Nathaniel.'s page

About Nathaniel.

Character Portrait

Description
Nathaniel is a white-haired half elf with green eyes and pale skin. His smile is ready and his ears have that cross between pointy and rounded that mark him as a half-breed. His build is very slight, edging onto unhealthy. He wears a dark greatcoat with about sixty pockets on each side, worn loosely. White chalk stains run quite visible down from some of the deeper pockets. On his back is strapped a thick two-handed sword with a plain hilt and cross guard, and his stride is noticeably distorted by the weight of the weapon. Atop his head is a formal black top hat, visibly gleaming at all times even in absence of light or presence of dust and dirt. The brim of it is pulled down reasonably low, and usually sliding it up reveals a thin marking upon Nathaniel's forehead- a simple pentacle, enclosed within a circle, that glows ever so slightly electric blue.

In the heat of battle, Nathaniel usually dismisses the illusion and takes his true form- a tall dinosaur-like creature with blue skin and thick armoured scales on its knees, legs and arms. Its feet are clawed and its maw opens to reveal an array of wickedly sharp teeth. It wears Nathaniel's top hat and greatcoat, except where the coat was before loose and ill-fitting it now sits easily and tightly. The hat is pushed slightly further up relative to before, revealing Nathaniel's pentacle marking, which glows brighter. The creature's facial features are close enough to Nathaniel's to warrant recognition and a male personal pronoun, though its smile is ever so slightly more… toothy… than Nathaniel's.

Backstory
The white-haired bastard of a madwoman, Nathaniel was bullied and beaten by his villagers and starved by his glassy-eyed lunatic elven mother, and became a thin and withdrawn youth. His persecution was not helped by the fact that his features were clearly those of a half-breed. The boy's only solace was his father, a magician in the service of some lord who every year would return to the village to rest and entertain the village folk. His father told no one that he had a son, and completely ignored Nathaniel. The boy only knew the man's true identity from a tiny carving under his mother's bed and some of her more intelligible ramblings. His father's fireballs and lightning bolts would distract the village folk from their tormenting, but it rarely lasted long.

Devoted to him despite his abandonment of his son, Nathaniel watched and studied his father carefully at every appearance, and one night was the only soul to observe his father drawing a small but intricate pentacle in the dust, and the bright and strange creature which grew up out of it to sit next to him and break bread. The creature entranced him and after his father left, Nathaniel begged, borrowed and stole every book and every scrap of paper he could find, each new word helping him wheedle and flatter a new snippet of knowledge from the villagers as he taught himself to read and write. One day, as he drew his father's pentacle for the thousandth time and pressed his hand against it, he summoned up a blue monster, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. The villagers reacted poorly to Nathaniel's new friend, but days then weeks then months of silent communication with a new being caused the youth to mature rapidly, growing in strength of personality and confidence, even as his body remained frail. It helped that as he learnt more and more about his new soul mate his magic also developed; spells were seared into his brain almost as fast as he could learn them, and with the villagers now leaving him alone for the first time in his life, Nathaniel was able to be happy, and even to attain some measure of understanding and sympathy with those who had persecuted him. His new happiness and skills culminated in a single moment as he and his companion- his Eidolon, as the books had taught him- sat next to each other amid the sunrise. A blink, a flicker, and the two fused together into a single being with two minds sharing a deep emotional and intellectual intimacy.

Exulting in his new form, and encouraged by the mind to which staying in a single place was anathema, Nathaniel gathered his few possessions and said goodbye to his mother, still mad but now in the care of the town's newly returned elder, who remembered her and her kindnesses from long ago, and head off for the city, and adventure. And just maybe, his father.

Personality
Despite his background, Nathaniel is surprisingly pleasant and easy-going, probably because of his deep connection to his soul mate and its strong and powerful new body he shares. Consequently he takes very few things personally and exults in the trials and tests of battle, though far less in the killing of sentients. Very rarely will he turn deadly serious, but he will do so for the death of his companions or of innocents, and for the violent oppression of the weak.

Having grown up with rags and definitely no riches, he takes a certain pride in his personal appearance, exemplified by his black top hat which tends to grow and shrink with his ego moment to moment.

His eidolon is named Bartimaeus, and prefers watching Nathaniel's experiences from behind his eyes to taking a personal hand. Nathaniel does on occasion yield control of the synthesis, usually when he is working on a particularly hard intellectual problem, or when for reasons of grief or anything similar he doesn't feel up to answering the phone call from reality.

Likes
------ Books
------ Top hats and other clothing
------ Meeting new people, new experiences, new… things; golems, comets, discoveries, etc.
Dislikes
------ Death of innocents, of friends
------ Oppression by the strong
------ Waking up early, particularly if it's by demons or bandits or the like

Goals
-Find his father and punch him in the face for abandoning him and to a degree his mother
-Find a cure for his mother's madness; not urgent as she is currently being cared for, and she's an elf so she'll live forever
-Increase his power, knowledge and understanding of his Eidolon
-In the long term (IE for high-levelled games), find a way to travel to the Plane his Eidolon is from and create his own home there. Maybe attached to a small town in the Material Plane where half-breeds can be safe, but who knows.