Junius Alfort

Junius Alfort
Corpse

Biographical information

Birthplace Vel Anir Born Rubin 12, 356 Died Age 16 Home Sexuality Pronouns

Physical description

Race Human Dreadlord Exile Sub-Race Gender Male Height 5'8 Mass 145 pounds (65.78 kg) Hair color Blonde Eye color Blue Skin color Pale

Political information

Affiliation(s) Dreadlord Exiles Occupation Dreadlord Exile Clan(s) Caste Domain Masters Apprentices Alias(es) Corpse

Out-of-character information

Writer Tarsas Created on 6/22/2023 Avatar Images generated using Midjourney unless otherwise specified

Junius Alfort, also known as Corpse is a Human Dreadlord and former Initiate who deserted Vel Anir to join Gilram's exiles after the revolution. He is currently serving in Gilram's exile army and works actively against his former home. Born in the month of Rubin in 356, Junius was orphaned from a young age as his mother, who was a prostitute, died when he was three years of age. Her death was ruled an accident and young Junius was taken in by a nearby Meadowmere Orphanage. While growing up at Meadowmere, Junius seemed to have a bizarre fascination with the human body and would study cuts, bruises, and scrapes for hours at a time. At five years of age, strange things began to happen around him. People would suddenly perform seemingly random actions as if they were suffering from some sort of insanity. These events would only occur around the boy.

It was proven by academy experts that Junius possessed a magic they termed “puppeteering”. It was a few months after this began that he was taken by the Dreadlords from the orphanage. Upon entering the academy, Junius excelled in the sciences of anatomy and showed an aptitude for inventing and building along with extreme intelligence. Though seemingly blessed with many gifts, his magical abilities were seemingly lackluster for several years and his martial training scores were low. While he showed impressive dexterity and agility, he had little aptitude for martial combat as he was weak.

Three years before the resolution, initiates who he did not get along with began to have what seemed to be mental breakdowns. Though knowing his abilities, academy proctors could never quite pin it on him as dreadlord training was harsh and unforgiving. Right before the revolution, it was discovered that he had been murdering initiates whom he disliked and using their bodies to make what he called “corpse puppets”. He was one of the first to defect with Gilram. Currently, Junius is a loyal member of Gilram’s exile army, though no one is quite sure what drives his loyalties. His only answer, when asked, is always the fact that Gilram afford him “freedom”.

Junius is a slight and seemingly frail boy, standing at only 5’8 and weighing 145 pounds. Many would refer to him with descriptors such as “gaunt” and “skeleton like”. His figure is of one who spends many hours on more sedentary pursuits that involve sitting for many hours, with very little definition and muscle. Junius also has numerous scars on his body from the harsh years he spent under the tutelage of the Dreadlord Academy. He typically stands out by virtue of his clothing, which is usually either armor painted with various colored runes or brightly colored tunics.

Though only sixteen, Junius’ features carry the signs of one who has lived a hard and physically abusive life. His skin is pale and stretched over his bones gauntly from many days when he was either not fed or too manic to be hungry in the academy. His dark blue eyes are tired and carry the sagging signs of one who has missed many hours of sleep. Though often possessed of a manic jovialness, it never truly reaches Junius’ eyes, which carry an unsettling dullness to them. Looking into them, one would see no trace of the smile plastered onto his face, only a calculating coldness. His dirty blonde hair is often unkempt, but clean and always washed.

His build is slight but conceals a wiry dexterity that he can use in the event he has to fight in close quarters. This dexterity is often used to conceal his strength, which is below that of his peers. This scenario came about because of Junius’ refusal to heavily invest himself in the martial aspect of his Dreadlord training, instead excelling at other aspects such as running and climbing. His reflexes are also still tuned and trained from training so that he can stay alive effectively on a battlefield. A sword or a bow are often too much for Junius but he can effectively handle small weapons such as daggers to an effective degree.

Junius’ body is covered in scars from years of abuse at the hands of Vel Anir, but his appearance is always what one would consider spotless, and clearly obsessively so. His clothing is always wrinkle free, his blades are always polished, and his hair, skin, and nails are always well groomed to the point of manic obsession. Whether Junius is wearing the tunic of a pauper or the robes of a king, they are always kept presentable and spotless. He does not like to have excessively muddy boots or be covered in dust and grime. This excessive trait has periodically annoyed his comrades on various assignments.

Junius is rarely a front-line combatant, though when fighting still wears armor to protect himself on his assignments. A thick padded leather breastplate and tunic protect him. A layer of mail offers a defensive point between the tunic and the leather. A pair of bracers with various hidden weapons allow him to defend himself and aid him in escaping in any scenario he cannot win. Junius wears a pair of greaves that have a similar design with built in spells and hidden weapons to offer him methods to quickly deal with opponents that they may not expect and avoid a long, drawn-out duel. Extremely tight-fitting leather pants provide weather protection and some minor slashing protection for his legs. All his equipment is painted with bright but organized runes and other depictions.

Ethereal Thread - Using mana, Junius can create long elastic threads of energy that look like marionette strings. He typically projects one from each finger but can project them from any part of his body. These threads of energy can attach themselves to any object or entity and allow Junius to manipulate the object or entity. They are entirely invisible to the naked eye unless Junius wishes them to be visible. He has noted that some entities with the ability to magically enhance their vision have been able to see them. The threads cannot be severed with any non-magical weapon or blade, which pass harmlessly through them, and can only be severed with arcane or enchanted weapons. Once created, they can be set to draw energy from life around them and stay in place for a long period of time even if the caster is not nearby. To manipulate them, however, Junius must be within 400 meters, and they must still be attached to him, though part of his training is to attempt to extend the distance that he can manipulate them. These threads can be used for a variety of tasks, such as wielding a blade or moving an object and can even manipulate and control living beings. Junius has used them to climb over obstacles, create elaborate traps, and even guide arrows. In order to attach a thread, he must be able to see the object and visually see the part of the body he is attempting to attach it to. Once attached, the threads remain on the target for a set period of time until Junius can no longer channel energy into them due to distance. Objects that break line of site do not affect the threads once attached unless they pass through a magical force that severs them. Junius can always see his own threads and is able to reattach them with new threads if given the opportunity. These thread can also be used to reattach limbs and stitch close wounds since Junius can set them to feed off a person's energy and dispell them later. He can also manipulate and control some charactertistics of the threads, such as making them extremely sharp to cut through enemies.

Marionette Master – Junius can use his threads to turn all sorts of objects into marionettes. Any entity or object is susceptible to this ability, though with varying degrees of success. Any inanimate object can be easily controlled and manipulated, though the heavier it is, the more threads it requires to move and the more physical energy it takes for him to manipulate. Pulling a large boulder down on someone, for example, would be an extremely energy intensive task and many of his threads would need to be attached to it. For controlling living creatures, the strength of Junius’ control is directly related to how many threads he has attached to the target and where they are located. Those who possess no ability to use magic are nearly defenseless and can be controlled with as little as one thread, provided he attaches it to a limb or some other flexible part of the body. To move an arm, Junius must have a thread attached to the arm. Once attached to the limb he wishes to control, it is possible to extend other threads off the main thread. A thread attached to the lower forearm, for example, may branch off into other threads to attach to the fingers. Those who possess and can sense magic can resist the domination of the threads by using their power and may require significant numbers of threads to fully overwhelm them. For this, Junius must channel power into the threads to suppress the host’s power. Therefore, it requires significantly more strength to dominate a resistant magic wielder. The threads can be interacted with by other spells and severed in this way, which is often how practitioners of magic protect themselves from this ability. When fully under control, a living person will transmit full sensory data to Junius, allowing him to control them at a distance.

Puppeteer’s Domination – To Junius, enemies and sometimes even friends are simply puppets that he can control. He has recently perfected the ability to take total control of a target. He can attach several thousand strings to an entity and temporarily assume full control of the entity’s body. He can use their physical form to vocalize, move, eat, or do anything that he desires them to do. It is potent enough to allow him to physically phase inside of a target’s body temporarily. Though this ability is extremely powerful, it comes at a high cost. He cannot just do it to just any target, and he must fully dominate the target with his energy before he is able to even make an attempt. Even after establishing dominance over the target, it takes roughly thirty minutes to successfully perform the spell, making it completely useless in combat where he would have no chance to perform the task uninterrupted. Phasing into a living being is also fraught with danger and if the entity is strong enough, it can forcibly eject him and cause permanent damage to his psyche. Junius can only hold the ritual as long as he possesses enough energy to maintain his grip. Thus, it is generally preferred by Junius that he utilizes this ability on his corpse puppets, which he can do with impunity and very little risk. Though he sets them up with runes to provide extra energy to help him sustain the form, he currently can only remain inside of the puppet for 24 hours at a time and then he must emerge for a period of 6-7 hours and sleep before he can use the ability again to restore energy. An entity that takes energy to dominate shortens his time greatly. The average city guard, for example, would only afford him 12 hours of time.

Corpse Surgeon - To provide easily controlled mediums for his ability, Junius is known to collect, modify, and utilize corpses as weapons. As a result of this, he has become intimately familiar with the human body, to the point where he has served in some capacity as a surgeon and medical practitioner for Gilram’s Exiles. He has extensively studied and obsessed over the human body his entire life and has disassembled, modified, and embalmed numerous human corpses. Though he possesses no healing magic, Junius is about as knowledgeable with regards to the human body as any doctor. He has several notable corpses that, through various chemicals and incantations, he has turned into living dolls that have retained a remarkable likeness to what they were like when they were alive, to the point where he can pass them off as still living. They are constructed with various weapons and abilities that can be fueled by Junius’ magic and can move and function like a real body through marionette manipulation. When controlling a marionette, he receives sensory data from the puppet, allowing him to see, smell, taste, touch, and hear what the puppet would be able to. He powers these abilities through incantations placed on the puppet. Junius has also devised spells which allow him to swap replace and swap missing body parts, provided he has a source of replacement parts. Though he does not possess major healing magic, he can successfully perform actions such as transplanting an eye into another human that functions and transplant an arm successfully from one person to another.

Tinkerer’s Fascination – Being a boy of high intelligence, Junius has aways been an avid tinkerer with machinery and small devices in addition to corpses. His tinkering abilities are eventually what lead him into corpse modification once he began to see corpses as simply tools. He has created innovative creations that have improved his quality of life and made life easier for those around him. His favorite designs are concealed weapons that are controlled by easily concealed mechanisms, such as hidden crossbows and concealed blades. He is known by some in the underworld of Vel-Anir and nearby cities for these abilities and has been known to discreetly sell his devices to raise extra funds for the war effort. He also uses this ability in conjunction with his threads to make extremely dangerous, long lasting traps and has taken down many an enemy without ever fighting them directly.

Energy Scapel – Despite possessing no healing magic, Junius has developed the capability to cloak his fingers and hand in magical energy, creating in effect a magic scalpel. This allows him to make precise surgical level cuts through many objects but he most notably uses this ability along with regular blades for work on human bodies and to disable enemies in combat by severing arteries, tendons, and other key parts of the body required for it to function. The ability manifests itself in a dark red glow around the hand or finger he has applied the energy to.

Martial Weakness – Never one to be heavily invested in sword practice, Junius’ abilities all entirely rest on relying on his magic and puppets to do any hand to hand fighting for him. He is at least quick with good reflexes, so he is capable of managing with small blades and daggers but cannot compete against those more skilled with the blade. Though possessing some proficiency with a bow, he cannot compete with many warriors with better bow skills. His style of combat heavily relies on not being present directly in front of the enemy. Though Junius falls short physically, when controlling a puppet, he is just as capable as any swordsman or bowman, since he is able to control others far better than himself. To compensate somewhat, Junius can attach his threads to himself and control his own limbs like a puppet, provided he keeps one hand free. With his scalpel ability, he is capable at hand-to-hand combat.

Obsessive Utility - Junius is manically obsessive about cleanliness, to the point where he developed spells specifically for satisfying his compulsion. He has several small utility spells that he can cast on himself to remove dirt from clothing, smooth out wrinkles, and perform a similar role as a bath would. Though this often was a source of shame in the academy, it has proven useful in Gilram's forces for long trips without access to clean water for bathing.

Planar Gem - Around his neck sits an artifact he stole from the academy in Vel Anir prior to leaving known as the Planar Gem, an artifact which is connected to another plane of existence that was created inside of the gem. It is a red ruby set in with eight smaller rubies surrounding the central stone in a pendant made of a dark metal with a chain looping it around the user's neck. The ruby serves as the only entrance into the plane and the owner can store any item within the plane inside the gem. The magic of the gem keeps Junius aware of every item inside the plane at all times and he can call any item out of the gemstone at any time by thinking of it and speaking the incantation. He stole it specifically to permit him to collect corpses for puppeteering. Despite its utility, the plane cannot support life and any living thing inside of the gem will quickly die. Living things also cannot be forced inside unless they are willing, as the magic was not designed to trap or capture.