Ll'hora, Messmer

Face Claim: Rei Sakuma / Ensemble Stars!

Appearance

Messmer stands at a sulky 5ft 8, barely larger than the average human male. He's not entirely upset at the fact his height is quite often dwarfed by many other men, and sometimes women, that he encounters in his life - it's not until his height is brought up by someone particularly tall that Messmer pouts a bit, wishing he was perhaps a head or two taller - who doesn't look great with a pair of long legs?

Although his eyes are a little more unique for his species, ruby red in colour and vibrant in even the darkest rooms, Messmer is wholly average in his looks. Messmer is neither buff nor skin and bones - he has light definition of muscles and no scars to speak of. He keeps his hair ruffled and long, fringe falling this way and that over his eyes, long strands curling around his ears and the nape of his neck. It frames pale, almost sickly skin and gives the illusion of a young man that needs to put on a few more pounds than he's currently carrying.

Messmer wears whatever currently strikes his fancy - be it a shiny black suit and some shiny leather shoes, or ornamental and almost decorative clothing meant for celebrating specific holidays or feasts. It's hard to pinpoint where he comes from - Messmer has no specific accent, no specific style of dress, and no mannerisms that betray anything other than a sense of being well traveled.

When given the chance, Messmer prefers to lounge around in clothing that exposes his skin - often dark tones with red, gold, silver, purple or blue accents. Due to his pale complexion and inky black hair, Messmer finds he can look good in almost anything, and he isn't afraid of taking advantage of that.

Personality

Messmer is a fairly quiet, reserved man among those he doesn't know well. He would much rather sit and wait for someone to give away their nature naturally instead of pry it from them -- if they want to share. Messmer doesn't need to be close to people to have them as traveling companions, do work for them, or generally sit in their company for a meal. He's fairly patient and willing to have a conversation about anything, as long as no one is trying to harass him or get information from him that he's not interested in sharing (be it about his species, his age, why he looks like a ghost, where he came from, what he does for a living, etc). Messmer is gentle natured on the surface, and he's fine with people having that impression of him.

Under that carefully painted surface, Messmer is in truth someone who has become utterly obsessive. He fixates on specific things and is willing to let his entire life be spent towards that thing until he reaches the end he either envisioned, or the end he expected to reach. Perhaps something happened with the siren witchcraft that probed his mind and shifted his way of thinking -- but Messmer is no longer a boy happy to craft and only craft for a while, to create cute tea kettles and teacups with delicate flowery patterns and gentle washes of blue glaze. Those days feel far behind him, with only new fixations ahead.

Instead, if Messmer finds a dish he loves to eat and can't get enough of it, he will eat it for days. Weeks. Months. Perhaps, even, he will try and master cooking it. Before Messmer successfully sealed his body from outside magics (of the mental influence variety), effectively stunting his life and corrupting something about the natural order of his magical affinity and ability, he was obsessed with arcane craft. Whatever went awry with him amplified the desperate, curling desire to know more and learn, study, fixate on something to its end. If he had never been pulled from his quiet ocean life, Messmer would likely have become a doctor, or lived peacefully crafting luxury goods with his family until he took over the business and, perhaps, had a family of his own.

Now, Messmer is a little bit of a mess.

Abilities

Sealist - Medical.

Messmer's first goal was to learn how to create arcane seals so that he might be able to better understand medicine, as a whole, but especially anything that related to the body; what was vital, what wasn't, what he could stop/start on a dime and what needed to be avoided at all cost. While some Djinn push this magic to the extreme and become phenomenal "doctors", Messmer wanted it only so that he could rip his body open and work on himself. His knowledge is somewhat stunted in this regard - Messmer won't be able to help you get over a flu, stitch up your wounds more than an average person might, but he can absolutely save you from bleeding out, or keep your organs going until you can get true medical assistance.

Messmer must first write the rune and activate the magic before it can be effective; this takes time. It cannot be rushed or done incomplete, due to Messmer's incomplete knowledge. It is a very "all or nothing" skill. If someone is going to die immediately, there isn't much he can do for them. Due to Messmer's anti-influence work, his knowledge is almost permanently stunted, unable to truly master anything in this regard. What he knows is a handful of completed runes and scripts that he will always struggle to make better.

Sealist - Anti-Influence Seals.

Messmer, after a particularly bad reel of being controlled by one of those wicked creatures that can take your mind for a spin, focused almost nine hundred years exclusively on learning Sealist magic. This was post his experimentation with healing magic, learning just enough of medicine so that he might be able to make a career of that to fund his more arcane, dangerous work. Sealist magic came somewhat naturally to him, being a Djinn, though his knowledge was almost entirely focused on a singular sect of the magic - warding, sealing, against the influence of external forces on one's mind.

Normally it isn't easy to completely throw aside the magic of a master when they try and pry into your mind, but through toil and elaborate (and dangerous) experimentation, Messmer has learned the difference between temporary barriers against mental onslaughts and manipulation of thoughts, feelings, and actions. While some other being might have a better way, a more 'correct' way, Messmer was obsessive and secretive. He concluded his work in private and, in part, doomed himself for it.

Downsides for Messmer due to this craft are threefold; this is not a thing Messmer can give or supply to just anyone. It has also horrifically stunted his magical abilities as a whole. It takes much longer for Messmer to learn anything new, to a point where it is exhaustively slow. What might take someone twenty years would take Messmer much closer to one hundred, if not two or three depending on the complexity of the magic. Additionally, magic done to Messmer, good or bad, have weakened or warped effects. What might have been a lovely healing spell may harm him further, or only staunch blood where it might normally have completely healed him.

The seals are intricately woven over nearly every inch of Messmer's bones, anywhere he could reach without killing him mid-writing is coated in Djinn script, letter after letter weaving and winding. Messmer was able to write upon bone that would normally ache through use of Djinn/medical magic - effectively using sealing magic with his medical know-how to keep himself from effectively bleeding out. It could have cost his life, and he is still dealing with long-term health issues.

A mere break or removal of a section of bone isn't enough to break the seal; Messmer would have to, quite literally, be taken apart completely for the seal to cease functioning. "They might be able to break my body, but they won't take my mind."

The most Messmer might be able to use this magic upon someone or something else would be negation runes on smaller objects, though it could easily be broken by someone doing a lot of natural damage (non-magical fire, crushing with a hefty non-magical axe, etc). He supposes he could possibly seal someone's body the same way he has done for himself, but it would be a very long process, and he doesn't trust that he wouldn't kill someone in the process.

Night Vision -
Messmer has always been able to see in the dark just as well as he can in the light, though it feels much more comfortable than the sometimes too-bright sunlight of the waking world.

History

Messmer hails from from O'efan coastline, his parents having originally settled in a small town nestled along the coast. It was a place for crafters, merchants coming from far and wide to drop off supplies in exchange for goods, and Messmer's family made their money in that way. They sold hand crafted tea vessels - from soft paper lined boxes to keep teas fresh, to teapots made of porcelain, clay, and anything they could mold with their hands. While Messmer's parents, both Djinn, had no real fondness for magic, they were extremely gifted with their craft, and Messmer was raised to know both how to create and how to identify what was worth the coin they toiled for. He became quite good at identifying not only the material his parents bought and the work they sold, but that of other merchants and crafters within the small town. The only thing that he didn't want to put his hands and eyes upon were the locally sourced fish (ew).

For his first hundred years, Messmer lived happily with his parents. Time slipped by and Messmer grew, maturing quickly. He was never a problem for them, even at his worst, and his parents felt blessed for a do-good child that was curious about the world around them. They were lucky to truly want for nothing, and as Messmer took after his parents, he was content to pick up where they left off with craft goods before retiring. Being a coastal town, however, it wasn't unheard of for travelers to come and go from the calm, sunny waters. With them came medicine men and women, herbs from the continent strapped down in pouches. They bought boxes and containers that normally stored tea from his parents, and some couldn't afford the luxury prices his parents asked for -- Messmer, somewhat entranced by the idea that leaves of plants could be used for more than just cooking or drinking, took lessons from some of the travelers as a substitution for partial payment.

The knowledge he gained was neither large nor small - it was, truly, spotty at best. While Messmer could easily identify a great swathe of herbs and medicines from different areas over the next hundred years of humans and various other regions of the world, finer elements of medicine and doctorship were far beyond him. He might know how to crush different herbs together to create a soothing balm or how to grind specific barks together to release pain-relieving agents, but he was definitely far from anything surgical. Without anyone really available to learn from constantly, nor patients to treat, it was a passing hobby his parents were fine with him learning. Messmer acquired books where he could, but otherwise was pleased to live his life crafting new tea kettles and goods.

One of the travelers he met, nearly two hundred years old at this point in his life, was not like the others. She claimed to be a skilled doctor, willing to exchange her knowledge and skills for.. a companion. Messmer was not interested in leaving his home, let alone with someone he had just met, and the young, inexperienced boy said so. He couldn't fight against the soft crooning of her voice, the gentle sing-song tone that she reached out to him with.

Messmer fell in love with her, yet he was confused. He knew, somewhere deep inside, that it wasn't right. It didn't make sense. Instilled in him, however, was everything she needed to keep him by her side. Messmer left his homeland and traveled with her - finding that she had other 'lovers', men and women alike who carried out the menial chores and tasks she needed. They worked hard, for free, because they 'loved' her. When some of them started to be sold off to strangers in cloaks and his lady went missing for a period of time, well, without her whispering sweet nothings to him in that sultry, seductive voice tinged with magic and charm, Messmer was able to snap out of it.

He wasn't sure at first how long he had been traveling - his days and nights little more than blurrs of cities, people, hard labor, and the soft sound of crying from around him. Others had not been quite as lucky for their minds to phase out what they'd spend so much of the last decade doing, and Messmer supposed that it was a small blessing.

He found his way home, run ragged from figuring out how to return. After traveling many regions, almost starving a few times, and feeling close to death, he finally found his little coastal town again. His parents were elated and welcomed him with open arms, but the joyous boy they had raised had changed, and for a while they were scared of him. There was something haunting his eyes, shadowed by long hair he no long kept neatly trimmed. His once fair skin was ghastly in complexion, and he seemed to carry an air of sickness about him that not even the fresh O'efan breeze could repair.

It wasn't long after his return to semi-normative health that Messmer began his study. He had, on his many month travels home, decided that no one else would ever take his body or mind for a ride again. He would not be lured into believing anything that wasn't fact - that he could not decide for himself. Whether he had to remove himself from this world or not to ensure that was the case remained to be seen.

Many travelers were of no help - not even those of his species. His parents knew even less about the magics of other Djinns, and Messmer went almost mad trying to find out what he needed to seal his body from outside magic and influence. After years, hundreds of years, Messmer finally completed self-created runes through the arcane magic of his people. He had originally started small - learning the art of arcane from various colleges around the world, dropping out of classes once he gained what he needed before moving on. He gave up such a huge swathe of his life for this knowledge that his parents threatened to disown him if he didn't give up his obsession, but by that point, Messmer was truly little more than a stranger. The things he had loved seemed to fall by the wayside, his mind unable to think of anything but sealing himself off from the world.

It came with a price.

One evening, after perfecting the runes, and deciding there was only one way he would never have to share his finding and knowledge with anyone else, Messmer used the skills he gained medically and magically to rip open his body piece by piece, achingly carve runes into his very bones, before he patched himself up and let his body heal. Thanks to magic imbued medicines, there is little to show that Messmer butchered himself, though a trained eye can see the faint scars that run over his body.

Thirteen hundred years old and Messmer's place in society and life is stunted. Apart from his false lover, who he never truly bedded, Messmer has no real social life to speak of. He has retained some of his craft skill, and his medical knowledge has helped in a pinch and allowed him to make some money here and there, but Messmer is a traveler of the world. A part of him is too ashamed to go home and see his family, and he's certain he still carries a bit of the madness that overtook him in his obsession to protect himself. He suffers from PTSD from the event, and if he'd opened up he realizes now that he might not have ever needed to go through what he did to himself or the amount of dedicated time and effort went into learning piecemeal arcane magic.

In the greater scheme of the world, Messmer just wants to survive. He will help anyone, do work for anyone, as long as it gives him safety and coin to travel. He ultimately doesn't care who is a supporter, who is a champion, who has what place in this world, as long as no one tries to weasel into his mind.