Nigrum Leicent

"Most people have something interesting to say, but as for me? Nothing. I’m just another nameless face in the play called life. Ah, I’m talking to myself again, aren’t I?”"

- Nigrum Leicent

Appearance:
I’m poor so can’t afford an artist, also I have the precision of a drunken claw-machine. Have some descriptions instead. Nigrum covers just about every part of his body, save his face. He wears a navy hooded pea-coat that trails along by his knees, the top half being the only buttoned part. Underneath it, he wears a sleeveless black dress-shirt that exposes just the tiniest portion of his midriff, his emblem appearing right over his left breast. Said emblem appears as a warped hollow heart made of green flames, a slight rift in the middle of it going halfway down.

His pants are a plain dark jade, two brown packs wrapped around his right leg, and one wrapped around his left. Underneath that he wears briefs. Like a man. Moving on, his shoes are a pair of black metallic sneakers with gold outlines around the side of them, the shoes being able to “mecha-shift” into thick bracelets around his ankles. Of course, he has to lift his foot up a bit first.

Accessories include his hood appearing as an atora of sorts, what with it's double-horn design. Additional accessories are an an earring with his emblem on it dangling from his left ear, and a pair of brown gloves.

Final portion, head. His ashen black hair is spiked backwards uncaringly, save a single large bang that curves forward and covers his right-eye. On the topic of eye, his singular eye is a pale red, bordering on pink. The reasoning for singular eye and not singular shown eye is simple, he only has one eye. Underneath his bang is an eyepatch where his eye should be, plus some burn scars. The burn scars are on his hands as well, hence the gloves.

Personality:
Most people assume Nigrum to be sullen and pensive in nature, given his usual blank expression, and in most cases they’re right. Beneath the sullen exterior is a quizzical mind with a thirst for knowledge, questioning just about every little detail around him and why it’s how it is. Rather than knowledge itself however, it's knowledge related to a person. Due to this, he’s remarkable well at reading said people, noticing the most subtle of nuance and coming to various conclusions to why it’s like that, before coming to a final one with the knowledge of that person and how people of their type act.

He’s right most of the time, but there’s exceptions to every rule, so he occasionally gets it wrong as well. He has a queer fascination with both humans and faunus, studying psychology on the side as a result to understand them and their actions better. People are something like a game to him, sizing them up and picking them apart with his mind for his own amusement.

He could be called something akin to “mind-reading,” but rather, it’s not that at all as the results are just logical guesses compared to absolute answers.

His passion, it could be said, is finding the base pairing of things. People are just at the top of the list, with a close second to his adoration of stories and games. Rather than liking those for entertainment purposes, he likes them for their structure and how it plays a role in execution.

Some people he’s known call him wise due to this, mistaking his skill for wisdom at some points, but he doesn’t really believe it. He likes to think he’s mature, but knows it’s only so-so. He can be rather teasing at times, specifically when he wants to garner a specific reaction he knows will likely happen from someone if he does.

He doesn’t usually get angry, preferring to analyze things with a calm mind, but he has a pretty short-fuse in some cases. One way to get him sour and prickly quickly is exposing him to the cold. He hates the cold with a burning passion, his mood immediately darkening the second even a slight breeze hits him. A few more are when he’s playing a game he can’t beat, reading a book he dislikes, or it’s something relating to his “incident.” When he’s like that, he’s quick to use his pick-apart skill to see only flaws and bash someone or something with it constantly in a merciless barrage, regardless of who they are. He’s usually open-minded and apathetic (in a good-way), but like this he’s the exact opposite.

Additionally, it doesn’t help much that he has sadistic tendencies he himself hardly knows about. He just views the amusement of seeing someone’s hurt or betrayed face as being him being right, rather than actually enjoying the pain he’s causing them to feel. His adoration (not obsession) with people hinders him a bit though, as he’s somewhat reluctant, if not full-on hesitant to fully go "all-out” in a fight against them. Race, gender, and everything else is irrelevant to him, so long as it’s a person. He doesn't like hurting other people (physically), and as many mistake it for, it's not because he's a good person. Him hurting a person is like him hurting a book he loves.

As such, he has a bad habit of losing just about every match against someone. The exceptions to this rule are people are who actively trying to end his life, or someone he cares for. Plus friends who ask him politely to not hold-back. He’s more prone to partake in a verbal conflict rather than a physical one with someone due to this, and to verbally attack someone in physical conflict as well. He tells himself it's so they can better themselves, as he points out positives in the person as well, but as mentioned earlier, it's because in truth he enjoys seeing the faces they make. Not is to say in some instances in the past, it hasn't helped that person. Grimm aren't people however, so he has no qualms with wiping away the threat that hangs over the races he adores.

Pretty much, he’s someone who reads into things too deeply, and is also unknowingly a dick at times. As a side-note, he has a habit of voicing his thoughts aloud when alone, in a sense talking to himself.

Backstory:
Nigrum grew up in a village way back where in a part of Vacuo together with his parents, his older brother, and his younger sister. His village was more mountainous compared to the usual desert sands of Vacuo, but the occasional sand-storm did hit every so often. He grew up being taught the ways of a merchant from his mother, and smithing from his father. The latter he didn’t particularly enjoy, but the former he did, and had a certain knack for. The more his mother taught him to haggle, and the tell-tale signs of someone backing out or accepting a deal, the more he realized his fascination wasn’t with the job, or the money, but rather the way the buyer would react in response.

Thus began his adoration of people. His brother was a better smith than merchant, so he grew closer to their father as Nigrum grew closer to their mother, eventually abandoning smithing altogether. Once his sister was born however, both parents attempted again, and this time the child went with the father. Satisfied that at least one of her children was interested in her job, she continued to teach Nigrum.

Compared to the distance he felt with his brother and father however, him and his sister grew particularly close. Jump ahead a few years, and Nigrum’s father got assigned a job to forge a hunter-weapon with fire-dust as the key component. Rather than making it himself, or having his brother do it, his father assigned it to his sister as her first “serious-task.”

She took to it heartily, working on it night-and-day with hardly any breaks, and was nearly complete too. Having never encountered dust before, Nigrum’s sister didn’t know how volatile it was, particularly the fire variation. Her father or eldest brother didn’t teach her how to etch dust into weapons either, so as Nigrum watched her proudly attempt to do so, the crystal exploded, setting off a chain-reaction of the other red dust crystals around her as well.

He immediately attempted to save her, but failed as he both wasn't fit at the time and didn’t have his aura awakened to protect himself, recoiling from the sudden heat. The flames of the explosion went directly towards his face, where he attempted to shield himself with his hands, but only succeeded in covering the left-side of his face. As the explosion subsided, and he writhed in agony, a terrible thought occurred to him. His sister didn’t have her aura awakened either.

As he ignored his pain and attempted to rush around and find her, the rest of their family arrived, and then he finally blacked out from the pain. When he came to, it was to the sight of the village doctor, that assured him he was well, enough. At the very least, alive. His face and hands were irreparable however, something he could care less about as he asked about his sister.

The doctor explains that she survived the explosion, somehow, but is in a coma and was rushed to the nearest Hospital. Roughly 12 hours passed since the explosion. The reason he wasn't taken flies over Nigrum's head as he bristles, becoming the first time he ever truly feels anger. He stomps past the doctor, rushes towards the living room, and immediately goes off on his brother and father as soon as he sees them there.

He shouts at them, curses, practically wishes them dead at how irresponsible and stupid they were for forgetting something as important as that. His mother tries to calm him down, but this only upsets him more as his anger turns towards her for taking their side. He notes how he enjoys the expressions of shock, pain, and guilt spread across their faces, and storms out of the house.

He doesn’t go home that night, and struggles to move around with his faulty depth-perception, flinching in pain at anything that touches his hands as well. He waits for the Huntress set to pick up the weapon to arrive, and after two-days, finally does. Nigrum shows the Huntress the remains of the weapon, something he took prior before leaving, and practically begs the Huntress to take him away and train him.

She notes that’s kidnapping, and says it isn’t if he wants to leave. She argues back he's injured and should stay with his family, and he says the only family he has in a hospital. He continues to beg, and explain his situation, and against her better judgement, the Huntress accepts. All he leaves his family is a single blank note. Years pass as he lives with the Huntress, growing as a person as she continues to teach him. He begins to realize he was at fault at having left his family suddenly like that, immature at how he handle the situation, but resolves it’s too late to do anything about it now. He’s mature enough to realize he’s at fault, but not mature enough to stop blaming them. More so is the problem is how thanks to his study of psychology, he realizes he actually blames himself the most in an irrational manner.

He visits his sister frequently in the Hospital, something that's quite expensive as she's still in Vacuo and he lives in Vale now. He's working towards becoming a Hunter now, being a dream he picked up while under Verta. She went to all kinds of places in her work, meeting all kinds of people. He liked meeting people, plus Hunter's were strong, so she began training him and bought him in an entry into Signal. The year he graduates and is supposed to go to Shade (as it's in Vacuo and would make it easier to visit his sister), however, is postponed as his sister wakes up, and he drops everything he had planned to spend time with her. He has mixed feelings about the whole thing. He’s elated she’s finally awake after so many years, but also furious that not even once did their family come to visit her. The fury quickly turns to twisted joy as he figures that just means more of her for himself.

She begins her own rehabilitation as he catches her up on everything she’s missed, not leaving out a single detail and giving everything to her bluntly. Much to his satisfaction, he’s able to recount the tale of him running away without giving a one-sided version. This doesn’t prevent his hidden feelings however.

His sister saddens as she hears that no one but him visited her, bordering on depression as it continues to build up. To prevent it, he promises to introduce her to their “new family,” being the Huntress Verta of course, and she accepts. Verta picks them both up after his sister's recovered enough, then arranges his transcripts for Beacon in place of Shade. He goes to Beacon the following year, contemplating how different his life would presently be had he gone to Shade instead.

Relationships:
Team NGRM

Grau Spiegel: Just about the only member of his team he doesn't like. Doesn't mean he hates him, but he doesn't like him. To Nigrum, the core of people are their decisions and actions, but when all of those are dictated not even by that person? Well, then that's just sapping the fun out of things. Grau can be entertaining from time-to-time, the two often having a competition of sorts on reading the people around them, and Nigrum does make a conscious effort to bond and get along with him. Even attempt to make him think for himself. It often ends in failure, but he's pretty sure he's making slow progress.

Rory Carlette: Rory's hysterical. Both figurative and literal. To the way she talks, to how she acts, to how she solves everything through punching "politely". She's sensational. Rory's a prime example of why he loves people so much, showing the odd and quirky sides of human nature in a charming and endearing way. Her constant need to drag him into every antic annoys him a little though, especially when said are always physical, but he puts up with it. Now if only she could find a work-out partner to replace him with.

Marain Havhek: He positively adores her. He's very well aware of her hatred for him, and he doesn't care much for it. She's just so interesting. If Rory shows the quirkiness of human nature, then Marain shows the beauty and complexity of it. She's so petty and childish, yet mature and strong-willed in a way that shouldn't make sense, but it does. Even her actions are mesmerizing to him, down to the littlest one. It's hardly love, he reasons, what he feels is more akin to how a researcher might observe a newly discovered exotic species.

Abilities:
The first obvious ability he has is the “pick-apart” one, i.e. where he gets to the base copy of things and builds up that being or thing from there. He excels at stealth and blending in, the latter of the two usually used to harmlessly watch people interact with one another. He knows basic psychology as well, and proves to be an excellent cook. Often having had to cook for his surrogate mother, it’s no surprise. Thanks to pick-apart, he's also surprisingly good at impersonating people.

On-top of that, he knows basic accounting skills, plus some bartering skills from when his mother was training him to be a merchant. Though not exactly an ability, he's very proficient with his feet and mouth in place of his hands. The main reason his shoes are made to retract is so he can grab things with his feet if his hands begin to irritate him.

Semblance:
Nigrum’s semblance, in short, speeds up his mental processing, allowing him to think and act quicker. It lasts for a total of a minute, maybe two if he strains himself enough. Alternatively, it can also be used in short-bursts that add up to a minute, the recharge rate for this being shorter. Thinking quicker self-explanatory, while the movement part is not.

Saying it helps him move faster is kind of deceptive, as it doesn't raise his speed in the slightest. It makes his reaction time and reflexes faster, as the signals can get to his brain quicker. As such, he can make various little movements in a short-amount of time. Doing these various movements still take up stamina, making it more prone to run out. Also, raising his reaction time only increases his odds of dodging, it doesn't solidify them. For the most part, he mainly uses his semblance in short-bursts to dodge attacks, or use it offensively by putting a max of two to three cuts around a target in one blurring motion.

Some science on his semblance now. Electrolytes help open up the neuron signals the body send around, opening up the channels between each one. As a result, eating foods or drink with high numbers of electrolytes help his semblance cruise along smoother in the long-run. The main electrolyte he consumes is magnesium, as it helps in muscle contraction and nerve function. Mainly eats home-made chocolate granola bars that are filled to the brim with electrolytes. Or magnesium anyway.

After using his semblance for the extended minute (or two), he becomes mentally drained and tired. A side-effect of forcing his mind to speed up its signals.

Weapon:
His weapon is a plain black uchigatana named Dragon's Silence, because in the end, dragon's are just really big swallows. It red dust etchings on it, the weapon actually being made from the remains of the weapon his sister was making. There’s nothing special about it, save how when the dust is activated, well, it’s on fire. Swinging it often shoots out streams of fire, and increases it's offensive capabilities.

On his left hip is a plain rifle, specifically a Mosin-Nagant called Rattler. Can load a total of six shoots, each bolt action, before it needs to be reloaded. Has various types of scopes and parts for in the pouches on is legs. Nothing much else special about it, save for the large curved blade underneath. More for stopping then shooting, but it can be twisted so the blade extends and two metallic portions stick out, forming a make-shift blade of sorts.

Combat:
His fighting style is pretty much of the assassin variant. Long drawn out fights aren’t his forte, and actually a major weakness of his. The main reason for this is extended usage of his hands gripping something irritates them, so he can't really afford it. Specifically the reason he chose an Uchigatana as a weapon. They're made to finish things in one quick stroke, being when the blade is unsheathed. He knows how to wield it outside the sheath, but he can't block well due to the heavy pressure on his hands, instead choosing to parry. His swordsmanship is speed and technique compared to weight and power, being an informal version of high-speed iaido with help from his semblance. Rattler is made to accommodate for any situation where that won't help or work much.

If a fight is extended, he opts to use his feet to wield his sword in unconventional ways. Either by balancing himself on one leg and swinging with the other, or by balancing himself on his hands and spinning around. He doesn't like doing it much, so it continues until his hands feel better after a bit. Assuming the fight is still going on at that point. For Rattler, he mainly only uses it on Grimm to take out from a distance, or scouting. The different scopes and bullets he has for it helps with this. Dual-wielding both weapons isn't a problem for him skill wise, but comfort wise it is.

Post-Beacon
After the fall of Beacon, it's safe to say Nigrum has changed the most than anyone else on his team. He no longer wears his eye-patch, and mostly leaves his jacket unbuttoned now. His dress-shirt is shorter as well, showing more of his midriff than previously. The pouches wrapped around his leg aren't there anymore either, instead replaced with a pattern on his left-leg resembling the broken moon. Personality wise, he's...actually brighter. Oddly so. It seems during the breach he came to realize his darker side, now actively relishing in the (emotional) pain he causes others, sometimes even purposely causing such pain to enjoy it. His inquisitive nature isn't just aimed at people now though, it's aimed at everything around him. It seems after the fall, he's grown to distrust any coincidence, growing more paranoid.

His weapon, Dragon's Silence, was smashed to pieces by a Griffin while he gave Rattler to his sister so Verta could train her. To compensate, he's remade Dragon's Silence and renamed it to Swallowtail. It has multiple forms now, first starting at a thick wakizashi before extending into its usual thin Uchigatana. The same old fire dust is still present, but now has a wind dust canister slit near the hilt as well, activated by a trigger. The final form for is a large long broadsword, becoming as such due to clicking into the sheath. The sheath folds a bit to make an edge and make small slits, the slits being able to fold and unfold with the press of the trigger. Mainly used to let fire build up inside the heat-resistant inside, then flipping the switch open plus activating the wind-dust to make an "explosion" of flames, heat, and wind on impact.

Alternatively, he's gained more proficient in using his feet in combat, being able to fight purely with powerful kicks. Unbeknownst to him, it's similar to the Nevermore style of Grimm Chance. As he hasn't formally learned the martial arts yet, and it's only a cheap imitation he himself isn't aware of, if he went against someone who actually knew the art he'd more than likely lose. It serves its purpose though as a back-up.

He's left his team, and his sister Alba, in what he claims is soul-searching. Traveling around aimlessly throughout the lands, gaining his entertainment from the people around him and the pain he causes them. While most people to criticize him for it, in its own way, it's a coping mechanism for him after the tragedy that happened. Will admit he misses his team without an ounce of shame, but says its better they learn to grow without him when (if) he comes back. He does keep in frequent contact with them though. Has gained a habit of smoking, keeping a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in his coat-pocket.

Notes:

 * His eye turns into a dark shade of green when his semblance is active
 * Gets along better with women rather than men, largely due to how the only people he’s liked and gotten along with throughout his life have been women. He’s not very effeminate though.
 * "Dragons are just a bigger swallow." - The savior of France
 * His scopes range from scopes of different zoom, to red-dot, to thermal, to night-vision, and so on. The bullets range from different types of dust to thicker anti-armor to ricochet and more.
 * In an out of RWBY universe comparison, his “mind-reading” is similar to how Sherlock Holmes or Auguste Dupin would “mind-read.”
 * His first name means Black in latin. As for the reason I chose latin, it’s the oldest and fanciest sounding language I know of.
 * His last name is a reference to Maleficent, the character’s he’s loosely based on.
 * His nickname comes from his sister, something she'd call him whenever he complained about her room in the hospital being cold.