[color=6B8E23][b]Recollections, Sycamore Tree[/b][/color]
[indent]
[hider=Luciano Alves Oliviera]
[CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/FVY5Fq3.png[/img]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X0HMU0bDK4&ab_channel=Haken-Topic[/youtube][/CENTER]
[i]"Why wouldn’t I use the time I have left to help?"[/i]
[table][row][/row][row][cell]
[center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/de/3f/30/de3f30edad0a9fdec1f9ae9a81f935f3.jpg[/img]
[sup]_______________________________________________[/sup]
[sub][color=6B8E23]Luciano “Luca” Manuel Alves Oliviera[/color]

[color=6B8E23]He/They[/color]  [b]|[/b]  [color=6B8E23] 25[/color]  [b]|[/b]   [color=6B8E23]Brazilian[/color]  [b]|[/b]   [color=6B8E23]5’3”[/color]  [b]|[/b]   [color=6B8E23]105lbs [/color]     
[sup]_______________________________________________[/sup]
[color=6B8E23]Positivity[/color]
[sup]_______________________________________________[/sup]
[color=6B8E23]Skills & Talents[/color][/sub]
[i]"I had to give up a lot of what I was good at when [/i]it[i] attached itself to me. Maybe one day I’ll be able to play soccer again…"[/i]
[sup]___________________________________[/sup][/center][hider=]
[sub][color=6B8E23][b]Information Gathering  ⫻[/b][/color] Luca has spent most of the last ten years researching a way to remove the apparition attached to their soul, jumping from paranormal group to paranormal group and finding as many materials they can on the subject. While they haven’t found much to help out they’ve gotten very good at searching for information, whether it's from talking to people or reading books.

[color=6B8E23][b]Optimism  ⫻[/b][/color] Luca likes to think his optimistic thinking, always looking on the bright side, is a talent. No matter the bad news or the difficulties he will keep going. He’s very resilient. 

[color=6B8E23][b]Wood Carving ⫻[/b][/color] Though he doesn’t do it as much as he did as a teenager, Luca is good at carving figures out of wood. He mostly does animals, and sometimes the paranormal creatures he’s seen. He can only do it for a short period of time at once, otherwise he’ll start rotting the wood, but it’s the one hobby from before he got his abstraction he’s managed to keep up.[/sub][/hider]

[/cell][cell][sub][color=6B8E23][b] Appearance[/b][/color][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"Huh, I’m bleeding? It’s bad? Don’t worry, this happens a lot."[/i]

[indent]With noticeable dark bags under his eyes, Luciano looks perpetually tired. Dull brown eyes peer out from behind sweeping curtain bangs that they’re constantly having to move to keep them from restricting their vision. Their hair is thick and dark brown, falling in a smooth curve past his eyes and in shorter, light curls at the back of his neck. Their skin is a warm tan, slightly rough. They’re rarely found without at least earrings, often wearing a simple stud in one ear and a hanging one in the other. Their earrings are most commonly made of titanium, which is resistant to rusting. All of their jewellery, which they enjoy wearing, is made of this or other pure metals - anything mixed with iron won’t last long near them.

Luca isn’t particularly short for who he was born as, but his small stature is something that annoys him. It makes it more difficult to pass, and their parents weren’t even that short! So why did he get the short end of the stick? Luca is slender, too - currently still a healthy weight, but at risk of becoming underweight. He’s physically weak, though he tries to hide this as best as he can. He has curved scars under his chest from top surgery. He has multiple smaller scars across his body, most of which he can’t remember where he got them from. Most of the time Luca has at least one, if not multiple, open wounds or cuts. 

Luca is always found with a button down shirt on. They vary from the occasional bright, bold patterns to more lowkey neutrals, sometimes tucked into a pair of baggy trousers and sometimes open over a tank top, but always there. Their favoured colours tend to be shades of green, brown, white and navy blue in striped patterns apart from “special occasions” (days they’re feeling like brightening everything up). Their shirts are normally paired with wide legged trousers, with a white or black top underneath. They tend to cover up, whether it's wearing a long sleeved t-shirt with a short sleeved button down, or a long sleeved button down. Most of their clothes are made of synthetic fibres, polyester or nylon, because it degrades slower and thus he doesn’t have to replace them as frequently. He’s never found without a pair of black, polyester-lycra gloves on. Luca is bright and cheerful, often smiling or chatting. He is generally very expressive, with an inability to keep his immediate reactions off his face. The only expressions he rarely has are those of sadness, the one thing he keeps locked deep down. 
[/indent]

[/cell][/row][/table][sub][b][color=6B8E23] Psychology[/color][/b][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"I want everyone to remember me as someone who never gave up. I want them to remember my positivity.”[/i]

[INDENT][color=6B8E23][b]MAIN GOAL  ⫻[/b][/color] To be free of the apparition he’s adjoined to. After that he just wants to live his life, enjoying all the things he was unable to - spending time with his family, playing soccer again and just using a phone without worrying that he’ll destroy it. 

[color=6B8E23][b]PHILOSOPHY  ⫻[/b][/color] Live life as if everyday could be your last. Luca has always focused on living life to the fullest, without getting dragged down by the small things. This has only grown stronger when they realised how short their life might be. They believe in focusing on the good and in enjoying himself, rather than the inevitable end. Because everyone dies eventually, some just sooner than others.

[color=6B8E23][b]SECRETS  ⫻[/b][/color] Luca’s biggest secret is his shortened lifespan, and how ill his abstraction has made him. He keeps on a strong front as if it isn’t slowly eating him from the inside. He hasn’t told any of his family, because how could he even begin to explain it? He also hides that sometimes he feels that it's all pointless. This is a feeling he tries to hide from even himself, shoving it deep down everytime it rears its ugly head.

[color=6B8E23][b]SEXUALITY  ⫻[/b][/color] Probably attracted to men, but Luca has never had the chance to be in a relationship. When he was younger he was struggling with his gender, and now he can’t get physically close to anyone without hurting them.

[color=6B8E23][b]FEARS  ⫻[/b][/color] The Rot possessing them. They can constantly feel it prodding their mind, looking for a weak spot to take advantage of. They fear it more than dying, though they also fear dying like most people do. They also fear harming their loved ones, especially their family.

[color=6B8E23][b]REPUTATION IN OLD COVEN   ⫻[/b][/color]  Neutral, or slightly positive. Luca joined the coven late, a short time before the final battle. He was helpful and friendly which would’ve given the others a good impression of him but also standoffish as he learned the effects of his abstraction. He stuck with the old coven until it dissolved and while he wasn’t contributing to the petty squabbles his attempted positivity didn’t help towards the end.

[color=6B8E23][b]ROLE IN THE BATTLE AGAINST THE STYGIAN SNAKE  ⫻[/b][/color]  Luca joined the coven late, but from then he was very useful in the battle against the Stygian Snake. His abstraction was one that allowed him to directly weaken the emotions fueling apparitions and the Stygian Snake itself through touching them. With this he was able to help them defeat and seal the Stygian Snake on the day of the eclipse. 

[color=6B8E23][b]FLAWS  ⫻[/b][/color] Luca has absolutely no filter. He says what he thinks, whether positive or negative. This can come across as blunt and is incredibly tactless. He hurts others often because of this, regardless of his intentions. He is almost toxically positive. Luca hides difficult emotions from even himself, burying them deep down so he doesn’t have to think about them, ignoring all his problems. He can often invalidate others emotions because he doesn’t understand why they’d dwell on the negative. As he’s grown older Luca has become more self sacrificial, and become worse at looking after himself. He’ll neglect his health frequently and in a situation where sacrificing himself would save others, he’d probably do it. While generally optimistic and cheerful, Luca can be somewhat erratic thanks to the apparition adjoined to him that’s constantly trying to corrupt him mentally. This mostly manifests in sudden mood swings and acting outside of his normal, especially under stressful situations since he’s essentially always under mental stress. 
[/INDENT]

[sub][color=6B8E23][b] Backstory[/b][/color][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"My life was completely normal till she attached this fucking thing to me."[/i]

[indent]Luca was born in Brazil, but his parents moved to St Portwell, and the USA, when he was only two for work. Luca has very little memory of his home country, and has only visited a couple of times as a child. 

From a young age, Luca knew that he wasn’t who he was born as. His parents called him Isabela, but that wasn’t right. He didn’t have the language to explain it then so he settled for being a tomboy, refusing to wear anything girly and making everyone call him El - it was slightly less feminine, at least. It wasn’t until his teenagers that he began to figure it all out. He wasn’t a girl like everyone thought he was. He wasn’t really a boy either, but he was closer to that than a girl. He settled on somewhere in between and the name Luca. Just, he didn’t have the confidence to tell anyone.

Luca was fifteen when the Stygian Snake’s rampage began, something he was very unaware about until a week before the eclipse. It was just another day for Luca, heading home from school, when he was attacked by a group of Apparitions. He was thrown to the ground and almost killed there but a girl from a few years above him tried to defend him… Before getting injured herself. Both Luca and this girl, Olivia Ruiz, were saved by Britney Williams. Luca passed out from shock.

When he woke up, his entire world had changed. There was something else inside of him, whispering to him. When he grabbed his phone it turned to dust in his hands. [i]Good,[/i] goaded the voice in Luca’s head. [i]Destroy everything.[/i] Confused and scared, Luca managed to find the girl, Britney, who had saved him. She explained everything to him - that magic existed, that she was part of a coven protecting the city and that a thing called an apparition (which called itself the rot) had adjoined itself to him while he was injured. She invited him to join the Sycamore Tree coven, to help defeat the Stygian Snake that was attacking the city. Partly out of gratitude, and partly out of not knowing what else to do, Luca joined the Sycamore Tree coven. It was the first place he could truly be himself - being Luca, not a girl, from the start.

In the short time he was part of the coven, Luca threw himself into helping. He learned his abstraction quickly, figuring out that he could weaken apparitions and destroy abominables, though he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t dwell too much on anything outside of using it to help the coven and on the day of the eclipse he used his abstraction to weaken the Stygian Snake so that Ashley could stab it with the Apparition Killer. He had his memory wiped with everyone else, and was glad it was over.

He could live peacefully now, right? Except he still had an apparition attached to him - one constantly trying to get into his mind and whispering to him. The uncontrollable nature of his abstraction was more obvious too. He destroyed everything he touched, and everything around him slowly decayed. He felt weaker too, but he put that down to exhaustion.

Luca couldn’t exactly live a normal life like this.

So he stuck with the coven, hoping they could help him. He grew closer with Olivia, the girl who’d defended him what had felt like a very long time ago, who was now in a similar situation to him. They had a shared goal of splitting from their aberrations, though hers wasn’t as debilitating. 

Luca was enraged when he found out that Britney was the one who’d forcibly adjoined him. It could hardly be called saving him with the life he had now. Luca didn’t treat her as badly as some of the others - instead he just didn’t talk to her at all. He stuck with the coven till it dissolved, hoping against hope that they’d help him instead of squabbling. But they didn’t. Luca was disappointed when it ended, but it was fine. He’d find another way. There was no point in dwelling in the negativity, as much of it as there was. 

So he moved on, deciding to try and figure out how to get rid of his apparition. Olivia followed him, the only person he had left for him - he’d cut himself off from his family out of necessity, as painful as it was. Just being near him would kill them. He took some online courses at college while trying to research the paranormal as much as possible. 

Then Olivia found out, through going to the same college, that Emily had formed her own coven. Luca didn’t particularly like Emily (not many did), but his need to get rid of the rot was stronger. He managed to convince them to let him join a seemingly all woman coven… And it was good, at first. They were learning about magic, and with that making progress in understanding adjoined. But it didn’t last. 8th Street’s agenda changed, and Luca couldn’t stay for it.

So they went back to just the two of them trying to figure it out, back to what it had been like just after the Sycamore Tree coven dissolved. At this point he hardly left the apartment he and Olivia shared. Every outing was a risk of hurting someone. He threw himself into research in his spare time, trying to find everything he could, while working a completely remote job. He managed to figure out a setup that worked for him - a desktop and large screen far enough away to not be affected by his abstraction, and a pile of cheap keyboards and mice on hand for when the ones he was using were destroyed. He gained more control over his decaying touch, learning how to turn it off… Even if it exhausted him. It was difficult, but that was fine. It wouldn’t be like this forever. He stayed optimistic and focused on the positives. 

After a year of almost no results, Olivia decided to call it quits. Her family was moving to the other side of the country and she wanted to go with them. There were no hard feelings between them when she left, and they promised to keep in touch. 

Luca’s life continued much the same. He found joy in the little things - his weekly calls with Olivia, the days where he could control his abstraction enough to do some wood carving without instantly destroying the wood in his hands, and the late night research that seemed to be getting him somewhere. He would go on walks late at night when very little else (human at least) was outside. He tried to meet with other paranormal, or ex-coven members - just anyone who could resist his abstraction a bit. It was relatively peaceful, if a bit lonely.

Of course, there were so many negatives. He never really got a peaceful moment, with an apparition inside of him constantly trying to erode at his mental state so that it could take over. He’d just gotten good at blocking it out and thinking positively. He was also growing weaker and weaker, struggling to walk around the block on some days. It was as if his muscles were wasting away. It was terrifying, and he had no one to talk to.

Finally, a year ago, it got bad enough that he went to a hospital. His uncontrollable aura wasn’t strong enough to destroy anything instantly, and as long as he didn’t touch anything it would be fine. He felt bad for putting the doctors and nurse through the pain of it, but he needed checked. What had started as occasional exhaustion and weakness had grown worse, and he was constantly in pain. Somewhere always hurt. The doctors ran their tests, so many of them, and took his blood. 

The results weren’t good. They’d never seen what was happening to him, so they couldn’t give him a diagnosis, but it was as if his entire body was slowly decaying. A new kind of degenerative disease they’d never seen before. The outcomes didn’t look good. At this rate he probably had a few years left. If he was lucky he’d reach thirty. They said they could recommend him to a more cutting edge hospital that would research it and work with him, but Luca declined. He took a prescription of strong painkillers and went home.

After all, he knew the cause. Normal medicine wouldn’t help. He needed to get rid of his abstraction first before it could be treated. 

Luca continued trying to find a way, speeding it up. He tried to talk to some of the paranormal groups in St Portwell, namely the Elite, Greenwood Coven and 8th Street again. The Elite was useless, 8th street was concentrating on its new ventures and the Greenwood coven didn’t take too kindly to Luca… after all his abstraction was one of the many destroying nature, even if he couldn’t control it. It was fine. He resigned himself to never getting rid of it, and resolved to enjoy the rest of his life. No point dwelling on what was out of his control, after all! He’d do what he could and that would be enough. 

Then he heard that ex-coven members were dying. Then Olivia went missing. There was no news of her death, but she wouldn’t pick up his calls and wasn’t at home. Luca didn’t know what he could do, until he got contacted by Auri. It was an easy decision to join again. Maybe they could help him get rid of this abstraction that was eating him away, and if not, why wouldn’t he use the time he had left to help save others?  [/indent]


[sub][color=6B8E23][b] Paranormal-Abilities[/b][/color][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"I wish I’d never gotten it. But I can’t change the past, so I might as well use it for something good before it kills me."[/i]

[indent][color=6B8E23][b]TYPE  ⫻[/b][/color] Aberration - Adjoined

[color=6B8E23][b]ABSTRACTION ⫻[/b][/color] Rotting Decay, the ability to decay and damage all living things, to corrode and weaken non organic materials and to decay the emotions that fuel magic.

[color=6B8E23][b]ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION  ⫻[/b][/color] 

[indent][color=6B8E23][b]Aura of Decay ⫻[/b][/color] Luca has a permanent, but weak, aura of decay around him. This aura spreads out about an arms length around him. It slowly decays everything around him, with results and speed varying by what’s being exposed and the size of it. For organic materials, it will take an hour to completely rot something weak such as a flower or grass. For something stronger, such as a tree, it would take days - but it will kill leaves or flowers on the tree. For human flesh it will hurt immediately, then damage the outer layer of skin within an hour, but would take weeks to rot through the bone. For inorganic objects, the aura works best on metals, which it will oxidise and then corrode in days. The effect on emotions is minimal - in the aura, people will perhaps feel their emotions slightly dimmed, but little else.

[color=6B8E23][b]Decaying Touch  ⫻[/b][/color] More powerful than the constant aura, Luca can touch something and instantly cause it to decay. The effect varies by what is being touched. The flesh of the blind would be rotted instantly, and within minutes whatever he is touching would disintegrate and die. The paranormal are more resistant, but initial touch would cause intense pain and eventually decay, then disintegration. It affects apparitions, by decaying the emotion that fuels them and thus weakening them. For nonorganic objects it will take moments to corrode something small - a cup, or a mobile phone. It would start to crumble a brick but take minutes to properly destroy it, and something larger would take hours.
[/indent]

[color=6B8E23][b]LIMITS  ⫻[/b][/color]
[indent][color=6B8E23][b]Aura of Decay ⫻[/b][/color] The aura is too weak to affect apparitions at all, and hardly affects those with Emotional-Fields. They will feel pain, more intense the longer they are in it, but it won’t cause decay. It is limited size wise, only spreading an arms length around Luca. It's always on, so they can’t control it at all. The stronger and larger something is, the longer it will take to decay. 

[color=6B8E23][b]Decaying Touch  ⫻[/b][/color] There is no range to the touch. Luca must touch whatever is to be affected with one of his hands. It is only his hands that can be used. The decay only happens in the immediate area touched and doesn’t spread. It can’t straight up kill those with emotional-fields, and can only weaken apparitions or those without substance. It would take minutes of touching to start properly decaying any with defences. The longer he touches something and uses the abstraction the more he will strain himself, physically and mentally, and start damaging him too. While he could technically do it for hours, it would likely destroy him too. This ability is normally on, and he has to be actively concentrating to turn it off. This concentration includes ignoring the apparition itself, which constantly wants him to decay and destroy everything around him.
[/indent]

[color=6B8E23][b]WEAKNESSES  ⫻[/b] [/color]
[indent]The Aura of Decay is always active, and Luca is unable to turn it off, which means he will cause objects that he doesn't intend to decay and rot away. He's used to throwing beds away and replacing his cell phone. The Decaying touch is also consistently active and requires him to consciously turn it off and expend energy to not rot objects away. However, the most debilitating weakness of all is that the Abstraction is causing him to rot away. It's slowly eroding at his skin, organs, and bones, weakening his body, and will eventually induce organ shutdown... or worse if that doesn't happen first. The Power of Decay makes Luca more frail, his skin will tear easier and his bones are way easier to break.[/indent]
[/INDENT]

[sup][color=6B8E23][b] Other[/b][/color][/sup]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"It would've been nice to see everyone again, if the circumstances were different."[/i]

[indent]Luca has no preference between he or they pronouns.
Luca is mostly fluent in Portuguese.
Luca has a box filled with cheap phones in his apartment because he has to constantly replace them. In fact most of his salary (after essentials) goes into replacing all the items that he destroys with his abstraction. [/INDENT]

[table][row][cell][h2][b]The[color=2e2c2c].[/color]Rot[/b][/h2][/cell][cell][/cell][/row][row][cell][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/HNFR0BK.jpg[/img]

[b]Very Old | The Rot | It/Its[/b][hr][i]"̶̥͈̙̗̔͒̎̀̈́͜È̷̻͔̞͓̜̊v̵͎̠̪͓̅͌ę̷̛͖͇̊ṙ̷͎͗͐y̷̭̗̜͊͝t̷͕̣͖̍͗̚h̶̳̺̍̽ȋ̸̜ṅ̷̗̖̥̤̝̃͐ǵ̷̟̣͛̋̏ ̷̛̘͈͙̬̀̽̈́ẘ̸͔̖̞̥̞̀́i̶̱̖̳̱̦͆͒̓̀l̶̝͙̖͌̚ͅl̴̟̻̱̤͚̓̄̀̆ ̵̫̐̽̀̇͘r̷̢̰̝̹̤̀̃̇̏̿ò̸̠̱̝̦̮̏̚ẗ̸̥͈̜̱̑͘͝ͅ"̸̞̠̯͕̙̔̍[/i][/center][/cell][cell]
[b]Description:[/b]
[indent]The Rot came to be in this dimension centuries ago, born from the intense desire for destruction from humans waging in petty wars and the corruption of many. All it wants is destruction, to rot everything away until no life is left. It has destroyed towns and cities, feeding off the flesh of poor humans unable to flee from its path. It has corrupted the minds of those that are weak to aid in its path of destruction. However its influence and power was short reaching, and its movement restricted. It could not go to places completely free from corruption and corrosion. 

Hundreds of years ago the Rot was sealed, the object it was sealed in then lost and forgotten. Until ten years ago, when Britney Williams freed it and adjoined it with Luca Oliviera to help defeat the Stygian Snake. After the Stygian Snake Luca wanted rid of the rot, but it refused to leave him - why would it, when it finally had the perfect vessel to cause destruction from? Luca wasn’t limited like it is. Instead it is constantly trying to corrupt and weaken his mind, so one day it can push out his soul and abscise his body. Occasionally it succeeds in temporary possession, but it has yet to gain complete control. The Rot always remains inside Luca, but it will talk to him from within when it benefits it. [/indent]

[b]Abstraction:[/B]
Apparition - [i]Decay of All Things[/i]
[indent]The Rot allows Luca to use most of its abstraction - the ability to cause physical and emotional decay. It has another ability it has not given Luca - mental decay. This can completely corrupt or destroy the minds of the blind. It can leave them as empty shells of themselves, or corrupt them to become the worst of humanity and help it succeed in its goal. Those with Emotional-Fields are resistant but not immune. It can slowly plant the seeds of destruction within them, whittling away until it succeeds. It has been doing it with its host ever since they were adjoined. [/indent]
[/cell][/row][/table]
[/hider]
[/indent]