ToC Staff Post -Cert, Link to Official Uncert & Inventory Table of Contents & Rules Basic Info History RP Log Art (Official and Non) Growth Requirements
Rules Do not post in this thread unless you are staff, myself, or invited first. By posting this I am agreeing to follow ToS and shop rules, so I would invite the reader to do the same.
Contact Information I am always open for plotting/rps! That being said, some ways you can contact me are listed below;
3 Base Traits: Reticent // Resentful // Resilient Personality:
Due to Eliazer's upbringing he isn't very forthright with his thoughts. Even to those closest to him it can be a struggle to get him to open up. He feels as if the moment he expresses himself that somehow that's being 'selfish' and that he'll be called cumbersome, thus invalidating his feelings and leading to dismissal. Around those he's grown comfortable with Eli is a little more open, at least in the context of expressing a little individuality, but he still tries to keep things 'neutral' and 'calm' out of fear that he'll make someone mad at him.
This reserved nature has justifiably bred a strong vein of resentment within Eliazer. Though he is loath to show it to anyone, those closest to him know that his spite runs deep. In moments when everything becomes too much he's been known to lash out (ex. breaking a dish while washing it, throwing a book out a window, etc) but never in ways that would hurt someone. He's always deeply embarrassed by it afterward, but since he never truly feels able to express anger to anyone or at anything it just bottles itself up inside of him until he explodes.
Still, through it all, Eliazer tries not to stay down for long. He's pushed himself through all of life's trials thus far on the fire that his mother placed into his soul and a determination not to end up like his father. While not entirely hopeful that life will some day get better for him he does know that it could be a lot worse.
Facts -Was born Mute -is fluent in Belrean sign language
Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2021 6:09 pm
History
Eudora was never known for her stellar taste in men. When she fell for Langdon Aberswith her family tried to tell her what a horrible idea it was. He was handsome, of course, and a hard worker, but a horrible drunk. Even in his youth Langdon was known for carousing the dance halls late at night, sneaking into taverns with his friends and getting into trouble with the Justice district. Eudora was just one in a list of women he'd gone through, but to her he was everything. When she became pregnant her family pressured the two into a quick marriage, and by the time their son was born the two were living in a small, barely funded apartment in the capital.
In the early years Eudora tried to keep Langdon reigned in. She did her best to make sure he was home every night, pulled him away from strange women and tried to make sure he went to work on time every morning. With a newborn on her hip, however, and a job of her own Eudora soon grew sick of the routine. She'd already grown accustomed to having to hide what meager earnings she had lest Langdon take it, and eventually she gave up on her husband all together. With baby Eliazer around he came home less and less, claiming that having the infant meant less time for him to 'rest' after a long day.
For a while Eudora built a routine for herself and little Eliazer. She would leave her son with an elderly neighbor while she worked as a scrivener, returning home to spend the rest of the evening with her growing boy. When Eliazer showed no signs of speaking Eudora paid it little mind. After all he had been sick as a baby and it wasn't entirely uncommon for children to speak later in life if they were born small, or so she'd heard. As he started to age, however, she began to worry. Her neighbor's children had already proven plenty vocal, but Eliazer just...wasn't. He would make gestures, stomp his feet when irritated and clearly had his own way of getting the point across. Yet, for whatever reason, he never could speak. They tried coaxing the boy, hoping it was just selective mutism, and when that failed Eudora took him to see more experienced healers.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Aberswith, but there's nothing I can do. Your son is perfectly healthy; he just can't speak."
At a loss, Eudora returned home. For a while the shock got to her, but seeing the way the other children embraced Eli, as they always had, got her to thinking. What if there was another way for him to communicate? Eudora used every connection she had to find a special school that Eliazer could attend that would not only give him a fine education, but also the ability to learn sign language. Unfortunately, this would come at a cost; a high one. Eudora would not only have to keep up her work as a scrivener, but also take up a second job as well. Still, if it would help Eliazer she would gladly do it.
Hope came in the form of Tulasidas Fortescu and his family. Eudora was able to take up a caretaking position with their house in exchange for having Eliazer's tuition paid for. At first she thought it was too good to be true and the adjustment from one long job to two was difficult, but the determined mother did her best. It was especially nice when they allowed Eliazer to come into the house when Eudora had no one to watch him. At first he wasn't so sure about it; after all, up until this point Eli hadn't been the greatest at making friends. Still, he got close to Tula's son, Aleksi, and formed a lasting friendship.
Langdon dropped by on occasion and would leave funds when he did, but that kind of sporadic income could never be counted on. He made some effort to connect with his son, though it was never enough to satisfy the boy. It would always start the same. Eli would write down what he knew on a sheet of paper, hold it up to his dad and Langdon would respond in kind. Then the man would grow tired of it, push the boy away and eventually leave as if it were exhausting just to be around him.
Eudora, on the other hand, tried her best to learn sign language alongside the young Eliazer, but it became obvious that it was much easier for the children at his school than it was for his mother. Soon enough he was writing his more 'complicated' thoughts down for her while the simpler things he could just sign. For the first time in his life he was able to properly 'talk' to others, and as tense as things had become at home Eliazer couldn't find it in him to regret that.
Socially he grew to be awkward at best. In his specialized classes he was open and friendly, if not a little goofy, but around the 'normal' kids he was a little odd. Without his friend, Aleksi, around he spoke by writing on a little pad, and it was always up to chance as to which teens would care enough to read.
At home Eliazer became the primary caretaker. While his mother kept up her near constant work the young boy learned how to handle the domestics; cooking, cleaning, laundry, and anything else that would help ease her burden. It's exhausting, keeping up his lessons as well as life at home, but he'll do what he has to.
Stage 2 [Belrea] Target Acquired - Gabhan [Matori] Little White Lies - Honi [Matori] Treasure Hunter - Honi [Matori] Unexpected Encounters - Nin [Matori] On The Line - Honi [Matori] One Night - Honi [WE] A Local Disaster - Honi [WE] Take on the Beast - Honi [WE] Lost in Translation - Honi [Belrea] Never Too Late - Honi
Stage 3 [Belrea] The Break In - Honi [Belrea / 10] Perfect Timing - Honi [WE] Cold Snap - Honi
Character Name: Eliazer Class Promotion: Alchemist [Arcanist] Current Location: Belrea Journal:x Growth Point Links: [5] Target Acquired - Gabhan [5] Little White Lies - Honi [5] Treasure Hunter - Honi [5] Unexpected Encounters - Nin [5] On The Line - Honi [5] One Night - Honi [5] A Local Disaster - Honi [5] Take on the Beast - Honi [5] Lost in Translation - Honi [5] Never Too Late - Honi Growth Blurb: Eliazer's 'honeymoon' phase of his bounty hunting days is officially over. Now that he's been charged with a crime he didn't commit he's found himself on the other end of a bounty and on the run! He's had to get crafty - and fast - to stay under the radar, especially now that Honi is involved. Now that he's getting older he's more determined than ever to find out who put a mark on his head and put an end to it all.
Physical Description: Grow his hair a little and keep his scruff
Outfit inspo - 1, 2, 3 - No hat though. Feel free to take inspiration from the refs provided and go with a new look or a combo of what he already has. I'd still like his markings to be somewhat visible
Body Type: Tall, beefy fella with a strong nose
Preferred Artists: Scar lines / Kana color, Scar lines [any colorist], Kana lines [any colorist] WIPs: Sure!
Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:15 am
Class Affinity - Arcanist (Blunderbuss)
Langdon Aberswith’s very existence felt like a boil on Eliazer’s backside.
Ever since he’d been born he remembered reaching for his father’s approval only to be slapped down at every turn. Why wouldn’t the man simply acknowledge him? Be proud to have a son who was taking the steps necessary to become a good man; the kind of man he himself could never hope to be? Day in and day out Eliazer fought for his place in the world. He suffered through bullying at school, slogged through endless classroom assignments, pushed through chores at home and was only allowed to rest when his body physically couldn’t go on any longer.
The days of coming home after a long day just to be excited to see Langdon camped out in their kitchen were over. In the early years he’d been beyond thrilled just to see his father home after his ‘sabbaticals’ but now Eliazer pointedly ignored him. He would simply walk past, keen on getting a start on the evening's chores until the drunkard would inevitably yell at him. It wasn’t until the day that Aleksi had unexpectedly shown up that Eliazer realized this dynamic wasn’t going to ‘work’ anymore. He was angry, bitter to the core, but resigned. He’d bit his tongue for so long that Eliazer feared it had disappeared completely, but what worried him most was his mother. In the beginning she’d tossed Langdon out on his butt for so much as saying a foul word to her son, but these days...these days she was just tired.
She’d given up and somewhere along the way so had he.
It wasn’t until a moonless night that Eliazer found his passions again. He’d been walking home from some after school activities when he’d been mugged again. As terribly common as it was in this area he’d fought back as much as he could and managed to get away before any of his coin was taken. That being said he was chased...right up until several shots rang out in the night. That...had been enough to bring the geian to an abrupt halt. He’d been scared before, surely, but now....now he was as curious as he was terrified.
The woman who had appeared before him was death incarnate. Smoke plumed off her pistol and the scant light of a streetlamp made her hair glisten like fresh fire. With each step that brought her closer to him the click of a heel stamped her presence into his soul. For a moment he feared she might shoot him as well and so Eliazer took a half step back until his spine pressed against a brick building.
“Little late for a walk, eh, boy?” Her voice was less melodious than her appearance. Physically she was positively stunning but in an unconventional way. Her nose was too big, she was too tall, her eyes too sharp and her voice...hearing her speak was like hearing a thousand nightmares at once. When she cast her cobalt gaze down on him Eliazer’s blood ran cold. “You dropped this.” When she held up his coin purse Eliazer panicked. He tapped his pockets, a flush darkening his cheeks as he realized that somewhere along the line he must have dropped it.
When he looked back up she was a hair's breadth away and he stilled. “If a little runt like you’s planning on coming out to play after dark then you should think about suiting up.” She tapped the side of his temple with her pistol and Eli could still feel the warm.
If he’d been a smarter man Eliazer would have left it at that. He would have never gone back out the next night, the night after that or the next night in search of her. There was just something about the way she’d owned the night...as if there wasn’t a monster she couldn’t control. He found her, of course, and as much as she wanted to chase him away he simply wouldn’t leave. Eliazer discovered that her name was Adhira and that she was an Arcanist. At first he’d been under the impression that only those with Lightning blood could take up the art, but she just laughed him off.
“If you’re stupid enough to listen to what a few people have to say then you won’t get anywhere.”
She didn’t care that he couldn’t speak; if anything, she seemed to prefer it. She also didn’t know how to speak sign language so he had to resort to writing things down for her, but that was alright. Between the two of them communication was more of a visual thing than verbal. If he wanted to learn from her then he would have to follow and that wasn’t something she could tell him.
Of course it affected his studies. Eliazer started sleeping in class, getting into trouble with his instructors, all of which inevitably made its way back to his mother. Eudora was understandably upset, but when prompted why he would never say. How could he? For the first time in his life Eliazer was discovering a side of himself that gave him the power. He could fight back against men who would steal from those smaller than themselves and someday, maybe soon, he could afford to get her away from Langdon for good.
Or maybe even to get rid of the problem completely…
“If you want to get in close you can always use pistols; like me. But if you’d prefer a distanced shot you can always go with a blunderbuss.”
As if there had ever really been an option. Eliazer was patient, surely, but not so much that he wouldn’t want to be involved. The comfortable weight of a blunderbuss in his hands brought him a sense of peace that he hadn’t known. Adhira warned him time and time again that it was only a weapon; an extension of his soul, really, and if he messed up it wasn’t the gun's fault. Whenever he pulled the trigger he had to make sure he was ready to deal with the consequences no matter what they may be.
Adhira’s ‘work’ varied from night to night. Sometimes she was asked to provide physical enforcement when a group got too riled up and others were missions she didn’t want to talk about. Those were the nights when she would send Eliazer home under the pretense that a woman’s work was sometimes meant for her and her alone. Of course he’d followed one night and saw her take a life. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a murder, nor would it be the last, but it did cement something inside of Eliazer’s soul.
If he wanted to get out of the slums he would have to go deeper into the darkness. His mother was so sure that the way out for him was through hard work and a good education. For anyone else that may have worked, but for him….No one wanted a mute Justice worker or a novelist who couldn’t communicate his ideas to his publisher. At best he might have been able to land a job at a desk somewhere, slugging through the same ways she did until some poor sap took him as a husband and then he would have to work twice as hard for a family he couldn’t support. Would that lead him to a life of drinking like his father?
With Adhira’s training he could be more. She didn’t promise him work in the same ways that she didn’t promise him safety or comfort. She only gave him what he wanted and so long as it didn’t stop her from doing what needed to be done she tolerated him which was more than he could say about some of his instructors. A part of him wanted to tell his mother, but she would just get angry and right now he didn’t care.
If he trained as an Arcanist he could go wherever he wanted and get as far away from here as possible. He could chase down some of the stories he’d learned in school, look for magical artifacts and sell them to the highest bidder! All he had to do was make money; that was the easiest part of all this, right? Surely she could understand that much! If he could just keep up his grades long enough to graduate then maybe she would be happy and then he could repay her for everything she’d done throughout the years.
The only true concerns Eliazer had was the fear of leaving his tiny little community. If he left then the pool of those who could understand his sign language would be significantly smaller and yet...If he never left would he ever be happy? These little nightly escapes with Adhira had given him a sense of inner peace that he hadn’t had in years and for that reason alone he was willing to risk it. Maybe once he truly mastered the blunderbuss he could come back with his head held high, but until then he was going to have to dedicate himself to his training.
[1519] [5]
Painted Moose
Dapper Codger
Offline
Painted Moose
Dapper Codger
Offline
Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:19 pm
Growth Solo
[Eliazer's lived his life on a tight rope. Part of him wants to take as much pressure off his mother as possible while the other is struggling to become a better man than his father. All in all he just wants to be the sort of man he can be proud of, and now he's deciding that in order to that he needs to walk his own path not one that someone else has decided.]
As Eliazer neared the end of his schooling, questions of his future became a favored topic at dinner. Eudora personally wanted her son to continue his studies, to push further into programs that took education to higher levels and would ultimately set him up with a nice life. As far as she was concerned, so long as she continued to work then there was no reason why he shouldn’t. The thing was Eliazer had no desire to go to school anymore than he already had.
He needed money. Why should he study now that he was old enough to get a job? His mother was already working herself into an early grave by pushing two jobs while his father continuously stole from them. If he could start working as well then wouldn’t that be better? Anytime he tried to talk about it, though, Eudora just shut him down. She was stubborn and had her mind set on a future that her son simply didn’t want. She’d had it planned since he first started school, that much he knew, but…
Then Adhira had come into his life and now Eliazer simply didn’t care.
“Keep it up for a few years.” In surprise, Eliazer turned toward Adhira and saw the flame of her pipe drawing what little light there was in the evening to her sharpened gaze. Looking at her was like looking at the face of a demon itself, and when the light drained from the pipe he felt his throat go dry. “Take a few classes here and there, just to make her happy, and say you’re interning with the Security sector.”
On his notepad he wrote, She’ll find out it’s a lie.
“You’re not lying if you’re telling the truth. Look, I take jobs through the Security sector, okay? I’m a Bounty Hunter and you can be too. It’s technically a noble profession; she just doesn’t have to know all the details.” Taking a long drag off her pipe, Adhira leaned back against the brick edifice of a building and he could have sworn she was smiling.
Adhira’s work was less than legal and he knew that. All of her work was done under the table away from anyone who might take issue with it. Officially she was an outlaw; someone that couldn’t be trusted and definitely should have been locked away. In reality? She was a watchdog who did her best work at night. If he shirked his mother’s ideal lifestyle in favor of training under her then he might disappoint her in all the same ways his father had. But...it wasn’t as if he was stealing from anyone and the money he could get from bounties would set them up. Wouldn’t that be better than spending even more money on an education he couldn’t care less about?
Writing on his pad, Eliazer put, Fine, I’ll do it. How do I start?
Adhira leaned over to read what he’d written and clapped his shoulder with a laugh. “Meet me here tomorrow night. I’ll put you in contact with my hookup and we’ll get you started.”
Reply
