Name: Kai Gracen Door: Door Pass Submissive LinkCanon: Kai Gracen Series Canon Point: End of Mad Lizard Mambo Age: Actual age over 100 (exact age unknown), looks mid to late 20's Appearance: No link available (book canon) - Pretty in an ephemeral sort of way. Pointed ears, dark purple eyes, black hair, fangs, high cheekbones. Extensive scarring on his back that makes out the shape of a pair of wings, numerous dragon tattoos. History: Kai was created when his father mixed sidhe and unsidhe together with a dragon egg and then implanted it into a female sidhe prisoner. While the sidhe and unsidhe are both elfin, children born are either entirely sidhe or unsidhe, when conceived naturally. Kai was the fourth or fifth attempt of his father, Tanic, to make a chimera, and his mother stabbed herself in the stomach while carrying him to kill both the monster growing inside of her and herself. She died, but with the help of Tanic and unsidhe healers, Kai survived. His body was aged by the healers to rapidly achieve adulthood, although his mind had to develop at a usual elfin schedule. That didn’t matter to Tanic, who used Kai as a subject for experimentation and torture. Sometime after Kai’s birth, the elfin world combined with the human one, slamming together and replacing chunks of one world with the other. At that point, the sidhe and unsidhe stopped fighting each other and got into a war with the humans. A few million humans died and about six hundred elfin, which the elfin considered about a draw, given the dramatically lower birth rate of elfin. After Kai was around 60, which would be the mental equivalent of a human 14, Kai was 'rescued' by a cigar-smoking, grumpy human named Dempsey. Dempsey was a Stalker, a sort of Bounty Hunter licensed by SoCalGov, and he was originally contracted to deliver Kai to someone else. As he got to know him, even if it included him being bit a few times on the way, he couldn't turn him over to someone else who would hurt him, and decided to turn the mostly-feral Kai into a trained Stalker. Dempsey wasn’t a kind foster father, believing in physical discipline and throwing Kai into life-or-death situations while on Stalker runs, but Kai considers his life under Dempsey as far superior to what came before and meeting Dempsey as one of the best things to happen to him. He spent another forty or so years working for and then with Dempsey, until Dempsey was injured and retired. Since Dempsey drinks most of his money, Kai supports him, giving him a third of what he makes. Kai himself lives in a former warehouse in San Diego, with his cat, Newt as company, and works full time as a Stalker. He’s left the elfin world behind, until the sidhe lord named Ryder conscripts Kai into his service, sending them both through dragon territory to relocate a pregnant human woman. This gets him in the middle of a bloodline feud and with far more contact with the elfin than he’s comfortable with. He does manage to survive, and so do the two elfin children who were magically implanted into the human to carry to birth. The elfin parents of the children turn out to be Ryder's sister and Kai's brother (Tanic's son, treated as a potential heir by him). The children were sidhe, but Kai's brother Valen attempts to kidnap them to bring them to the Dusk Court. Kai rescues them and sees them protected in Ryder's court. Personality: - Confrontational - There are many things that Kai doesn't accept easily. One of them is an abuse of power of any sort, but especially from the elfin. Kai doesn't so much speak truth to power as he strides up to power and spits in its face. That has some negative consequences, but Kai has experience with negative consequences even when he hasn't done anything to act up. It's not just bravery then, that motivates him, as much as it is the feeling that the situation can't get any worse. Kai has good reason to feel that way, but it means he tends to escalate situations that might be able to be solved more diplomatically. This is partly because he doesn't believe there will be a diplomatic solution and partly because he'd rather show his resistance than compromise in any way with someone he believes is wrong.
- Feral - Kai is driven by his instincts and he has a very strong fight or flight response. There are other ways he's feral too, he tends to be slow to trust and ready to run from intimacy at the first sign that things are getting difficult. He's prickly, used to being on his own and very comfortable with that continuing to be the way that his life functions. He likes being a Stalker because it’s helping people without having to interact much with them.
At his heart, Kai is a nurturer, but he’s also incredibly afraid of himself and what he could become. He’s afraid of being like his father, and he’s afraid that he might become whatever sort of monster his father had planned for him to be. He’s not used to getting a lot of affection or care, and as a result he’s suspicious of it.
- Self-doubt - Kai is used to thinking of himself as a monster, something that's been reinforced by some of the people he's known. He's sabotaged relationships and potential relationships under the assumption that he doesn't deserve them or would only end up hurting someone he cares about. This can be most clearly seen with Dahlia, his neighbor and friend, where there is acknowledged mutual attraction but he rejects her because he is sure that she deserves better. When he grows to trust someone, he tends to believe they can do better than him, so he limits himself to more casual sexual contact. He's also quicker to put himself into unpleasant situations because he doesn't value himself, as when he agrees to kiss someone he loathes in exchange for getting information he wants.
- Loyal - Kai feels a very intense loyalty and care for a man that almost no one else has any time for. This is because Dempsey rescued him. Even if other people have opinions on how he raised Kai, Kai views Dempsey's presence in his life as the best thing that ever happened to him. Maybe someone else would have been better, but Dempsey was the one who was there and he cared about Kai in his own way and that's more than anyone had given Kai before then, even if Dempsey’s more than a bit of an asshole, who treats Kai more like an indebted squire than an adoptive son.
Kai understands Dempsey, and if part of what he understands is that the only reason he kept Kai was because he thought he could make money from training him as a Stalker, it’s a debt that Kai can easily satisfy. Dempsey is, in many ways, Kai’s adoptive father, and while Kai doesn’t explicitly look for approval from Dempsey he also doesn’t consider taking a path other than the one Dempsey wants for him. So Kai’s a Stalker, and no matter how much Dempsey’s former allies will tell Kai he doesn’t have to support the old man, Kai can’t imagine doing otherwise. That Dempsey’s own regard for Kai is tempered is something that Kai accepts, like he accepts the fact that the woman Dempsey is with hates elfin with a passion that leaves her to call for a priest to bless the house if Kai ever steps into it. Kai simply accepts the fact that he's no longer welcome in Dempsey's home, and meets outside instead, even knowing that he's paying for part of the house.
Powers and Abilities: - Fighter - Kai's well trained with weaponry, able to use knives and guns to deadly purposes when necessary. He's a decent shot, and in good shape for physical grappling for his size.
- Survival skills - Kai is fluent in Singlish (Simple English, a future hodge-podge of English) and understands sidhe/unsidhe, although he won't speak them and hates hearing them. He can do basic budgeting and financing, and in his time as a Stalker can skin a variety of animals and is on top of basic outdoor survival skills.
- Healing - The elfin heal faster than humans, and Kai heals faster than an average elfin. It's possible to watch his wounds to heal, or to see them close during a fight. This is a weakness in canon more often than it's an advantage: he frequently heals around bits of clothing that later have to be cut out and when he suffers a broken arm during a fight it starts to heal quickly enough that he has to have it rebroken after the fight because the way it started to set wasn't right. His wounds when they eventually heal will do so without scarring, unless the wound is made of iron. Along with the healing, he has an increased metabolism which includes the ability to go through more alcohol before he can get drunk. Elfin also have a dramatically longer lifespan than humans (which includes a longer time to develop).
- Iron Weakness - He's heavily affected by iron in the way of all elfin in his world are, although he's capable of handling it a little better due to past exposure building up some protection. It can still burn him at the touch. He also reacts poorly to elfin magic, partly because of the psychological affects of having had it used against him for his father's torture and partly because he has iron shavings under his skin that are too small to be able to effectively remove which react to the magic.
Inventory: - Newt, his cat - a glock pistol - a pack of clove cigarettes Samples: Duplicity Test DriveNoctium TDMNotes: Due to the nature of Kai and his canon, I have an opt-out for him here. |
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halfbloodhatchling) wrote2021-09-17 06:34 am
