Name: Dariush Khan - AKA Kandahar
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Height: 5'10
Weight: 162lb
Ethnicity: Pashtun
Sexual Orientation: Irrelevant
Religion: Lapsed Sunni
Occupation: Self-Employed
Appearance: A light-skinned man of average build, sporting no particularly muscular features barring those of a man not unused to physical labour. Kandahar’s face is one of a man perhaps prematurely aged by the ravages of war - or, in his case, by the experience of torture and death. A short, coarse beard clings to his face and jawline, with a short mass of equally coarse charcoal hair atop his head, with almost perpetually crinkled eyes to match. Normally garbed in a dark leather jacket and cargo pants with a rugged pair of working boots, Kandahar is a man that does not particularly stand out in a crowd. If anything is of note, it is the amputation of his left ring finger past the first joint.
Ability: ImmortalityThere isn't any other way to say it - Kandahar can't die. And that goes without saying that he hasn’t tried, or at least thrown himself back into the jaws of death in the aftermath of the Energy Storm. Fatal injuries don't put him down, eventually healing and closing up once sufficient time has passed. Even lost limbs, with time, will recover.
Background:Dariush was born in Soviet-Occupied Afghanistan amidst a bloody, drawn-out conflict as the USSR attempted to prop up the communist puppet government that had replaced the monarchy in the 70s. Though many of the nation's intellectuals and skilled labourers had fled the country, most of Dariush's surviving relatives had remained to fight the occupation alongside the Mujahideen, with Dariush's own father smuggling arms into the nation from neighbouring Pakistan.
Raised along mountain passageways and precarious roads, ever under threat from the Soviets, Dariush's childhood was one fraught with hazard from the moment he could walk. Yet despite this, he survived to outlast the Soviet Occupation, only to see the nation of his birth descend into anarchy and civil war as different factions clashed over who and what sort of government would take the place of the communists. Amidst this, Dariush's father was arrested and executed by the Taliban, forcing his surviving family to flee to the United States to eke out a living there, Dariush among them.
Life in the pre and post-9/11 US proved tenuous at best, though Dariush made do as a displaced person exposed to US culture on the West Coast. Eventually, seeking a sense of purpose (and needing the employment anyway) he enlisted in the US Army as an interpreter, being fluent in both Pashto and Farsi, with a semblance of perhaps doing some good by returning to his nation of birth as a serviceman. Yet this too would be a bitter experience for him - Dariush came to see what a shell Afghanistan had been rendered, between the corrupt US-backed government and security forces who were often more interested in pulling 'dancing boys' off the street than dealing with insurgents, not to mention the weariness and even contempt with which his own countrymen regarded him. When Dariush's service came to an end, he had been rendered disillusioned by his time in Afghanistan.
Returning home, Dariush found himself torn between contrasting cultures, unable to reconcile the differing values he'd picked up in his years. Perhaps it was this who led him under the wing of a fellow Afghan, Gulbuddin, who had once known Dariush's father and indeed had helped his family escape to the United States back in the 90s. Out of a sense of debt and perhaps lacking a father figure, Dariush found work with Gulbuddin as a respected figure among the local Persian community, a mishmash of Afghan and Iranian expatriates that had been driven from their homeland for one reason or another, following a certain ideal - 'Shir o Khorshīd' - Lion and Sun.
Whilst Gulbuddin regarded it as simply a way of life, being part of a community, it was simply another form of organised crime. Where others trafficked sex or hard drugs, Gulbuddin dealt in opium and arms smuggled from the Khyber Pass, alongside local property fronts and protection rackets which harshly dealt with interlopers. Dariush played a significant role in building their community's power, managing associates and lesser members of the organisation - indeed, he took on a new identity in the process, becoming known as 'Kandahar' for the city of his birth.
Kandahar was a man of many things that society would deem reprehensible. He hurt people, even killed some. This identity took the place of Dariush, the sense of place and belonging embodied by the small empire which he and Gulbuddin had built out of their little community. Yet things come to an end eventually - in their case, it came in the form of a two-pronged assault on their 'community' - one on Darius himself. Kidnapped, tortured and drugged in an effort to pry some information on Gulbuddin out of him, Dariush refused to give in. His last memory prior to the Energy Storm was one of being taken out into the wilderness, moments before being shot and dumped in a shallow grave. Anything that remained of Dariush died there.
Kandahar crawled out of that grave, half-mad from the shock of dying and reawakening covered in soil, dealing with withdrawal symptoms. He returned to find their ‘community’ aflame, amidst three-pronged onslaught from rivals, the police and the anarchic aftermath of the Energy Storm itself.
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