorbed by touch - any dirt that touches it becomes barren, trees are blackened and shed their leaves, humans are paralyzed and slowly die in a growing pool of toxins or spores. This ability makes Wormwood increasingly difficult to fight as battles grow longer, for he has more time to flood the area with poison.

[i]The Chernobyl Disaster:[/i] The light emanating from Wormwood's spotlight eyes is extremely radioactive, orders of magnitude above even the worst nuclear disasters known to mankind. It is enough to kill ordinary humans more or less instantly, and will produce strain on magical shields. Everything touched by the light is soaked in radiation, and will be inhospitable for centuries, barring magical intervention. Wormwood may control the amount of energy chanmeled into his eyes at will, or turn them off if he so chooses.

[i]Seeds of Darkness:[/i] The "fungi" that grows on Wormwood's body and spores are actually more accurately described as parasites made of solid darkness. As they are made of his energy, he can control them, flexing them, sharpening them into razor blades or hardening them into armor. Although he cannot change their state(eg. into liquid) without disrupting their mana structure, he can retract or extend them, change their shape and fling them out violently.

[i]Star Wormwood:[/i] Wormwood can transform his body into that of a blazing comet, allowing him to accelerate at supersonic speed. It also grants him extreme maneuverability, allowing him to make sharp turns at full speed, and blasts radiation in a massive aura around him, though at a reduced intensity. Upon a hard impact, the comet explodes, loosing a large cloud of nerve gas and transforming his body back into his regular demon form.

[i]Curse of the Third:[/i] Wormwood can turn almost any substance into a glowing acid, bright green and highly concentrated, upon touch. The acid is always liquid, regardless of the form of the substance that was touched. Substances magically powerful enough to resist Wormwood's deconstruction will not be affected. There is no limit to the volume of matter this ability can affect, save Wormwood's mana supplies - he has been known to acidify entire rivers. 

[b]Soulshards:[/b] 
[i]Belphegor's Pendulum[/i]: A magical clock that appears as either a pocket-watch or tattoo of a water clock, Belphegor's Pendulum was originally a gift from the demon prince Belphegor as a reward for Wormwood's loyalty and competence in serving the Infernal Legion. Although it has no particular combat purpose, it synchronizes Wormwood's mind and heartbeat with the sway of an internal pendulum, keeping him from having psychotic episodes, fits of rage or otherwise becoming emotionally and mentally unstable. It also grants him hyperprecise knowledge of time - he can recite the timing of events down to the microsecond level, for example. 

[b]Possessions:[/b] None. 
[/hider]