Malik

[Joe]

Player Name: Joe

Character Name: Malik

Full Title and Rank: none. Malik is unemployed, never staying at any one place for too long he never really held down a job. He will occasionally work as a mercenary or bodyguard when he wants some extra gold to carry with him.

RACE: Human

Magical Affinity: Umm, I'm assuming void, but I can't remember my login for the wiki right now and the link for the alignments don't work if I'm not logged in.

Military Division/Rank: none

Character overview: Malik is a wanderer. Not from any place in particular, never staying in one place long enough to call it home. He worships no god, though he acknowledges their existence, he is something of a humanist, believing that only humans determine their fates. Gods only meddle in their affairs. He is not evil or good, but truly neutral.


ABILITIES: Malik was born with a gift, though for most of his childhood he considered it a curse. He has the innate ability to feel the world around him as if it were tangible. It was almost as if he had an aura that could feel, could connect him, to whatever it touched. When he was younger it was always the same, it reached a certain diameter, where it stopped. In a sphere roughly thirty feet thick he could feel everything, but as a child he was not prepared to deal with such over stimulation and it nearly drove him mad. Instead, he learned to control it, and learned to concentrate under great amounts of stress. He was sent to a monastery where monks taught him in silence grace of movement and concentration of the body. In time, he learned to focus his aura. He could expand it out to nearly one hundred feet, or draw it in as close as only three. The monks taught him control of his mind, and of his body. This had the side affect of making Malik a skilled fighter. His flawless skin comes, not from having never been in a battle, but from his ability to sense each blow before it ever happens. It is much more than sensing blows though. He has learned how to predict how a movement will finish when it is first beginning. Other than this, Malik's only true prficiency is with his knife. He has learned to fight with many of the monk's weapons, but after leaving the monastary, only continued training and fighting with his knife. He is intelligent, and loves to read and learn, but this leaves him as little more than a jack of all trades, knowing a little about many subjects, but having a commanding knowledge of very few.

His higher than average concentration levels give Malik an advantage at resisting the strong will of wizards or other magical beings who would try to enforce their will on his. But he is not without his weaknesses. Even though he has learned, been forced to concentrate at a higher level than the average man, his ability does have its disadvantages as well. He can still be over stimulated with too much action. This is one of the reasons he prefers not to fight if he can get away with it. In a battle against a single opponent, his prowess is nearly unmatched, but on a battlefield with hundreds of men, it would be too much for him to handle. Things like rain or snow also put Malik at a disadvantage. Though he has learned to tune them out, it also comes at the price of tuning everything else out to a degree. Even pulling his aura in, within a few feet of him, the concentration for that alone would be enough to lessen his skills and put him in danger.


Physiology: Malik is 5'10, weighing approximately 175 lbs. His dress, a molded black chest piece accompanied by black warboots and a dark cloak, make Malik appear to be a warrior. But he carries no noticeable weapons and his smooth tan skin reveals no scars of battle. He has dark eyes and darker locks of hair that curl slightly to the nape of his neck. His name means angelic, and his appearance is not far from it. He appears to be the pinnacle of fitness and health, and in the right light his skin almost seems to glow with a natural aura.


Mannerisms: Though Malik is striking to look at, he is not extremely outgoing. He comes across as shy, but in truth, he is comfortable around nearly anyone. He just prefers the role of observer. In his heart he is a philosopher, and, on the surface, to him, his wanderings have no real purpose other than to understand more of life and humanity in all the world. In truth though, he is searching for something that his conscious mind isn’t fully aware of. Though he occasionally will take a job as a mercenary or bodyguard, Malik prefers not to fight, and even in such roles tries to use more peaceful methods to resolve any conflicts.


Properties of choice: Malik considers very little of personal value. The only weapon he carries is a knife, made of blackened steel, with a blade of less than six inches and having no magical properties, the knife is nothing remarkable. Malik has only developed something of a fondness for it. His chest plate is his most valuable piece of equipment. Really it is the only thing of value that he owns. Though it is all black, it has a simple, yet ornate design covering its surface.


Sociology: Malik tends to be stand offish with most people, not because he dislikes them, but simply because he is inexperienced with interaction. Travelling as often as he does, he has not had the opportunity to develope any true relationships with people, though he does hold all humans in high regard and subconciously he desires the close bonds of true friendship, and the closed bonds of love.


HISTORY: Malik was born to two ordinary humans in a, more or less, ordinary village. His birth, however, was not so ordinary. On the day of his birth they were approached by a shaman who had traveled many days from a faraway village. He told them of a prophecy. A child would be born, their child, who would change the course of destiny. The shaman said he would provide the child with a gift, a blessing that in time would lead him to do great things. The prophecy was vague and full of mystery, as most are, and the prophet told them that only the boy would know, in time, when his true destiny would be revealed. The prophecy also spoke of another, that the boy’s birth heralded. Another that would come later, and from what the boy began, the second would finish. Malik’s parents were already deeply religious, worshipping all the gods in their turn. They doted over him from birth, much more so than had he just been born a normal son. His gift was not yet manifest as an infant, but they kept an ever watchful eye to see just what the gift might be. Being the parents of a prophesied child had its rewards for them as well. Their status was raised in the town. Suddenly they were not mere mortals like the rest, not mere laborers. They rose to a prestige they never would have dreamed of before the shaman. A prestige they never should have really had.
When Malik was seven, his powers first manifest, and in a most horrible way for him. He was playing in the woods surrounding his village, which in that time were very safe, void of nearly all dangerous creatures, save the occasional fox, still too small to harm a seven year old boy. But the horrible thing that would happen to him was not a beast of any sort, nor a living thing at all. It was snow. In truth, Malik’s powers had manifested twice before this time, but only in very short spurts. Once, while he was alone in his room at night, just for an instance he had the sudden feeling, of everything. His cat moved to jump on his bed, which startled him, and the feeling quickly faded. And a second time, when he was swimming in the creek, he’d dove under water at its deepest point, and felt for a moment, not just the water touching him, but almost as if it spread out from him and he could feel what it was touching as well. When he came up for air, that was gone too, and he thought nothing more of it than what water must feel like. Surely he’d just not noticed it before. But this time, this was different. This day in the woods Malik’s powers manifested, and they stayed. It started with a whisper, a single snowflake falling to through the trees, somehow avoiding each and every branch, to come within Malik’s new aura. He felt it, as if it was falling slowly through his skin, to his core. It was a gentle thing at first, that single falling snowflake. And then came the rest. Suddenly he was aware of everything, the trees, the grass the ground. Every needle on the pine and blade on the earth. He was touching them all. His mind may have been able to handle the change, as huge as it was for him, had it not been for that single falling flake, and the hundreds upon hundreds that followed. By the time he made it home, the gentle snow had turned into the heavy wet beginnings of a winter storm. It was too much for his child’s mind to handle, and all he could do was curl up into his covers and shiver and cry. His mother found him, tried to comfort him and make it better, but her every movement was just that much more that he couldn’t stand. It wasn’t until the next day that his mother finally was able to get enough coherent thought from him to somewhat understand what had happened. He choked out through sobs, the best he could describe the new world to her. And it dawned on her what must have happened. Their son’s gift had arrived. She was elated. Her and her husband both, upon realizing the truth of it, tried everything in their power to get Malik to realize that this was a gift, his gift, and he needed to embrace it, use it. This was his gift, for his prophecy to be fulfilled. But Malik couldn’t think, he couldn’t concentrate enough on anything. He just wanted it gone. No matter what his parents did, they couldn’t reach him where he was at. Finally, unable to console him, and at their wits end, they sent him to a monastery high in the mountains to the north of their village, where monks who had taken a vow of silence had agreed to take him in. They were to train him to focus and to calm his mind, and in the end, they did. It wasn’t the monk’s training at first that had a soothing affect on Malik, but the smooth stone building they lived in. It was huge, and empty, and, thank god, simple. The monks spent so much time meditating that there was barely movement much of the time. When he was old enough and they decided he was ready, the monks began to train him in martial arts, and in how to control his body as a focus for controlling his mind. They knew that when he left their refuge, there would be much more to distract him and without an internal focus, he would only fall apart again. It took them many years to fully prepare Malik for the outside world. He was nearly an adult, and had spent most of his life around men who had never spoken a word to him. In writing they taught him philosophy and many other learnings, but he lacked the truth of what it is to interact with society, with other human beings. Still, when he believed he was finally ready, he set out to explore the world around him. He would not return home. In fact, he would never return home again. As he learned more of the world, and of the people in it he’d been so sheltered from his whole life, he came to resent his parents for not having been there, for locking him away from human contact, except with the monks, who, though he had grown fond of in ways, never could show him the affection he had always been looking for. The same affection his parents never showed him either. To him, he was their prophecy, and never really their child. Malik became a humanist, shunning the gods and his parent’s beliefs, and even the prophecy on his own life. He didn’t believe his gift to be a gift, but considered it a curse, for having kept him from humanity for so long. He began traveling extensively, never staying in one place too long, determined to make up for lost time, and learn all he could of humanity and the world, and to make his own path and his own destiny in life.