Feinus

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Appearance

Feinus himself is an incorporeal essence of a lesser demon infused into a statue of obsidian, and his presence has warped the stone quite obviously. It's harder than obsidian has any right to be, with an outline of an alien musculature; flexible, capable of twisting and turning, but unyielding on impact. His head is crowned with four horns, curving back, arms and legs have spikes jutting out. Palms are longer than they should be, and fingers are armed with claws. Behind his back stretches a pair of wings, with a membrane of solid magic. Through his eyes shines a callous green, the same violent shade that bleeds through the cracks should he be injured.
Feinus stands tall, made taller by the wrists of his wings overhead, but his movements on land are somewhat stiff and heavy, especially landings and takings off; smaller gestures, such as arm movements, are either too sharp or too small; facial expressions suffer as well, not as pronounced as they would be on a human. His face is more an abstraction than man, a mask with little flaws other than its owner. Feinus can't open his mouth at all, instead his voice comes from within the statue itself. In contrast to the face, the voice is incredibly expressive, capable of shifting pitches and tones - clear or guttural, pleasant or inhumanly cold on demand.
Doesn't care for clothes much, since putting on any is hard due to spikes, armor throws off his balance, and the statue doesn't have anything obscene to hide in the first place; to humor human customs, he wraps token bandages around the hips and calls it a day.

Personality

Orderly, pragmatic, self-serving, a death of democracy incarnate with a brutal authoritarian bend - a mess of fogged memory and half-holding bonds. He doesn't do seductions. Instead, he does "for the good of many" and "he who comes with a sword".
Feinus is oddly complacent when made to fit into a system, yet very motivated to exploit it; completely amoral, yet frowning upon betrayal; willing to tolerate supervision, orders and assessments while not telling even tenth of the truth. He finds joy in order, and even more in enforcing it, grinding the offenders down - be it by magic, by words or by brute force. It doesn't matter to him what order he follows, only that it comes from a seat of power, and said power is willing to enforce it: destroying illegal weaponry and burning books are nigh-indistinguishable for him. To make a good impression, he defaults to "capture, not kill" for now, but it should be noted that his weaker opponents oftentimes suffer from lasting scars, physical as well as mental, and he absolutely isn't above writing off a few acceptable losses here and there. In a perverse style of justice, Feinus prefers to kill irredeemable sinners, viewing murder simply as speeding up the Earth-Hell soul transfer. In a similar fashion, he rarely bothers with torture, as any and all pain inflicted on a mortal body doesn't hold a candle to what Nether has to offer.
Feinus likes to appear phlegmatic, level-headed, which is complete fabrication, as certain things will quickly leave him seething. Personal attacks on his bound state or ignorance of modern technology, one example, blatantly displayed anarchy and disorder, another. He takes "kill all cops" worse than actual cops, and for all the wrong reasons. It's hard to get him down from his tower of cold superiority otherwise. Individual mortals are not all that much, really.
When bound to stone, Feinus was made more material - not humane, surely, but perhaps more comprehensible (or simply lesser), than he was before. Much of his relative mellowness and acceptance of human interaction comes down to either crafting a persona to put his handlers at ease or leftover ritual bindings of servitude. Explaining his apparent enjoyment of music or attachment to a pet magpie is quite harder, as otherwise Feinus is nearly ascetic.

Biography

BIG WIP
The general idea was:

  • Summoned in 113 B.C.,by a circle of demonolators, who turned to dark magic as a way to supplant Ptolemy VIII. What followed was a giant mess.
  • The ritual was a) rushed, b) interrupted in the last moment, just before Feinus could properly inhabit the stone, but after he was already bound to it. This may or may not caused the demon equivalent of brain damage. He certainly forgot a lot of his existence.
  • The tunnels to the hideout were sealed, the statue itself left as it were due to unwilligness to touch it and fear of the curse.
  • A mistake, really.
  • Present days, a team of anthropologists followed a trail of ill-documented leads about capture and execution of dark cultists of old.
  • By a Final Destination-style coincidence (involving a very dry air and a nosebleed), they accidentally finished the ritual and woke Feinus up.
  • Cue giant mess №2.
  • While Feinus was coming to be, it a rather sorry and confused state, everyone promptly backed off, blocked the entrance to the tunnels and called UNTIL or whatever magical SWAT was available.

(And this is where it gets bad. Before reading about the lore I was operating under the impression that demons were not as much of a threat as they actually are - probably mislead by lvl 14 demon mobs in Westside. And now that I recognize the game as a dirty liar, the following ideas are flimsy at best. If, by any chance, someone is reading this, any help is appreciated.)

  • Magical SWAT rolled a successful intimidation check on Feinus, who has never in his life seen a rifle before and/or forgot about it, and still was in a very sorry state. Lvl 3 squirrel sad.
  • Not willing to be destroyed, Feinus rolled a persuasion check of his own, being generally confused, asking for directions and pleading for life all in one. He managed.
  • After some testing and prodding, it was tentatively decided that attempting to destroy and/or banish Feinus would bring much more trouble that it's worth, and it's instead more cost-effective to point him in the direction of a rampant crime underworld of Millenia City (while quietly scrambling to find just what exactly could banish him).
  • A mistake, again.
  • Feinus proved to be very effective, very not asking questions, not whistling any bells, and surprisingly resistant to defection and bribery, and the quiet scrambling went so quiet it is nonexistent at this point.
  • Imagine a boot...
  • Currently given to a local circle of mages, the idea is they can handle Feinus should he suddenly go rogue. He's effectively a guard gargoyle and an expendable heavy-hitter rolled into one.

Functional capabilities

Occult

Occultism is Feinus' main weapon, and everything else is an addition. Take away his magic, and all you are left with is a land-bound, clumsy rock. He is a formidable wielder of a "Fanged Bane discipline", a teaching that professes that light is merely an absence of shadow, and goes to great lengths for practical demonstration. Not to be confused with Shining Darkness of Qliphoth under any circumstances.


The Fanged Bane: an assortment of methods to, effectively, summon and control very hungry shadows with very jagged edges. Noted uses include binding, blasting or throwing, shielding, making an improvised whip, and transferal of a life-force from victim to either Feinus or a recipient of his choosing. Shadows are nearly weightless, though, all impact comes from Feinus' magic; great for binding, not great for forcefully holding superhumans down.
General knowledge: vast, varied, and outdated by two thousand years. He forgot more of it than most mages ever learned.
Levitation: not very high off the ground, but present. For the most part occurs as a "power float", on superhero jargon, or as an aid to take wing off the ground.
Third eye: seeing auras, sensing ghosts and getting a general feel on the human soul is not a problem. He is completely lost with androids, A.I., most technical appliances, and has a lot of trouble with cyborgs.
Light: the Fanged Bane was specifically designed with Holy Light in mind, and it's quite less vulnerable to it than one might expect. Shadows don't overpower light, ceteris paribus, but are nearly equal. Fanged Bane fares noticeably worse against Holy Fire.
General Holiness: it hurts, a lot. Properly sanctified earth is a no go zone, holy water corrodes the obsidian, pure faith will send Feinus to catatonic shock. All of this, with one small caveat: pure, unwavering, human faith. Angels may enjoy some advantages, but are on more or less equal footing.

Innate

Praesentia Dira: Feinus is surrounded by a pervasive aura of dread, which he can either greatly enhance for a while, or to suppress for a longer while.
Quick learner: and alarmingly so. One notable exception is, again, technology, which he resigned to treating as an unfamiliar kind of magic.
Alien mind: he thinks in archaic version of an obscure Nether dialect, and if someone has beaten Feinus down enough to pry his mind open, resorting to threats is generally easier than trying to understand any of it. Prying it open is, in fact, ill-advised for most mortals.
Regeneration: if no life-force to leech is present, Feinus will regenerate on his own. Fully capable of fusing back, provided he shattered in big enough pieces, said pieces lie close enough, and Feinus has enough energy left. (Working theory is that fusing of exhausted pieces can be assisted with glue; unconfirmed). Head, as it turns out, is not a fatally weak point, though he might temporarily lose consciousness if it's gravely injured, and will certainly lose half his coordination.
Self-sufficient: Feinus has neither ability, nor need to breathe, eat and drink. Sleep is a state of quickened regeneration and recovery.
Insomnia: it's a shame he's taking so long to fall asleep, wakes up for no apparent reason, and in a foul mood to boot.
Animals: react to him with collective fear and loathing. Of note: half invertebrates don't react to his presence at all, neither do some lower vertebrates and reptiles. A single magpie among its homoiothermic brethren is quite calm and cheerful around Feinus.

Physical

Flight: a surprisingly nimble flighter, rather heavy landings aside. Feinus prefers to take off from height, but with some effort can also start from the ground. Can hover in one place, if said place allows for a full and a half wingbeat.
Melee: were it not for Feinus being four hundred pounds of regenerating rock, he would have been rather hopeless. Still, any opponent worth his salt would leave him in the dust - with common thugs and soldiers he can deal well enough even with no magic.
Night vision: it doesn't matter if there's not a single photon present, Feinus can see better than in broad daylight.
Glowing bits: pretty, but make Feinus a very attractive target in the dark.


An excerpt from assessment by Dr. Muzychenko:
Subject O. appears to be, by Nether standards, quite weak, on par with a middling superhero. This agrees with our previous theory about previously existing bindings. Caution is advised, as at is unclear which ritual was used, to what success, and what banishing counterpart would be useful. [...]

An excerpt from assessment by Dr. Friday:
[...] had an unintended side-effect of subject O. appearing to form a bond with a test animal #4 (Pica pica). Briefing all personnel to refrain from assumptions about subject O's perceived humanity and/or good nature is urgently required. As for the incident itself, as of yet we have no leading theory, however Dr. Wellenstein [...]

An excerpt from Dr. Wellenstein's working notes:
[...] left in a state of limbo for two thousand years during a critical point in summoning ritual, for a lack of a better term, might have left him brain-damaged. For a demon such behavior must certainly be a flaw, yet [...]


Relationships

Allies

Enemies

DEMON, with a seething hatred.
Elysium, quite understandably.
Local gangs, especially the Maniacs, are quite often on the receiving end of Feinus' magic, and his distaste is quite evident.

Neutral

VIPER, who Feinus would prefer to leave well alone, as their hierarchy is solid, and their enmity with DEMON is no less bitter than his own. Sadly, one-sided, as VIPER's antipathy for magic includes demonic statues.
ARGENT has a fine grasp on exploitation and pragmatism already, so its not very interesting to Feinus.
Other demons are a difficult case. All in all, when not feuding for influence, they have little to no interest in each other. Most of the present ones are bound by DEMON, and so, will attack Feinus on sight, whether they want to or not. They might even think they are doing a favor by freeing him from his strange state (just as he does, by sending them back to Nether).