Coete Paladrian

5'11" and lean well into bony territory, Coete was once just a scrawny kid living in a kennel thanks to a promise the master held with his dead mother. With a few adventures and plenty of mental torture under his belt, he's gained a few bony protrusions and scales.

Yes.

Coete's skin is pale and primarily covered with tiny translucent scales. Some areas where bone is close to the surface, such as the backs of his hands, the bridge of his nose, and his cheekbones, are scaled with thicker, more robust silver scales. He also has hardened claws on his fingers and toes, though they are not large or spectacularly sharp. He also has a number of horns slowly growing, both from his skull and along his spine. His head horns are only about two inches long so far, but develop more as he uses more magic. He has one over either eye, and then a row of six roughly in line with the joint of his jaw on the top of his head. The horns nearest to his ears are the largest, and close to three inches long. The horns along his spine are still more knobs, roughly half an inch long and still covered in skin.

Being blind, Coete doesn't go in much for fashion or style. He also doesn't bother cutting his hair much, so it is currently long enough to cover his butt when down; he tends to tie it into a highset ponytail so he doesn't sit on it. His hair was originally black but is now growing in pale silver, and only the last foot or so is still black. His eyes were originally blue but have lost their colour altogether, and are always staring blankly at nothing; really, their only purpose is to be a weakness and a source of tears. Coete also has elongated, triangular ears with a bit of scaling along their upper edge, and a reinforcing ridge along the back.

Coete's clothing, at least at his time of arrival, is foreign and military. It isn't mass-produced military, but rather was customized to fit him by a too-energetic assistant. It consists primarily of a tight-fitting dark grey jacket with a narrow white collar and white sleeves, a double row of snap-clasps across the left side of his chest, and a white hem that secures to his pants. Those pants are simpler, just loose grey fabric with subtle reinforcement into the shins and knees. He also tends to wear a fabric collar in the same grey, covering his most conversation-inducing scar (yes, someone did try to cut his throat, no it didn't work, no he's not going to let anyone else try), and usually wears beat up leather boots that are molded to his feet by a lot of walking.

Speaking of scars, though, his throat is not the only part of him marked by past trauma. The palms of his hands are covered in criss-crossing scars, thanks to dragging himself out of a trash heap following the throat-cutting incident, and the rest of his body is nicked and marked with abuse in the common areas.

It should also be noted that he arrived with a broken piece of indigo-coloured antler, and he will probably kill anyone who messes with it without a second thought; it's the only physical thing he has left of his teacher, Lest, and also proof that she is indeed now dead.


Personality Description: Coete can be difficult to work with. He has a very thick layer of superficial temperament, and the true nature that lies beneath that rarely shows itself. He is extremely familiar with betrayal and abandonment, and with getting to know good people just in time for them to die. He has met royalty and every single one he met was horrible - some in rather spectacularly horrible ways - but much of the peasantry he's met was just as bad.

He stays aloof as much as possible, in an attempt to protect others, protect himself from their pain, protect himself from their betrayal, and because he doesn't really know how to trust easily. He has trusted, and in his younger days he trusted anyone even vaguely nice to him. Once upon a time he was a soft-faced puppy who adored everyone around him, but wolves can be born of trauma as much as flesh.

When Coete trusts, he does it wholeheartedly. He is absolutely loyal and will do absolutely anything to care for and obey those he follows. He will - and has - travel across continents, assassinate royalty, and bring down such a blizzard upon a region that it will probably still be frozen a few years later, never mind barren. The value of everything else pales past invisibility when there is harm or threat of harm to those he is truly attached to.

He didn't consciously intend to die, when Lest truly died. At some level, though, he begged for it. He had already been empty, drifting aimlessly through the world with only revenge to direct him - but he had it. Too late, and without fanfare. Nothing has changed but his location and the laws of magic around him. He might be in a brave new world, but he still has nothing.


Powers: Energy Manipulation: Elemental (Frozen Caves)
Coete's magic takes the form of being able to tap into natural - and artificial - power lines and shape the resulting energy. He has little natural ability - and little need - to store it, and can cause himself considerable damage by attempting to do so, but he is quite skilled in channeling it through himself and out into the world. The farther away the power line is, the more effort it takes to tap into it, and it is both safest and easiest to use power lines of a similar nature to his intended working.

Coete can shape energy. The process is very instinctive and intuitive, and does not involve incantations or tools. However, its complexity is rather limited as a result. He cannot convert energy into magic unrelated to the sort of dark underground stony places you might find under the permanent frost level in the far north, and is strongest with cold and ice. He is powerful enough to bring lethal blizzards down upon a large area, but most of his potential is only unlocked through extreme emotional distress. He can shape ice and snow with some proficiency, and can build rough structures. He is theoretically capable of shaping stone to some degree but all of his training and experience is with cold. He cannot convert energy into any other element, and channeling energy of other natures is a good way of seriously injuring himself.

In order to shape magic, the first thing Coete had to learn was to detect magic. He has developed this ability in the absence of eyesight and now readily uses it to feel the shape of the world around him. He can only clearly feel where his attention is, but is generally aware of abrupt changes in all directions. With attention, he can feel texture, temperature, and contrast of most sorts that are not related to visible light.

Magically Manipulated: Dragon of Frozen Caverns
A distinct feature of magic in Coete's world is its correlation with non-human ancestry. Furthermore, use of magic gradually triggers physical changes in the mage, and continued use will eventually turn the mage into a magical creature. Coete's heritage and magic has him on the path to become a dragon, and while he hasn't been using magic for long he has sure used a lot of it lately. The more he shifts - and the changes are permanent, and strongly resist magical interference - the stronger the magical side effects he experiences become. Those side effects, excluding appearance, include rapid healing, energy regeneration, and improved efficiency during adrenaline rushes. He also has reduced sensitivity to frostbite, and increased vulnerability to fire where he is not scaled; his scales are somewhat fire-resistant. Additionally, he tends to react poorly to receiving outside magical energy that is too far diverged from his native elements; he reacts most strongly to powerful life energies, such as jungle-associated magic. His reaction to a particular flavour of magic varies based on the nature of that magic, and is more or less the same as what happens if he tries to use energy outside of his nature.


Biography: [[a book exists that details this in detail, though it is not yet published. there are many details in my head. also, in the event that anyone ever ends up reading my book.... SPOILERS. ALL THE SPOILERS. BECAUSE THIS IS BASICALLY A DETAILED SUMMARY OF THE ENTIRE BOOK.]]

Coete's mother was brought from her underground homeland as a slave, though she succeeded in buying her freedom while her son was still an infant. She never confirmed the father, or spoke of him in any useful detail beyond a faint wistfulness. Coete grew up poor, in the slums of the capital city of the largest empire of the era, but life with his mother was happy.

She sickened when Coete was seven, but before she died she forged a deal with a local kennelmaster. The master never spoke of the details of that deal, but took Coete in and traded work for food and lodgings. Coete took well to the dogs, and he grew as the kennel grew from a small facility at the edge of the city to the largest, favoured by the richest of Cathset and built into the very palace. Coete wasn't always treated kindly. A lowborn caver child wasn't likely to earn much respect in that society, even one with intact senses. Coete was born blind. It didn't ruin his life but it did make many things more difficult.

One very unexpected fall, the empire's crown prince stopped in for a visit. Under the (very thin) guise of wanting to be friends with Coete, the prince and his friends whisked Coete to the far north - and abandoned him there, attempting to use him as bait for a legendary predator. It didn't work. Coete survived, gradually shedding his naïvete, and came across a shapeshifting chimeric mage.

That mage carried him even deeper into the wild and offered rescue if and only if Coete could make it through a labyrinth of ice and snow and booby traps to return with some treasure. With little option, Coete entered the maze, home of the rather more famous Maze Mage - Lest.

Lest met Coete in the maze, near-dead from exposure and poison, but understood his situation rather more thoroughly than she let on. She allowed him to stay with her through the winter, if only to have some more company than her slew of cats. She began to teach Coete the basics of magic out of curiosity and boredom more than any expectation of success, and had little experience teaching anyone anything, but to the surprise of both it took. Coete progressed, though he was still very much a beginner when spring came and the crown prince returned.

The prince defeated Lest, and took Coete prisoner, though only so they could return him to the kennels like a chewed-on book that had been dropped in a bathtub twice before going back to the library. They should have kept Coete from finding out it was them, though - and seriously, they really should not have thrown him in the wagon with a bin of weapons. People do some pretty stupid things when they underestimate others.

Coete disguised himself as a palace servant, snuck into the residential wing of the palace, made it into the crown prince's bed chamber, and attempted to kill him. The prince was a little too quick and a little too sober, and had his guards throw Coete out into the trash pit with his throat cut. Logically Coete would have been dead. Realistically, the cut hadn't been quite deep enough to kill him on the spot. He would have died in the trash pit without help, though, even if he managed to drag himself closer to an edge.

He was rescued by a priest who followed a deity lingering from the preceding dynasty, a wild fox who found xeir raven-loving disciple amusing enough to stick around sometimes. The priest nursed Coete away from the brink of death, but ditched him to save his own hide when a group of guards known as the Squatter Scatter Squad came knocking; the priest hadn't exactly paid for the run-down house he put Coete in.

Unable to run - well, barely able to walk when leaning on a nice, solid stick - Coete was captured, and with a growing war to the east he was conscripted. A short wagon ride and a long walk later, Coete found himself on the front lines with a sword (yes, someone gave the blind guy a sword; they also gave a tiny kid a hammer) and his magic to protect him. The latter proved enough, though his counterattack was enough to knock him out for a few hours.

The military was very pleased to discover a second mage in their midst, and stuck him with the healer mage who ran the infirmary for further training and recovery. While their magics were (rather spectacularly and nauseatingly) uncomplementary the healer was far more versed in magical theory than Lest had been, and was able to teach Coete quite a bit.

The war seemed to be going fairly well, and Coete was kept back from the fighting for the time being. His magic developed quickly but wasn't truly tested until the other nation brought out their own secret weapon: a pollen dragon controlled by a mage specializing in rage and manipulation. The battle was dramatic, to say the least, and most of the army Coete fought with was destroyed by the time he made it to the field. He took on the dragon alone, diverting it with maze-walls of snow and eventually tricking it into stepping into its own thornlike footprints and tripping. That proved enough of a break to attack the mage who controlled the dragon, and though it wasn't the end of the battle it did nearly seal it.

Coete eventually defeated the double magic of the enemy, but woke to find the remnants of his army fleeing: he'd taken out the dragon but the minion soldiers were still intact. They were able to regroup with fresh reinforcements without being attacked, but apparently the royal family - or one part of it - thought they needed a little more magical might.

The crown prince had Lest, extensively tortured and mutilated by his pet sadist, chained in a wagon. He intended to use her as a weapon against the enemy he had pissed off. Instead, he got to drag himself through several sudden feet of snow and howling wind to try to 'protect' Lest from Coete. Apparently by killing her before he could free her.

He got magically backhanded.

Lest still died.

Coete kind of froze the local hell over. Thoroughly. And managed to either rip or attract an interdimensional rift, leaving him on a strange island surrounded by scattered, melting ice and no better off than he'd been moments before.

Additional Information: Coete is a novel character of mine and I am (slowly) working towards publishing it. As such, copyright is kind of especially important for me on him. I don't expect anyone here to be problematic, I just have to say it XD