Dramatis Personae | awashrpg

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ALLIES THE WARLOCK Smart, cunning, and a skilled strategist in his own right, The Warlock received the somewhat questionable gift of energy manipulation upon his arrival in Nevermorrow. Due to his altered physiology, he is capable of firing energy blasts out of his hands and feet, and unlike Summer's magic, this ability does not gradually deplete over time. His most frequent use of this ability is as an offensive ranged weapon, assaulting his enemies with energy blasts thrown from his hands. He is also capable of achieving flight through the expulsion of energy from his feet, and has improved his skills to be able to manipulate those blasts in increasingly complex ways. However, these abilities do still come at a cost: the more he uses them, the more he becomes "corrupted" from their use. Though the process in the short-term is slow and can generally be combated with various curative items, a lifetime of use would eventually see The Warlock achieve maximum corruption, shedding his humanity altogether in favor of becoming a being of pure energy. Once Summer's lieutenant and most trusted confidante, The Warlock quickly became her greatest downfall when, while preparing for their final confrontation with Skul the Dread King, The Warlock fell prey to Skul's psychic influence. Seizing control of The Warlock's thoughts, Skul manipulated him into taking aim and firing on Summer at point-blank range — a mortal wound that badly scarred the right half of her face and left her on the precipice of death. Horrified, The Warlock begged Maerlyn the Gray, their quasi-ally, to save Summer's life. Maerlyn agreed, but at a cost: rather than returning home with the rest of the group, Summer alone would have to stay behind in Nevermorrow and work off her "debt" for the service rendered. Lacking any other options, The Warlock agreed on her behalf, and thus condemned her to captivity on Maerlyn's Sorceror's Isle in the aftermath of their adventure. THE HERO Brash, bold, and frankly overconfident, The Hero is another energy manipulator in the group. However, unlike The Warlock, The Hero's capabilities are largely defensive in nature. His abilities allow him to shape shields and solid figures out of energy, enabling him to create barriers, platforms, and even stopgaps through the controlled use of his powers. Like The Warlock, his abilities do not gradually deplete over time; like The Warlock, continued use of his abilities would see him eventually succumbing to the same corruption. But unlike The Warlock, who largely enjoyed the range of his powers and made good use of them, The Hero experienced dissatisfaction with the abilities he began to manifest in Nevermorrow, and was largely reluctant to use them to the group's advantage as he did not perceive them as sufficiently "heroic". The most vocally adamant of the group when it came to accepting Maerlyn's charge to pursue the six objects of power, The Hero's opinion on the group's adventures in Nevermorrow is the most diametrically opposed to Summer's. He has no desire to return home to what he perceives as the "boring, average" life he used to live, and he is instead addicted to the excitement and prospect of winning glory that his time in Nevermorrow affords him. For this reason, he earned the somewhat derisive mantle of "The Hero", because in battle he is always first to charge and last to retreat, even when not engaging in battle altogether is unquestionably the better option. THE BLADE Quiet, permissive, and withdrawn, The Blade is the group's gentle giant — a personality type somewhat incongruous with his gift, a soul link to his sword. The blade in question is a tangible, physical object; as such, The Blade does not experience corruption through the exertion of his influence over it, and the sword is subject to the usual physical constraints of a weapon of its type and nature. His sword can be broken (albeit with difficulty) and it cannot cut through material harder than it. However, The Blade is capable of using magic in various ways to manipulate his sword, and his connection to the sword afforded him instant proficiency in its use. The blade cannot be lost or stolen; he is capable of recalling it to his hand at any time, though it must physically travel the distance separating them in order to reach him. He is also capable of augmenting and strengthening his sword with magic, and he can apply rudimentary spells to it, such as to make the blade glow with light, or to coat it in fire or ice. His connection to his sword also allows him to control it and fight with it even without having it physically in his hand. The most passive member of the group, The Blade is decidedly a follower, not a leader. He expresses no interest whatsoever in guiding the activities of the group or setting their priorities, and he is largely willing to go along with just about anything provided that everyone else is doing it, too. Originally The Hero's best friend, over the course of time The Blade gradually begins to withdraw from their implicit alliance, in particular when it begins to appear that The Hero is starting to go off the rails from his desire to be an acclaimed fantasy hero. However, he remains equally ambivalent about Summer's aim to return home at all costs, and appears mostly content to simply kill whatever it is that the group aims him at, at any given time. THE SHAMAN Naive, lofty, and pontifical, The Shaman began to manifest purification magic upon his arrival in Nevermorrow, which granted him a number of unorthodox — pun intended — abilities. Though he is arguably the closest thing the group has to a healer, The Shaman actually possesses few if any wound-treating abilities; his powers run instead to the purification and dispelling of corruption, the latter of which proves invaluable to his teammates who run the risk of falling victim to corruption through the use of their powers. He is also gifted with a sort of "psychic radar", allowing him to track the presence of magic and identify its use. Much like The Hero, The Shaman also entertains delusions of grandeur about the group's stay in Nevermorrow; however, where The Hero's dream is to win battles and cover himself in glory, The Shaman's aspiration is to be installed as the leader of the team and prove himself responsible for guiding the group to the completion of their mission and their triumphant return home. Unfortunately for those aspirations, in practice The Shaman proves himself a largely inept and ineffectual leader, whose plans tend to be sound if and only if everything goes exactly as he expects them to, which it often doesn't. Lacking skill in both forethought and in adaptation on a moment's notice, The Shaman's plans often result in failure because minor unforeseen circumstances are capable of derailing them; in this respect, he somewhat resents Summer for being recognized as the de facto leader of the group, as planning and pulling off strategies tends to be one of her major strengths, and one of his greatest weaknesses. THE MORPH Curious, daring, and nonconformist, The Morph began to manifest the dubious skill of transmutation magic upon his arrival in Nevermorrow. At its core, The Morph's magic allows him to alter the properties of matter; however, like Summer, he can only exert these alteration abilities a finite number of times before exhausting himself. As his magic operates on the same "magical battery" principle as Summer's, he is not subject to the threat of magical corruption. However, due to the vast potential and high complexity of matter transformation, it takes time and effort for The Morph to work out a successful transumation. Once he has learned a particular transformation, however, he can repeat it with relative ease, much in the same way that Summer can easily re-cast spells she knows but takes time and effort to learn new ones. Much to the chagrin of the group, The Morph largely opted to focus his transmutation efforts on that of learning how to transmute living flesh — and specifically, on how to graft various nonhuman appendages onto his own body. As such, he is capable of altering his own form to do things such as adding on a few extra pairs of arms, or equipping himself with a prehensile tail, or extending his fingers into twelve-inch claws. What actual purpose any of this serves is largely lost on the group, but no amount of rationalization is particularly effective on The Morph, who seems fixated on spending his days finding increasingly bizarre ways of grafting new appendages onto his body, and at using them in strange but occasionally helpful ways on a day to day basis. His perspective on how best to use his powers is largely a frustration to Summer, who has all sorts of ideas about how better a skill of this caliber might be used to the group's benefit, but The Morph is largely content to do his own thing, regardless of what the group might have to say about it.

ENEMIES THE WIZARD The enigmatic figure responsible for bringing the group to Nevermorrow, Maerlyn the Gray is a man whose background is shrouded in mystery. Pragmatic and self-serving, he initially presents himself as an ally to the group; however, his tendency to play his hand close to his chest and to give the appearance of being more helpful than he actually is quickly made Summer suspicious of his motives. Where all of the other members of her group were varying levels of agreeable to Maerlyn's request that they embark on a quest for the six items of power, Summer's skepticism and reluctance to blindly accept his word as reliable had him quickly disenchanted with her in particular. However, unbeknownst to everyone for quite some time, Summer also drew particular attention from Maerlyn because the form of magic she had manifested upon her arrival in Nevermorrow was of the same type and variety as his own — a vast array of potential constrained solely by the wielder's training, or lack thereof. Thus, while Maerlyn's magic appears vastly more formidable than that of Summer and her cohorts, this is largely attributable to the fact that Maerlyn is considerably older than them, and has had comparatively far more time to hone and develop his skills — not that he is inherently more powerful than them. Along with his considerable magical prowess, Maerlyn is a cunning strategist and skilled long-term chessmaster. It is ultimately for reasons of maintaining his power that he brings Summer and her friends to Nevermorrow; though he sells them a pitch about grand adventures and questing to save the world, his fundamental reason for sending them after the six items of power is to prevent Skul the Dread King from collecting them first — and furthermore, to avoid a direct confrontation with Skul until such time as he's prepared to win it. Thus, by using Summer and her friends as much as a diversion as a means of gathering the items, Maerlyn gains the time to prepare for a showdown with Skul at a place and time of his own making, to foster his own best possible advantage. Furthermore, it is because of this pragmatism that he chooses to preserve Summer's life on the condition that she remain his captive on Sorceror's Isle; her gift is rare enough that he wants to be sure that he exerts control over her potential, and so long as Summer behaves herself, she's slightly more valuable to him alive than she is dead. Thus, he keeps her captive for the sake of fostering her potential, but in a controlled environment where he can track her progress and ensure that he's able to maintain authority over her. In the best case scenario, she'll break and he'll gain the advantage of a second spellcaster like himself for his personal use; in the worst, he'll have to kill her and it will be an acceptable, albeit regrettable, loss. THE DREAD KING The overt antagonist of the group's adventure in Nevermorrow, Skul the Dread King is a source of unquestionable evil in the land of Nevermorrow. At some point in his reign of terror, Skul grew discontent with what he saw as the confines of the universe Nevermorrow resided in, and began to search out a means of expanding his influence into other dimensions. Though Maerlyn the Gray was known to be capable of traversing dimensions, he presented too great a threat to Skul to attempt to challenge directly, and no other magic-user in Nevermorrow shared the same capability. So instead, Skul set his sights on six legendary items of power that, according to the stories, were capable of opening portals between the dimensions when combined. However, the locations of these items had long since been lost to the sands of time, and upon being scattered they had assuredly been warded against evil, thus making it considerably more difficult for Skul to pursue them directly. However, when Maerlyn the Gray brought six outworlders to Nevermorrow, Skul soon saw an opportunity arising from their activities. After all, if the outworlders were willing to traverse the land seeking out and collecting the six items of power anyway, why not wait for them to succeed and then simply kill them all and take the items once they had them assembled? As such, his efforts at harrying the group over the course of the adventure were largely intended to spur them on toward their goal and keep them continually aware of the threat he posed, not to destroy them outright. Instead, he spent the vast majority of his time readying his armies for a grand final showdown with the group and with Maerlyn, intending to overwhelm them in one final assault and immediately use the items of power to open a portal to another dimension and lead his still-battle-ready armies through to continue conquering. Skul is also the entity responsible for brainwashing The Warlock into attacking Summer, hoping to kill her but content to at least throw his adversaries into disarray in the aftermath of that friendly fire scenario. However, in their final confrontation, Skul and his armies were ultimately overwhelmed, ending his reign of terror in the world of Nevermorrow — and, by extension, removing one of the last remaining major checks on Maerlyn's influence in the region.

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