[hider=Leviathan] [b]Name[/b]: Leviathan; the Black Kraken; the Thousand-Faced Stalker; the Demon Prince of Envy. [b]Species[/b]: Demonic shapeshifting kraken [b]Alignment[/b]: Dark [b]Partner[/b]: Harold Nordstrom [b]Faction[/b]: Infernal Legion [b]Sex[/b]: Male(?) [b]Age[/b]: Unknown [b]Appearance[/b]: The first word that comes to mind when describing Leviathan is "squid". Whilst he can apparently take on any humanoid form he likes through his abilities, and tends to adopt a humanoid form based on his current preferences, his true body is very distinctly shaped, appearing as a massive entity seemingly modelled after the colossal squid if it were twenty meters long rather than twelve to fourteen. Many gigantic eyes run round the entire circumference of his head, and a great many hard pointed spines run down his length, including along his tentacles, of which he seems to typically possess at least twice as many as any normal squid, with the capacity to grow even more. Also, like a colossal squid, his tentacles possess both swivelling and three-pointed sharp hooks, in addition to the standard suckers lined with teeth that are more prevalent on the smaller giant squid. All of this is coloured black, in varying tones ranging from glossy to matte depending on the discussed body part, and in spite of what the square-cube law might otherwise suggest, he is in no way weighed down by gravity on land, able to move around through flight or by walking on his tentacles, and capable of striking with his tentacles with terrifying speed for their size if he so chooses. His currently preferred humanoid form, generally adopted when in council with the other demon princes, is light-skinned, possessing slick blonde hair that seems to have been oiled back, and bright green eyes with a piercing gaze. It is about 170 cm tall, and is typically clad in a spotless white suit with a red shirt, black tie, and black dress shoes. The most notable aspects of the form are the six meter-long tentacles extending from its back, with the capacity to extend even further outward, dispelling the image of an otherwise rather normal human, though the form in question is generally altered alongside his other traits when interacting with human beings, and even other spirits at times. [b]Aura[/b]: Leviathan's normal aura appears as a smooth, inky liquid darkness with a hint of sea green in it, seeming to be capable of flowing and reforming into whatever is desired of it. However, as with his appearance, this can be edited to appear as any number of possible alternatives suiting his current personality. [b]Personality[/b]: Leviathan appears to be quite normal externally, capable of putting on a charming, charismatic personality which can often sway the most stubborn of minds. This, however, is the charm of a psychopath who sees others as tools and nothing more: his capacity to adopt and discard false personalities on a whim is incredible, as though he is directly editing his very mind, but all hide a callous disregard for other forms of life. If he even has a true self beyond this, it is buried beneath his falsehoods beyond any reach less than a very deep mindscan indeed, and he is unwilling to allow anything of the sort to be used on him if he can help it. [b]Biography[/b]: Leviathan reveals as little about his past as he can when asked. Logistically, all that is really known by even his fellow demon princes is that the original Leviathan had been weakened by a curse set upon him by Satan during the coup of the princes, and was therefore forced to hibernate to recover from it. This Leviathan hid himself away from the rest of the demon realm whilst recovering, so well in fact that even the other demon princes could not follow; and yet another demon still managed to find a way to intrude upon and murder him in his hiding spot, and what returned was a very different Leviathan, with a very different mindset. Where the original Leviathan had been recalcitrant and unwilling to interact with his fellows, this one was shockingly charismatic, almost to a fault... when he felt like it, at least. He was also, it turned out, one of the most active plotters in the Infernal Legion's upper echelons, and has developed a number of ideas regarding how they could advance their cause over the few dozen years he has been active, including significant input into seeing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come to fruition. With the fall of the First Seal thirty years ago, and the more recent choosing of a sufficiently powerful partner that he can basically manipulate into doing his bidding at will, his great power and extensive capabilities now extend into the world of humans too. [b]Skills[/b]: Leviathan's full skillset is vast, thanks to his abilities, but its full extent is typically kept under metaphorical lock and key, and not described wholly even to his fellows; attempts to pry it or anything else from his mind by force have been historically unsuccessful thanks to a combination of slippery mindset and substantial psychic ability. What he is well-known to be very good at, however, is manipulation of others into doing his bidding, being capable of putting on often-personalised facades which can play all but the most perceptive of beings, as well as a surprisingly large inventive streak that leaves him rather capable of changing tactics on a dime. [b]Abilities[/b]: [i]Shift[/i] - The base of most of Leviathan's being, this ability lets him, at will, alter not only his physical appearance, but his aura and even his very personality too, to mimic just about any being he's personally encountered before to the point of copying their magical abilities, or to form entirely new personas to adopt as needed. The change in aura and personality is almost complete, requiring a rather deep mind scan just to uncover his true self beneath the image (though this is not to say any mimicry will actually be particularly good without significant knowledge of a copied target), and his physical shapeshifting is of course very useful in combat, letting him form blades, blunt objects, and spikes of all sorts to attack his opponents with. [i]Telepathy[/i] - Leviathan's main form of attack, in which psychic energy is used to penetrate a target's mind, and subsequently read their minds, implant illusions, deal mental damage to them, and many other possible effects, either subtly or not. He prefers this form of attack when not emulating other beings, but it is obviously less effective against beings of greater willpower. He can also use this ability to communicate with others from long distances, as well as on himself and his partner to produce beneficial effects, including amongst other things enhanced and accelerated perceptions, increased deductive capabilities, and both active and passive resistance to an opponent's mental assaults, the latter in particular achieved by increasing willpower in a way that also increases the effectiveness of mental assaults against any given target. [i]-Mindtheft[/i] - By either devouring a target's soul, or performing a deep scan on their mind whilst they are unable to fight back, Leviathan can accurately copy most to all of their mindset, and subsequently acquire knowledge of both the skills they know and the elements and abilities they can use. Additionally, he acquires intimate awareness of the target's aura and mannerisms, allowing him to pull off a nearly perfect imitation of them through use of Shift, though this can be seen through by those who are close to the imitated target with enough skill and perceptiveness. [i]Deathflood[/i] - An ability based around freeform manipulation of heavily Dark-infused water, to produce a corrosive effect akin to very strong magical acid, complete with green boiling colouration. Given his wide skillset, Leviathan is more than capable of producing various attack forms with this ability: [i]-Death Geyser[/i] - Leviathan forms a Deathflood geyser beneath an opponent, striking them from below with a condensed burst. This can also be launched as a normal beam-like attack from Leviathan himself, with similar effect, and/or condensed down even further to form an attack akin to a waterjet cutter more suited for penetrating armour and other defenses. [i]-Deathwave[/i] - Leviathan sends out a Deathflood wave of variable width and height, covering a potentially very large area to hit massed foes as well as foes with the capacity to dodge more effectively than usual. [i]-Death Abyss[/i] - One of the stronger attack forms which combines with Telepathy for greater effect, Leviathan forms a seemingly-shallow Deathflood puddle beneath a target, only for it to rise up and swallow them whole, submerging them in an apparently endless Deathflood ocean with no way out, though they are really only contained in a pit slightly larger than themselves. In addition to Deathflood's usual damaging capacity, this produces the illusion that the target is also drowning and placed under extremely high pressure for water mass, in a way that is likely to knock them unconscious after a while if they have not already died or broken out of the illusion. [i]Abyssal Ruin[/i] - In similar fashion to Asmodeus' version of the ability, Leviathan has learned to utilise to some extent the power of the Abyss that Hell is built around, letting him produce a pitch-black energy that appears to devour light around it whilst emitting its own dark, sea-green light, with effects akin to those of standard Dark magic whilst also being far more damaging and harder to resist per unit of energy. However, it seems Leviathan is no more capable of controlling it than Asmodeus himself, and in fact those in the know have often asked questions about how he managed to acquire it in the first place, given that he is almost certainly not as skilled in the relevant areas as Asmodeus despite his vast repertoire of abilities; when asked, he will tend to deflect the question, change the subject, claim he's "just that good", and otherwise do what he can to avoid revealing how he acquired it. [i]Dark Rituals[/i] - Using his extensive knowledge of Dark magic, Leviathan can perform many Dark-aligned magical rituals with effects that he cannot directly produce with his own magic. As usual, these require preparation, time, and focus, and are weaker than his own abilities. [b]Soulshards[/b]: N/A [b]Possessions[/b]: N/A [/hider] [hider=Harold Nordstrom] [b]Name[/b]: Harold Nordstrom [b]Species[/b]: Human [b]Alignment[/b]: Dark [b]Partner[/b]: Leviathan [b]Faction[/b]: Infernal Legion [b]Sex[/b]: Male [b]Age[/b]: 23 [b]Appearance[/b]: Harold nominally possesses an abnormally skinny build with extremely pale skin, to the point that one might think him a victim of forced slavery if the appearance were not seemingly deliberate. He is 180cm tall, with unkempt brown hair and blue, bloodshot eyes surrounded by deep purple bags, and typically wears rather generic grey clothing in the form of a shirt, jeans, socks and hoodie, plus grey shoes. [b]Aura[/b]: Harold's aura is nominally a wavery grey, as though it has no clear direction to it, though mouths and eyes seems to momentarily form within it on a regular basis, as though pressing outward from behind a veil. This changes when he is incited to go berserk - the entire aura goes haywire, expanding into a much larger area that seems to flood the area with deranged faces and static-like interference. [b]Personality[/b]: The most major aspect of Harold's persona is that he is heavily schizophrenic, a trait exacerbated by Leviathan to encompass the vast majority of his being to the point that even the thought of suicide has been wiped from his mind. At a good moment, he will merely exhibit its negative symptoms, such as a lack of expression and emotion, poverty of speech, lack of motivation and desire to form relationships, and an inability to feel pleasure, alongside various deficits in cognitive function; in moments where positive symptoms are in effect, he tends to experience delusions, disordered thought and speech patterns, and various forms of psychotic hallucination. However, Leviathan has further integrated a trigger to set off a state of berserk fury; in this situation, all Harold will perceive is a mess of warped faces screaming hateful things at him, with only Leviathan's intended targets clear through the mess, and the promise in his mind that so long as the targets are destroyed, the state will fade sooner or later. [b]Biography[/b]: Harold is not too sure about his past prior to acquiring schizophrenia, given that part of its effects involve cognitive deficits. He remembers that his life was actually fairly good, and that for the most part, he had a loving family, but nothing more particular than that. After the onset of his mental illness, he knows he was placed into an institution to help try and deal with its effects, and that he seemed to be recovering to some extent, particularly with the help of pills... and then a man in a suit came along. The man told Harold that his potential for power was exactly what he needed to help him, and that with his help, he could make Harold one of the most powerful beings alive. To this day, Harold remains unsure about why he accepted the offer; the fact remains, though, that with a soul pact forged, Harold was spirited away from the institution to some dark and horrific place, and his mental state rapidly decayed, to the point of becoming a shadow of his former self even by the standards of his prior illness. The suited man had not lied, though, and Harold quickly developed into a powerhouse, more than capable of helping the man perform whatever was needed of him at the time. In fact, he did not want anything more than to do this. Other considerations were always veered around by his brain, and he eventually stopped trying to reach them; the man in a suit was his friend, and so he needed to help him. There was nothing else he needed by then, after all. [b]Skills[/b]: He's not quite sure how, but it seems that Harold acquires whatever skill is needed of him for any given task, to a shockingly high degree; at the same time, once a task is completed, whatever skills he had seem to fade from memory, leaving him incapable of performing the actions needed for his tasks. One thing that remains generally present, however, is an absurd degree of relentlessness, particularly in his berserk state, to the point that he is likely to end up being killed if not reined back by Leviathan against a sufficiently-powerful foe. [b]Abilities[/b]: [i]Mutation[/i] - An ability revolving around the modification of Harold's body toward particular intents, typically as requested by Leviathan. The most common form of this ability, often entered into almost automatically during his berserk state, involves modifying his physique to focus on speed, agility, and strength, though other forms can be readily implemented as needed. This can also act as a form of impromptu regeneration by mutating away physical injuries, though it is somewhat less effective in this than true regeneration, both by being less energy efficient and by needing to be manually instigated to work in this fashion. To wit, Harold will never be as good in any given form as an otherwise physically identical person who has focused on those traits specifically, though that is compensated for by the versatility of this ability. [i]Static Shock[/i] - An ability revolving around the use of heavily Dark-infused monochrome electricity, both to paralyse and damage foes through electric burns and the disintegration common to Dark magic. In spite of his schizophrenic state, Harold seems to be at least moderately skilled in using this ability, being able to form structures such as blades and energy-absorbing barriers as needed, as well as longer-ranged attacks like beams and blasts. [i]Static Overload[/i] - An ability similar to Static Shock, but in the realm of the mind instead; a foe subjected to this ability will typically either have their thought processes paralysed, have pseudo-electrical mental damage dealt to them, or be subjected to a perceptive effect that emulates Harold's mindset in them, leaving their vision and sixth sense flooded with static and disturbing images, and their hearing overloaded with voices informing them of how awful they are in various ways. Of course, this is less effective on those possessed of greater willpower, and in particular those with higher self-esteem will be substantially less affected by the voices than those of lower self-esteem. [b]Soulshards[/b]: N/A [b]Possessions[/b]: N/A [/hider]