App: Tower of Animus

[nobarnacles]

Player Information

Name: Charlie
Personal Journal: drawzel
Age: 26
Contact Info: drawzel, same on AIM, or PM to this account
Other Characters Played: n/a

Character Information

Character Name: Zelgadis Greywords
Character Series: Slayers (anime series)
Character Age: 20-ish
Character Gender: Male
Original Canon
Canon Point: Right after Hellmaster crushes his soul sphere at the end of Slayers NEXT
Background Link: Canon overview, episode synopses, first season synopsis.
Personality: When Zelgadis was an enthusiastic, pigheaded, and slightly gullible youth, he spent his time with a Robin Hood-like band of misfits that raided supplies and loot in the name of his grandfather, Rezo the Red Priest, thinking that he was getting his hands dirty so that the blind cleric could remain pure in his efforts to cure the world's children of their ails. In a moment of overwhelming teenage feelings of inadequacy, he wished to be stronger so that he could do a better job of carrying his weight. Rezo granted him this wish by turning him into a walking freak of nature that happened to be physically powerful and magically enhanced; the major downside to this, though, was that his appearance looked so repulsive and scary that the very children he was trying to help ran screaming whenever they saw him. Owing to the power of friendship, though, Zelgadis slowly learned to get over his sudden influx of self-image problems, and youthful optimism helped him accept his newfound superpowers as a boon that just came with an unfortunate side-effect.

That is, until he found out that Rezo was just using that as an excuse to perform horrible magical body-modification experiments in order to figure out ways to cure his own blindness. In fact, basically everything Rezo did was part of his obsession with curing his own blindness. So, mix some crippling teenage body image issues that forced him to live on the margins of society, the earth-shattering realization that everything he thought he was doing for good was instead done for evil, and a betrayal from his beloved and only known kinsman, and you now have one angsty, angry, and conflicted chimera-boy.

Zelgadis is highly intellectual, chronically mistrustful, unapologetically prideful, and generally takes himself way too seriously. The majority of his life since that event has been consumed by searching for a way to cure his body with a similar selfish obsession to what caused Rezo to curse him in the first place. He is as morally grey as grey gets, and often shows little remorse for recklessly using others in his pursuits. While chasing a lead for his cure, he'll allow few things to stand in his way, and has leveled mountains, kidnapped girls, and accepted all sorts of humiliating tasks, all for the sake of obtaining more knowledge. However, he is not without a softer side, as he recognizes instances of profound injustice and will act to correct them. After his transformation, despite his generally prickly nature and insistence at maintaining a heartless and mysterious image, he is still shown as displaying kindness to animals and, occasionally, marginalized humans. When faced with the fate of humanity, he will undoubtedly stand against evil, though his ambiguous behavior has left even his closest friends to question his motives.

Beyond that, he has little tolerance for nonsense and frivolity, and despises being used or manipulated. He will make some allowances for friends he knows well, but it takes a long time for someone to gain his respect. His skills as a fighter and dedication to tasks has made him a successful mercenary, but he has no interest in money or fame; he prefers to work in exchange for information or access to knowledge. He has a tendency to slip into withdrawn, darker moods when there's nothing to distract him; for that reason, he is perhaps far more dependent on his friends' light-hearted shenanigans than he will ever let himself admit. He often displays a reserved and stoic nature, but he's quick to judge and displays an alarming lack of tact.

Despite his physical strength and fighting abilities, Zelgadis is more often the voice of reason in the group and does all he can to keep them on task and organized. He is curious and observational about his surroundings, and acts with a general precision and near-obsessive attention to details; when things don't go his way, he's quick to blow his top out of frustration, but he'll also coolly ridicule others when someone else is throwing a tantrum. Between his training from Rezo and the vast amount of strange things he's had to do in his search for a cure, he's a walking swiss army knife of skills, from music to sculpture, gunslinging to navigation, complicated kinematics analysis to obscure lores, with a knack for absorbing any information he touches. In a pinch, he's pulled out his own wire-hairs and used them as darts; his inventiveness and flexibility makes it easy for him to deal with new situations.
Abilities: Zelgadis is highly skilled in both swordsmanship and sorcery; the golem part of his body gives him an extreme durability that makes him hard to seriously damage by most mundane means, while the brau demon gives him speed and magic capacity that puts him far above most mortals. His specialty is in Shamanism, in which he knows the strongest of Astral and Earth spells, while being highly proficient in Air and Fire spells. He is also capable of mid-level Black magic and low-level White magic. He often utilizes a combination of swordfighting and spellcasting, depending on the nature of the fight, but is also certainly not lost without one or the other at his disposal. He is a very clever and efficient fighter, rarely over- or underestimating his foes, and has a tendency to toy with them for general amusement when he's certain to have the upper hand.

Physically, he can certainly be killed by things like poisoning and asphyxiation. He's been known to dent up every sword that hits him, though he's also been damaged by severe blunt force trauma. A live volcano would probably destroy him, but smaller flames probably wouldn't hurt him. His main physical weakness is water; due to the composition of his body, he sinks like a rock unless he protects himself with an Air spell.
Sample Entry: thread with a canonmate and a longer thread with cross-canon CR