Cool. I'm not sure what you mean by 'good', but I hope it'll be good enough...
now I'm nervous. Both my characters are probably gonna stick together through most of it, so I doubt it'll be a problem. I'll get it done by the end of this weekend.
Name: Fenris Arkwright
Age & Gender: 19, Male.
Species & Occupation: Human Alchemist, wannabe Mechanic.
Alignment: Rebel Impure.
Main Tools/Weapons: Fenris is an alchemist, and as such isn't much of a combatant. He generally carries a pair of thick leather gloves, a small knife (for cutting plants and small animals for ingredients), some empty vials and boxes to store whatever interesting thing he finds, and several potions that do varying things - anything from causing things to go up in fiery explosions when thrown to growing a little flower on someone’s head.
Pet/Mount: Nope.
Appearance (picture not entirely accurate):Fenris’s physique can best be described as ‘scrawny’. He has a distinctive lack of muscle and fat, a result of his rather inactive lifestyle and tendency not to eat much. He spends most of his time inside, and thus has the relatively pale skin to match. His height is average, not exactly short but nothing to write home about. His relatively long hair is a bright, scarlet red (originally a much duller shade, but he dyed it later using his own potions), and is always messy, sticking up in tufts like some sort of badly-made bird’s nest. His eyes are green and always see to shine with a sort of light, although people debate what it is - some say ‘manic’, others ‘cruel’, others ‘curious’, etcetera etcetera. Usually, it’s a mix of all of them. His mother always told him that he’d look handsome if he cleaned himself up and worked at getting fit, but he always dismissed it as her joking, and takes a sort of pride in his untidy appearance.
As for clothing, he generally wears a brownish lab coat over whatever shirt and pants he can find. He’s got very little fashion sense, and can often end up wearing completely mismatched colours that make him look like some sort of crazy idiot. His clothes tend to be slightly too large and a bit baggy, adding to his ‘guy-who-doesn’t-care’ appearance. Normally, most of his outfits have wrinkles and stains on them, which he doesn’t bother to smooth out or wash off.
Personality: Fenris likes to think of himself as a cynic, and almost takes pride in that label. He would be correct in his assumption - he is, in fact, an incredible cynic. He’s prone to find things ‘fake’, and has an incredibly dim view of human nature, seeing people as being inherently selfish and arrogant. He scorns the concept of ‘love’ seeing it as simply a delusion made to trick people into having babies. He has a disdain for high-class society (like the Dukes, counts, royal family etc), and dislikes people who conform to social norms despite wanting to do other things. As such, he himself has a sort of casual disregard for what others think, and isn’t afraid to go around telling people exactly what he thinks about them, sometimes just for the sake of pissing them off.
He tends to see the worst in people and gravitate towards that, ignoring the good - and that applies to himself, more than anyone. His view on himself can essentially be summed up as ‘I’m a horrible person, but most people are worse, so it’s ok’. He sees himself as being lazy, self-centred, manipulative, dishonest, as well as a whole host of other bad things. He isn’t afraid to let other see all of his flaws, and often even puts them on display, seeing them as part of his identity. He’s also prone to lying impulsively for no real reason. He has a deep-seated fear of disappointing others like he disappointed his parents, and thus likes to lower people’s expectations of him as much as possible, reasoning that he’d rather have them not consider him at all than consider him and then realise he isn’t as good as what they were expecting.
He’s a very casual, live-life-as-it-comes set of person. He has no ambition, and no goals, content to simply just drift around aimlessly. He’s lazy, preferring to not work whenever he can get away with it - although his current lifestyle pretty much forces him to work 24/7. Nevertheless, he hates to be rushed, and does things at his own pace. He’s also very comfortable with himself and around other people, and is prone to treating other people’s houses like they’re his own. He has no qualms about slumping down on someone else’s couch and putting his feet on their chair, and doesn’t care if others go and do the same in his own house. Generally, he’s very casual, tending to ignore formalities and expecting others to do the same with him. He’s an incredible actor, being able to charm the shirts off people’s backs, but he prefers not to, thinking that it’d make himself no different from all the people he looks down on.
His worldview is a very strange one. He tends to see his life as a narrative in which he is the protagonist, something born from spending most of his free time reading books. As such, he tends to sort people into character types (the happy guy, naive girl, bad boy), and story roles (he’s the main character, she’s the love interest, he’s the guy that dies in the first chapter). He also sees things in terms of being part of a larger story, and acts in accordance to that (for example, if he sees a guy dead on the street outside his door, he’d immediately think that it means he’s about to become part of a detective story, and start going around looking for clues). He often finds himself feeling bored with his life, and this constant comparing of his life to the life of a fairytale character serves to help make it more interesting. He finds the process of tinkering with potions to be incredibly satisfying, which was why he sought out a career in alchemy in the first place.
History: Fenris wasn’t born into a particularly pleasant family. It’s not to say that he wasn’t loved - in fact, he was quite loved. His family was a very loving one. But that didn’t make it pleasant. Once a noble, his father had committed fraud and thus had to flee from the royal city, taking his then-lover and now-wife with him and becoming a businessman. They were happy with their lifestyle in the Port Cities - simple, plain, but comfortable. That was, until they had a child - Fenris.
It was obvious from about six years of age that Fenris was an exceptional child. He was smart, and, more importantly, possessed the wits and the acting ability to make him successful in politics. This revelation ignited an old flame in his father, who saw a chance to lift his family back into the prestige they once had. Suddenly, his modest but comfortable lifestyle was no longer enough. He wanted the glory of being a noble, respected by society, once more. So he began to train Fenris, teaching him how to act in the presence of others, and, most importantly, how to get close to the royal family - their ticket out of ‘this dump’. He would become an advisor, or a diplomat. At first, Fenris didn’t mind, and did as his father said. It was clear that he did love his son, and Fenris didn’t want to betray his expectations.
It was when he was 13 that they managed to get him to attend a ball in the Royal city - an opportunity that couldn’t be missed, since the royal family was there. It was a valuable chance to make a good impression on them, and get on the highway that would lead to power. So Fenris went with his parents, and had all of his dreams instantly crushed. He could see none of the beauty that his father described, none of the elegance and grace. All he could see was people trying their best to act posh in a way that made it almost painfully obvious, sucking up to the king and queen like no tomorrow, throwing out false compliments and giving fake shows of familiarity to people they haven’t seen for twenty years. Try as he might, he couldn’t understand why his father, a man he had loved, would find such a life so desirable, and began to see him as someone who longed only for power, money, and more women, even though he already had his wife.
He hated it, despised it, and left early. And thus changed his entire world.
Ever since, he has resisted all of his fathers lessons on diplomacy, and in fact began to actively rebel against him, often escaping through the back door of their little home in order to wander around in the woods collecting plants. He began to get into Alchemy, and spent most of his time in his own room, burning through books on the matter. His father, loathe to see his dreams taken away, continued to push him, and their relationship steadily worsened. Fenris began to withdraw from society, unable to see the good in it and seeing only people who lied, stole, and hid their true selves. He hated it. Without friends, he sought entertainment in brewing explosive potions in makeshift flasks, and reading books. Lots of books. Seeing all the characters live their lives and experience such interesting things was a sort of wish fulfilment for him, and eventually he decided, on a whim, to run away, like he saw protagonists do so often. He already had enough knowledge of Alchemy to get an apprenticeship and maybe earn some cash.
So he did, leaving behind an overly dramatic note to his parents. Most of it was complete BS, but he wanted to do it because that’s what all the characters did - the fact that it might arouse some guilt in his parents also helped. As was his plan, he managed to talk his way into a position as an Alchemist’s assistant/student. He was fourteen then, but managed to convince the Alchemist in question that he was in fact around eleven (his lack of body mass helped in that regard). The alchemist saw potential in his home-brewed potions (which he had brought along for extra negotiating usefulness), and decided to take him under his wing. He worked for that alchemist for four years, before using the cash he had been saving to buy himself a small, decrepit shack near the edge of the port cities, and struck out alone to go solo.
Since he didn’t have a store, he just went around as a sort of street-vendor, selling potions at a cheap price to whoever would buy them, no strings attached. Since his potions were usually of incredible quality, he managed to support himself despite his lack of qualifications, earning a rather paltry sum of money. But since he never ate much anyways and wasn’t particularly concerned about his clothing and other necessities, he got along just fine. It was around this time that a girl (ALF) approached him, asking if he needed any help with his work. Curious but skeptical that he would be able to sustain two people, Fenris asked her to fetch him some dragon blood (an exceedingly rare ingredient due to how difficult it was to obtain, since one would have to injure a dragon and probably kill it), reasoning that if she could somehow procure ingredients like that, she’d be able to pay for herself. She returned with a vial of the liquid several hours later. Deciding that the girl checked all the flags, he decided to hire her as an assistant, putting the matter of how she had obtained it to the back of his mind.
The two of them lived together for three months or so before the curse first struck. Fenris had been sending ALF on gathering missions while he himself brewed the potions, not bothering to question where she managed to get the ingredients. Seeing an opportunity, he began to research it, hoping to find a cure. It was more out of a desire for adventure - he was familiar with plots that started with an illness coming over the land, and deduced that it was probably the work of some evil force - than a desire to save others. Oh, and the money would be nice, too.