demigoth | (no subject)

Player —

Player Name: Marie
Pronouns: She/her (they/them is also fine)
Are you over 18? Yes
Contact: seemarierun @ Plurk
Current Characters: Tim Drake and Tommy Shepherd
Who Invited You?: Originally Shikki

Character —

Character Name: Nico di Angelo
Character Canon: Percy Jackson and the Olympians (and subsequent series)
Character Age: 15
Canon Point: End of The Tower of Nero (Book 5, Trials of Apollo)
Link to History: N/A (canon character)
Inventory:

Sword made of Stygian Iron - Nico's sword is made from Stygian iron, a magical metal that is indestructible once forged and is the only magical metal that is capable of hurting the full gamut of life (humans, demigods, monsters, immortals, etc). Items made from Stygian iron are forged in the Underworld and cooled in the River Styx.

The sword is deep black and glows faintly purple. It will absorb and be strengthened by the essence of any monster it dispatches, so that's fun. As with all Stygian Iron, it can only be used by children of the Underworld deities. Nico has used the sword to channel his summoning ability for greater power.

Powers —

Skills: Does Mythomagic count?

Fluent in Ancient Greek, Italian, and English
Swordsmanship - Like most demigods at Camp Halfblood, Nico is shown as being proficient in battle with his weapon of choice. Nico's skills have grown considerably with training and battle since he first appeared at 10 years old, to the point where he can fight a legion of monsters with his sword in one hand and wand which must be kept aloft at in the other and emerge basically unscathed.

Superpowers:

Standard Demigod Abilities
- Battle senses - Demigods in this universe have heightened awareness and alertness, which is often mistaken as ADHD, that is meant to keep them ever ready for battle.
- Prophetic dreams - Demigods often have prophetic dreams and message-carrying dreams. Nico is shown to have better-than-average control over his dreams, including the ability to astral project his consciousness into the dreams of other demigods or to send others into deep dreams.
- Brain "hard-wired" for Ancient Greek
- Enhanced physique - Demigods, by nature of being half god, are just a bit better than peak human for their size and age in regards to strength, speed, agility, stamina, durability, senses, and reflexes. It's not on par with a true metahuman ability in any of these areas. For example, Nico can't lift 500 lbs, but he can and does lift and carry healthier campers. Another example is that the camp rock wall features lava, and that sort of proximity to a lava flow would likely kill a human.
Demigod Abilities specific to being a child of Hades
- Limited Geokinesis:
  - Can call up rocks from the ground (usually black and extremely sharp) and levitate them if he chooses*
  - Can split fissures in the ground (usually done to drag monsters to the Underworld or call up skeletons).
- Necromancy:
  - Can physically call up the undead (largely those buried nearby but not limited to) and control them. This generally takes the form of skeletons.*
  - Can dismiss/destroy/banish/release the souls the risen undead (even those that are not under his control) as well as those that have cheated death.*
  - Can physically interact with ghosts and control them.*
  - Can summon souls of the deceased by ritual and communicate with them.
  - Can summon and telekinetically control bones.
  - Can send out some non-verbal message that warns the undead and spirits to keep away (which they will adhere to)
  - Can sense death and life, including knowing if someone is nearing their death (even if they are not injured), when someone he is close to has died, when a god is fading, where living individuals are in Tartarus, if a death is not "normal", and if any changes occur in someone's mortality).
  - Can kill mortals and demigods by transforming them into ghosts or skeletons and banishing them to the Underworld.*
  - Can use use the seeds of Persephone to put himself in a Death Trance for 24 hours.
- Umbrakinesis: Can shadow travel, essentially teleporting via shadows. shadows as a way of transportation; however, great distances tend to wear him out.
  - Can absorb other magical shadow effects into his sword.
  - Can generate darkness as bolts and shields.
  - Can twist shadows around him to hide.
- That Boy Ain't Right: Nico has shown extremely limited additional powers/status effects which largely serve as literal mood-setting, as he seems to use them when he's angry, and as a way of signalling to others that he's a child of the Underworld.
  - Limited Cryokinesis: Generates an area intense cold, dropping the temperature in the immediate area and causing a frost to form.
  - Projects/inspires an aura of fear and death, similar to Hades on a reduced scale. It has caused people and monsters to shrink away from him. Some have claimed that he smells like death, but this is also described as like rain on a stone. As this can cause grass and other plant life in his immediate vicinity (say less than 5 feet) to wither, it is likely related to the necromancy.

Limitations:

A number of Nico's abilities are asterisked above. This is to denote abilities that cannot be heavily used or repeatedly used without a good long rest or use of magical restoratives. Calling up a skeleton, or even a few skeletons, can be done easily and repeatedly. Calling up an entire 20 skeleton SWAT team will leave him exhausted. Similar effects were seen when he transformed living creatures into undead.

The shadow travel is heavily asterisked because it has been shown to have potentially life-threatening consequences if he overextends himself. The first time he tried it, Nico passed out for a week. He still occasionally passes out in he's taking others with him, although luckily he's stopped landing in China. While Nico has gotten better at it, repeated teleportations of himself, two others and a forty foot statue nearly permanently turned him into a shadow himself and left him briefly comatose.

Most monsters can smell demigods and quite a number of them preferentially eat demigods. It's implied that most young or solo demigods are killed. I'd love to keep this in the game and have anything that would qualify as a "monster" or would potentially eat humans or demigods be able to track him from a mile away.

He’s barely educated in the traditional sense. Nico is 15, and probably hasn’t even had 5 years of formal schooling at this point. Half of which were pre-1950 as he was born in the 1930s. He can read and write, but struggles with both due to dyslexia (autocorrect and text to voice will be a revelation), and while some things - like geography- he’s pretty good at he’s abysmal at science and technology because in his world, there's some interference between being a demigod and tech, particularly cell phone usage attracting monsters.

Personality —

Nico is that kid at the edge of the friends' group who very much wants to be a part of the friends group, but doesn't want to be the centre of it (or doesn't know how). In Nico's case, it's both.

He has spent a long time with relatively no supervision and few people in his life, although his sister Bianca did try to look after him. When your mother dies before you're ten, it can be traumatizing. When your dad Hades decides the solution is to that is to wipe your memories and dump you in a series of increasingly dangerous "babysitting" solutions, you end up hitting your tween years a little awkward, lonely and naïve. The naivety was brutally ground away over the next few years. The loneliness is is still a work in progress - although he's learning that people actually want to be in his life, he still gets surprised by it, and Nico is fiercely protective of the people that cares about - because he's lost so many.

Between being a child of Hades (which carries a certain stigma), being time-displaced, and being gay, Nico has struggled with insecurity and fears that he won't be accepted - a fear that he then self-fulfills by pushing everyone away and not giving them an opportunity to do so. Yet he constantly finds himself surrounded by the sort of people he wants to be: bold, shining, good.

He acts like he invented stubborn and grudges. Nico will push himself beyond inadvisable if he thinks its the right thing to do, and there are a limited number of people that he will allow to talk him out of it. Mostly the same people that he'd do it for, so that's an issue.

Nico went through a huge I-am-dark-and-humourless-and-no-one-understands-me phase. Really, he's still in it, but the addition of more friends and a sense of humour (albeit a bleak one) has lightened him up a bit. He creeps around a summer camp in head to toe black and probably rips his clothes just to patch it with safety pins, but the only time he raises skeletons are to have an excuse to sit at the Apollo table.

But... that "phase" wasn't actually entirely a phase. As stated above, he's lost loved ones, but he's also been kidnapped by monsters and held in a jar for days, been under the influence of a mad ghost, and survived a solo trip to Tartarus, something that should be impossible for a mortal or demigod, and seeing the abyss for what it is has left him with some ongoing anguish and mental health concerns that he's trying to work through. While he is noted in the books as having tremendous willpower and ability to shoulder burdens, he has recently begun receiving counseling from Dionysius.

While Nico is capable of fending for himself, it is in a bare bones, basic needs sort of way. He's not good at self care (worse if he can't mask if with a fake doctor's note or as actually do it for someone else's benefit). The worst that can happen at this point is that he dies - and his dad's already prepped him a room at his underworld palace so... really, it's not as bad as you would think, as long as you avoid the Fields of Asphodel.

Gameplay —

Areas of Interest / Brainstorming:

I suppose I'm interested in playing with the school idea (I apologize to the teacher characters in advance), having someone to throw at the younger set, to see if anyone will adopt this child.

Samples:

Here at the TDM.