[BIO] Tuurael, The Vermillion

[thefinalwarden]

Name: Tuurael The Vermilion (Formerly of the Skychaser tribe)

Age:. 82

Race: Tauren

Gender: Male

Languages: Taur-ahe, Orcish, Common

Class: Death Knight (Blood), Former warrior with very limited shamanistic ties.

Faction: Horde

Alignment: Lawful (He fluctuates between good, neutral and evil.)

Likes: Vivisection, Hunting, Eating, Blacksmithing, his vague memories, Sensation, Indulgence, Darkfallen.

Dislikes: The Alliance, Vague dislike of dwarves, The Light, Bolvar The Lich King

Personality

Tuurael is a strange beast, conflicted with his lack of memory beyond his service to the Lich King, his former ties to the Earth-Mother, and the very nature of what he has become. There are times where he practically seems inert, as if he were nothing more than a construct locked away in heavy plate-mail armor. Other times he seems overly curious, especially to shamans and their ties to the elements, feeling a sense of longing. Even if he is informed of his former life in the slim chance that any of his family is alive, he would feel no direct attachment to it. Instead, his life simply began a few years earlier. There are sometimes bouts of horrible obsession with pain that borders on sadomasochism.

He understands that he will always be on the outside looking in with the horde, though this does not stop his loyalty to the horde, and he will place himself in harm’s way to defend it. One must wonder though if this is a sense of patriotism and honor, or more of a self-destructive tendency. Oddly enough he still feels tinges of loyalty to the Darkfallen that remain and is more indifferent towards the Scourge as a whole. Sometimes he misses the sense of purpose and structure the Scourge held.

Strangely enough, he has developed a very dry, but sardonic sense of humor, possibly from his former masters and mistresses. He does tend to use it at inopportune times, do to him not normally feeling many emotional ties to situations he is involved in

Appearance

The Vermilion is a very large Tauren Male, standing at eight and a half feet tall and weighing 500lbs. His fur is an offwhite color primarily with brown markings that seemed to be greying in areas. Heavy stitching barely holds shut portions of his body that had been cleaved into before his death and both of his eyes had been gouged out, replaced with a faint red glow that allows him sight. When made to be without his armor, he tends to dress in muted crimsons and greys. One of his horns is broken while the other black horn jutted forward, capped in metal. Unlike most undead, his blood flows through his body, though it is thick, almost to a state that it has congealed.

His armor is very heavy and shows absolutely no skin. Any portions that lacked plates was hidden behind thick chainmail. Even his visor hid his face in shadow, showing only the red glow from the slits. The armor was constructed in a fashion to deflect blows from his body and vitals after they have struck him, as well as to keep blows from falling behind him. The armor is made from a strange soot colored metal that always held a wet, crimson hue, as if constantly slick with blood.

He always has with him his favored weapon, simply called Bloodletter, a strange, heavily serrated, two handed sword. Groves lay in the flat of the blade to allow blood to flow across both the runes and to his hand. The metal looks to be made of a greasy black metal that held the same crimson hue of his armor.

Strengths

Blood Rites: Tuurael has a vast knowledge of the blood sorceries found in the scourge. He can manipulate his own blood and the blood in others, as well as perform rituals to fuel either himself or others. He is also very knowledgeable with torture and how the different bodies function, do to his training and watching those he was sent to protect. His wards took enjoyment with experimenting on their bodyguard, and as such he has developed a craving for consuming blood, hearts and bone marrow.

Immovable Object: Do to being both undead and the experiments done to him, it takes this creature a very long time to tire, able to fight for hours and even days if his body is still intact enough to continue. His own former devotions have caused him to become so single minded that he will not be swayed from his tasks. The only hints of his former shamanism show through in this as he is a very hard person to move, seeming to be tightly bound to the ground he walks on.

Death Knight: As a Death Knight, he is trained in combat, tactics, siege and counter-siege warfare, and necrotic magics. The Vermilion is able to plague others with various diseases, and can drain the life from living things, though this is restricted to those who have blood. He tends to be resistant to shadow magics, as well as being immune to poisons and diseases. Also he survives without sleep, and does not need to eat, drink or breath, though he does enjoy to do the both of the former.

Weaknesses

Undead: While being undead has its advantages, it does come with its flaws. As an undead creature, most animals dislike his presence and many who follow the light consider him an abomination. He is also susceptible to holy magic much more than a normal creature is.

Forgotten Memories: He has almost no memory of his past life, save for a few fleeting ones about shamanistic rites and the Earth-Mother. He feels absolutely no attachment to those who were in his life before what happened and feels dedication to the Horde as he was informed he needed to reintroduce himself to them. While he is very loyal, it seems almost robotic in nature, as if that is what he was made to do rather than that is what he wants to do.

Old Ties: He holds no ill will towards the scourge at all and freely converses with them when he is in Northrend. He will kill them if required to, having no issues with slaughtering his former allies, but does not hunt them outright like others might. This has caused a great deal of mistrust with others. Also, if his remaining keeper, Mistress Shali’kova, was to order him, his own conditioning will cause his loyalty to immediately shift to her without hesitation. He will hesitate when it comes to killing any Darkfallen elves that remain in existence.

Addiction: He is completely addicted to blood, as well as devouring hearts, bones and marrow of creatures. Living, dead, rotting, it doesn’t matter to him. If he does not consume these things at least once a day, he will begin to be wracked in pain, dislike bright areas and begin to become more violent and uncontrolled. Animal forms of this can substitute his cravings, though they are not as satisfying as humanoid forms. Also, his enjoyment of eating rotted flesh tends to cause others to vomit.

History

Life

Tuurael Skychaser was born just over 80 years ago in the forested Stonetalon Mountains, living in a, nomadic hunting tribe. His tribe consisted primarily of hunters though there was a shaman within them, along with a few warriors to help fend off attackers. The childhood was a good one, one that he remembered fondly before his death. He spent much of his time playing with his siblings and exploring when he could. The shaman that lived with the clan noticed the boy had some latent ties to the earth. He tried to teach the boy the ways of the ancestors, but the most Tuurael could do was speak with the spirits and occasionally draw strength from the elements themselves. Still, as he grew in both age and size, he did do well as both a warrior, a hunter and a spiritual leader in his own right.

Tuurael joined with the rest of his clan to join Thunderbluff once it was established, and eagerly became a part of the Horde that had begun to form, using the skills he had learned in his youth to assist those he served under to help carve out the New Horde’s place on Azeroth. He was sent over by the Grimtotem tribe eventually to assist the Forsaken in keeping back the Scourge, though little did he realize this would be the beginning of the end of his life as he knew it. Both the Grimtotems that were in the Eastern Kingdoms and the Forsaken used him much like one would use a distraction, drawing the attention away from them so they could push further into the plaguelands for bits of diseased flesh and plants. The Skychaser was not bothered though, taking into himself a sort of zeal with the destruction of these enslaved undead. He took part in the occasional raid upon Scholomance, though it wasn’t until Naxxramas problems began to occur.

The undead began to swell in the Eastern Plaguelands, forcing him to go without sleep in an attempt to help defend against Light’s Hope Chapel. It would not have mattered in the end though, as after the first day of assault, he was felled by a group of zombies wielding axes. His corpse, as well as others were never found and most simply assumed he was dead at this point. His family wept and his friends mourned the loss of Tuurael, though they would beg for him to be lost in oblivion if they knew what had happened to him.

Scourge

When Tuurael returned from his death, he was deep within Naxxramas, being repaired and fueled with necrotic energies. He was being prepared to become a new form Death Knight, all of his old memories gone, replaced with an unholy drive. It was an unmistakable need to serve the Scourge, and soon after rising, he was sent to the Eastern Plaguelands to train in the ways of undeath and warfare. He excelled with his mind being a blank slate to mold as they wished, he followed orders without hesitation and committed the most vile acts at the whims of both his teachers and officers. There was no humanity left in the tauren, only urges and commands. They even brought his immediate family into the training fields to see just how devoted he was to their cause. They wished for him to simply kill them without pause. He drew out their deaths over the course of a weak until finally allowing them the sweet bliss of death.

As time drew on and his training continued, it was noted that he seemed to just barely still hold an affinity to the earth that he did in life, and was able to subconsciously tap into it. While limited, it was useful and he acted as an unmovable bulwark in the missions they gave him. He also seemed to excel in the sickening blood rites of the death knights, to a point that some of the Darkfallen took notice and requested him be sent to Northrend to act as a defender of the vampiric elves.

It was in his time with the Darkfallen that a personality began to emerge within the death knight. Their own indulgent ways rubbed off on him, creating a creature that gradually began to derive pleasure from things, even starting to show signs of a deadpan sense of humor. When he wasn’t used as a spearhead in their assaults against the untainted denizens of Northrend, he assisted the Darkfallen in their blood rituals. They were greatly amused by his ability to observe and learn their magic, albeit in a cruder more primal sort of way, and one even laid claim over him, saying that he was hers to do as she pleased. This San’layn was a very corpulent mistress named Shali’kova.

Shali’kova was one such undead who prized herself on both her skill in disgusting magic and her own form, deriving a certain pleasure in her own gluttonous, voluptuous form much to the disgust of others. She treated Tuurael, whom she dubbed The Vermillion, much like one would a prized guard dog. She gave him tools and chances to sate his growing lust of pain, while he acted as both her guardian and if one could call it such, her lover. Words cannot fully describe the depravity that she forced upon him, though it helped solidify his loyalty to her. He remembers his years with her fondly, and holds no ill will towards her, even though he was treat like a slave.

It wasn’t until the fall of Arthas that he managed to gain some form of free will, and with Bolvar in control, he felt lost. He still defended Shali’kova with the same zeal as before though he did not have the comfort and security he had known from the rigid structure of Arthas’s Scourge. While fighting with a group of roaming members of the Alliance, and his mistress sent him to die in an attempt to escape with her own unlife. He fought them, seeing them as some sort of new enemy to take on and eventually slaughtered the entire group, feasting upon their blood, hearts and bones. Even though he felt pride in defending his keeper one last time, he was now truly lost. The Vermillion simply roamed at this point, seeming to not even pay attention as the southern continents changed from the Cataclysm. It wasn’t until a small group from the Horde were assaulted by a larger group from the Alliance that he was finally reintroduced to the home he once knew.

The Horde

He took his last course of action when he was still with his mistress as what he was meant to do. Tuurael began to defend the group the best he could, killing each human, dwarf and night elf that tried to attack the tiny exploration team. Expecting him to do the same to them, the goblin and orc were surprised to notice that he seemed to simply stand there, as if waiting for something. While it took over an hour, they managed to figure out what he was and that he was free from the Lich Kings command, expressing that he should try to reintroduce himself into the life of the Horde. He remained with the group for several months until they brought him back and he went through the painful process of being reintroduced into a life he was not used to.

They began to try to train him from his former vile tendencies, with varying degrees of success. While they couldn’t break his addiction to blood, they did find a way to subdue it somewhat, allowing him to have regular servings of animal blood, organs and bones. While it did suppress his addiction, it was not ideal. He would occasionally hunt humanoids for their blood and hearts when he could, far from the eyes of the Horde, and only against those who were enemies of his new home. Officers often sent him off to battle against the Alliance as a way to demoralize their ranks, and to this he was very well suited. It was the recovery and downtime that seemed to cause him to be lost, having misplaced gallows humor, and unable to truly relate to others. This did not detour him in his own need for structure and to find a place in this world. Only time will tell how well he can be integrated within a normal society that he is unable to truly feel a part of.