Rhame Lucem

"“Did you know that one touch to the back of the head from my gauntlet can fry your brain and have it oozing out of your nose, leaving you spasming on the floor? Yeah, you might want to back down, now.”"

Appearance
Rhame’s usual outfit consists of a light brown overcoat that reaches the middle of his sturdy, brown boots. His boots are laced leather and are lifted, giving him an extra few inches in height, though the heels have a practical application as grapplers that can be used in combat or when he’s climbing. Under the overcoat is a vest full of pockets and zippers, and there are even more of them on his leather utility belt. He wears a white button-down shirt underneath his vest which is kept aloft by suspenders on his khaki-colored pants. He wears brown leather gloves, while keeping his shock gauntlets retracted on his wrists. All of his clothes are rubber-lined, so as to keep them insulated from electricity.

Rhame’s formal wear consists of a Victorian-style blazer with coattails over a white ruffled shirt. He wears a waistcoat with attached fobwatch that he keeps in its pocket, while underneath that are long, tight-fitting pants that end briskly at his dark brown, laced and shiny, pointed-tipped shoes. He also might wear a fancy tophat.

His swimwear consists of a pair of dark swimming shorts, with copper colored accents strewn around in gear patterns. His nightwear consists of a pair of bronze pajama bottoms, though he wears no shirt when he sleeps.

Rhame is a boy of somewhat average height for his age, with a cool, lithe build. He has a short torso and long legs. His complexion is fairly fair and he has black spiky hair streaked with a vaguely metallic bronze color. His eyes are a clear shade of caramel that become almost red in certain kinds of light. He has a wide nose, high cheekbones, and full lips. On his left shoulder is a distinctive scar that seemed to be made by a large claw.

Rhame’s emblem is two gears with a lightning in between.

Personality
Rhame is a nice enough person for sure, though some might define him as a bit of an oddball. He has a tendency of being a bit aloof, though not to the point that it’s something that a lot of people pick up on. Other than that, his morals usually fall in line with whatever happens to be his self-interest at any given moment and some might define him as something of a flip-flopper in that regard. At any rate, this doesn’t mean that he’s immoral, as his extreme empathy is something of a large part of who he is. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll put the greater good over what he personally deems to be important.

Rhame is quite intelligent, which is a large part of why he was accepted into Beacon. He’s incredibly creative and finds pleasure in doing everything from writing to playing musical instruments to engaging in combat. He’s also very, very bad at debates, though that does not mean much as he oftentimes engages in them, anyway. Supposedly, he’s better at debating philosophy than he is at debating things that require actual facts. If there’s something that’s certainly true about Rhame, it’s that he prefers to follow what he feels more than actual logic. Despite this, he knows when to be logical and these two sides of him often conflict and cause quite a headache in his scatterbrained mind.

Rhame is generally not a bad person to hang out with, though some are a bit put-off by his weirdness, but he decides to take it all in stride. He prefers the company of others over solidarity and this is also why he’s quite into the whole romance thing, despite his repeated non-success with the opposite (and same) sex when it comes to the whole affair.

History
"“Enduring copper, electrified with life; he searches for his true purpose.”"

Rhame was born to a working class family living in one of the poorer sectors of Vale. His father was something of a practical engineer, working on construction projects and the like. He also had an occasional side-job crafting practice weapons for combat schools and other clients. His mother, meanwhile, worked as a nurse - but was not particularly well-paid despite her profession. His parents were immigrants to Vale from a foreign kingdom, after all. However, Rhame reports to having a mostly normal childhood apart from conflicts with other children concerning language and whatnot.

When he was young, Rhame was dead-set on his lifelong dream of becoming a hunter. His parents managed to scrape up enough money to send him to combat school, where Rhame excelled. His grades were high and he learned to be very good at the fighting arts. In his spare time, Rhame found an affinity for invention and engineering, often creating a number of different gizmos or contraptions within a relatively short timespan before taking them apart and making new ones. This is why Rhame’s primary weapons, his shock-gauntlets, seem to others to be incredibly overdesigned.

An event of particular significance within his formative years occurred when he was almost mauled to death by a Beowulf whilst exploring during a field trip. He wasn’t seriously wounded past some scrapes and a gash on his shoulder (which left a scar that is still visible) before shocking the creature to death with a prototype version of his shock-gauntlets, causing its external and internal organs to burst. It was the first time that Rhame had killed a Grimm and it set him on his path of continually tinkering with and improving his weapons, as well as solidifying his opinion that the Grimm were indeed a blight to rid the world of.

If it weren’t for that event, then Rhame would never have gone to Beacon. He’d been leaning on the side of ditching combat school after his grades started plummeting due to difficulties both at home and in his school life. However, his combat efficiency and grades shot right up after he was almost killed. Thanks to this, Beacon was easy for Rhame to get into.

Abilities
Rhame’s weapons are classified as a pair of VDEGs (Variable Dynamic Electric Gauntlets) that bear the name Tesla Gage, powered exclusively by lightning Dust. They are copper-plated shock gauntlets that reach up the length of Rhame’s forearms, though they have a retracted form that appears as a pair of bracelets on his wrists. The copper plates are arranged in segmented rows that are surprisingly sleek. Whenever the weapon transforms, the copper plates shift accordingly, revealing new segments and sections. The Tesla Gage has two primary modes:


 * MixBoxing Mode: The Tesla Gage’s primary attack mode is by delivering electric shocks through the knuckles and palms of his gauntlets. It also holds emitters in the palm that lets Rhame shoot a thin, electric power beam across a short distance - about 5 feet at the maximum. This is useful mainly for crowd control as the beam can sweep and be used as an ad hoc electric barrier.
 * Whip Mode: This is Tesla Gage’s secondary mode and its main ranged mode. The segmented copper plates shift on the underside of his forearms and reveal a long, prehensile pair of whips. The handles automatically move to his hands whereupon grasping the handles causes the whips to shoot out from the gauntlets. The steel cables that make up the whips flail out and are engulfed in electricity. The heat and friction from the electricity is intense enough that it can easily scorch and slice through metal.

In addition, Rhame has a pair of knives that are stored in the upper parts of the gauntlets that can be extracted in times of emergency. The knives are not very efficient, but they are deadly enough to be dangerous. Also, the gauntlets have an emergency self-destruct mode that causes an electric shockwave across a short radius, at the cost of the gauntlets themselves. Rhame also has grapplers at the bottom of his boots that can be used to grab and clamp against enemies, as well as having a practical use if he’s ever climbing something.

Rhame is a stamina-driven fighter. His attacks, due to their nature, require a lot of moving his arms around, which means that his arm strength is very high. His overall foot speed is also surprisingly high. This is mostly because of his propensity for kicking his opponents in conjunction with his electric-powered punches, as well as because of the use of his boot-grapplers. Due to the varied nature of his fighting style, Rhame refers to it as “MixBoxing.” Rhame’s main mode of fighting requires that he not get easily tired, which means that his overall endurance is quite high.

Misc.

 * Rhame’s weapons are designed to be most efficient against Beowolves.

Trivia

 * Rhame is based on various corroborated fairy tales, the most prominent of which is The Boy Who Cried Wolf.