Afanas

Biographical information

Birthplace Elbion Born Died Age 160 years old Home Alliria/Allir Reach Sexuality Pronouns

Physical description

Race Psychephage (Vourdalak, the term his people use for their race). Vampiric humanoid, but not a true vampire. Sub-Race Gender Male Height roughly 7'4 or 7'5 Mass between 370 and 400 pounds Hair color dark chestnut Eye color onyx colored Skin color pale, like bleached bone

Political information

Affiliation(s) Occupation Sellsword, mercenary, etc. Clan(s) Caste Domain Masters Apprentices Alias(es)

Out-of-character information

Writer Bison Created on February 20th 2025 Avatar @artplusdoodles

Afanas is exceedingly tall and long-limbed, with notably dry, chiseled musculature clinging to his skeleton. He appears to be in his mid-twenties and sports youthful, if not sharp, facial features. He has thick eyebrows, a smooth bridge of a nose, and long, thin eyes shaped like twin almonds. Whenever sufficiently angered or using his witch sight, Afanas' eyes undergo a drastic change. His atygian orbs lighten to grey, silver, chrome and white consecutively and the usually round pupils coalesce into vertical, dagger-like slits.

His complexion is unnaturally pale, if not slightly grayish under the right lighting.

There's a marble, or rather porcelain-like quality to his skin, further accentuated by the fact Afanas is entirely hairless, sans for his brows, lashes and locs, all of whom are the color of lightly roasted chestnuts. His hair is long, reaching well past his upper-back. He wears a tight-fitting bodysuit that hugs his bodice closely, leaving only his feet and hands exposed, opting to cover the former with knee-high boots.

Oftentimes he's seen sporting a dark cloak draped over his broad shoulders and a wide-brimmed traveler's hat meant to protect him from the sun's harmful gaze. A dazzling sapphire pendant hangs from his neck, its metallic edges chased and fashioned in the likeness of evil beasts.

Afanas is magically gifted, possessing much raw power but not enough skill, or rather experience, to reap all of its benefits. Afanas does not carefully sculpt and tweak the supernatural energies he commands so much as he simply grabs the energies and forces them into the desired effect through harsh and bloody-minded determination.

It is a crude and terrifying spellcraft, much like the club of a northern raider, apt to strike down anything and anyone in its vicinity. The downside is that Afanas must actively wrestle the chaotic magic into shape.

Failing to do so would lead to a great deal of unintended damage as the unrestrained and unguided arcane energies twist the physical environment, cause rampant mutations in the caster or bystanders, or otherwise scar the very fabric of reality.

Those who had the misfortune of casting their witchsight upon his magecraft say it flows like sluggish, shimmering tar, drowning, in its sticky embrace, the minds and souls of any who carelessly approach it.

It is, however, true that he can apply magic in terms more mundane and unlikely to blow anything up. Such applications of magic are usually, not always, but mostly always centered around doing something to his body rather than the environment around him. We are talking basic enhancements, puppeteering his own body for maximum efficiency, levitating his sword, and such.

A psuchephage's nature drives it to feed, to draw the warm essence from living flesh. Young phages like Afanas have a specialized proboscis situated in their throat that they use to bleed their prey dry. They, however, do not consume blood for the sake of it. Since they are young, they use blood as a vessel through which to rip out a person's soul. Older phages lack the proboscis and can separate a creature's soul from its physical coil with a touch, and sometimes, with a mere gesture or a thought. A phages body converts souls into magic. Phages use this magic to increase their strength, speed, resilience and senses to preternatural levels, and to mend wounds at speeds that shouldn't be possible under nature's laws. Phages can ingest normal foods and drinks, but derive no significant sustenance from them. Depending on their age, personality and diet, phages can exhibit a whole lexicon of strange abilities, ranging from telepathy, mental dominance over animals, teleportation, telekinesis, biomancy and so on. They tend to gain these abilities over the course of hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years. The longer a phage lives, the more it "evolve", often shedding off its humanoid appearance or at least severely altering it to the point where it couldn't possibly be mistaken as a member of any known humanoid race.

Without air, Afanas (and any other phage) could endure longer than most breathing races, surpassed only by naga and merfolk, though the slow grip of suffocation could still claim him. His endurance is prodigious and he can fight at full capacity for longer than any orc, elf or human, assuming he's well fed.

Phages are born severely sensitive to light, to the point where of a phage child is exposed to it their skin will rapidly burn and chat. As they mature, the light sensitivity lessens, until, around age of one hundred, direct light exposure causes physical discomfort without outright damaging them. Centuries old phages (500-1000 year olds and older) are completely indifferent to sunlight. There are no known diseases that afflict phages, they cannot be turned by a vampire's or a werewolf's bite, matter of fact, ingesting their flesh and/or bodily fluids can cause the disembodied bodypart to start regenerating inside the consumer's digestive tract, causing mechanical harm and sideeffects similar to severe poisoning/metastatic cancer.

Truly ancient phages are also, unsurprisingly, unbothered by silver. Their only true weaknesses at such an advanced age are magic and massive quantities of running water.

↪Aversion to sunlight: While the sun doesn't burn him, it causes him discomfort. One could say that he's light sensitive, hence the heavy cloak and the wide-brimmed hat.

↪Hunger: The body of a psuchephage requires continuous sustenance to fuel its immortality. If Afanas fails to feed at least once every few days, his body starts to rapidly deteriorate and he loses much of his supernatural prowess. Think of it the way you'd think of a curse or any other spell. No magic is eternal, everlasting, hence the psuchephage needing outside sustenance.

↪Silver: Burns him on contact. The wounds inflicted by silver present a challenge to heal, even if they are not necessarily fatal.

↪Decapitation: Will kill him, especially if performed with a silver blade.

↪Running water: Disrupts his spell weaving. He can't cast as well as normal if he's say, in the middle of heavy rainfall. You could also theoretically drown him by chucking him into a river (being completely encased in moving water gives him the equivalent of a seizure).

↪Intense heat/fire.

↪Consecrated grounds: Not a massive hindrance, but operating on consecrated soil renders him weaker, gradually sapping away at his strength by dampening his innate magical reserves. This isn't a feature inherently tied to the "holy" nature of such places. Simply put, consecrated grounds are magical, even if said magic comes from the gods and not from...within. Magic can harm a Vourdalak. It's not kryptonite, but since magic begets magic, being exposed to a magical field (like the ones produced by consecrated grounds, that are meant to ward off supernatural entities) makes it so that he's literally being rejected by the place. Oil and water sort of situation. Incompatible magical mixing.

↪Noise: Certain high pitch frequencies will disorient him. Go high enough, and it's like throwing a flashbang square into his face.

Afanas is a loyal friend to those true to him and abides by his own set of chivalric ideals, which often marks him as more civilized than those more sophisticated people he meets in his travels. Indeed, straightforwardness is the staple of his character. He rarely lies and is often brutally honest, regardless of consequences. Despite his impressive martial prowess, he tries his best to avoid abusing and suppressing others, especially for the sheer sake of it. His non-humanness makes him stick out like a sore thumb and often leaves him feeling like he does not belong to the world around him.

Being a man of good humor, Afanas is hard to anger. He sees violence as a means to an end and despises needless cruelty. Nonetheless, when spurred, his wrath can be a terrible, bestial thing. He rarely forgives. He holds grudges and he's stubborn. When his mind is put to something, one would have to produce herculean efforts to change his opinion. He serves no gods, and doesn't acknowledge them past the fact they exist and that he doesn't particularly like them. He's skeptical of religion, dogmas and blind adherence to any particular set of ideals. He cares little for money and even less for lands, but, perhaps, he cares just a smidge about titles.

Besides the aforementioned knickknacks, Afanas carries a large blade strapped to his back. This imposing greatsword stretches 230 centimeters from pommel to point, fashioned from dark metal. It possesses a single-edged blade that is wider towards the point and narrower near the hilt, making it vaguely resemble a scimitar. The cross guard flows into forms of snarling beasts, likely a wolf, its mouth agape and howling. The grip and pommel continue this flowing, bestial aesthetic, with sweeping lines that suggest claws or talons reaching back toward the wielder. The sword was fashioned with durability in mind so that it could survive the tremendous stress brought upon by its owner's strength. Furthermore, it's a magic conduit, enabling Afanas to channel magic through it as a sort of improvised casting wand/staff.

When deployed blade is often wreathed in black light and dark fire, and the very air around the wielder howls with crackling energies. Any creature felled by this wicked blade will have their essence snuffed out.

Due to having been used to slay countless fel beasts, monsters, demons, fae and other malevolent astral entities, the sword has been tempered by the malice of such beings. As a result, this instrument of death has become more effective against supernatural threats, capable of harming otherwise intangible beings and even interfering with regeneration.