[center][h2]Czes Schäfer[/h2][/center] [i]Immortality—the defiance of entropy in spite of time or casual circumstance.[/i] ... [h3]KNOWLEDGE[/h3] Whether a thing is good or bad often depends on factors independent of its own merits—a bit of knowledge Czes ascertained the Winter of 1675. The night in particular was bitterly cold, and the white vapors that still stir over the Baltic shimmered ominously under the low haze of the Northern Lights. A vague and magical apparition it seemed, seen through a small block of frost-traced glass fogged by his breath and painted over with hearth fire. At the time Czes was recently turned nine and was, he had been told by his custodian, to become—on short order—a man’s man. That is, if he behaved himself and was very lucky. Until then, he would have to be sated by the duties required of him as a man’s toy. Such was his state as he gazed out the window in awe: a rented bit of equipment that, once unwanted, would be returned to the orphanage in Prague, stitched up, cleaned up, consoled, and sent out to service the next inquirer. Forgotten for the while, he perched on a stool and took small comfort in the heat of the fire. Otherwise, the room was empty and drafty. His suit inadequate to the climate, he shuddered, but not merely for the chill thrust into his bones by the wet seaside air. Beyond the door, an occult gathering of gentlemen were audible, and out of the muffled din of voices the words [i]all of us who are here[/i]! seemed to anticipate an onslaught of demoniacal laughter. At the time, he did not know what they were speaking of. Still, the thought of what was to come utterly terrified him, but it was proven baseless, as much worse transpired within the hour. Inexplicably, he survived it all—being torn asunder, burned alive, frozen, and disemboweled. From that night, where abandoned for the while he sat and shivered in a cottage on the little Isle. of Falster, he never aged and never suffered an injury from which he did not almost immediately recover; nor did he gain the strength of manhood, with which he could have defended himself against life’s ghastly perils, indignities, and crimes so often and undeservedly imposed on society’s weak and unusual. Since then, he has learned a great deal. ... [h3]WEALTH[/h3] Lifetimes later, beneath the shadow of a brown plaid flat-top hat, Czes studied an elaborate porcelain jigsaw puzzle strewn across the expansive bamboo floor of the Comte Foundation boardroom. The hand-painted tiles depicted the Battle of Zama, a fact entirely unrelated to anything, but it distracted him from the death of his most recent adoptive father. Both signified the end of something great—the Cathage Empire and Karl Albrecht. Albrecht was ninth in a long line of wealthy adoptive parents Czes had secured for himself after decades of torment and terror, making his estate—estimated at €81 billion—one of the richest and diverse on the planet. Light cut as a sword through the iconic violence scattered before him when his secretary adjusted the blinds on a massive window overlooking Frankfurt, Germany, from the 48th floor of the Messeturm. It was time to go. He stood, felt a tweed jacket that matched his cap slip over his shoulders, and made his way to the door. The entire floor belonged to Czes, and was the locus of business conducted by the Comte Foundation: a band of organizations that collectively controlled the European Union’s technology market, with a special focus on human augmentation through a combination of robotics, wetware, and genetic engineering. ... [h3]STRENGTH[/h3] Three minutes later, when the service elevator doors opened for Czes, the square of white light they formed dispersed into a vast room dimly outlined by red LEDs arranged in sharp geometric patterns on the otherwise bare concrete walls. Nothing seemed capable of penetrating the indistinct blackness at the chamber’s center, so all he could see for the while was a ramp that led down from his feet and another far afield that led up to a large bay door. He stepped down into shadows, the doors closed behind him, and for a while he closed his eyes and hummed. When he opened his eyes, the scene was changed—that is, from his perspective. Nothing had actually happened in the interim, save that the cones and rods in his eyes had adjusted to the lack of readily available illumination. So, instead of a pit of darkness, he saw an elegant machine, feline in structure, covered in hundreds of blotches similar to the markings of a jaguar, except these were the emblems of companies that comprised the Comte Foundation. Where there wasn’t a blotch, there was the mercurial ooze of nanobot armor overlay that clung to intricate titanium barding wrapped around the machine’s flexible tungsten endo-skeleton. Tungsten, Czes had learned, was one of the few materials that can interface with organisms on a molecular level, so in a way this wasn’t a machine at all, but a living creature. Eventually, his eyes focused, and they followed the curve of its neck upward, where he observed the platinum-embossed logos of BMW, Virgin, and Stryker, to the center of its forehead, which was dominated by the symbol of the Abditory: a teardrop being cut by a sword. When he approached, the tank-sized contraption knelt down and opened its mouth. He entered with two thoughts in his mind: ‘[i]Damn, this thing is so cool![/i]’ and ‘[i]Nothing can hurt me in here[/i]’—like Nascar meets Transformers meets [url=http://auroralion.deviantart.com/art/Energy-Liger-MK-II-254646316]Beast Wars[/url]. He intended to be fashionably late to his political summit in Geneva, Switzerland. [quote=C | I | M | P | T][code] Out of the Ordinary > 0 Clout > 1 Intellect :: hundreds of years of experience > 2 Magic :: immortality, blood magic, hexes, and access to other planes of existence > -1 Physical :: perpetual prepubescence > 1 Technological :: extensive interaction with technology[/code][/quote] [quote=Soul Sigil][code] Beyond the Veil of Flesh > a constellation of a baby jaguar sound asleep beneath a shooting star, morphing into a Möbius strip and back, -- placed by Ximbic-8 on his left hand in deep radiant crimson.[/code][/quote]