Malacus Thuelban

"'I always play for the winning team, even if they're not the one I started on.'"

Team: HMLK (Pronounced “Hemlock”)

Age: 17

Gender: Male

Race: Faunus (Serpentine)

Height: 6’ ½”

Weight: 163lbs

Hair: Jet Black

Eyes: Yellow-Green

Appearance:
Malacus gives off a vibe that is the essence of what one would refer to as “shady”, however a very refined kind of shady. At a little over six foot he is not the tallest, but with his impeccably upright posture he seems much taller than he actually is. He looks down on those around him in the literal and figurative sense. His features, particularly given his heritage, can all be described as serpentine. His yellow eyes stare without emotion and seem to pierce the very soul; they analyze you not as another person but as prey. His look is almost always smug and condescending. His facial features are sharp and framed by the solid black hair which is kept short and slicked elegantly back. His most disconcerting feature is by far his smile. His one Faunus feature comes in his mouth as a pair of slightly protruding fangs and a flickering, forked tongue. His physical form is built for speed. His muscles flow like water and a pair of strong legs carry him away from most attackers with startling speed. His back is crisscrossed with long thin scars. He has a number of other, less notable, marks scattered about his physique.

His combat wear and casual wear are identical, life is fight so why bother changing. He wears a pair of pristine, slimming trousers tucked into a pair of leather riding boots, perfect for concealed knives. At his hips he proudly displays his weapons, not caring who sees or knows. He wears a Victorian style vest of dark green over a deep purple shirt. The sleeves of his shirt are often casually but cleanly rolled up. A brass pocket watch chain hangs between pockets of the vest, secured to stay in place even during combat. Much like his other outfits, he wears his Haven uniform in crisp perfection. Every shirt is pressed and every button fastened with not the slightest crease for even the strictest Headmistress to find fault in.

Personality:
As one could probably infer from his dress, Malacus is uptight to the extreme. Every detail must be perfectly placed and a plan must be made for every contingency. He may be uptight, but he also isn’t stupid: no plan survives first contact with the enemy. From a social standpoint, he is somewhat of a contradiction. He doesn’t thrive in isolation, he needs people with which to communicate, but his arrogance and attitude naturally drive people away. To compound this issue, he often works to fulfill the stereotypes placed upon him. Tell him you think he’s a thief and it’s a guarantee he’ll have picked your pocket by the end of the day. He is also a passionate intellect with a love of literature and debate.

Whether he likes it or not, Malacus often acts as a lone wolf, rarely asking for help even when he needs it. He is a very strong believer in the concept of relative moralism: what’s right and wrong changes with every situation and even if it didn’t it wouldn’t really matter. This tends to lead towards a lack of trustworthiness; Malacus cannot be trusted with a secret at pretty much any cost. He is also a hopeless gossip. Despite his loose lips, Malacus is uncharacteristically honest. He will almost never tell a lie outright, but will use his master of wordplay to avoid any questions he doesn’t want to answer. To him, wealth is the pinnacle of achievement and can take many forms. If it has value, Malacus wants it. This leads to some severe criminal inclinations. The only line is drawn at murder. Malacus will not kill under any circumstance although crippling injury is not out of the question.

Weapons and Abilities:
Malacus has only one true love in his life: knives. One of his few personal effects include a very large knife collection. His weapon of choice for battle is a pair of two knives set in stained wooden handles with blades around 5” in length. The interesting aspect of these weapons is their internal mechanics. Within the handle of each is a reel of twenty feet of high strength piano wire. Also included are a small dust powered engine and firing chamber. The firing chamber can ignite dust to launch the blades out of the knife handle while the engine and wire are used to quickly retract the blades. While he will still fight in very close proximity with his knives, this mechanism allows Malacus to harass opponents from medium range with great precision. The eventual goal of most of his attacks are to entangle and weaken his opponent so they can be finished off in one powerful blow. Malacus’s second weapon is an enormously high caliber pistol. The 50 caliber pistol is break loading and only holds one round at a time. The reload is about .3 seconds and so no shot is ever wasted. He prefers to use the pistol at very close ranges where missing is virtually impossible. The rounds are almost always infused with Dust in some form or another to ensure they do maximum damage. He has also developed methods for infusing knives with one use only Dust. Given his lack of defensive capabilities, Malacus will prefer to dodge attacks rather than deflect them and will most often attack from behind.

Malacus’s Aura manifests itself as deep purple. While he possesses much aura Malacus has very low defensive stats and one or two particularly heavy hits can take him down. Malacus’s semblance is ''Peau des Memoirs'', a primarily illusionary semblance used for changing his appearance. When Malacus’s aura comes into physical contact with another individual with an activated aura it allows him to put on a glamour (illusionary appearance) that mimics one of four people related to the target. First, it can appear as the target’s concept of themselves, second is the figure most strongly associated with longing, third is rage, and fourth is fear. The largest drawback is that the glamour will be based off the image the target holds of the figure and not the original figure’s actual appearance. Furthermore, regardless of the glamour, Malacus’s eyes will always remain the same as will his teeth. The semblance also allows him to mimic the voice (as the target remembers it) of the figure off which the glamour is based. Everyone sees the glamour, not just the target. The glamour can be put up 15 minutes after last contact and can be held continuously although it inflicts constant drain on the aura. The initial changing also requires a fixed quantity of aura. Malacus most often uses his semblance when facing an opponent one on one in an attempt to put them off guard or off balance psychologically. He may also use the power to gain information, make a clean getaway, or preform an infiltration. He prefers to use the power in dark or otherwise disorienting conditions. In order to effectively portray a character Malacus often has to place himself in incredibly vulnerable positions. If he has advanced warning of who his opponent is, Malacus will often preform intense research to determine what glamour he may get and how they are related to his target. This is important because, while he knows the emotion associated with the glamour, he has no other knowledge of their relation to the target.

Because of his Faunus heritage, Malacus has incredible vision at night and in other situations with decreased visibility. Other abilities of note include wordplay, acting, and a high skill level in Dust usage.

Backstory:
Malacus was born and raised in the Kingdom of Atlas. Having been dropped on the doorstep of an orphanage he has no knowledge of his parents other than at least one of them was Faunus. He spent his childhood bouncing around the foster care system, never getting attached to any one set of parents. He changed homes often as a result of his propensity for theft and fighting, each a problem in their own right, but together a perfect storm of rebellious youth. Somewhere along the way he picked up a taste for luxury that he never quite lost.

At fourteen he decided to leave the foster system and simply fade into the night. He found a job in one of the only places in Atlas a Faunus can: Schnee Dust. For two and a half years he worked the mines and lived in one of the more violent of the worker camps. There he further honed his combat skills and more criminal skills. As a pastime he enjoyed pickpocketing guards and burgling the foreman’s office. This earned Malacus more than one beating and at one point the whipping that gave him the scars on his back. He was briefly courted by recruiters of the White Fang, but he turned them down.

While he may have refused to join the organization, he had no qualms working as an independent contractor, smuggling agents in, smuggling Dust and information out. It was during a run of smuggling Dust out that Malacus realized he was missing out on a lot of potential profit. He took a truck full of Dust and left town. From that point forward he dedicated himself to a life of crime. He targeted lightly guarded shipments of Dust and after taking what he wanted sold the rest on the Black Market. It was at this point that he developed an intricate network of criminal contacts. Despite his earlier betrayal, the White Fang remained a top customer.

Although his true face remained unknown, a character known only as “The Viper” slowly rose on the list of Atlas’s most wanted. After a shipment of highly valuable, large carat Dust crystals simply vanished with its crew found days later after wandering dazedly into an out of the way village, the Viper hit his highest spot on the wanted list and the Atlas Police Department opened a permanent and active investigation into his activities. As the snare began to tighten around the Viper’s neck he, as he often had before, disappeared. The only lead was a cargo ship that arrived in Mistral with the most valuable portion of its cargo mysteriously missing.

In his attempts to evade the law, Malacus made his way to Mistral. Knowing it would be the last place anyone would ever think to look he enrolled Haven where he could become a “perfectly law abiding” Hunter. He scored high on his academic exams and came near to the combat examination record for an applicant with no combat school experience. Despite school, he still attempts to remain somewhat active in his criminal activities, albeit at a much less noticeable level.

To his great misfortune he was paired with Hibiscus Aurum during his initiation. He views his goody-two-shoes partner as a hindrance and a liability. Worst of all, the man is a complete slob. Nevertheless, the two share a passion for intellect and continuous moral debates. Despite his scorn for his partner’s strong moral stance, Malacus considers Hibiscus one of his first true friends.

Trivia
Malacus comes from Malachite, a green gemstone.

Thuelban comes from "thueban", the arabic word for snake

Peau des Memoirs is french for Skin of Memories