Nym
Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2022 3:32 pm
N Y M
Details
Full Name: Nym
Race: Dunash Rathor (Beastalt Wolf)
Blight: Dranoch (Botchling)
Sex: Male
Age: 54
Height: 2.24m
Weight: 144kg
Birthdate: 4568
Birthplace: The Sea
Profession: Healer (Grave)
Housing: 20x30 Cottage
Partners: None
Titles:
Factions: The Unbreathing Horde
Fluencies: Common, Gentevarese
Conversationals: None
Ineptitudes: None
Appearance
Looming from a leering height, Nym takes up much of the room with his calm presence. Jet black fur mottled with streaks of paler gray speaks of a grizzled age, but this mistranslated wisdom is truly a result of him being among the living dead.
With dim, yellowish-orange eyes surrounded by a dark mask, and long, sharp claws and teeth, Nym is a creature built for ferocity just beneath the surface of an outer sense of serenity. Oft found adorned in dark petticoats or reasonably proper formalwear, Nym blends in seamlessly with the night by his own sordid intention.
Addendums
None yet.
Personality
Nocturnal. Smooth. Animated. Nym is the outcast, the predator, the experienced. Having lived a long and storied life, he has seen and done much, never rising to the point of scrutiny out of a rightful fear that he will never be accepted for what he is: a monster.
Living alone for much of his life, Nym craves the attentions of others. An inner sense of joviality and empathy guides his personality, while the hunger of his Blight has frayed his sense of morality to something more selective, akin to a sense of camaraderie. In spite of what he is, he genuinely enjoys uplifting others and improving their lives, even if he must feed to save himself from wasting away. The associations of prey and fellow occupy entirely different parts of his mind.
As a wolf, Nym is deeply affected by scents, capable of picking up on the chemicals in others' sweat in absence of more overpowering odors. While many of his Rathor inclinations have dimmed, he still feels a sense of kinship with others, bonding with groups of individuals and distrusting outsiders. A heightened sense of hearing leaves him irritated with the caterwauling locales and individuals rife within the public, and he prefers upscale establishments where words are spoken with soft tones and playful laughs.
Nym does not feel a sense of faith. If anything, he feels he has been denied his mortality, and hopes to one day return to the ranks of the living in some way, to escape the gnawing void of his own desire. He envies humans, as they enjoy life in ways he never could, even when he still yet lived.
History
What began as whispers on the seas culminated in the bond of a lifetime, ultimately swaddling an infant Nym in the stories of his forebears. His parents were notable pirates from a bygone era, and the sea was destined to be in his blood.
Such fantasies never last. One day, Nym fell ill, and the crew was moored in Icheron. The establishment understood who they were with several maritime agreements to protect them as privateers, and yet the looming threat of the Unbreathing Horde drove them to betray Nym's father.
The ruling authorities commandeered every ship, executed the crew, and Nym was left to grow without a blood-father through a youth of hardship. He was still a boy by Rathor standards when the upper class left everyone in that damned city to die after the living dead started crawling up through the harbor. Every man and woman was raised by the Blacksworn, and all of the children were gathered up and spirited away to a strange village toiled by the unliving who knew little else. This was what Nym knew, and all he had ever known.
The undead are remarkably dutiful educators. There was always a fattening bounty of food on hand, in part due to the lack of older mouths to feed. Nym watched, one by one, as the older living eventually changed and disappeared, given some higher purpose. Fueled by countless stories, he was called upon by the Blacksworn, fully inducted into the faith of Y'shendra, and branded with the mark of Grave, educated in Necromancy to supplant these abilities.
Growing alongside and working with the dead for so many years could not prepare Nym for what was to come. The Blacksworn who mentored him took his life in ceremonious agony, and he was raised a Dunash. As a Rathor, this gutted his purpose, and left him an aimless puppet, participating in the ongoing war against the inhabitants of Icheron.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Routed and captured by the enemy, Nym was certain he would soon meet his end. An older, grizzled man with fewer teeth than ought to be healthy interrogated him about his youth, and he spoke freely. The man then revealed he was a sailor with Nym's father, and vowed to protect him, to escape from Icheron and assist Nym in finding a way to return to life so that they might both stop Y'shendra's horde.
Nym found himself questioning his loyalty to the Unbreathing Horde, and reluctantly agreed out of some sense of waning empathy for the living. Together with his father's former crewmate, the pair boarded a barely seaworthy schooner, and like so many, attempted to brave the seas. Over the next few weeks, Nym learned every little thing about his family that the man knew. The vessel took on water and capsized during a storm, and Nym lost the final tether he had to anything and anyone, adrift in his emotions as much as he was at sea.
Washing up upon the shores of Sil-Elaine, vagrants took him in as an accursed oddity. Rumor of the living dead drew the attention of Dranoch, and Nym was forced into servitude once again. Once they were done with torturing him for all he knew, and they grew bored of his physiology, the Cardinal keeping him afflicted his body with the Dranoch Blight, and a whole new world of feeling opened up to him, starting with a months-long blood craze that saw him losing his mind at the slightest scent of blood on the wind.
When everything began to dim again, and Nym returned to his senses, finding himself deeply bonded to the creature in spite of the constant cruelties directed at his personage. He could not stand the oppression of the monster that made him, yet he could not bring himself to escape. Once his master was hunted down and slain by Pyromancers belonging to an order of rebels, his spelled mind was free to explore on its own once again, and he fled rather than fight them, distracting the Ebon Knights with a contingent of Husks padded with soils. Fooling another dusk elf into taking the trip with him, he stole a rowboat and churned the water endlessly, day and night, sobbing as he feasted upon the man he'd come to share a bond with. He arrived upon the beaches of Daravin, and did his best to blend in with the serfs, drawing ectoplasm from the dead and healing the poor for a meager living and token promises of privacy.
Unlike before, Nym would not allow himself to be led by the nose. He let go of his entire past, and spent years in relative obscurity pretending to be a living Rathor traveling between cities to avoid suspicion. The wolf chased what he enjoyed while developing a scorn for both himself, and the noble whimsy oppressing the people he cared and hungered for. Eventually, Nym settled in Amoren, a city that suited his nature with sprawling woodland to flee should the truth about his hunger for the living come to light. It was there he met a wayward Dunash by the name of Maric, saving him from a brutal end. Together, they opened up a filthy clinic to treat the damned serfs and commoners who could afford no one else, with Nym treating it as recompense for his feeding upon them. Those who could not repay him for the service would be less deserving of life, or so he deluded himself to add some sliver of moralistic correctness to the gnawing pit of self hatred within. To this day, he is a paradox to himself.
