The Tired Old Gun
First Name: Jonah
Nicknames: The Walker, The Drifter, The Wanderer, (tired) Old Gun, (among others)
Age: 138 years old
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Ethnicity: Caucasian-American
Appearance:
Appearing Age: Between 55-65 years old
Hair: Just short of shoulder-length, unkempt, full, mostly grey with black strands.
Facial Hair: Full beard and moustache, hanging just below the jaw, mostly grey with a black tint.
Eye Colour: Green
Height: 5ft 11”
Weight: 75kg
Build: Wiry/Athletic
Clothing: Varies, if undescribed mostly likely wearing a brown duster coat, brown riding chaps, dirty black leather boots, and a stained grey undershirt. The only consistent item of clothing one can expect is his trusty brown felt cowboy hat.
Physical Characteristics:
Hand: Left Handed
Foot: Left Footed
Movement Range: Capable of minor acrobatics, fairly competent parkour, jumping height of around 6-8 feet, range of around 25 feet in long jump with a short run up.
Strength: Disproportionate, capable of the most extreme feats within human capabilities, but not beyond. (In simple terms, he could bench around 400kg of weight, allowing him to manhandle light opponents with ease and deliver powerful strikes. The rest of his muscles are comparative to this degree of upper body strength, allowing him to conceivably leg press much more.)
Agility: Though difficult to determine, Jonah’s reactions and agility are far beyond anything humans should be capable of, acting out the motion of drawing his weapon for example in fractions of a second. The closest estimate would place his agility at roughly three times that of the fastest human martial artists.
Durability: Unsurprisingly, his body seems to maintain itself particularly well under duress, lending him supernatural durability of a man roughly five times his size, increasing the difficulty of damaging his body by that same amount.
Endurance: As a result of his healing factor, Jonah ironically doesn’t get tired easily. He can fight under continued duress for up to an hour without any obvious signs of slowing down. (Though his personality tends to cause him to outwardly exhibit signs of fatigue often, this does not translate to literal muscle fatigue.)
Healing Factor: The bane of Jonah’s existence, his body is capable of regenerating cells at an advanced rate, reducing his aging process considerably and speeding up his healing by roughly three times. Extremely urgent wounds have a tendency to heal even faster, though this would make little outcome on the immediate circumstances of any conflict if he could survive a battle after sustaining a normally fatal wound it would likely be healed within a few days. His response to poisons, hallucinogens, and other nasty chemicals is somewhat different to a humans, in that his reaction to them is tempered significantly. Though they are all still effective there is no poison that could outright kill him in a single dose, and most chemical effects last far shorter periods of time.
Speed: In terms of pure running speed, Jonah isn’t particularly impressive, due to a seeming unwillingness to run around all that much. He could probably top 20mph at a flat out sprint, but such actions are rare.
Perception: With an inhuman perception, often likened to that of an eagle, Jonah could easily pick out the etchings on a bullet flying towards his head, and probably narrowly avoid it as well. Interestingly, his eyes are completely unaffected by the normally blinding effects of direct sunlight.
Senses: Other than eyesight, Jonah is not much different from any other human, though a lifetime of pain has allowed him to grow more accustomed to it than any human before him, his tolerance is such that he rarely if ever balks from any wound given to him.
Magical properties:
The Shadow: Jonah’s shadow sits behind him regardless of the direction of the sun, betraying its supernatural properties. Though it follows the physics of an ordinary shadow in that its strongest in direct sunlight facing towards him, it still remains dimly even at night or in complete darkness.
All of Jonah’s magic is dependent on this shadow, if magic would be the right term for it. In ideal conditions when the shadow is strongest he has a large volume of power with which to use his abilities. Where-as in the worst possible conditions (strong sunlight directly behind him or a complete lack of light) he has only fifty percent of his total power. His abilities drain his shadow, reducing it and by extension the power of any further abilities he uses by a relative percentage) The shadow seems to restore itself at the stroke of midnight each night, and not a moment before.
Tired Gun: The ability for which Jonah was named, The Tired Gun is a state in which Jonah’s already formidable marksmanship and reflexes are further advanced by an inward slowing of the world around him, this reduces (to his own perception) everything around him to half the speed, save his own actions, which are only reduced by around 75%. There is a cost to the technique however, as his shadow is drained, to the degree that thirty seconds in the Tired Gun state would cut his shadow by half.
Shaded Volley: The limitations of a six shot revolver grow unimportant under the influence of this ability, which drains his shadow by 5% for each shot he fires. Essentially, it allows him to fire shadow rounds from his weapon, which form within the chamber of the weapon itself removing his need to reload. The rounds are similar in almost every-way to his normal bullets, except they are unique in that they pass through inorganic matter cleanly, though harder substances reduce the eventual impact damage so armour is not rendered completely useless.
The Reaper’s Cloak: A failsafe built into his accursed shadow, hostile attacks are unconsciously deflected by his shadow at a significant cost, and the ability only works until the shadow is at 25% of its power (which would allow him one such saving throw in the shadows weakest form). Each blow blocked in this fashion costs 25% of the shadow’s power regardless of its force, though to activate it has to pose a certain degree of threat, so crippling, wounding or straight up killing blows only. If a particularly powerful attack is predicted, the shadow reacts by preparing itself in a similar fashion, though the additional time it receives seems to result in the same power cost. (This is where the tier system comes into his power, allowing him some protection from powerful charged magical attacks.)
The Touch of the Dark: Jonah’s only real protection from psychological attacks and magic, Jonah’s shadow can reach out at a distance of around fifty feet in four different directions, the thin streams can detect obstructions and people if they come into contact with them, relaying the information to Jonah. Though it can be avoided by nimble opponents, the shadows are none-the-less very quick, though they are limited to ground contact only. Flying opponents are immune.
The Long Shadow: Arguably the most powerful of Jonah’s abilities, with the equally high cost of whatever remains of his shadow, The Long Shadow has an effect proportional to the shadow price paid, and can only be activated after a period of sustained combat (On the fifth of my turns after initiation of combat) Growing tall and dark behind Jonah, the shadow begins to move out of sync with his own movements, raising its arms high and then literally bursting through Jonah. With an effective cone of effect equal to ten feet in radius and length for every 10% of the shadows remaining strength, anyone caught in its effect is forced to undergo a terrifying experience within a shaded world. Whatever scenery happens to be around the fighters seemingly rots and melts away and shaded humanoids attack those drawn in by the attack with a multitude of slashing razor sharp claws. It’s nigh on impossible to avoid taking grievous harm at this point, as the volume of shades is so great, however some opponents may be more resistant to large numbers of gouging attacks than others. The time in which they are forced to defend themselves from these invulnerable shades is roughly three seconds for every 10% of the shadow used. Even with a somehow fully powered shadow the torment only lasts thirty seconds, before everyone involved is thrust back into the real world.
Some Technical Stuff: Obviously, there is likely to be situations where Jonah is forced into worse conditions for his shadow power, or likewise moves into more favourable conditions. For simplicity sake, there are three main conditions.
Favourable: Examples of favourable conditions are strong sunlight in front of him, or other powerful light sources, this causes his shadow to jump to its max capacity of 100%
Neutral: Sunlight above him, average light levels inside, overcast days. 75%
Unfavourable: Sunlight directly behind him, very low light levels, artificial darkness. 50%
The effect this has on the usable shadow is relative, for example should he have used 25% power of a total of 100% leaving him with 75/100 power, and then he is forced into complete darkness, he will be left with 37.5/50 power. Likewise, should he then step into neutral conditions he will be left with 57/75 power. The percentage will be rounded up and what-not for simplicity as it’s only a rough guideline of how much power he has at any one time. Ultimately, you as the opponent don’t need to worry much about this, it will be recorded at the bottom of each post how much remaining shadow exists. Oh, the joys of a mana pool. Or shadow pool in this case. Hopefully however the light conditions of combat won’t change significantly.
Member
Nytefall