The Blood Prince
The Basics
Name: He was never given a name.Nickname: When he was young he was referred to as 'The Boy'. Among the other Bloodcursed he's known as 'The Blood Prince', a name that also caught on with the Gallicans, though mostly condescendingly, and more often than not they would just call him 'The Elf' when talking amongst themselves. A few know him as Estrid Sune (lit. Estrid's Son).
Gender: Male
Age: 19
Offshoot: Bloodcursed
The Physical
Height: Eighteen hands (6')
Weight: Twelve stone (~170 lbs)
Hair Color: Ash Black
Eye Color: Gold
Physical Description: He's lean, muscular, and moves with a dancer's grace. His skin shifts from pale white to a firey flush, occasionally even a purple bruise. There's some meaning in the shift, a form of colorful communication, though it's a fairly simple language to learn, his thoughts shown in color more than expression, the warmth or coldness of his skin often the same as his thoughts, unless he's purposefully trying to deceive.
He wears well-crafted armor designed to let him move, his defense to avoid being hit rather than absorbing the blow. It's well-crafted, but worn, patched, and stitched from when his defenses failed. His armor and several other accessories are adorned with sparkling red jewels, a particularly large one around his neck and another in a crown. He has several knives about his body, some obvious, some hidden, two slender ones at his hip are a bit longer than the rest, and arguably could be called short swords.
Under the Hood
Personality: The Boy was raised to be the best. This was the Gallican way. He was also raised to believe he was inferior. This only made him strive harder and eventually produced a quiet defiant streak where he looked down on those who looked down on him. This secret arrogance drives him to do more, be more, faster, stronger, smarter, crueler, kinder, whatever it is, he wants to be better than anyone else at it.
Of course, this is an impossibility. He knows this, he faces this, but when he notes that someone is better than him at something he strives to improve himself or find some way to compensate.
Skills: His first and foremost lesson was how to kill, with his hands, with blades, with his mind. His second lesson was to read people, not in the way that understood what they thought, but how they felt, what that slight tick in their heartbeat meant, what that warming at their throat meant, what that shiver down their spine meant. His third lesson was to behave like a civilized creature. This doesn't come naturally to him, though whether this is because he's a Gallican or an Elf depends on your point of view.
On his own, he has taught himself to read but isn't very good at it (and is embarrassed by that fact). He knows some small-scale military tactics and is trying to learn large-scale ones.
Class: Blood Mage
Class Powers:
Grasp the heart: Within close proximity he can grasp the blood within another person. When grasping blood, it refuses to release oxygen into the body, numbing a person (especially their limbs) or making them dizzy. With prolonged effort, he can suffocate them, despite them being able to seemingly 'breathe'. He's experimenting with finer control in an effort to immobilize a person without suffocating them. So far he's only managed to do this on small animals.
Rend the roads and raise the red: When blood is exposed (i.e. a person is cut), he can solidify it, filling a person's veins with tiny shards that rip them apart from the inside with every heartbeat. Under the right circumstances, he can pull it out of them as well, ripping it out through muscle and skin.
No name for it: With more effort, control, and concentration, he can be more selective in this transformation, stitching wounds and forming scars in moments. He can also draw blood from a wound (including on his own body) and form simple objects. Practically speaking there's little use for this as it takes a great deal of blood and effort to make even the smallest object. He does however use it to make the trophies he wears in the form of the blood-red jewels decorating his armor.
The Whispered Beat: Blood speaks to him. While the whispers are generally unintelligible the pulse is clear. This is useful in combat to anticipate attacks and in social encounters to recognize excitement, fear, or other involuntary reactions. This ability is particularly useful during interrogations where it is effective at detecting lies. It also makes it difficult to sneak up on him or spy on him without his knowledge.
Weapons Training: Though he's trained in a variety of fighting weapons and styles, he prefers close fighting with sharp knives, and like a Bloodcursed Assassin he only needs to make the smallest knick in order to control the blood of his opponent, only where they make it flow faster, he makes it tear them apart from the inside.
Vulnerabilities: Blood sings to him. He trusts it more than a person's word and is sometimes drawn to it like a vampire when it flows. He is an outlaw and being hunted by the nobles of Gallica as well as the Assassins Guild.
Society Info
Guild Affiliations: None though he received some training from experts in the Assassins Guild.
Contacts: He is known within the upper circles of Gallica society having appeared in court as a prop/pet and may have friends that he doesn't know about (or enemies given he's killed several of their number). He is known to the Bloodcursed in Gallica and possibly others beyond the borders, some of who may be willing to help him (or not given he's killed some of them too).
The Juicy Bits
Backstory: The Boy was born on a moonless night in Fensalir, on the rocky northern shore of Lake Ámsvartnir, at the foot of the Hindarfjall, the southernmost peak of what other people called the Valerian Mountains. Fensalir, the Deep Hall was almost impossible to reach, the lake surrounded by a deep bog on three sides, and stark cliffs on the fourth. The lake was frigid cold year-round and filled with black eels, their teeth like razors. They were a delicacy to some, but nearly impossible to catch as they would slip through even the finest of nets and chew through the sturdiest of holds. The only way to reach Fensalir was across those waters and few made the trek unless they were summoned or sent.
Fensalir was the abode of Estrid Aumont, cousin to the Queens of Gallica, renowned for her intellect and her family's ability to bend even the most stubborn Bloodcursed Elf to the Gallican will. The Blood Prince was one such Bloodcursed Elf, though how she obtained him as a mere babe was a closely guarded secret, all that was known was that before he could even walk he was being taught and trained the Gallican ways.
There were stories, some were even half true, like the one that he'd been nursed on Gallican mead and weened on Elven blood or that he'd killed his first elf at the age of twelve. It was actually ten and the elf had been weakened by a decade of captivity, fed nothing but water and scraps of bread so that he was only pale skin, brittle bone, and blood so thin it was translucent by the time he was brought out to see the sky one last time and a small cut was drawn across his chest. Weakened or not, The Boy killed the elf, tearing him apart from the inside until the creature was nothing but a pretty red cloud.
More demonstrations followed, more nobles summoned or sent to see the monsters they were making in Fensalir, The Boy only one of many, not the youngest, not the oldest, just the best.
By the age of fourteen he was pitted against three or more at a time, no longer weakened or even caught in the wild, but bred, born, and trained the same as he had been, younger, older, he danced with them and they all bled. At least, they were almost the same as him. His kin were cut from the wombs of Elvish mothers while he was born of a Gallican one, his father nothing but a pretty red cloud.
There were few of them left now, Estrid's experiments. Those that hadn't been killed in demonstration or sport were sent off to units in the field, to hunt elves and men and monsters.
The Boy too, and he did this dutifully until he himself was summoned back to Fensalir, brought across Lake Ámsvartnir, and met with drawn swords and a proclamation, his mother was dead, her crime discovered, her punishment swift, her abomination to be eradicated in the place he'd been born and thrown to the eels. But they had forgotten, they had not just made him like them, they had made him better than them.
He wore them now as jewels.
He would never admit it, but he was tired. Things had not been easy since he'd fled Fensalir. The Queens had learned their lesson. At first, they'd relied on one cousin to deal with another and had chosen one for loyalty over ability. They'd chosen another cousin this time, one with more ambition than loyalty, but that ambition came from ability and influence. As confident as The Boy was, it had been getting harder to operate, harder still to feed those that gathered near an old and abandoned hunter's hut in the swamps that made the northern border so inhospitable and difficult for an invading force to breach.
It was abandoned for a reason, there was no game, and with the supply lines better protected it had turned the place he'd hoped to be a rebel encampment into little more than a way-stop for refugees seeking a path into Valeria. That was why he'd joined the latest group north, leaving a few trusted friends behind to man the fort that never was until he returned, desperate times calling for desperate measures. He would never admit it, but he was desperate, desperate enough to see if it was true, that Valeria could help.