| NAME |Jack Hawthorne
| AGE |16
| MENTOR |Note to self ask the others because fuck if i know
| DESIGNATION |Fuck dude idk
| APPEARANCE |Jack is 5’10”, and comfortably rocks a lazy goth aesthetic with the messiest hair known to man. He wears a lot of black and dark blue colors, favoring clothes for winter weather and outdoor living. What sticks out about him most is his left hand and arm, which is solid black all the way up to his neck. He has a scar riding across his face, under one eye and over the other.
| BIO |Dragged away from a life where he would not be missed, Jack’s earliest experiences with the extraordinary began when he fell through the cracks of the universe, into a realm known as the Shadowlands. A land of living darkness, home to monsters and mysterious powers of all forms. The shadows of that place reached out all across reality like strands of a spider's web, to drag things in through thin, abstract borders, in the places where they were the weakest. It called out to him, sensing something that made him gravitate away from his world, and he just happened to be one of the unlucky few to find his way there.
In the Shadowlands, danger lurked around every corner for the hapless boy. Witch-Kings ruled little kingdoms, and led legions of infernal soldiers to defend their borders from their foes. Great and terrible beasts roamed storm-swept highlands where the very stones thrummed with unknown force. Forests of trees veiled in ivory white hid the lairs of demons, who schemed and plotted in secret. Jack ran for his life so many times that it became second nature. It took weeks for him to grow accustomed to this realm. He was scared, alone, confused, and never safe. When he began to finally understand how this world worked, he realized that he was being changed. Something immaterial flowed through everything there, and it eventually bled into him like radiation. The darkness started to move and flicker when he commanded it. Jack took advantage, using it to hide more easily.
Seeking a way out of the Shadowlands, Jack honed his newfound tricks to the point that it became magic. He fooled demons into giving up their own secrets, and outsmarted Fiend Lords that thought they had him cornered. Jack learned things, no longer feeling scared and instead feeling confident in what he could do to survive. Eventually, he crossed paths with a man named Morrag the Immortal. He was a cambion, part human and part monster, who had been banished to the Shadowlands as a child by exorcists. He nearly killed Jack right there, before he saw the boy practically teleport into a tree. Morrag claimed to know a way that Jack could access truly legendary power, enough to open up the way back home. At the center of the realm, there was a structure known as the Black Diamond. It held what was left of the angel Eclipso, who had fallen from a much better, more gentler place long ago. There, according to Morrag, Jack would be at his strongest. But it would be dangerous, more so than anything he’d ever faced. The demons, imps, goblins and countless other beasts near there fed on the power coming from the Black Diamond like flowers under a sun. It was the same power that Jack was connected to, but they had more of it, and they were countless.
But Morrag was a hardened warrior. The might to Jack's magic, the sword to his sorcery. They called him immortal in the Shadowlands because he had survived things that would've killed even the strongest. He knew things, he lived longer, and he wasn't afraid of an army. So they struck a deal. Morrag would accompany Jack to the Black Diamond, and they’d fight together no matter how dangerous things seemed. In exchange, Jack would use his magic, and somehow try to reopen the path that led him here. And if it worked, they’d both go home together. For days, they tracked down the location, meeting with powerful figures for knowledge and passage through their territories, and fighting through things that would haunt Jack for years to come. It was a long journey through the realm, but against all odds, they found it. A towering spire of glass, in the darkest reaches of the realm. Just standing in front of it, Jack felt something deep inside his chest twist. He touched a hand to the surface. The power surged, it grabbed hold of his soul, and warped him.
He saw everything. From the furthest universes and back. The beginning of Creation, and the end that gave way to Nothing. It was beautiful, but he couldn't bear it for long.
It took everything he had, but he was able to force open a path out of the Shadowlands, blacking out in the process.
He woke up to the feeling of wind on his skin, a bright blue sky, and the warmth of a midday sun. He was back on Earth, with black fog trailing off of the grass he had been dropped into. When he looked closely, he saw the images of other places in the fog. Stars above different skies, planets he had never heard of, and so much more. Just out of reach, in flickering images that abandoned him as he came to his senses. Soon, he realized that the Earth he was on wasn't his Earth. There were differences from the one he was born on.
Jack never saw Morrag again. The cambion came through for him, but had gone off on his own journey now that they were free. Now he had a chance to live life how he saw fit. So Jack set out to see the world. The spell Jack cast to leave wasn’t a one way trip, and he could go anywhere. Earth, the Shadowlands, the other worlds he heard about from his time there… He just had to find those places.
He never felt so free in his life.
Freedom changed Jack. There was no one to stop him from moving forward, one foot in front of the other, free of all the things life had thrown at him. The days became weeks, and the weeks turned to months, and Jack experimented with his magic. He travelled from city to city, Earth to Earth, on a restless journey that he couldn’t bring himself to finish. He barely allowed himself the time to rest between jumps across dimensions, occasionally growing weak enough for the Shadowlands to drag him back down again.
Along the way, he stopped to help other people in small ways. Pulling cats out of trees, stopping the occasional robbery- He even put a guy in jail once. People who witnessed these acts of good usually looked at Jack with fear over the way he appeared and disappeared like a ghost, but he never stuck around long enough that it mattered to him.
It has been three years since he and Morrag parted ways, and little has changed. Jack is older, more confident in his magic, but he’s still on the move.
| ABILITIES / SKILLS / EQUIPMENT |This is not just about your superpowers if you even have any. It also includes talents, learned skills, weapons, armor and tools which complete your hero identity.
Shadow Magic: Jack has a supernatural connection to the Shadowlands that he has learned to take advantage of. And like those who came before him, this lets him perform feats of magic that other, better practiced magicians could not. He can bend and warp shadows, strain himself to conjure darkness out of thin air, and even summon some things out of it. He has a few specific tricks he uses most often.
Night Gate: Jack's favorite spell is to surround himself with darkness through one method or the other, and slip away to another dark place. To anyone else, it looks like he just teleports from one shadow to another. But from his perspective, he runs from point A and then runs through the Shadowlands, then runs back out to point B very fast, with the distance he crosses growing with the distance to his arrival point. He uses this spell to get to many places, from down the street in a moment to the other side of a planet in half an hour.
Blade from Nowhere: Jack summons supernatural darkness and creates a simple weapon, such as a knife or a spear. They're solid objects that look almost like an optical illusion, transparent and somewhat fragile in their own way, but the blades of these weapons are wickedly sharp. He can easily use them to slice up an enemy, get through a door or put a hole in something when the situation calls for it.
Darkvision: A simple, passive trick that lets Jack instinctively know what he's looking at in the absence of light. He can see in perfect color, as if it were daytime, even in pitch black darkness.
Sneak 100: Jack is well-versed in the art of not being caught. Even without his magic, his ability to get into a place and get back out undetected is his most practiced skill. In a fight, he is best suited for situations where brute force isn't the best move, such as a targeted hit-and-run or the retrieval of important items.
Bag of Whatnots: A knife, ten feet of paracord, two pens and a small notebook, a water bottle, impact-detonation smoke bombs, and a spare phone. Various useful things for a sneaky wizard.
Limitations are feats you can’t accomplish due to the limits of your powers and/or personal skills. Like the maximum amount of weight you can lift. Weaknesses are something that can be exploited, or some other shortcoming.
Photophobia: There is an inherent unpredictability to Jack’s magic, based on light. Energy based powers such as pyromancy or hard light projections can break his weapons and lock him out of repositioning. Standing in the sun with no ambient shadows nearby makes casting any elaborate spells damn near impossible. The impact tends to be much more pronounced when he is exposed to natural sunlight, where artificial light hinders him less, albeit not by much.
Castaway: Jack’s dimensional travel trick works both ways. Excessive use of his magic gives the Shadowlands more of a grip on him, which makes it harder for him to resist falling back. The more he casts, the less here he becomes. If he goes too far, he’ll disappear and be shunted away from his current location. Finding his way back isn’t difficult, but it’s a long way from the Shadowlands no matter where he’s going. It could be hours before he returns.
Arrogant Fool: The best way to make Jack do something dangerous and absurd is to tell him that he can’t. He is daring at best, and self-destructive at worst, being far too willing to do something wild and unexpected for his own good. Caution is rarely the first thing on Jack’s mind unless someone other than himself is at risk.
| NOTES |It is difficult to tell where exactly Jack originated from, because the usual paper trails when investigating someone’s past don’t exist. No database on Earth contains any information about him or any relatives he may have, and there is no record of him ever being born.
Member
Forsythe
Cerera
tadcfnaf
Achronum
Zeus23
xVampire3go
Antlers
Morose
