Sooo I might have written an entire character vignette for this new version of Nev. Whether I make the group or not, this was fun to write. XD

Again, I'm still making some setting assumptions, but I think this flows together a bit better.

CW: Animal death. Also the vignette is kinda long.


[hider=Nevaris Vignette]
The low, otherworldly growl shook the leaves, the branches, even the ground beneath Nevaris’s feet. Thick streams of blood dripped from the creature’s fangs. It was a hulking, hunched figure in a vaguely canine shape, the arch of its shoulders nearly six feet from the ground. Nevaris’s grip tightened around his bow. This thing in front of him that paced slow, menacing circles in the forest clearing was very familiar, but at the same time, very, very alien.

“M…Milo. That’s enough, boy.” Nevaris swallowed hard, struggling to maintain eye contact with the distorted, monstrous form of his once-faithful hound. “You’re just sick. I know you’re hurting… and scared. Just stop all this, okay? We’ll call the mages. They can make you better.”

His voice was thin, trembling along with the rest of his body. He knew Milo couldn’t understand him. In the past, he had imagined that he could; he would ramble all about his plans for the future. Adventures, danger, excitement. Big, silly dreams without a single foothold in reality. Milo always listened, enraptured like a loyal best friend, but Nevaris knew deep down that he didn’t understand his words.

It didn’t make lying to him any easier.

The gore that soaked Milo’s maw was that of a neighbor’s son - a friend that Nevaris had known for as long as he could remember, now nothing but a bloody stain on the ground. Even if the mages could cure this… disease, curse, whatever it was, the town wouldn’t just let Milo roam free. They would kill him. Several hunting parties were already out looking for him, but they didn’t know him like Nevaris did. This place was special: somewhere the two of them would rest during their long hunting days. If Milo had to die… then Nevaris would be the one to do it. It’s fitting that it would happen here.

Nevaris took a deep breath, in and out. He blinked away the tears pooling in his eyes and drew back an arrow. Milo stopped his pacing, head low. As they held each others’ gaze, Nevaris searched the beast’s eyes for any glimmer of the friend he had known. There was nothing. Just two burning red embers that yearned for blood.

“I’m sorry,” Nevaris whispered, and he loosed the arrow.

A blur of movement, and Milo’s form vanished from the arrow’s path and eclipsed Nevaris’s vision with otherworldly speed. In the next breath, Nevaris was slammed onto his back and pinned beneath the beast’s immense weight - it was all he could do to interpose an arm between the incoming fangs and his exposed throat. His scream echoed through the trees as the bite shredded his skin like paper and sunk into the bone of his forearm.

Pain and panic engulfed him. This wasn’t Milo - this was a monster draped in Milo’s skin. As the creature lashed back and forth, threatening to sever his arm with every pull, Nevaris desperately clawed at his side pocket, his own blood matting his hunting leathers.

Finally, he freed his hunting knife. His eyes went wide and he hissed through his teeth as the curved blade sank into the side of the beast’s throat. The vice-like grip on his arm didn’t even loosen. Instead, the beast flew into frenzy, pulling back with such force that Nevaris was lifted into the air before being slammed back down to earth. There was a sickening sound of cracking ribs.

Nevaris’s thoughts began to spin. [i]I’m… going to die here. This thing is going to… kill me. KILL ME.[/i]

His mind went blank, except for one thought. [i]SURVIVE[/i]. Knife still clutched in his free hand, he let out an inhuman shriek as he sank the blade into the beast’s throat again, and again, and again, his guttural cries becoming more and more incomprehensible with each strike.

The great beast cried out in turn: first a roar, then a series of grunts and groans, and then… whines. It shuddered in place before lilting to one side and slumping to the ground, finally relinquishing its grip on his arm. As the monster’s labored breaths began to slow, Nevaris forced himself upright, blood streaming from his arm and speckling the grass beneath him.

Once again, he found himself gazing into its eyes. Where there had been unholy embers only moments before, now there were two familiar brown eyes staring back at him. The pair beheld each other one last time, a moment of quiet reverence, before Milo finally went still.

Time didn’t seem to move. Nevaris could only look at the distorted corpse, his mind so far away that he didn’t even feel the searing pain in his right arm. The edges of his vision began to go dark as he fell deeper and deeper into numbness.

Then, someone began to clap.

Nevaris spun around. “Who’s there?!” His breath caught in his throat as his arm throbbed with the sudden movement.

Behind him, lounging on the stump of a fallen tree, was a creature from a children’s tale. Human-like, but with the legs of a goat, the torso of a man, and long, spiraling horns that curved back from its forehead. The hairs that coated its goat legs where sharp like the spines of a porcupine, and what should have been its skin more closely resembled the gray bark from an old, old tree. Its eyes were two empty, sunken sockets filled with a pale yellow light. The same yellow leaked from its mouth as it spoke.

“Quite impressive.” Its voice was like a hollow grave. “It’s not so often that the small things kill the big things. But of course, this is how it must be, lest the big things get fat and lazy.”

Nevaris fumbled and grabbed his knife from the grass, then shakily pushed himself to his feet, right arm dangling uselessly at his side. “What… Who are you? The hell do you want with me?”

It lifted itself from the stump, almost hovering in the air as it did so. “A pertinent question, little hunter, but a boring one. I am a simple thing of this forest: a thing of watching and knowing. But you… [i]you[/i].” It walked forward, hands outstretched. “You are a lovely, interesting thing. A delightful contradiction - pride and shame, ambition and sloth, bravery… and cowardice.” It looked him up and down, like a butcher sizing up a prize cut of meat. “You want the world, but you do not take it, because you know it is beyond you. But what if…” It was very close now - close enough to lay a cold, tender hand on Nevaris’s ruined arm. “…what if it weren’t?”

Every muscle in his body screamed for him to run. But… he couldn’t. He couldn’t even look away from this strange thing whose words crawled up his spine.

It continued. “You tell yourself that a simple hunter cannot achieve the great things that you want, the things you want deep, deep down in your bones. But answer me, my dear, is one who could turn his blade against his own hound truly a simple hunter?” It tilted its head. “You could have let the other hunters do it. But no, you saw your beloved thing, your [i]Milo[/i], heading to a wretched end, and you said no! The end would be you, instead.” It smiled then, wide and unnatural. “And you showed it who the [i]real[/i] beast was, didn’t you? Oh yes, yes you did. It was [i]wonderful[/i].”

“How… do you know all this?” Nevaris’s voice was barely a whisper.

The thing closed its “eyes”, still smiling, and shook its head. “I told you, my dear. I am an old thing. An old thing of watching, and of knowing.”

Gently, it took hold of Nevaris’s wounded arm. There was a flash of sickly light and the wounds began knitting themselves shut. With its other hand, it coaxed the hunting knife from his grip, blade still wet with the beast’s blood. As the wounds were mended, it used the bloody knife to trace lines along the scars. These lines quickly began to take shape, red blood outlining a scene of a proud hunting dog bounding through thick woods.

Nevaris regarded the beautiful composition on his skin, mouth agape.

“Focus now,” the thing said, it’s tone low and sharp. “His spirit needn’t be gone from this world.”

Without taking a moment to question, Nevaris poured all of his will and focus into the mark. A vision flashed through his mind; once again Milo’s fangs were bearing down into his flesh, and the pain was as real as it had ever been. Nevaris screamed.

“Do not fight it, boy. Persevere!” the thing bellowed, more a command than comfort. “This pain will be your strength!”

He gritted his teeth, the pure need for [i]survival[/i] pushing everything else aside. All at once, he was jolted back to the present. His hand felt heavy.

A sword of sharpened bone sat in his grip. It was bladed on one side with a gentle curve, and the guard was wrapped in wicked thorns. The weapon felt nearly alive in his hand, and as he held it, his body surged with energy.

The old creature stood beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “There is power in blood, Nevaris. The small needn’t always be small. Just like a little hound can become a beast of nightmares, so might a little hunter become a hero.”
[/hider]


[hider=Nevaris Character Sheet]
- Name: Nevaris “Nev” Moonshard
- Age: 22
- Gender: Male
- Race: Human
- Rank: Iron
- Appearance:
    - Messy black hair that flops forward over his eyes a bit
    - Tan skin
    - Irises a mix of brown and pale turquoise
    - Plain linen clothes, with dark leather jerkin with violet accents over top
    - Red tattoo on his right forearm that resembles a proud hunting hound running through thick woods

- Personality:

Reserved and polite when first getting to know someone. Once he begins to feel more comfortable, he will quickly become friendly and protective. A very emotional person, sometimes to the point of being volatile, his worst mistakes tend to come from acting without thinking, even if he means well.

He is known to hold grudges against those who wrong him, even slightly. He also has a competitive streak that can seem a bit out of nowhere to people who have only recently met him. This likely stems from a deep-seated insecurity about not actually being good enough for the path he’s chosen.

- Brief Backstory:

Born in the town of Felrist, Nevaris was raised to be a hunter by his parents from a young age. While he enjoys the profession as means of providing for his family and as an excuse to explore the great outdoors, he has always yearned for something more. He was enamored by tales of heroes and adventurers, regardless of whether the stories were fact or fiction. Unfortunately, he was always mediocre at best when it came to personal combat, and when he was assessed for any sort of magical ability, his mana potential was judged to be below average. While he was always handy with a bow, he had little experience killing anything that also wanted to kill him. Dejected, he resigned himself to being an adventurer only in his daydreams.

Then, early one morning, he awoke to screams outside of his window. A neighbor had been mauled to death by a large, unknown beast. Oddly, Nevaris’s dog Milo was also missing. After tracking the creature to the woods, Nevaris made the harrowing discovery that the creature *was* his loyal hunting dog Milo, somehow mutated into a towering beast by a strange disease or curse. Deciding to end the creature’s misery rather than let him be hunted by the townsfolk, he decided to kill Milo himself, though he barely survived the confrontation.

As he laid in the grass holding his mauled, ruined arm, a strange fae creature appeared to him, apparently having watched their battle. It was impressed with Nevaris’s conviction to kill the creature himself, as well as his ferocity when faced with death. The fae knitted his wounds closed using the blood of the beast, leaving a red tattoo of Milo running through the woods where the wound should have been. The tattoo allows for Nevaris to summon a magical sword of sharpened bone that can also give him a sudden boost in strength and speed at the cost of his blood.

While the fae’s true motivations are unknown, it has agreed to give Nevaris more tattoos with spells to summon magical weapons, but Nevaris has to provide blood from powerful creatures he has slain in order to do it. Seeing this as an opportunity to chase the dream that has always seemed out of reach, he sought out the Adventurer’s Guild.

- Equipment:
    - Hunting bow / arrow quiver
    - Hunting knife
    - Outdoor survival equipment. Flint and steel, rope, fishing nets, etc.
- Skills:
    - Hunting / tracking / archery
    - Cooking
    - Middling sword-fighting competency. This is usually supplemented by the temporary boost in physical ability that the bone blade gives him
[/hider]