About:

• Name: Alex Taley
• Sex: Male
• Orientation: Heterosexual
• Age: Over 1200 years old, physically frozen at 19
• Hair Color: Dark Brown
• Eye Color: Bright Green
• Height: 6' 5"
• Build: Broad shouldered and lithely muscled
• Occupation: Former Commander of the Blackpool Mercenaries, Leader of the Rebellion
• Weapons: Dragonsteel Blade, Aetheric Magic
• Armor: A chainmail and leather armor, enchanted heavily by a very talented and powerful enchantress, with a hood, should it rain, and a golden shoulder cloak, his symbol of command
• Clothing: Blood red belted and sleeveless tunic over black trousers tucked into scuffed leather boots

Abilities:

Alex is a powerful spellsword that wields Aetheric Magic, and is capable of wiping out armies if he used all his power, though doing so would kill him. Very few are even capable of interacting with Aether, but Alex's body was altered due to his planeswalking, making him an exception and allowing him to siphon off Aether for use in magic. To do this, Alex must focus intensely via meditation, as it is the only safe way, even for him. He is immune to illusions of any kind due to the nature of the Aetheric Magic stored within him. This Aetheric Magic is the raw power that comes from the plane between planes, known as the Aether, Aetheric Plane, or Aetherius. Aetheric Magic is one of the origin magics and is particularly chaotic and powerful. It is nearly impossible to contain, and if Alex stores too much of it at one time, he risks serious injury or death in an Aetheric explosion. However, his capacity is rather large and capable of expansion.

Avatars: Alex can imbue items, normally golems, with Aetheric Magic, granting them movement under his command. He cannot empower and control more than five golems at any given time. Alex must meditate and focus on controlling the golems for them to be a threat to powerful warriors. While most of them are incredibly tough due to the materials used in their construction, the golems take a considerable amount of time to construct. So if they are destroyed in battle and must be rebuilt, it takes considerable time, effort, and money. However, Alex can, if he chooses, make a single Aetheric Avatar, which resembles an elemental. It is made of pure Aether, and is, accordingly, very powerful, and very difficult to control. It takes time to form it, and Alex cannot lose focus while controlling it. If he does, Alex risks losing a significant chunk of power, corresponding with how much he used in creating the Avatar, and possibly injuring himself and others from the resulting explosion, which originates from the Avatar. His current golems were built for war, are composed of a steel and mithril alloy, humanoid in shape, and fifteen feet tall.

Force: In the event of emergency in battle, Alex can quickly and explosively discharge some of his stored Aether from either hand in a single, general direction. Those caught in this very loosely directed blast are pushed or thrown back, depending on their weight, resistance, and position, and receive some degree of magical burns, depending on how much skin is exposed. This moves objects or people with 2500 pounds of instantaneous, explosive force; especially dangerous if target is in the air. This can kill Alex if used when power is too low due to him not having enough energy to nullify the backlash of force on him.

Buff: Alex can, with great focus, channel Aetheric magic to empower his limbs and heal some moderate wounds, such as gashes and larger cuts. He can either gain twice the strength and twice the agility after charging to stage one, which takes one turn. If he continues charging to the second stage, it doubles his new strength and agility again, but at an exponential cost in magic. Stage two takes two turns to achieve, totaling three. And so on with subsequent stages. Each stage will last for three turns, and no more, after achievement. He cannot charge beyond five stages due to the current limits on his total amount of magic.

Storm: Alex’s most complex ability, and most devastating. It uses all of his remaining magic, with a very small amount left so he does not kill himself, to cast powerful Aetheric magic into a battlefield, where it will explode and do as much damage as a natural disaster, akin to a Tsunami or Volcanic Eruption. After using this, Alex MUST meditate or he will die from the extreme strain on his magic. There is a short window for him to escape from battle if needed. Due to the nature of this only using however much power Alex has left, it is more powerful immediately after meditating, and cannot be used when his power is too low. The only plus in regard to the power consumed is it cannot kill him so long as he meditates immediately, as it scales according to his remaining Aether. After using Storm, Alex must meditate for an entire day in order to recover his store of Aetheric Magic to capacity.

Sleep: After being heavily or near fatally injured, Alex can enter a deep, trance-like sleep in which his magic is free to roam about his body and heal any injury. The process cannot be interrupted at the risk of further and terrible injury. This healing results in Alex being composed of more Aether, which, while it grants him more power, starts to affect how he thinks and acts. If used too much, Alex would eventually be nothing more than Aether personified: wild, untamed, uncaring. Alex must leave the trance when his magic is expended to meditate, and in some cases eat and drink. Due to this being used when Alex is heavily injured, Alex will normally need care, guarding, or both. This ability was developed after a suggestion from Drakin after Alex was critically injured and rendered paralyzed.

History:

Alex had seen a lot. Dozens of brutal wars, hundreds of executions, countless lives thrown to the abyss of death. He'd seen when the fierce Horde tore through his village, looting, raping, and killing as it pleased them. He saw his comrades falling at his side as they fought off the Horde. He even saw the strike destined to kill him pierce the air on its way to his throat. But a mischievous Wizard saw something in him and snatched him away from his death. Away from his reality. Away from his life.

But the wizard is not done with him. He is continually snatched from reality to reality, something explained once by the Wizard. Alex rarely sees the Wizard and cannot begin to understand his motivation behind pulling him from world to world, plane to plane, dimension to dimension.

He fights, though only when he must. Beings that existed in his home world, elves and dwarves for instance, are only occasionally present in the foreign planes he has traveled. Sometimes he sees creatures believed to be myths or long dead in his homeworld, such as dragons or demons. Other times, he has encountered creatures that were never even myths, such as six-legged horses covered in hard scales or hairless cats.

Alex once wondered if his mind is intact. Was he still human anymore? He often doubts that. He never felt as though he was aging. Or perhaps he was, and the wizard reversed it the process. Alex knew beyond any doubts that he was far stronger than any man, elf, dwarf, or orc he had ever seen. But he didn't care. By the time he realized his strength and immortality, Alex was nothing more than a wanderer. He was not a hero, or a villain. He was an observer. He would rarely interfere, for fear that the Wizard would take him before he could finish his work. He would never commit to a cause, or person, ever again. His mind learned that lesson well. But Alex's heart never seemed to learn this lesson; he still fell in love, he still desired to stand for his beliefs, and he was punished for this every single time.

Other than the clothes on his back, only the sword at his hip traveled with the warrior. It was a simple thing at first glance, an heirloom passed down through generations of his family. It was not particularly ornate or flashy; strictly utilitarian. Among the sparse information the Wizard offered Alex was that the blade was forged with the aid of a dragon's fiery breath; it was dragonsteel. When Alex asked what that meant, the Wizard refused to elaborate beyond saying it would never break or forsake Alex when needed. And, of course, that it was capable of piercing through the toughest dragon's hide and scales.

The man fought for freedom. Every chance he got, Alex attempted to force the Wizard to release him from this existence. But Alex's dreams of hearth, home, and family faded as the years rolled by. Slowly, he started to resign himself to this life. He would enjoy what he could, where he could. Besides, what is the point of returning home or growing close to someone? Everyone he knew from home was surely dead, and he would outlive nearly everyone he met. The few Alex would not outlive, the Wizard would snatch him away from.

Without any guidance, Alex began to believe that the wizard was playing a game with him. But Alex silently hoped the magic-wielder had some purpose, even a sinister one; he did not favor being a toy, a mere plaything, to the Wizard.

Then the Wizard dropped Alex into a plane of existence he had never seen before; not a unique event by any means. However this place was different from other planes. In this plane there was a unique establishment protected by powerful magics. This place was not merely a tavern with rooms for the weary, but a slave depot. Men and women from all walks of life, and even planes, came there to buy and sell slaves. This was the first time Alex encountered other people who traveled across various planes, though they did so of their own volition.

Alex remained at the inn, where he made good friends and excellent conversation. However, that was not the sole reason he remained there. The only time the Wizard had stolen him from that plane was when he was far from the inn itself, eventually returning the warrior to the plane. Alex suspected that the Wizard could not remove him from that plane so long as he was within a certain distance of the inn. This theory offered Alex a freedom he loved, even if he was confined to a small area. But it also offered him something else: hope.

And Alex took that hope and ran. He discovered within a few days that all of his planeswalking at the wizard's will had made him into a walking magical power well. So the swordsman bought several spell tomes and began to learn how he might tap into his power magic, with the end goal of being capable of hunting the wizard down in his own little pocket of reality. The swordsman spent most of his time practicing his magic and learning new powers.

Soon, he was ready.

Alex cast his planeswalking spell and breached into the wizard's own plane of existence. The wizard knew that Alex was a skilled swordsman and strong warrior, but he was blind to his actions while he was at the Inn. He knew nothing of Alex's magic, and that was his end. With his powerful magic flowing from his dragonsteel sword, Alex put the wizard down, freeing himself from his wicked grasp forever.

After his triumph, Alex returned to his homeworld for the first time in hundreds of years. But his home was not anywhere close to the same. The village in which he grew up no longer existed. He now knew how long it had been exactly: over 1200 years. Entire kingdoms had risen and fallen in his absence. There was only one thing left of Alex to learn about his home.

It took him several months of searching, including bribery, spellwork, and intimidation to find them. But find them he did. Alex had finally found his family, though it was over thirty generations past his own. Never did he tell them who he was. But he remembered one night when his story was told. In the story, he was unnamed, merely an ancestor, and he fought at least four times as many men and died after no less than three arrows and a blade sank into his chest. He burst into laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of his myth as the family patriarch told the story, drawing his ire.

The powerful spellsword told the patriarch the real story, using a spell to convey the memory perfectly and convincingly, before leaving his old world. He had new business now.

Said business was an offer made to him during his last visit to the plane he knew as Caltheria. Said offer was the eventual leadership of the revered Blackpool Mercenaries, the mercenary guild based just outside the city of Blackpool. Following the old commander's death and the ensuing power struggle, Alex claimed the position of leadership, as the old commander wished.

He sought to increase the stature of the Blackpool Mercenaries even further, something the immortal would surely have time to do. Alex found tremendous success in those pursuits to the extent that he built a massive fortress within and integrated with the super city of Blackpool. And then the Pelrethian High Prince Ude invaded Caltheria.

The war lasted decades, and Alex led the mercenaries and Caltherian forces to victory time and again, repelling the Pelrethian forces with ease. Eventually, Ude's other campaigns resolved, and he consolidated his forces on Caltheria. The armies were large and near insurmountable. Alex's army and the forces he helped lead were in dire straights against the Pelrethian armies. Driven to desperation when Ude's largest and most elite legion marched on Blackpool, the most powerful and important city in Caltheria, Alex stood alone before the enemy, knowing that his actions would lead to his incapacitation and possibly his death.

Alex pulled at the sum of his incredible power of the primal Aetheric magic and unleashed an Aetheric storm upon Ude's legion. The interdimensional magic ripped through the battlefield and decimated both the land and the enemy army. The army was repelled. However, Alex was on death's door from the overuse of his power. As it was, Alex held off that army, but Ude would not be satisfied until his dreams of an empire were realized. While Alex was still out of commission and the Caltherian forces still battered, Ude marched five armies on the city of Blackpool, whose gates were opened by the most lucractive bribe the high prince ever offered, and flushed out the resistance. With the aid of dark powers and wicked beings, Ude locked Alex and all his commanders, allied immortals, and powerful wizards away in a magical prison deep within the largest mountain on the continent for eternity, the new emperor's blood being key to their release.

Two thousand years passed until the immortals were released from their prison. Alex stepped into fresh air once again after two thousand years of drawing power from the Aetheric plane. The ancient legend was released, and he was ready for war once again.