Lazulin Mulciber

22

Homeland and Locale if applicable.

Lazulin is a tall, lean individual, easily distinguished from a crowd by his long strands of silvery-white hair and mismatched red and blue eyes. An especially noticeable trait he has is the strange tattoo-like scar that runs down the side of his face, sharing a similar angry red coloration as the eye it frames. As side from these traits, Laz's face is rather handsome in its own way, though most will find there to be a strange level of . . . intensity in his eyes, as if something is staring at them from just within the darkness of his pupils.

In regards to his attire, he often walks around in a dark cloak covering the majority of his form, beneath it being a somewhat stylish but mostly functional outfit. He often keeps his right arm underneath his cloak whenever possible, so as not to draw attention to the strange black gauntlet that adorns it. In the side of his coat, there is a holster for Twilight, a magitech revolver that shoots out condensed bolts of Malum-infused energy from the Lacrima stored within the core of the weapon, which needs to be taken out to be recharged with Malum every so often. He also carries a large array of mundane knives of various sizes on his person, for when encounters tend to get more up close and personal than he generally prefers.

Laz is generally a fun-loving soul who enjoys playing a good prank or three on those around him, using his wit and charm to lower people's guard before striking with certain humiliation. While most of his jokes can be considered in the name of fun, he does have a tendency to go a tinge too far at times, especially if the target in question has done something to irritate or anger him recently. Laz's temperament can best be described as that of a low burning flame, in that he isn't the type to go over the top with his anger, but instead holds a grudge against the offender in question until he feels like they either have proven themselves worthy to be forgiven, or he has been able to enact an appropriate punishment upon them.

When it comes to the current government, however, you'll find few others who hold such a deep-seated and burning hatred for them as he does, So great is this anger, as well as his desire for vengeance, that he treats everyone involved with the system to be corrupt until proven otherwise, and often has little hesitation in dealing out his own brand of justice on them for their supposed crimes, be they present or future ones.

Laz is not fully human. This is a fact that he has been aware of for as long as he can remember, explained to him by the woman he once called his mother, Nirvellia Mulciber. As the Inquisitor tasked with researching the influx of demonic activity as well as ways to handle them with fewer casualties, to find a young hybrid specimen like Lazulin was a veritable goldmine of information.

He was snatched away from the orphanage where he was found and taken to a secure facility to be raised by the researchers there, always put under a constant battery of tests and assessments to see how the demonic blood in his veins affect him both magically and physically. he was not treated poorly, however, quite the opposite, with the researcher treating him as a child first and an experiment second, especially when they got to know him. This was mostly done in order to keep Lazulin in as neutral an environment as possible, but also because the researchers weren't monsters. Half-demon or not, the boy still looked and acted like a sweet and caring little boy, and as a result, melted many a heart in the facility.

The most notable case of this was Nirvelli herself. Lazulin was practically glued to her hip throughout much of his early life, and despite her best efforts to remain objective, she couldn't help but feel a warm, maternal connection with the boi. In all ways except legal, she and the other researchers had adopted Lazulin, teaching him how to control the large pool of latent ether within him through the practice of Animancy, which he took to quite easily.

However, aside from an impressive pool of latent magical power and his natural skill in wielding it, Lazulin's only noticeable trait was how he seemed to radiate small levels of demonic ether that seemed to steadily increase as he grew up. Knowing the many dangers this could pose for the research group as a whole, a special gauntlet was developed restrict his demonic blood, developed as a prototype from one of their tests. With it, he would not only be able to safely interact with others without risking corrupting those around him with tainted ether but also could theoretically use it in a similar manner to an artificarum to channel the demonic energies within him, though any attempt to awaken any special abilities granted by his demon blood often lead to little and less success.

While the research team was content with their progress, steadily learning more and more about demonic ether and it's properties from the boy, the higher-ups were much less accepting of his lack of abilities. While they had said that the project was to understand the power of the Abyssal denizens that plagued the land, what they had wanted more than anything was either a weapon or some way to harness the demonic energies for their own uses. None of the research provided by the team was able to meet those standards, and after 18 years, the Eccelsiae decided that they needed to take matters into their own hands. A small platoon of Inquisitors was sent to the research station, demanding the boy be handed over for more radical testing. However, to their surprise, they found a good number of the researcher to be in opposition to the idea, especially when Nirvelli herself did so. Unfortunately for all of the protesters, the Inquisitors weren't taking no for an answer and despite their requests for more time, they quickly subdued all dissenting team members until they got to Nirvelli, who actually attacked one of the Inquisitors when they tried to grab a frightened Lazulin.

The Head Inquisitor of the platoon put her down before she could do much damage, face curled into a look of disgust and irritation. While the others went to Apprehend a struggling Lazulin, the head Inquisitor drew his blade and approached the downed woman with the intent to execute her for her treason. Lazulin watched the blade as time seemed to slow down, feeling utterly helpless and insignificant as his entire world was being torn away from him. And at that moment, he heard something. A voice within, one that had been with him all his life, whispering dark promises of power whenever his emotions seemed to be getting the better of him. Before, he had always managed to dispel it, as the voice brought with it the feeling of evil and danger. But at this moment, with the site of the woman that he'd come to think of as a mother about to be slain, he didn't hesitate to latch onto the voice. He let it consume him entirely, drowning himself in power, hunger, and primal rage as his visions faded into nothing but a field of red.

When the red faded away, he was the only soul left alive within the facility, with a flurry of disjointed memories floating through his mind, showing scene after scene of horrific violence as his demon-possessed body sought out and killed every last soul it could find, a monster without conscious or rational thought.

Just a beast driven to kill and devour solely by it's murderous, all-consuming Hunger.

He relived every moment of his victim's deaths, feeling everything they felt roll through him as he felt nothing but disgust and self-hatred. But more than anything, he felt a deep hatred for the Eccelsiae and the Inquisitors who had caused all of this to happen. If they hadn't come around, then he none of this would have happened. From this train of thought came others like it, pushing more and more blame onto the Ecclesiae, holding them responsible for everything that had happened and promising to himself that he wouldn't stop till the entire organization was not but ashes. With this new target in mind, he took a moment to mourn his family, promising once more that he would avenge their deaths, before setting out with his new purpose in hand, unknowingly giving into the darker urges and fueling the his demonic inner nature.

Over the next few years, he used his new found ability to learn more about the Eccelsiae's inner workings, target key targets and points of interest, and do everything he could to disrupt the organization, sometimes at the cost of innocnet lives. While he has yet to be identified by name, his face and hair often concealed underneath a hood and mask, his specific use of malum energy and his demonic abilities are often used to warn the general populace, with the main warrant on his head being a sizeable sum for his death, and about triple that for his live capture.

The Eccelsiae still want thei rweapon, after all.

Malum

Animancy: This magic was originally crafted with the purpose of turning malum energy towards healing and genetic improvement of mankind. Making use of malum's unique properties when coming in contact with other forms of ether to transfer vitality, heal grievous wounds, and even enhance one's body beyond human limitations. However, when it came to start dismantling the Ecclesiae piece by piece, Lazulin turned the magic towards much darker purposes.

To put it simply, through the use of Malum-infused ether, Lazulin can increase his regenerative and physical abilities, infuse objects or living things with necrotic energies, or even corrupt biological matter, either to force it to evolve in some way temporarily(say forcing his own body to change in order to grow a pair of wings of a tail) or cause the cells within a dead or dying creature to suddenly start multiplying like crazy, forming into cancerous growths that can somewhat shaped by Lazulin's will. However, more than other magic, these abilities come at a cost. Immediately after any transformation's duration ends, the user will feel a rather extreme form of fatigue falls over them. Similar effects are caused by the other uses of the magic, but they're more in line with what's to be expected of such spells.

The Great Devourer, Nidhoggr:Less a proper form of magic then it is a simple unleashing of malum energy at it's most extreme intensity, this magic summons forth an amorphous creature made of pure malum-infused ether, wrapping around him like a cloak and acting as a versatile tool for both offensive and defensive maneuvers by shifting itself into a myriad of shapes, most commonly that of a hungering wyrm. The energy that makes up this monster is composed is highly caustic and destructive, causing anything it touches to start breaking apart, be it metal, flesh, even ether itself. That being said, the speed of this deterioration depends on the strength of what's being put up against it, so stronger foes, dense or enhanced materials, and dense concentrations of ether, often take much longer to break down.

Another feature of this magic, however, is that its caustic nature isn't solely an offensive attribute, but instead an aid for the primary function of the magic: to feed on life, primarily other magic users. When something becomes fully consumed by the malum energy construct, not only does its ether serve to fuel Lazulin's reserves a bit(Nidhoggr itself is a highly draining magical technique that Lazulin can't maintain for that long even if he wanted to, no matter how much it consumes), but he also gains all of that individual's memories, right up to the moment of their demise. It takes time to completely process them, something usually done when he can take the time to focus, but such a skill has proven very useful to Lazulin in his attempts to take down the Ecclesiae, though he's yet to get used to the distrurbed feeling he gets whenever he goes through the memories of a dead man, knowing that he had been the one to kill him. This skill can also be used to temporarily gain the skills of someone recently consumed, allowing Lazulin to do some of the things that individual can do for a shrot time after he has consumed them, about 5 minutes or when he stops using the magic, which ever comes first.