Adel Fiddler

Stats
Name: Adel Fiddler

Titles: Walking Death, Plaguebringer, Harbinger of Death, Deadwalker

Species: Human

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Easily seduced.

Age: 19

Birthday: March 6th

Sign: Pisces

Height: 5'6"

Weight: 140lb

Eye Color: Reddish-brown

Hair Color: Red

Room: 204

Player: Dolly

PB: Irel Clark from Raiders

Background
Adel was born in a small forest village called Haplith in the Micah region. It shared a close border with the Fuggum region. It was a quiet and rather quaint place on all accounts; it was small enough that everyone generally knew everyone else and things were peaceful.

He lived alone with his mother; Adel never knew his father. He passed away shortly after Adel was born thanks to a fever that went around the village and Adel's mom was left to raise her son on her own. And for the most part things were just fine. He'd help her around the house with chores and laundry, gladly assisted in the kitchen (some of his fondest memories are of baking with her) and would attend the local school three times a week to learn reading, writing, and simple math. Most of his time was spent playing with a boy two years younger than him, Matthew Thomas.

Their mothers were close friends so it was only natural that the pair of them became more of less inseparable. They did everything together, Adel always leading the way and taking Matt on 'adventures'. Unfortunately it was on one of these adventures that everything became completely unraveled and the once-lively little village became a Dead zone where all life was snuffed out and nothing would again grow from its soil.

It started as a simple game of hide-and-seek in the forest. The pair of them were taking turns going deeper and deeper into the woods in an attempt to find a better hiding spot; they'd done it so many times before that on this particular occasion Adel decided to venture just a bit further and encroached upon the Witch forest that took root at the end of the Micah border. Matthew was opposed to the idea of going any further but Adel insisted. Their game turned from seeking one another to seeking adventure as they marveled at the over-sized fungi and exotic and strange plants.

Eventually though they found something that was very much not natural--a run-down structure of some kind; the remnants of an chapel. It was obviously not Witch-made; it had to be abandoned by the Light Keepers, Adel insisted. The Holy Order had always been an exciting topic for him; often his mother told him stories of the heroic Saint, Joan who brought peace to the lands and united the kingdom into the Perpetian Monarchy they lived under. So he couldn't pass up a chance to explore it even when Matt expressed his displeasure.

There was nothing inside but run-down remnants of seating and collapsed walls. Not even a mural or sculpture to give some sign as to who might have inhabited it at one time. Or at least there was nothing on the main floor. The cellar below was an entirely different story.

Behind a cracked wall was a secret chamber of sorts, long ago sealed up but weathered by the elements. It would have been entirely bland and ordinary within save for the immense stone slab that at one point had served to seal a doorway. But not it too had succumbed to age and become separated just enough for Adel to squeeze in and find the one thing no one should have ever stumbled upon: Ashur's Book of the Dead, a tome written by the world's deadliest necromancer.

Claiming it as treasure Adel and Matt quickly brought it back to their village to investigate. But try as they might nothing they did could open the simple, leather-bound tome. By all accounts they should have been able to easily open the tiny lock on the front, but for all their efforts nothing was produced. Nothing happened until on chance Adel managed to cut his finger while running it along the bound pages and a single drop of blood fell onto its cover.

Instantly power came rushing out of the evil tome and flooded the area, overwhelming Adel and at the same time wiping out all life in the entire village in an instant.

When he awoke he found that everything around him had changed. Wood had gone rotten, paint had peeled and the stench of decay was everywhere. In less than five minutes all life in Haplith had been sucked dry. The remains of Matt's body lay across the room from him, almost indiscernible; blood was smeared across the walls and floor. Limbs were mangled and torn, bent and disfigured and his head twisted clean off. Everywhere he went in the village was the same. Everywhere he went people had been torn apart and ground into the dirt.

And they were moving.

All of them were. Matt, his mother, his friends from school and all of the villagers--although they had been torn apart by the energy that ravaged the village it had also soaked them and saturated their dead flesh. They were animated purely by the energy itself and became something worse than undead. And they wanted him, the only source of life in the village.

With misshapen bodies they approached him, starting to knit themselves back together at the barest levels. Some couldn't even get more than an arm to move but they still only wanted him, and they weren't going to stop. Shaken, mortified and honestly more horrified than he had ever been in his entire life, Adel did the only thing he could: he survived. Crying and choking on his own bile the twelve-year-old grabbed an axe a neighbor had left at their house after chopping wood for his mother and beat back the ghouls one by one. Hitting them away didn't work though. They didn't feel pain. Adel had to cut off their limbs to stop them from moving and go one step further and destroy their heads to stop them from regenerating immediately.

He got as far as three people before the next ghouls came upon him; his mother and Matthew. That's when he literally lost it and screamed, hard and loud. Over and over he made the noise as he was forced to do what would have otherwise been unthinkable to him. And that's when Ashur's powers finally surrendered themselves to him. Again necromatic energy flooded the area and powered out of him like a dam bursting. It tore through the village a second time and wiped out all of the cursed villagers save for one--the only ghoul close enough to the center of it all to escape destruction: Matthew.

Damaged in more ways than one and guided entirely by the strange, foreign powers that had anchored themselves to his small body, Adel did the only thing his broken mind could think of: fix things. He could barely function let alone think, but the one thing he knew was that he didn't want to be alone, no matter what. So he forcibly dragged Matthew's soul back from the afterlife and attached it back to his battered and broken body. And spent the next three days living alone in the village with no life with a zombie that thought it was a ten-year-old boy, body broken and twisted. Adel bundled him up as best he could and gathered up everything loose, and then left the village.

For many months after the incident Adel didn't possess the skills or knowledge needed to properly use necromancy. He carried around Matthew's remains and spoke with the boy like nothing was wrong. Sometimes he even tried to convince himself that nothing had happened and it was all some terrible nightmare. Sometimes it worked. But then real nightmares would plague him, and each time they did his powers went out of control and revived whatever corpses were near him.

It became a necessity for Adel to learn how to control his powers after he had unwillingly destroyed his third village after only a year. Everywhere he went he seemed to only bring death with him, and Matthew was still in pieces.

That's when he met a strange man. He was a priest--part of the Light Keepers and Holy Order. And despite how everyone avoided him (he was dirty, unkempt, starving, and carrying remains on his back) this man actually sought him out, providing him with food and water and even going so far as to look after him. He bathed and clothed the youth who had up until that point done very, very little to take care of himself. He barely even spoke and couldn't sleep.

But even still, the man stayed with him and Matthew and even treated the dismembered boy like he was no different than Adel. For a whole month he would come and take care of them in the woods. This was a major pivotal moment in Adel's life: the first time anything had seemed even vaguely 'normal' to him since his life had become a nightmare, and more than that the priest even seemed to know about the source of his powers.

Bit by bit Adel began to open up and speak to the man. He told him his name, where he'd come from. They spoke about his favorite games and stories--simple things. Never would he approach the subject of what had happened in his village or how Matthew had come to be undead, but then never did the priest seem to inquire. He let Adel speak at his own disclosure and in return told the boy all about the Order and his duty as a traveling priest. He offered Adel comfort and security where he had had none for so very long, even going so far as to mentor him. And it was under the priest's tutelage that he began to gain some control over his powers.

His nightmares stopped. The dead no longer flocked to him. Bit by bit he began to find the control needed to stitch Matthew back together. Eventually he even made him whole--and found himself drawn to the glowing praise the priest would bestow upon him. He craved it in a way he couldn't hope to crave anything else; acceptance after everything that happened meant more than life to him. He came to look forward to the tales the man would spin for him: of mermaids whose song could purify the heart and their flesh any ailment; magical stones with the ability to sustain life eternally; beings and gods whose power was so great that they could bring back the dead and grant immortality. Adel immediately decided he needed to find these beings. Find them and try to find a way to fix Matthew no matter what the cost.

The day he told this to the priest the man simply smiled and placed a hand upon his head as he always had and uttered a single word. "Good." Then all he knew was darkness.

The next time Adel woke up he no longer recalled the horrors he'd witnessed in his villages. He no longer remembered the horrifying things he'd done; only that power had overwhelmed him and he had revived Matthew. He didn't recall the nightmares or the people he'd killed; just bursts of power and a loss of control. He didn't even remember the priest who had disappeared as quickly as he had left. All he knew was that he had to find immortality for Matthew's sake, no matter what the cost.

From that point on he intended to devote his life to the study of Ashur's tome in order to master the skills he would need to keep and preserve Matthew--but found the knowledge and ability leaking into his body. With his memories of the events gone from his mind nothing stood in his way to prevent him from intrinsically rejecting the power that had destroyed everything he had ever known and loved, and it was only then that the curse on his body began to truly take hold and spread.

The road to achieving his goal hasn't been easy though. Three more towns were felled by him (all inadvertently) during the next five years and as a result a bounty equality $5,000,000 was placed upon his head and he became the most wanted person in all of Ediacara. Often Adel has to travel with a decoy necromancer made of decomposed body parts, using it to distract any law enforcement or bounty hunters that pursue him.

Little does Adel know that the priest he met in his youth is actually a human named Lucas possessed by a Grower, whose only goal is to grow and feast upon as much magic as possible. To this end he works with a covert organization aiming to use Belief for their own ends and he was sent to find Adel specifically when the Holy Order caught wind of what happened in Adel's village. He spent a year searching for an all-powerful necromancer...only to find a borderline-comatose child instead. So he did what was necessary to achieve his goals and gave Adel the tools he would need to become a meal worth eating. Targets to pursue, access to his deadly power, and freedom from the restraints he had placed on himself to prevent Ashur's power and soul from taking root in his body. By sealing his memories he destroyed the only thing that would have protected Adel while at the same time enabling him to lead as 'normal' a life as possible given his circumstances. He did this only to ensure that Adel would follow through on what Lucas wanted him to do.

He now waits and observes Adel & Euri on their travels, waiting to see when their powers will grow and come to fruition.

Personality
Dumbest smart person to ever live. While he may be a self-taught scholar with and impressive talent for retaining knowledge he's almost completely clueless when it comes to normal human interaction. His emotional maturity is still stuck somewhere around 14 years old thanks to the events that lead him to become a necromancer.

Adel is basically a kind albeit somewhat clueless person who wears his heart on his sleeve and is probably too honest for his own good. He's quick to show guilt when he feels bad, cries when he's upset and basically does everything in excess. He'll be too focused, try too hard, be too dense, get too attached. Basically he just has a lot of emotions and doesn't have the maturity to manage everything properly. He;s not incompetent with them, he's just not good at judging and responding to various situations.

He's genuinely kind and values all life no matter how small or artificial. He abhors killing and fighting and always looks for a way to avoid. "Make love not war" basically sums up his whole core. He's not a fighter at heart and is...really just one big pacifist. He's more likely to let himself to get beaten up than try to fight back and if given the opportunity he will always run away from conflict. The only exception is when it concerns Matt; then he's fiercely protective and will do whatever he needs to to keep him safe.

The problem with all of the above is that until recently he...never had anyone to act this way towards except for Matt. He's not used to having attachments to other people that last purely because he's always had to be on the run or avoiding populated areas. He was basically a recluse until he met Euri and found himself just...immensely enjoying the company of others. Having friends is something he treasures more than anything else and wants to do anything he can to make them happy without...having them get too attached to him, because he knows he's going to die soon ):

Fears
More than anything Adel fears being alone. When he found Ashur's tome and this became his reality he was so deeply traumatized and affected by it that he couldn't handle the fact that he had killed everyone he had ever cared about and the fact that he was alone was all his fault. It's the reason he brought his best friend in life, Matt.

He is also afraid of heights, stereotypical Witches (he's read horrifying books), and letting people see him without a shirt on...because that's where the permanent reminder of his curse is, in the form of a blackened series of necromatic symbols.

Likes/Dislikes
As far as likes go he enjoys reading, baking, swimming (he is terrible at this), spending time with people, cloud-watching, stargazing, bunnies and laughing! He dislikes being alone, making people unhappy, lying, and people who hurt others for fun. He generally dislikes violence of any kind and doesn't like it when people use magic to harm others due to his own...horrible experiences with it. If you can control yourself and prevent your magic from hurting people willingly, why would you choose to do otherwise?

Dreams
What Adel would like more than anything else (in an ideal world) is to meet a wonderful woman he can love and marry and have a family with! Where he'll have to work hard but still manage to have time for them and they will live happily ever after forever c: He'd like to have been a Paladin or Knight of some kind...or a baker.

He'd also like to be able to make many friends. And one day visit the ocean. BASICALLY he just want to prove that he's capable of bringing something good into life rather than death )':

Normal
At first glance isn't that out of the ordinary build-wise. Because of the slightly over-sized coat he wears from a distance he looks fairly normal, but get up close and it's obvious this guy should have been born a woman. He's lanky, like he never quite finished puberty, and definitely on the skinny side. He's also fairly malnourished from eating mostly chocolate and alcohol, two things that include some of the properties needed to stave off the worst of the symptoms in the sedative-elixir he takes routinely for terminal patients.

He's got slight bags under his eyes due to staying up late working instead of sleeping like he should, but this is an on-and-off thing for him most of the time. And despite how poorly he eats he's at least got enough muscle to make quick sprints and is...actually really, really flexible. He just doesn't have a reason to ever show it.

The only other thing notable about him are his red hair and eyes; the latter of which steadily began to develop after he became cursed. Before that they were a normal brown color.

Casting
When Adel uses necromancy his eyes glow a sort of neon-purplish color and a glowing outline forms around his body of the same color. Usually nothing else changes but when he delves too deep into the unholy power it bleaches color from his hair and causes the blackened (normally hidden) marks of his curse to appear on his skin. Both return to normal after about a week, slowly fading.

History of Necromancy
Necromancy is a forbidden magic first created by its infamous founder and first user, Ashur Virtus over 4000 years ago. Although saying he created it is just a technicality--he discovered the method. The real creation was done by the humans of Minoa who possess the power of "Belief": when enough of them collectively believe in something it becomes real. Upon discovering this fact Ashur exploited it and used it to create the founding of Necromancy. It took many horrible, horrible experiments and mass-deception but eventually he managed to find the foothold he needed--a belief that the dead can return--and thus his horrible dream became reality.

With an unshaped belief at his to mold and deform Ashur began his spellwork and delved deep into the forbidden. He did everything he could to give himself power: seeking out relics, stealing knowledge from prominent minds of his time, even approaching the Old Gods. His ultimate goal was to gain immortality and hoard all the power and knowledge he needs to bridge the gap between the magic of Humans and Gods, and from there manipulate Belief to recreate the world.

Luckily he never got that far. Sometime in his forties he encountered the Saint, Joan: Paladin of the Light Keepers and the Holy Order. Commanding another Belief-seated power she used her Light to tear apart the undead armies he had unleashed upon the kingdom. Dome and Micah were both ravage by his assault but when the final battle came, it was Joan who severed his head from his body and ended his twisted vision. Mostly.

In secret Ashur had been preparing and planning for his eventual death and to reach his goal of immortality. He had done everything from buffet his own soul to consuming the flesh of elves, Witches, and mermaids; the most magical of the races. It left him a patchwork of magics and a empty void that drew in everything around it. There was no way to sustain his body. So to combat this he sealed everything he knew, everything he had worked on and the key to all of his power in one Book of the Dead.

And then he sowed the seeds of his soul within it, so that even when Joan bested him and his body was wiped from existence the parts of him secreted away within the book could fester and grow; magnetizing the soul departed from his dead body back to the book hidden within the Witches' Forest in Fuggum. There it lay in wait, growing and preparing itself until the most unlikely and unfortunate of hosts wandered into its midst and provided an ample supply of life from which to feed and grow stronger: Adel.

Since Ashur was killed there have been 7 other necromancers including Adel. His six predecessors were all killed, either by Light Keepers or their own sinister creations. Necromancy is outlawed and all material on it is destroyed whenever it surfaces.

General
All forms of necromancy in a higher class than Patchwork requires the usage of souls. These can be from victims, sacrifices or even the necromancer in question. Generally the smartest decision is to use secondhand souls. This poses less danger to the necromancer and allows for less strain on the body and spirit. Adel does not do this.

Adel uses his own soul for any work done above Patchwork-level because of his strict refusal and abhorrence to cause harm with necromancy. This places a terrible strain on him as a result but it also has the gambit side-effect of making his power exponentially more powerful due to the greater precision with which he can manipulate the undead. Unfortunately it also taxes his body and mind after prolonged use and each and every time he does it there is a very real danger of him becoming consumed by either his magic or the beings he aims to summon.

The one universal rule to necromancy, no matter what they wish to perform, is that one must have killed another human being in order to use it.

Patchwork
Using necromancy Adel is able to manipulate the bones of the dead however he sees fit, from gathering them into animated skeletal minions to hardening and making them more dense. He can reshape them and mold them into weapons or armor as he sees fit and keeps the remnants of bones sewn into the lining of his clothes for emergency use. He can also change, reshape and reform dead flesh into whatever form he wants and move it like a puppeteer.This is the least-dangerous of all his abilities.

Zombies
This requires a body! And if he's got one Adel can reanimate it sans-soul and turn it into an undead creature that hungers eternally for life. They will sense and seek it out for as long as they are animate; and once they find it they will bite into their prey, sucking out all life and spreading their curse. The afflicted then becomes undead as well, hungering for the same source of life. These require strict concentration to control as the necromancer is also at constant risk of being sought out as food.

Spectres & Spirits
This doesn't require any prep work. Adel can summon ghosts and spirits whenever he wants so long as he lures them to the realm of the living with a soul. This is more dangerous for Adel than normal necromancers

Wraiths
This is Very Dangerous. Wraiths are powerful spirits that can be used offensively and with great effectiveness, but the cost is generally not worth it for Adel. They're creepy and will devour anything in their path.

Reapers
The. Most. Dangerous. With this Adel more or lures a Reaper, creatures that collect & feed off of human souls, to the realm of the living with the promise of a meal and allows it to possess him in return for its powers. When possessed Adel retains himself entirely but gains access to a Reaper's scythe which is capable of ripping one's soul from their body, massively increased command of the undead, and gains a vast pool of knowledge on how to fight and wield scythes as weapons.

This method will always drain his hair of all color and turn his eyes a burning neon-purple hue. A skull mask comes down over his face for armor and all of his curse marks burn into his skin. The maximum amount of time Adel can spend like this is one minute; after that he must exorcise the reaper or risk being consumed by it.

Matthew
Probably the biggest mistake Adel has ever made. After Matthew died Adel forcibly ripped his soul back from the afterlife and burned necromatic runes into it so that he would remain attached to his decease body and not only turn it undead but reanimate it so that his personality traits and memory would remain intact. This is literally torture for a soul ready to move on (and Adel has an inkling about this).

This method of revival requires constant concentration on Adel's part. When he becomes weakened or otherwise incapacitated he loses control of Matt immediately and the zombie can begin acting...well, like a zombie.

Soul-stitching
When one is close to or on the verge of death and the body's hold on the soul weakens Adel possesses the ability to literally rip it from them, killing them. He can then use it as a power source for necromancy if he so chooses...but he always takes the souls he reaps to the nearest Church to be purified and sent on peacefully.

Curse
This is what gives Adel his power. It originated from the book he found within the Fuggum forest with Matthew when they were kids; when he cut his finger and smeared blood onto its cover all of its contents surged into Adel: Ashur's knowledge, power, memories, mind...and soul. It completely overwhelmed him and Adel's body rejected it violently, having no capacity for magic instead of the intended effect of Ashur gaining control immediately.

As a result the best it could do was burn itself into him in the form of a curse which slowly spreads across his body in accordance with his usage of necromancy. The more he uses it the faster it spreads, and once it covers him entirely the spellwork necessary for Ashur to take him over will be complete. When this happens his soul will be forcibly removed from his body and used to help power Ashur's.

Adel knows none of this of course. When his body rejected the magic it also rejected a vast majority of Ashur's knowledge. All of the necromancer's memories and mind are completely cut off from him and a great deal of the knowledge he needs to prompt himself with from the original Tome itself. Adel works under the assumption that the curse is slowly killing him; every time it spreads he experiences horrific pain, fever, delirium, and becomes completely incapacitated for twelve hours. Afterward he has little memory of the event.

The reason for Adel's scrawniness and short height are due to the strain the curse places on his body. Sans Ashur's revival, if Adel stopped using necromancy he would only live into his late-thirties, early-forties.

Relationships
Euridice Taverna:

Matthew Thomas:

Cerberus:

Ben O'Callaghan:

Beatrice:

Cheriour:

Cian Thornwood:

Coin Lenn:

Deseid:

Gabriel Corpseblight:

Michael:

Myra il Zhalai:

Nishi:

Robin:

Sonya Dämmerung:

Tabiana Morovan:

Zachary Binder: