Name: Kalif
Nickname: Kalif-of-the-Knife
Title: The Prince of Knives
Age:
Age apparent: 26
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Fluid and open
Occupation: Halal butcher
Languages: English, Arabic, Somali

Seeming: Darkling
Kith: Razorhand
Court: Autumn
Keeper: The Lady of Midnight and Shadow
Faction: Mondlicht Garten

Wyrd:
Glamour Pool:
Willpower:



Concept

Kalif is a man who walked in darkness and reveled in it, after his soul had been torn and the bleeding holes replaced with magic and malice - but his unexpected return to the world he was stolen from has left him unbalanced and uncertain, yearning for the things he can no longer have.


Appearance
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 170
Eye Color: Dark, dark brown/Muted yellow-red light
Hair color: Brown/Inky black
Hair Style: Very long dreadlocks/Wisps of shadow
Complexion: Moderately dark/Inky black with trails of yellow-red light
Body shape: Long and lean/With spiky protuberances
Clothing: Kalif avoids shirts when he can get away with it, and when he does wear clothing  it tends to be loose and easy to move in.


Mien:

I am a creature of darkness, my skin black as shadow and the edges of my form diffuse. There are lines and sigils on my skin, and they glow with Wyrd, as do my eyes. My body is lean, and under the haze of night there is muscle and sinew.

Despite the changes wrought in his body, Kalif still seems a man, if one doesn't count his inhuman qualities. He really does seem to have been dipped into shadow, wisps and trails of it bleeding off of him, helping him to blend in at night and giving him a rather unsettling (and unsettled) look during the day. The glowing trails in his skin are muted, for the most part, and easily covered, but not so the bladed protuberances on his body. He avoids touch by mortals if he can because of this, not wanting to have to explain why they feel something they cannot see.

Mask:


My mortal mien is more striking than I would have preferred. It is beautiful, as I was, and the shadow of my body is represented in my hair, the long, long dreadlocks that sometimes move as if they have a life of their own. My skin is not so dark, but my eyes are deeper than any mortal's have a right to be.

Kalif figured out early how to look at himself as mortals see him, and he has unpleasantly been cursed with a mask that resembles how he might have looked rather than something completely alien. Would it have been better to wear a completely false face? Maybe. But this familiar face is his to bear, and there is little to be done about it.

Personality
Virtue: Fortitude

Vice: Pride



Your Story
Passions/Goals:

(Oh there will be some, to be sure.)

(Soon.)


History

I was just a boy, though at the time I thought I was a man...

Kalif was a teenager before his durance. Halfway between childhood and adulthood at fifteen, he was a good student, a well-off refugee from the civil war in Somalia, and wavering between a place with his peers in a casual "gang" and his studies and a bright future. His family loved him and he them, and all seemed to be well.

Until one night...

I do not remember. Or rather, I do not trust the memory. I remember a boy I wanted to impress, or maybe just a boy I wanted, and the promise of precious minutes between a bored woman's legs, or perhaps the cleft of her rounded buttocks, as I had been hearing that this was better. It was late, and I should have been going home, but a man's body - a teenager's body - feels its burgeoning needs keenly. I thought that I could take a few minutes and sate the urge, well enough to focus on the paper I had to write for my history class.

That is what I think. But this boy does not have a name, and there never was a woman, nude and waiting. There was a woman. In the park, in the dark, calling me with a sultry voice. The boy pushed me into the shadows, and I stumbled into bushes, brambles, more than I thought would have been there. My clothing tore, my skin was scratched, but she still called and I was already too far in to go back. I could hear things in the dark around me, I could smell the loam and something else, a dead thing rotting. And then the voice...

Kalif doesn't remember the exact details of his abduction, though there are certain things he believes he remembers. There was a promise of carnal pleasures, irresistible to his fifteen-year-old self, there was a dark copse, and he was threatened in the dark. He believes he would have died, if he had not been carrying a knife, and if he had not tried to use it. His attempt at self-defense was... amusing? Impressive? Whatever the reason, he was taken into the Lady's domain, given purpose and punishment and a place along the edges.

Mondlicht Garten was not all beauty and light. I was the shadow on the edge, the terror that heightened the sweetness under the lanterns.

I would never have been so bold as to attack one of the True Fae. But I pretended, oh I did, I let them feel my rage and my pain by the silence that followed them, by the metallic song of my blade as I honed it. Others... others were not so lucky. In my anger I served the purpose I was given, and in desperation I grew to love it. I am not proud of what I was, but I could also have been much worse, I believe.

Kalif really did flit about the edges, set to darkness and isolation by the whims of the Lady. Given little recourse, he embraced his role and his darkness, always on the outside looking in, except for rare occasions. He honed his skills as a stalker in the night, becoming less and less human as time passed, more and more a true creature of the garden.

In the endless dark, there would be a whisper of cloth, a rustle of foliage. The woods would become quiet, and the mortal would feel the weight of my regard as an itching between their shoulder blades. Or perhaps they would hear a whisper, a sigh, and nothing else. Then ahead - a glint of something, moonlight reflecting off metal. Or from behind, a sudden suffocation as my blade severed the throat, followed by a final shock of blood and pain.

Sometimes the mortal might make it to the light, gladder than they would have been. Sometimes it would be seen as a refuge rather than another part of the prison they had entered. Sometimes, they would die with ineffable beauty just in sight, but still within the shadows. And sometimes I would kill one of a group, or hurt them, depending on my whim.

But Kalif was not without his softer side, such as it was. He did interact with his fellow Darklings, though not every interaction was pleasant or free of conflict. He watched the bright Elementals and Fairest from afar, desiring their light from time to time. And of course there was the person responsible for it all.

She never called me lover, though I would have killed for it. (I would have killed for a great many things.) She only spoke to me once, her touch drawing lines of fire on my shadowed skin, delicious pain that never quite faded. I think I had proved myself, somehow, though I could not say what I had done other than survive. She gave me a knife, a thin curve of crystal and metal sharper than anything I had ever seen. It shone with its own light, the captured sheen of distant moonlight, and in that moment I knew I was hers. I hated that I felt that way. I hated her for making me feel that way, to reducing me to a shadow that could be moved by such a simple gesture. But I loved her too, and deeply.

With the knife in my hand, I could watch her with the others and be happy. I could hunt and kill, and channel my anger at being outcast and alone. I could watch, with that sliver of her regard. I had something permanent and tangible, and what did the others have? An overdose of favor, followed by the ache of loss and punishment. I was what I was, and that was enough.

And then she left. The Garden was bereft of its purpose, and the denizens began to leave or to run riot, the natural order of things set on its head. Kalif began to realize that maybe there was an opportunity in this, a chance to be more than he had been.

My inhumanity faded as the others fled. I can't truly say if I was coming to my senses, after years, decades? I cannot tell, time passes differently for us all there. I felt remorse. I felt loneliness. The garden without a curator was a pale reflection of its former self of course, but a garden with nobody in it was a beautiful hell that I would not and could not stay in.

I joined the refugees. I pretended to be kinder than I was, and among them I began to remember. Home. My parents, my siblings, the cold streets of Milwaukee, and beyond that a shimmering coast and red dust. I felt the memory grow stronger with each step. I held on to it, my link to the real, my key to the Hedge. I substituted my love for the Lady, directing it toward them, as I likely had during the first lonely, brutal years of my durance. My love saw me through. My love and my blade, and my willingness to throw my companions to the denizens of the Hedge in order to survive.

I emerged alone, into sunlight. A sun I had not hoped to see again, a light I had not felt since I was taken. I cried then, inconsolably. I had lost so much, then and now. What new horrors would come next?


Relationships
Family: There's a few, to be sure.

Friends: Some of these too.

Co-Workers: Not so sure about these...

Lovers: Maybe these...

Enemies/Rivals: ...or these.

Other PCs: That remains to be seen.


Pledges
Vows:
Oaths:
Corporals:

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Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Merits and Flaws
Attribute Merits
I am as quick as the wind (x3)
I withstand privation and injury
My muscles are as corded iron (x2)
I am perceptive and quick-witted (x2)
I am strong-willed (x2)
I am intelligent
I can be very convincing (x2)

Attribute Flaws
My endurance is that of the cheetah, not the ox
I am shy
I am nervous in crowds
I intimidate people when I don't intend to
I can be obsessive

Skill Merits:
My knife is my body, my body a knife (x3)
I am one with the shadows (stealth x3)
I can track anyone, anywhere (x3)
I learned many secrets in the shadows of the Garden (Occult)
I can craft rough items of bone and leather
I am inscrutable and difficult to read (x2)
I am learning to cook

Skill Flaws:
I do not know how to drive a car
Modern technology is still difficult to comprehend
I did not finish high school
I cannot make small talk with strangers
I have poor money management skills

Background Merits:
New Identity
Perfect Stillness
Resources
Rigid Mask
Token - The Crescent Blade
Background Flaws:

Rare Abilities:

Seeming and Kith Abilities
Blessings:

Curses:

Frailties:


Contracts

Darkness 00000
-Creeping Dread
-Night's Subtle Distractions
-Balm of Unwakeable Slumber
-Boon of the Scuttling Spider
-Touch of Paralyzing Shudder


Smoke 00000
-The Wrong Foot
-Nevertread
-Shadowpatch
-Smoke-Stepping
-Light-Shy

Spell-Bound Autumn - 0
-Warlock's Gaze

? - 0
(to be decided)

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