alto-sun-favoured - Tumblr blog

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Warlockery Happened

[01:47:18] To [meej]: warlockery happened [01:47:18] [meej] whispers: Just so. [01:48:07] [meej] whispers: Yes, that same sort of, “Ladies, please stop throwing your panties at me, there is science. Yes, you are very lovely. No, I don’t want to make out. Yes, I would like you to help me with this practical. Yes, I would like you to keep your hands to yourself. [01:48:12] [meej] whispers: SCIENCE. [01:48:14] To [meej]: lookit that family resemblence [01:48:30] To [meej]: EXACTLY THAT [01:49:36] To [meej]: i am preserving this for character blog [01:49:41] [meej] whispers: DO SO

(reposting this to appropriate blog, edited for a little brevity this time).

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Zant's God, Ganon. Requested by hydrogenbombs.

concept inspiration - Zelda: Windwaker, and Zelda: Twilight Princess design and art direction for the various shadow-related ideas really heavily influenced Penny’s character design and development direction.

I can see it when looking at Midna’s shapeshifting parts of herself (that haaaand), the shadow people in general, the shadow magic with its geometric spirals, lines, hard edges, the electric-blue-on-black when something’s activated, and the stylized ideals/concepts from anything fog-, mist-, shadow-related in Windwaker.

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Beautiful Twilight appreciation: 1/3

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Steam Powered Giraffe - Honeybee

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armour and concept inspiration - art by kekai kotaki

Guild Wars 2 Largos concepts

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weapon inspiration - Penny’s ‘blade is a huge aruval-like sword he carries slung against his back, named Errant’s Choice.

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armour inspiration - art by ajhateley

‘Anastasia’ - character concept art commission

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RP Excerpt - Dissonance

taken from Walking the Dead

---

"...We do need to have many words, Penumbral. I do not think they will all be--ah--blue words."

"Tor," Penumbral agrees simply enough. The dead man rarely uses many words for replies when just a few--or one--will do instead.

No visible signs can be seen for his unease or his upset; he ghosts along next to Jabiru with head turned forward and pace as stolid and shuffling as the cripple's own. For a long time, in fact, the only sound out of him comes in the form of boot heels thumping solidly in the dirt, the slither of fabric as his cloak follows behind, and the rasp of metal on leather whenever his stride disturbs the thick, plated segments sewn to his kilt.

The hexer firmly dislodges the silence, speaking up first; his reward: a single, glowing eye shifting to stare sidelong at both trolls. Penumbral never turns to face them, at least, sparing the living duo the disturbing noise of bone shards grinding against each other with the unyielding finality of a millstone.

"--when you hurt him, you scared everyone."

"Kite-flier hurt Sun," the shadow-filled wight gravels, scarred and slack mouth moving--as always--just enough to force the dissonant syllables out, but no more than this. "Kite-flier uses dead things."

"Are you alright now?"

"Penumbral angry."

Hollow words to give, from a man incapable of changing the blank sag of leathery brown skin or the desiccated muscles beneath.

He lacks the tilt of his lips and the furrow of his brow, lacks the wrinkle of laugh and frown lines added into play, or even the shift of long ears--known by race to be flexible and expressive--to signal his distress. Too, his voice never rises nor falls in cadence, never alters in volume.

He speaks as he always does--as he always will--with the distant echo to lace guttural sounds, meaningless until projected into language by artifice alone. His vocal chords, caved-in as the back of his skull, allow nothing else.

Little wonder, then, that without those warnings taken for granted by the living--and many dead--and that without those means available to them as well, he must display his feelings in ways that leave no uncertainty, no room for doubt that he still feels.

Because saying simply, Penumbral angry, yields too little impact when coming from him.

Even reaching up for manual manipulation of his mouth to accompany such a statement feels grey and pale. Not enough. Never enough. It does not encompass all the things it should. It means so much more than simply, Penumbral angry.

He unhooks taloned fingers from the corners of his lips, lets his hands go. At his sides, his arms hang from him as distant and weighted as his voice sounds.

"Penny's Sun is Penny's all-reason for being."

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Fanart of Penumbral Moonwinged, by Quillery

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Video game inspirations - Prototype

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RP Excerpt - Death Grip

taken from Killer Bees

---

"Trrruce?" When the middle eye suddenly opens, and with all the blood slicking his scarred, dark face, wet lids give the gruesome impression of his forehead splitting wide to let the eye peek out. It rolls in its socket, looking not at Kite, but the troll's perch, studying the stone under him. "What truce," the the dead thing calling itself Penumbral eventually asks, his taloned claws scritch-scritching across rock rather like one might drum fingers in impatience or idleness.

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RP Excerpt - Suffer Well

taken from Let Go

---

The crunch of the tooth ground under one high, booted heel turns into something worse, grating, as in Penumbral's wake, the rook-dark sending covers the crushed remnants and consumes it without a trace. The winged thing flutters along the ground after, racing over withered grass and desecrated ground to rejoin the cloud of ceaseless, churning shades swarming in moth shape around his feet in place of a true shadow.

When Tisho blocks the next blow, the impact of their 'blades forces Penumbral back a step, scattering the sendings below at their feet. Even in the midst of his maddened fury, the smaller knight does not senselessly attack his favoured, and so the sendings stretch their collective wings outward, arcing into a notable crescent shape to surround all three combatants.

Unfortunately, while Tisho's interference gives Penumbral startled pause, it gives Kite the moment he needs to take advantage--as the young Zandalar snaps Tisho's neck, his action produces not just the sickening jolt of broken bone but the abrupt surge of an echoing moan from the depths of the sin'dorei knight's throat.

"Run," Tisho cautions the living troll, even then trying his damned best to coax Kite away from the path he rushed into so blindly.

Suffer, Penumbral distantly hears of his own 'blade, although the incoherent shriek of rage forms the concept less in words within his fractured thoughts than it does with scent and sound and the visceral promise of ripping into the traitorous living thing who dares trespass, dares bring harm, dares assault the one being in existence more precious to him than all things.

The collective swarm of moth shadows surge upward, no longer limited to the flat surface of the ground in spite of their ultimately two-dimensional forms. They swirl around Kite in a fevered whirlwind of winged shapes, black and starless like thousands of tiny tears made in the fabric of reality, except that these count as no illusion, for no trick of light ever ate away at a man miniscule bite by miniscule bite.

He drives Kite before him in this manner and wastes no time in running the vividly-lit 'blade straight through his poorly-matched opponent the second he gets the chance to, effectively pinning the living troll in place much as one would mount an insect prepared for collection.

Only this one, of course, yet lives, and spews blood into his face, onto his armour, vomits more up. None of it goes to waste: much of the swarm flitting about them diverts to the pooling blood staining everything before him.

Voices, tinny and far more distant than the harpy wails of his unsatisfied 'blade, call at his back. One, small and frightened and brave and foolish, whispers to him in distorted secrets of spirits that will never speak to him directly ever again.

He does not see, he does not hear, he does not think--all attention narrows down to the finite point of ebbing life caught in his gauntleted claws.

More blood gushes forth as he twists his 'blade, as he sinks metal talons in to widen the hole, to grasp at entrails, to fist and shred and yank because he must satisfy the burning hunger, the Red, the Red calls for vengeance and torture and death--

"Tisho needs you. More than you need to kill Kite."

Sound returns in a roar, drowning out the voice of Errant's Choice, so that he hears screaming, gurgling, sizzling of fel fire, and above all of it, the mantra repeated by child and cripple:

That's enough. Come back. Come back. Come... back.

Don't kill him! Please!

Penumbral turns, his own broken, fractured neck grinding awfully for the vicious twist. He searches, wide-eyed electric blue hunting for the glory of his Sun, the blaze of unnatural life that Kite so heedlessly threatened and snapped Penumbral's own grip on sanity for it.

"Tt. Ttssh." He croaks, a grave's hollow sigh fetid as rot and twice as lonely.

"Tisho."

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Short Story - Maybe Tomorrow

Sort-of a response to this, but also a companion to it at the same time, since it's intended as a mini-project between X and I of taking a breather from straight-up RP for plot progression.

I pecked at this for several days, trying to get the feel of Penumbral's voice just right, which was a hell of a lot harder than it probably looks, given the simplified vocabulary used.

I'm so used to writing how I please with a big expanded vocabulary with lots and lots of synonyms and flowery speech. Stripping it of the majority of that--making allowances for wordplay because that is definitely still a Penny thing--to also make sure I write in subjective third-person instead of the usual omni third-person makes me want to roll around and whine because IT FEELS SO LIMITING. I like conveying MORE instead of less.

Whatever. HAVE WORDS.

P.S. the above artwork is not mine. Source is this guy. The "gibberish" is a conlang of pseudo Kiswahili, as well as pseudo Igbo. I don't claim to have grammar or proper words right at all and especially not so with the "family words." It's all just there for flavour because trolls don't have their own dialects and language past the shitty in-game parser.

---

The two knights return from their stolen moments spent together in time to catch the scent of blood and misery. Expecting the worst--and, being a living remnant of the once mighty Scourge army, he can conjure up any number of things qualifying as “worst”--Penumbral opens up his middle eye and steps into the clearing with his ‘blade drawn before him. Surprise quickly banishes his expectations, and tumbles him right back into resentful confusion soon enough. He Sees nothing to explain the potent scents mingling in the air--their cloudy, ribbonlike shapes writhe before him, already decaying. After closing off Sight and opening his main pair of eyes, he sees nothing to make sense of, either--he sees only a handful of treehouse whelps, a fatty-croc, and a bloody and bruised, but quite alive, sea-bear. Gradually, with more effort expended than he would in release, he spools the surplus of revoked spellwork back into himself--much as if his body played the part of distaff, the spells the thread, and his taloned hands the spindle. He refuses, after all, to simply let go his clutch on raw, runic power not yet fully invoked; it would wither the surrounding clearing to let it loose, and doing so would put the living in needless danger, particularly when he finds no signs so threatening as to earn his wrath, much less Errant’s Choice unsheathed. So he recalls the unspent power, stores it away, and slides an unsatisfied and seething ‘blade down the throat of the heavy leather scabbard resting against his shoulder-blades. Only when the fatty-croc sends the whelps away does Penumbral and his favoured hear the Story of the the kite-flier fighting with the sea-bear, which upset the morning’s plans of first-aid learnings. What the sin’dorei knight pays the most attention to, however, comes not from the fatty-croc’s sonorous description of events, but the silence of the sea-bear on the subject, and the way no honey-snake appears present at all. The honey-snake’s misery lingers as one of the most marked of the miasmic scents, and thus one of the last to sucumb to time wearing on. Where, then, did the honey-snake fit into the Story, and why did the fatty-croc neglect to mention his presence in the Story? By scent alone, surely he should figure prominently into it. Penumbral says as much to his favoured, dourly, ponderously muddling his way through uncoordinated thoughts to convey this realisation. By then, of course, they carry out their conversation--given largely in their private language of ahali neno and only a smattering of Orcish or true Zandali--within the confines of the treehouse kitchen. Here, they gain further insight, where the stork confirms the honey-snake’s presence at the lesson, as well as a distinct disinterest in the goings-on of the other living things--until Kite appeared to interfere. Although slow and broken and oft-mistaken for stupid, Penumbral begins to See the hidden Story unfurling before him, like the trick ink that fades on a scroll until held up to light again. He cannot speak with certainty, not yet, but he believes that Kite’s return after months abroad heralds the predicted reds both dead men feared from him, and that somehow, somewhere, this Story also involves the honey-snake at its core. The red may spread, he fears as well, infecting the living far more effectively than if the knights brought plague into their adopted home. ”We should... see to this, Penumbral,” the stork advises in his quiet, severe way, “See to these reds, so there is less hurt.” Fully in agreement, he addresses his favoured to regain attention. “Shemshi,” he begins, as always, and then urges they divide the work, as they once did for the stork, too. They both remember too quickly how the stork once felt nothing but reds and violets and faded ever closer to the darkest blacks. Just like the stork, the kite-flier and the honey-snake need to see that blues and yellows and greens exist still, and while Penumbral suspects two dead men will not be the ones those involved should hear it from, they must start somewhere. His favoured agrees and leaves him behind with the two living, trusting Penumbral to go to the honey-snake while he, himself, seeks out the kite-flier for Words. He thinks much about the kite-flier as he shuffles his way through the treehouse to the guest’s quarters. In the time before his Sun, Penumbral labled and ranked all things in four simple, easily-defined categories: Living, Not Living, Blade Brother, and Not Blade Brother. These pairs of set, linked circles even he could visualise without effort, and they reduced his world to a manageable order. All Living Things died. All Blade Brothers shared the same Purpose under Him. Many other memorised mantras came from these unquestionable truths, but these first four could be deemed as the most important. Yet, while the times of Scourge, and the times of before his Sun no longer rightly apply, not all the Laws binding him can be wholly disobeyed. He will always be a sentient, albeit former, Scourge weapon, and weapons bend and yield only so far. To adapt, he--aided by his Sun and others met along the way--adjusted his categories. These days, the label and ranking system within his fractured mind looks little like circles overlapping, and quite a lot instead like a very monstrous plant. He does not mind this. A plant, he feels, suits him, and an ugly, withered one with tangled roots, even more so. The kite-flier calls Penumbral’s living brother, Me’notoa, a friend. A friend of the silver-eyed landshark earns the label within Penumbral’s mental list not as that of Living Thing--and therefore something to be largely ignored unless necessary--but that of Cherished Living Thing--and therefore something worth monitoring, protecting, and being made as green and as yellow as a dead thing can manage. Too, since the kite-flier's reds so clearly relate to the honey-snake's, Penumbral then can apply this logic to the shared problem of the honey-snake and his reds. Reds that, according to what he and his favoured witnessed at the clearing outside the treehouse, already turned a troubling violet. Sadly, with his Sun absent--and thus the troll knight’s presence no longer grounding him--he makes it no further than the correct room before losing his confidence that he can help. In being unsure, he lets in the faintest tendrils of Errant’s Choice into his thoughts, which severs the carefully stitched-together focus of what he means to do at all. Living things knock, he reminds himself after staring at the closed door before him with the bewilderment born of a dead thing unused to all the social contracts once required of them. Living things use doors, and when the doors do not belong to them, they knock. He dislikes doors. But he likes knocking, so he knocks--a clumsy, staggered rap of metal-plated knuckles scraping against pleasingly-carved wood. By the fifth unanswered knock, the noise of his own fist pounds inside his head like the uneven throb of a dying heart, and he falters. Errant’s Choice slips more shadows between him and the present. He forgets why he knocks. Heart, he silently repeats to himself, and touches taloned fingers to the front of his breastplate. Here, beneath metal and flesh and bone, he faintly hears the tick-tick, tick-tick, of the moth-shaped watch, which rests within the cavity of his chest in place of a real heart. Tak-tak, tak-tak, the tips tattoo a tinny timbre, his thoughts inform him inanely, fastening firmly to the wordplay like teeth sunk into flesh. He worries at this much in the same manner, pleased with himself as he taps out imaginary tempo to imaginary music, and resolves to remember the game to share with his favoured-- “Kite,” he abruptly says aloud to no one, and returns to knocking, because Tisho tries with the kite-flier, and so he must try with the honey-snake. Thoughts of his favoured always anchor him, and Errant’s Choice retreats once more to the smallest, darkest pocket of his fragmented thoughts. This time, he knocks with his fingers, but the honey-snake must not enjoy his non-verbal game of sounds like Tisho would, since the answer remains the same: nothing. Breaking things that belong to the living often ranks up there with breaking the living themselves, as far as Things Not To Do. He assumes, though, that the broken door abruptly latched in his grip--that he does not consciously recall tearing off its hinges--will be pardoned, given the stork’s current wishes to see to the honey-snake’s well-being. And regardless, Penumbral sees logic in the broken door. If he knocked, he can open the door because he knocked, and with the door now out of his way, he can enter--which he does. He trudges inside the guest room, split-toed boots resuming the dull clack of their raised heels with every stride, and then turns in a slow flutter of thick black cloak to set the door back against its frame--where it lists and sags rather sadly. This does not sit well for the sin’dorei knight, who spends several minutes trying to realign it properly well before he recalls--once more--the real reason he entered at all. “Ihe-onwu gini ka i biara ime? Gbu mu?” The rasping, foreign words constrict his thoughts, making it even more difficult to face the troll who makes weary, indifferent demands of him. “Je,” he retorts flatly in the ahali neno, faintly out of spite, but mostly because the family words come easier to him than even Orcish, thanks to constant use around his Sun. “Gini?” “Gani,” the sin’dorei knight counters again, warming slightly to the new word game. He does not recognise the honey-snake’s dialect of Zandali past gripping it does not mesh with the few phrases he learned of the Darkspear dialect and its subsequent sub-dialect from his favoured’s Before; not gripping it means little to him, though. He can See, and he can thus tell by tone enough to play along. “Loa’s sakes,” Oti’eno sighs at him without much feeling behind his complaint, staring out from a dirty, tangled mess of blankets. “I always forget I must speak this brute’s tongue around you.” The honey-snake bothers with the sluggish lift of one dark arm just long enough to flick his hand in dismissive fashion. “If you are not here to kill me, go away.” Even without colour in his world, shades of light and grey exist; the limb flopping at him without zeal looks like it could be as dark as Penumbral’s own skin. At least it might be. Penumbral no longer remembers for a certainty--not off hand, hah--and the compulsion at his own private little joke--to tug his paralyzed lips upward, using his thumbs as the hooks--chases after the second urge to remove gauntlet and vambrace for a peek at his own dry, weathered flesh. The white-haired sin’dorei refrains, though, and muses instead on how the honey-snake could palm an elf’s head easily. Penumbral’s favoured can do this trick, also, but he thinks Oti’eno’s palm may yet be broader, with longer, thinner fingers, than even Tisho’s. “Im.” When he does reply at last, he forgoes bothering with any elaboration; a single “no” suffices for the honey-snake’s words. “...Put your arm down, then. You look... ssi-i-i-sss.. absolutely ridiculous.” Penumbral blinks, all his eyes in succession. Focus shivers through him again, so that he sees his own leather-and-armour-clad palm held up before him, with the spined and clawed fingers fitted loosely side-by-side. “Forgets,” he drones blandly, apathetic to the effort required for reasoning out this unthinking reaction of his. A third sigh escapes into the open air, dredged up from within the huddle of blankets vaguely resembling the shape of a man. Penumbral ignores this--or, more accurately, he notes the noise only distantly as a purposeless sound, thus dismissing it as less vital to monitor than breath and pulse--and peers around the room. He does so, of course, without turning his head; the third eye slides without hurry in its socket, regarding both the walls papered in what he assumes to be protective signs and the floor with its tray of uneaten food. Where his roaming gaze wanders, a peculiar breeze rustles the crisp parchment, but this unnatural draft lacks the strength to do more. Its passing fails to stir the elf’s white, chin-length curls, much less the leather-bound tails weighted down past jaw and gorget by heavy metal rings. In truth, one of the splintered parts of a fettered Shade disturbs the flimsy talismans one by one in its wake, for through its sight shared with him, Penumbral can study up close the Zandali seals plastered over the stork’s own, more familiar wards, and all without needing to take either a single step away from, or his main eyes off, the honey-snake. “Leave those be,” the hissing command slithers free of a raised, hooded face cowled by one of many layered blankets. Preoccupied in his curiosity, Penumbral ignores the listless order as he ignored the sighs preceding it. “What Purpose,” he asks, instead. He senses no magic in the layered seals--to his Eye, every single one appears entirely harmless, useless, mere scraps of paper scribbled upon. “...Not your business. No tree to go get stuck in this time?” “Im.” Finished in examining the false seals, he centers his focus back to the Zandalar determined to cling to his Pretense of protection. Penumbral politely allows this, for the moment, neither pressing further about the seals, nor pointing out that blankets and paper make poor barriers against former Scourge of his skill in Seeing. “Went up tree for Kite. Kite in tree, not. May-be tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow.” The silence that greets the dead elf’s subtle humour should tell him much, but he does not grip what it says for the honey-snake until blankets shift to face the the opposing wall and withered, muffled regret rises next. Oti’eno’s voice, as hoarse and intangible as smoke, whispers, “There is no tomorrow,” so lowly that only something as dead as Penumbral can hear it. “Not for something like me.”

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Character Cliffnotes: Penumbral

Penumbral “Penny” Moonwinged - moth, shadow, and blood themes - sin’dorei; death knight - over 10,000 years old at death - former Sunfury researcher, and technical traitor to both the Sunfury and the sin’dorei at the time of his death - possesses a third eye, tied to one of his few unique abilities involving shades he enslaves from the Realm of Shadows - can be described as built like a brick: muscular, tall, with a dull, red-ochre skintone - white/grey hair, curling and thick, with two tails wrapped up in leather and weighted by metal rings; moth “eyes” dyed into bangs which obscure most of his face - heavily scarred on face and torso; “hollow” inside, with a “gut pouch” - partnered with Tisho; calls him “Shemshi” [“Sun”] - blood brother AND blade brother [“It’s Complicated”] to Meros, making him both uncle and godfather to Corsiel, as well - friend to Jabiru the King of Eyes, and his family out in Feralas, but not as overly fond of them as he is of Jabiru - carries personal grudges/enmity for--and thus is dangerously hostile to--Greyspell [Meej’s character], Ti’kalan, and Xaj the Snaptusk - DK name: drawn from a combination of his Sunfury callsign and a side research project - ‘blade name: Errant’s Choice; hints at the fondness for wordplay from life - his name in life: Merosiel Riversung [yes, he was that brother]; his alias after the Sundering: Namurael Quicksand - mostly speaks only broken Orcish or Tisho’s conlang - suffers from multiple disabilities, including but not limited to: severe musculoskeletal and nerve damage, true colour blindness, and a variety of noticeable cognitive/speech impediments - more stuff here.

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Character Sheet: Penumbral Moonwinged

(Tw: blood, gore, violence; basically lots of DK-related shenanigans in multiple links)

A few basics

Name (unlife): Penumbral Moonwinged

Name (life): Merosiel Riversung/Namurael Quicksand

Nickname(s): Penny, shemshi’ahi

Title: Shadow King

Gender: Male

Race: sin’dorei/blood elf

Subrace/Other: 3rd gen. death knight

Height: 6’6”

Weight: heavy

Age: 10,000+

Fanart

1 by Quillery newest, 2013

1 by Tennine/Kim Swan

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 by X

1,2,3,4,5,6,7 by Umbrarex

1 by Tezzy

1 by Beastly-Art/Aureath

1 by Defilerwyrm

1,2,3 by Avali

Inspirational Stuff/Reference Materials:

Aruval - 1,2,3,4,5

Armour - 1,2,3,4

Tattoo - spiral moth (courtesy of X)

A few generalised theme inspo’s - moths, bees, honey, death, shadows, eyes, third eye, precognition

A few broadly themed inspo’s - Ookami, Okage, ajna, eyespots and mimicry, Prototype, Bleach, Hellsing: Ultimate, Zelda: Windwaker/Zelda: Twilight Princess

Misc. Inspo - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19

Beneath the mimicry of life, buoyed on silent moth wings, and sensed beneath the hum of bumblees, the shadow of a monster sleeps-- and it knows only anger.

"Brief" Description: - Distinctive theme of shadows, eyes, and insects; moths and bees predominant. - Built like a brick, and coloured like one too. Scars by the handful. A once-handsome face, wizened by partial mummification; sharp-featured, with long, hooked nose, high cheekbones, and strong jawline. - Three lich-lit blue eyes; the middle is centered above his brow. - White eyebrows; exaggeratedly long even for an elf. Ridiculous hairstyle probably right at home on any elf-equivalent of David Bowie. Dance, magic, dance, and all that. - In-game cloaks are stupid. Give me one that looks as full-bodied as Maiev's or the Lich King's, and then we'll talk, since Penny's is far more like that than the piddly flaps of fabric we get. - Like his cloak, his armour's black; it does not reflect outside lightsources, and looks a little too organic and chitinous for the comfort of most. - Fauld is actually modified from the lames and tassets of more typical armour design; somewhere between pleated kilt and tonlet. It reaches to his ankles. Further modifications include taloned gauntlets and the raised heels of his boots. Some undead accessorise with extra eyeballs, manly skirts, and practical--well, as practical as you can get in a fantasy game--high heels. What? - Aruval-esque runeblade. Simple design, sleek blade, a few pits at the tip. Curiously, no runes appear present on the blade itself. - Voice is deep and echoing, and lacks feeling. He talks funny, too. Go ahead, try him and you'll see. A crushed skull and broken face'll do things to a man. - Shambles along. He is a zombie, yo. - Smells like old blood, the inside of a pot, and the musty dryness of a mausoleum. Basically: death metal. (You totally groaned at that, right?) Brief History: TBA TL;DR Description: A Death Knight's Regalia - Like with the others of his kind, a runeblade accompanies him. By virtue of its sheer size and weight, this bloodforged aruval advertises fairly plainly that he once numbered amongst some of the strongest of the Scourge army: the death knights of Acherus. His particular suit of armour, however, tends toward being a bit stranger than the standard-issue saronite of most other knights. For one, it presents as a shade too aphotic; one can never glimpse any hint of reflection. Sometimes, should it be stared at for too long, vivid blue--here, the fine grain of runic script like the thread of a mineral vein, there, the malevolent gaze of a lidless eye winking open--may occasionally be seen in its otherwise starless surface. For another, ridged quills sharp as thorns and twisted as vines guard the joints of limbs and the breadth of wide shoulders. A carapace of overlapping plica braces his body from gorget on down to heavy boots, and smaller, equally chitinous segments even spur his gauntlets, tipping them in cruel, false metal talons. The ragged hem of the sable cloak shrouding his wide back and shoulders skitters with impatience over the ground, shifting less like pliant fabric and more like seething shadow. The pleated leather of his kilt's layered tassets whispers restlessly across the metal cuisses beneath, a hissed sigh for every clacking stride of his heavy, high-heeled boots. He himself moves with all the slow, deliberate purpose of a dead man hell-bent on an eternal war-march: martial, dangerous. As a monster built to outlast his opponents, to lay relentless siege upon rather than merely outfight them, his armour effectively reinforces this seemingly unassailable mien. A Death Knight's Physical - Although built like a brick--coloured like one, too--he nevertheless stands rather average in height for a sin’dorei, and while relatively intact under the organic-seeming plate, this shambling cadaver’s body definitely saw better days. Preserved and embalmed well before a dead king ever raised him, his muscled form lacks in healthy fat, leaving the elf knight with somewhat mummified, leathery brown flesh. The electric blue of unholy energy flickers within sunken sockets like the shame of an unkept promise. Worse, he watches the world through three eyes, rather than two, with the middle one centered in the cradle of his forehead. In life, others commonly considered his face to be a handsome one; in death, though, sinewy flesh clings too tenaciously to bone, exaggerating his once-striking profile into a macabre caricature of the broken skull beneath. Too, his face bears the clotted furrows of deep claw marks. They score the lids of his main eyes, skate across high cheekbones to bite into the bridge of his hooked nose, and pock the corners of his thin mouth. A match to his face, untidy incisions knot his torso. Crawling north from his gut, the fused scarring forks left and right just before his collarbone. The left branch of the patterned “Y” leads to, of all things, an embedded bit of clockwork where a living man’s heart might be. The fist-sized watch mimics a moth's shape, one with delicate insect limbs buried firmly in cold flesh. A second, but distinctly spiralised, moth design inks his dark skin between his shoulderblades. The third typically shields his face from view. When not pinned back, grungy bangs obscure nearly the entirety of his features. When let loose, they hint at a moth’s folded wings--a suggestion made replete with dingy grey dye vee’d in reverse, a pair of beige-on-yellow eyespots layered over top, and the tattered antennae of typical sin’dorei eyebrows poking through at the edges. The rest of his bob-cut, white hair sweeps across either cheek in a thick halo of matted curls. This dovetails from his nape into twin, leather-bound plaits weighted down at their ends by plain metal rings. He never smiles, much less shares any expression at all. Broken, stilted speech yields even less emotion. His sonorous voice resembles a bell without its clapper--low and throaty, but twice as empty for sounding from the depths of a corpse rather than reverberating off the hollow curve of brass.