Baeroth
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Baeroth | |
| Player: | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Brute / Mastermind |
| Threat Level: | 50 / 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Baethirot |
| Known Aliases: | ' |
| Species: | Construct |
| Age: | Unknown |
| Height: | 6'4" |
| Weight: | 200 lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Crimson |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | None |
| Occupation: | Unknown |
| Place of Birth: | Unknown |
| Base of Operations: | Rogue Isles |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Deus (Brother), Sierra-Vahl (Sister), Shiovan (Sister), Primalus (Brother), Spera (Sister), Scionus (Brother) |
| Known Powers | |
| Supernatural Strength, Partial Hyper-Sensory Perception, Magical Aptitude, Magical Resistance | |
| Known Abilities | |
| High Pain Tolerance, Willpower | |
| Equipment | |
| Enchanted armor designed for protection and obscurement, Enchanted Battle Axe, miscellaneous arcana | |
| ' | |
Contents |
Personality
To outsiders, Baeroth is seen as a cruel and harsh individual given to cutting insults and a depraved sense of absolutism that borders on the megalomaniacal. He is quick to pass judgment on an offending persona, and just as quick to respond, either with verbal abuse or with definitively lethal intent, as the situation may (or may not) warrant. In the cases where no offense at all is given, he carries the reputation of an asshole; a truer to form one people would be hard pressed to locate, embittered supposedly by his own disfiguration.
Truthfully, almost everything he does in social circumstances is extremely calculated. Most of the time his insults, quips and threats are the devices of a mind that is constantly looking for weaknesses in those around him, and he usually approaches such instances with no more emotional investment in his 'fits' than one would credit to rock if they knew the truth... except on those instances where he truly does become incensed. It is then that his ferocity knows little bounds, and when pushed to it he is given powerfully to wanton destruction of the objects of his ire, via whatever means are available.
Inside of his family social structure, things change somewhat. He is overbearing and dominant, every bit a leader of his unique kind. This however is tempered by a fierce loyalty to kin, first and only. There is nothing he would not do to protect or uplift his brothers and sisters, including (as a last resort) throwing himself into a practically suicidal engagement merely so they could extract themselves. This however, does not extend to Deus Ex, whom he loathes openly and considers outcast from the family.
All over, most individuals who know him prefer to keep him at arms length, at least.
Powers
Supernatural Strength and Biology
Baeroth is a figure distinguished for his power, possessing physical strength in abundance. While it is notably below the caliber witnessed from the most powerful super villains, is still enough to dead-lift a Japanese automobile and throw it, make tremendous leaps and vaults without assistance by art or artifice, and even enough to snap a neck of an enemy combatant through reinforcing steel. When he wields his trademark weapon, a dark and gruesome battle axe enchanted to rend both flesh and spirit, his bodily might is all but unquestioned except by fools.
A little known fact outside of the Constructs is that he, like they, possess a distinctive lack of senescence, not aging or withering (with notable exception, mentioned below), their cellular structure retaining perfect consistency with each reproduction. While this biological immortality is indeed a trademark he holds in his own mind as proof of their obvious superiority to ‘mortals’, they can be killed by extensive damage, much as any being would or could be.
Partial Hyper-Sensory Perception
One of the more advanced and intriguing abilities he possesses is the ability to experience a simultaneous interplay of his senses from one set of stimuli. To wit, each time one of his senses detects something, the other senses perceive it as well, albeit in differing ways than human beings.
This ability is basically akin to Deus Ex except with one very key difference, that only half of his sensory organs actually function, rendering him blind, deaf and unable to feel anything but pain on his left side. This makes stealth much more likely to those that know of this weakness, and it is an ongoing sport from the more jovial of his siblings to approach him from his insensate side before beginning conversation.
Magical Aptitude
Baeroth is an accomplished sorcerer and in particular, necromancer. Having devoted centuries to the research of the arts arcane, he wields power enough to readily usurp control of the undead from lesser masters, open tangible and visceral portals to the netherworld to bring forth beings of pure elemental death, even fabricate new (or simply unheard of) types of undead to serve him. He also dabbles with magical synergy in combat. A common motif for him is to augment the potent blasts of nether-energy he can expel with a smoldering heat, searing the flesh of his victims even as it drains the life force behind it.
The truly terrifying aspect of Baeroth is not so much his potency in this field but his willingness to utilize it to bind his victims to him even in their death, promising no release to whatever afterlife may await them, or even obliterate their spirits entirely using rare magics all but unheard of among human beings. If he succeeds in killing a particular nuisance, it is a good bet that whatever the target was, it will simply be gone forever or it will spend the remainder of its existence enslaved to a being notoriously short on pity.
Magic Resistance
A side-effect of him being bound and made via magic is an inherent resistance to such effects. Spells often inexplicably have less effect upon Baeroth’s person as they should, or sometimes not even working at all. This applies to both positive and negative effects. A healing spell can be dramatically reduced in function or cancelled as easily as an offensive ability. There is one exception to this resistance, seen below in vulnerabilities.
Abilities
High Pain Tolerance
Unlike most of his brethren, pain is not simply sensory data; it actually hurts Baeroth (particularly on his left, which is a constant supply of feelings ranging from discomfort to agony and the spaces in between those two poles). Much like any number of individuals who live with chronic pain, in time Baeroth has become inured to the greater portions of bodily hardship he might receive, to the point where it means little and less to receive pain, or indeed, even bodily pleasure.
Willpower
Baeroth, like virtually all of the Constructs, has undergone varied and repeating crucibles and trials by fire in virtually every aspect of his life. From mental enslavement, constant agony, and the ever present drive to outdo all those around him, particularly his one older brother, he has developed strength of mind that makes most mental invasion attempts moot. While still susceptible to fine touches of telepathy and empathy, he is possessed (arguably more than any of his brothers or sisters) of a remarkably high sense of self, making such ventures extremely difficult.
Vulnerabilities
Sigil of the Soulless
Long ago, during Baeroth’s creation, his makers sought means to readily and instantly control the Constructs they had devised, insuring absolute obedience. The Sigil of the Soulless was the answer, a vastly complex magical rune that was placed visibly onto their flesh, but ostensibly attached deep into their relative psyche.
The Sigil of the Soulless, if activated, is a method of issuing commands to Baeroth. The Sigil overrides the will of Baeroth as an independent entity, instead forcing him to act on the commands to the best of his ability. Under this state of influence, the Constructs have killed thousands of people from various eras, people that could have potentially changed the world for the better.
While his makers are destroyed or absolved of the ability to operate the Sigil, and very few know of even its theoretical existence (much less it’s actual), they represent a bypass through the will of the Constructs, a means to enslave them to any purpose. Baeroth has attempted several times to remove the rune, utilizing everything from ritual high magic to a paring knife, but has been unable to succeed.
Anti-magic
The most powerful weakness in terms of lethality to Baeroth is his response to anti-magic. A powerful enough dispel, targeted or in an area, can kill him instantly. Even a weaker one will hurt him severely, causing instant cellular-death over large portions of his anatomy. What is more, this will bypass his magic resistance very often. It would be the function of relative miraculous luck for his own resistance to counter the effects.
Due to this limitation, Baeroth (and indeed, all his family under his command) aggressively hunts down and destroys any within the magical community that manage to stumble upon this little tidbit by happenstance or inquisition, with a culmination of Baeroth destroying the soul of the victim. Dead men, he knows, can tell tales. Non-existent ones cannot however.
Physically Flawed
Baeroth, like his older brother, was deemed a failure by the beings that created them both, but for vastly different reasons. Baeroth’s is that the left side of his body is in a perpetual state of decay, marring and twisting his features horribly. Baeroth is bitter about this, looking to the inherent beauty of his siblings as a constant reminder that he is not as perfect as he has a right to be.
Aside from the aesthetic, there are several drawbacks to this state. The first and foremost being that he cannot see out of his left eye, detect noise in his left ear. Even scents and tastes are diminished partially, the receptors given to rot in half of his body. Unlike the preternaturally perceptive Deus or the hauntingly aware Shiovan, Baeroth is left with an amalgam of extremely tuned senses and no senses at all.
His body also suffers. While his cellular senescence mentioned above prevents him from aging, it also denies him the ability to heal this inherent damage. It is a painful malformation constantly attempting to spread but kept in check by his physiology, going nowhere but towards agonizing. It also has a tendency to diminish his agility as he has to work hard for what grace he possesses, but mainly it hinders his fortitude. He tires more quickly than his brethren, and is more susceptible from impact force on the ‘brittle side’ of his body.
He attempts to counter this drawback with a collection of enchanted armor and other magics, both to obscure his half-hideous features and to reinforce his relatively frail side, to some success.
The Secret Plan
Baeroth’s plan stems from many motivations, but has few outcomes. In his eyes, human beings have failed. From his writings:
"It was always they who have had the real power to open and shut their home to incursion. They had the golden line, a spiritual lineage of messianic figures willing to guide them. The whole dimension was made manifest for them, an Eden, bristling with life and potential and beauty. They were a brave, proud species once.
No more.
Demons find continuous access to this world, beings that want not but to destroy it. The golden line is not heeded, mankind’s collective ears deaf to wisdom. Their paradise; despoiled by their own hands in their greed and vanity. All courage and honor has fled from these things as they tremble in the dark, only the strongest finding the resolve to act and then only because of power… and how they act. Decadence, arrogance, and entitlement are the hallmarks of their champions.
A new order must arise. If they will not impose order on themselves, find harmony with their world, then they who were once their hunters shall do it for them. And if they will not be ruled, then for the sake of the world they rape daily, they will be destroyed."
Ultimately, the real problem is numbers. Though any of his brethren could obliterate thousands of mere humans, they outnumber them by billions. To counter this, Baeroth has spent much of his free life searching for how they themselves came to be. It was not until recently that he could claim this knowledge and with it, the key to a second generation, unfettered as by the sigil as the first generation is; perfect, as he sees it.
The Constructs were, all of them, created by fusing the traits of several species together, beings great and terrible, and placing them in a human guise. Baeroth knows how to replicate this but the process is long, exacting and staggering in its complexity. He requires blood from each parent intended to be used in the ritual magic. He requires a dangerous amount of magical power, and lastly, a life to pay for each life created.
He wants children, he wants numbers, and using dark rituals completely beyond the scope and ken of man, he intends to achieve this.