Username: Lance Dartel
Name: Lance Dartel
Class: Scoundrel --> Master Thief
Gender: Male
Birthday: 1st day in the Month of the Dancer (April 1st, allegedly)
Deity: Tymora, The Lady of Fortune (Lance has a firm belief in the power of luck.)
Species: Errant (a specialized morph)
Description:Sprite
Lance has quite a few handsome features, having a lean body with most of his weight in muscles, and a fair face few girls would say no too. However, because of a scar he has over his left eye as well as the almost golden glowing eyes, his looks take a turn for the worse. His hair is long, reaching down to his lower neck, which he usually ties up in a ponytail and letting his bangs cover the side of his head. When he's not using them, he holds up this hairstyle from going down into his face with a pair of goggles. As an Errant, Lance only aged up to the age where the quintessence of the "host" from it was taken from, which leaves him looking like he's in his early twenties or late teens, even though he's probably older than that.
While Lance has a preferability for dark clothes, his wardrobe contains so much more. Having a dozens of different outfits for various occasions, he has a wide diversity to fit every need.
His usual outfit is a black tank top, black pants and dark brown boots reaching up to below his knees, covering his shins. Over his hands he wears black fingerless gauntlets. Around his neck he wears either a scarf, muffler or a special cape that's fastened into his top with clasps that are easily removed through pressing a button on them in case he'd quickly need to remove it as a distraction. He wears a belt around his waists with a lot of pouches, pockets and bags, and it contains any thievery tools he'd ever need; different type of powders (including but not limited to sleep and aphrodisiac), lockpicks, his Elemental Coins, and many more items and gadgets. Most of his clothes expand and retract depending on who wears it, so his clothes are never too big or too small, and his regular outfit circulates the air easily, ideal for the harsh environments of the Nabata desert. His boot has a combat knife hidden in them, and his belt has two curved small bladed weapons, one at each side of his hip, and they're adorned with an emerald and a ruby in the hilt, respectively.
Past: Many years ago (around 37 years before FE7), a countess in Etruria conducted experiments with draconic magic and more specifically, the use of quintessence. She was especially fascinated by the creation of morphs and as such spent a great deal of time with them. One of these experiments was to take the strong quintessence, compress it and make the morph a baby. Theoretically, the baby would then grow up and the quintessence it was made with would expand as it grew, making the morph in the end much stronger than a normal morph. The baby would then also get trained as it grow up, and the Countess had in mind that she would then create an elite morph bodyguard that would be able to lead the other more menial morphs.
In the beginning, her experiment showed great progress. The first of the morphs did seem to grow up healthy, and a lot more talented than the regular morphs, as for example a child morph could easily best a normal morph in magical combat, and for a long time her experiment seemed to be a success.
However, the first of her baby morphs started showing some flaws. For one, certain defects appeared that was not intended, and some of the morphs even lost their speciality because of them. Loss of control in the limbs, the inability to speak arcane words to name a few.
Secondly, as they grew up, just like normal children, the morphs started showing a greater level of insight and self-awareness, making them more independant. Though it might seem as an asset because the morphs would be able to make decisions for themselves, it also came with the possibility that they one day might rebel.
Adding in the long time it would take to make the morphs complete, she deemed the experiment not worthwhile, and decided to decommision the newest four baby morphs, who was now categorized as Errants.
One of the countess' servants, Nadia, took pity on the babies, and managed to persuade three other servants to help the Errants escape. The three other servants got away safely, but Nadia was injured as she was evading capture. Wounded, she still managed to get across the border to Nabata, where she collapsed in the sands. She, and the Errant, would've died if she hadn't been found by a mamkute by the name of Lenard Dartel. He took her and the Errant back to Arcadia, where he nursed her and the morph back to health (he eventually also married Nadia, but that's another story).
That morph was Lance.
As Lance grew up, he was often met coldly by the other residents of the Dragon Village, as they all knew his heritage. Despite that, Lance did his best to get along with everyone, and while not always successful, the respect his foster father held in the village was enough to erase most of the animosity towards the young morph. However, the sheltered life was putting a strain on Lance who wanted nothing else than to travel the world. At the age of 12, he left the village to travel Elibe.
As a young child he could not make much of a living, so he scrounged together just barely to survive. He managed to find out he had a knack for pickpocketing, and conning people into giving him money, which started him down the path of a thief. For a few months it worked well, until he was caught by the leader of a mercenary and talents-for-hire-group called Xavier's Ghasts. Xavier's Ghasts consisted of a wide variety of personalities and people using different fighting styles, and Lance started learning martial arts in this time. It was also during this time that Lance gained a name for himself, and his infamity gave him quite a bounty on his head. It was due to this bounty that Lance, on an "impressing" age of 16 was betrayed by one of his closest friends, and he barely escaped alive. He got his scar over his left eye as a memento of the betrayal, and for a long time, he was still haunted by the experience.
Lance's life from his 18th birthday to the present is a mostly mystery to him. Because of his Errant heritage, his mind is gradually beginning to fade. This has left a lot of his memories blurry. He only has a faint idea of what he's been up to the past years, which includes, but not limits to, thievery, mercenary work, various minor employments and even a brief time in the Illian army. Because losing his mind isn't all that fun, Lance is putting everything he got into figuring out a way to get his memories back and stop his mind from breaking down. This has taken him travelling around Elibe looking for answers, while keeping up with his talent-for-hire business to have an income. His travels has now taken him to Learania, which he suddenly had gotten into without any real knowledge, as he went asleep in some tree in Lycia and awoke in Learania.
However, for some arbitrary reason, Lance has lost all of his infamity in Learania, as no one seem to know him, not even people he had met in Elibe. That has deprived him of all his income (no one hires a no-name thief in Learania), and he almost starved to death if he hadn't been rescued by the Lance Knight Finn. The two has since then become friends (though only semi-mutual). Now Lance is trying to find some sort of cure for him, while fighting the rising insanity.
Personality: For quite a while, Lance was mistrusting and taking a long time to befriend anyone. That all changed almost suddenly about the time he became 18. Now, Lance is a happy-go-lucky, caring fellow, who's a very loyal friend once he'd befriend someone, and always trying to see the best in people. He goes by the saying "Every day is a new day for retribution", and as such quickly forgets about wrong-doings against him. Wrong-doings against people close to him he does not, however. Lance has despite his profession quite a high sense of justice and honor, disliking acts of evil and prejudice. He dislikes unnecessary violence (necessary violence is A-OK), and especially killing others, going for either talking his way out of conflict or immobilizing his opponents. He's generally lazy and carefree, but willing to do his part if he has to. Despite his laziness, he's very quick and nimble, which is useful when say, running away. Lance is proud of his legs, as he's able to sprint extremely fast, more so than most humans.
Lance has the heart of a child which leaves him joyful and wanting to play around, with an uncanny ability to get down to a child's level and play easily with them. However, despite his child-like demeanour, Lance is much older than he looks, and as such possess a great deal of wisdom as well. While he appear weak, he's actually much more powerful than what meets the eye, which has left more than one assailant underestimating him quite a bit.
Lance is highly intelligent, both being able to come up with intricate plans or acting based on gut-feeling or reflex. However, he can easily lose focus, and if he doesn't settle for the first best plan, he'll either go overthinking every possibility and never getting to act, or his mind wanders to trivial things with no relation to the current events.
The happy-go-lucky Errant has always been interested in women as well. No matter what the age, he's been know to compliment them to the point of flirting, which has left him with a lot of worry in the past (especially when faced with the parents of younger women). Despite his flirtyness, he has very little experience with them, and is known to freeze when faced with a woman that actually seem to take a liking to him. He's in reality very shy around the opposite sex, not knowing what to do when all comes down to it, which creates a sharp contrast when he goes from flirty to almost frigid. Lance actually has some dreams about becoming a father and marrying at some point, but the fact that he's slowly going insane, as well as the lack of knowledge of if he can actually reproduce makes it really difficult to find a suitable partner.
Of course, all of his previous mentioned personality is overshadowed by the fact that he's losing his mind.
Because his Errant heritage, Lance has in later years experienced more and more craziness with him. He has random mood swings, internal discussions with himself, and a tendency to be overdramatic with poses. He can recite long mottos or the like to people around him. That leaves him with difficulties befriending people, as they label him as insane, and people have a hard time taking him seriously. Lance realizes all of this, but he has lost most of his control, and he helplessly see himself screw up one encounter after another. This has left him a bit depressed too, and all he wants in Learania is to befriend someone that sees him for what he is and overlooks his craziness. So far, he's had little luck.
Strengths: A lot of life experiences, and versatile at a lot. While he does not fight directly with a type of weapon, he's been taught a lot of different styles, which he could use to surprise an opponent by changing style completely. Also, Lance is incredibly lucky.
Lance has the ability to go into a buffed up mode which he calls Errancy. When he does that, he releases the limiters that keeps the magic he's created with in a bodily form. That makes Lance basically a living source of magic, getting an ethereal body, the ability to pass through, enhanced magical hits, you name it. He can hold that power up for at most 30 seconds, and he is virtually invulnerable during this time. It is, however, difficult to activate it, and not even Lance knows the exact details of what he has to do.
Lance has the ability, as a special kind of errant, to use his abundant magical energy to release a short burst of it in what he calls Impact which relieves him of having to speak incantations. He can also "feel people's rhythm". It can be the heart-beat, breathing, footsteps or body language of people. Everyone has a special kind of beat to them, and when that beat changes, either from a sudden action or a change of thought, he can predict what can happen. This has made Lance being able to gain insight in a fight, and dodging, counter attacking or parrying becomes much easier. With that he has developed his own fighting style, Hand of Unexpected Glory (well, he's not the best at naming stuff), which looks a lot like some sort of dance, where he tries to flow around with handstandings, and mixing it with his Impact attacks. Check weaknesses.
Weaknesses: Lance has no alcohol resistance whatsoever, and can get giddy just on a pint of beer.
Lance is also narcoleptic, causing him to fall asleep randomly, sometimes even standing up. While it doesn't matter if he falls asleep normally, it is a problem when he falls asleep during a fight. Because of this, Lance almost always sleeps in, as the odds for him falling asleep during the day gets reduced. And while he's lucky, he has a tendency to end up in bad or embarrassing situations.
While Lance's power is powerful, the weaknesses it gives are great. First, the fact that he can only hold it for 30 seconds is sometimes not enough. Secondly, after the time is up, he gets shrunk to the size of a toddler standing up for twice the time he activated the power. While his clothes expand and tighten depending on the person wearing it, he becomes really weak for a while.
As he gradually began to lose his mind, he also lost many of the abilities he had. Feeling other people's rhythms, using Impacts and with it his Hand of Unexpected Glory (though he can still charge his Elemental Coins) and exactly how to use his buffed up Errant state (he can use it, he just don't know exactly how). This might come back to him over time, but until then, it's not even something he can rely on.
Likes: Games(including gambling), talking, meeting people, catching up on his lost rest, things going his way.
Dislikes: Evil, people doing injustice, not being able to read a person, things not going his way.
Fighting Style: Lance has a wide variety of fighting styles, all derived from companions he has travelled with in the past. Though he hasn't been taught the arts of each individual person, he has copied moves and stances from what they've been using and implemented it into his own. Though he's lost most of the knowledge about them, they still exist deep inside his head, waiting to emerge whenever he manages to fix his deteriorating mind.
At the present, he's the most known for using his Elemental Coins to battle. His Elemental Coins are made from a rare mineral called Arcanium, which is a metal that can absorb magic and get infused with its powers. Then the metal can use that magic inside, much like mages use spellbooks for their spells. The difference is that anyone, if they learn how to eject magical energy, can use Elemental Coins to a certain degree. It's just that Lance is the first person to use the Coins like this, since he cannot read or speak Arcane words. The coins eject different types of magical effects depending on what properties the Arcanium the coins was made with to begin with. There are several known properties, but Lance mainly uses coins with the properties of Flash, Thunder, Wind, Fire, Ice, Heal and Light, though there are at least just as many types as there are spells in the world.
Elemental Coins are first infused with magical energy. Then they are activated by releasing a quick burst of magic of the same wavelength as the user in the vicinity of the coin. That means that even though Lance is primarily who can activate them, anyone that can get close enough to the same wavelength can activate them.
Apart from that, Lance's battle style revolves around dodging and evading damage until he can find an opening to turn the opponent's power against them.
-More to be added as it gets thought up-
Magnus was born as the only son of Lars and Ingrid von Kirksberg, the rulers of the piracy governed city of Visbynia. The city, practically being a floating fortress, had been in the von Kirksberg's care in five generations. Growing up along with his older brother, Bjorn, the two of them explored every nook and cranny of the city, gaining popularity along with their parents for their fair treatment of everyone. Up until he turned fifteen, Magnus was still the younger of a popular prince pair.
But not every idyllic life lasts forever. The neighboring city of Ultower, always looking to expand and wanting to take control of the floating city, managed to turn another high-ranking official in the city into betraying the governor, who assumed power in its place after executing Magnus' parents and taking Bjorn captive. Making Bjorn act like a placebo ruler, the official reigned the city while in practice leaving the governing to Ultower. Magnus, barely escaping the betrayal, started a secret resistance, refusing to believe the rumors that Bjorn killed his parents to assume control himself. After finally finding out the truth, Magnus rescued his brother, and together they led the resistance to defeat the new government. After reassuming control, Magnus left Bjorn in charge yet again, this time for real. Himself, he dropped the 'von' out of his name, and set off to become a true pirate himself, as to keep the two brothers from being at the same place together, to prevent the same issue of a placebo ruler again.
Magnus then travelled the world on his own private vessel, the Whistful Melody. Making a name for himself over the next few years, using his high-speed and high-maneuverability ship he evaded captured, and raided smaller trade ships by himself, until a bounty was finally put on him. Although never actually killing anyone other than in self-defense, due to the damage he inflicted on his raids, and the number of minor pirates he inspired, he faced the threat of the death penalty if captured. Adding to the number of times bounty hunters failed to bring him to justice, the reward for his head just kept climbing. It was looking as though the Whistful Melody and its captain would remain a legend forever.
That was until Magnus faced Cole Marionette.
Even though Magnus was still possessing the quicker ship, the heavy ship and over the top outfitted ship of the Sky Slayer kept on following Magnus around obnoxiously. When he had breakfast at an inn, the ship pointed its cannons at him when he exited. When he was taking a bath, the ship came roaring above him, rapelling its crew down for his capture . For over two months the Sky Slayer came after him, firing its cannons ferociously at him. In the end, Magnus was impressed by the tenacity of his opponent, and finally stopped next to a large civilian ship, luring the Sky Slayer captain into a single man duel. He was surprised to find the captain of the Sky Slayer to be smaller, dumber and louder than he had imagined. Except, as their duel went on, Magnus found the captain to be much more capable than he initially thought. However, in the end, Magnus managed beating Cole, frankly because he just was much better at fighting. As he was about to deal the final blow, however, their fighting was interrupted by another pirate ship appearing, attacking the helpless civilian ship. Abandoning the duel, Magnus quickly rushed to the civilians' aid, fighting for the civilians' survival. Succeeding in beating back most of the pirates, he thought it to be over.
That's when the pirate captain fired his ship's main cannon at Magnus. As he would not be able to get away in time, he closed his eyes, expecting to never open them again. That's when Cole came rushing in, having recovered from their duel, and pushed him out of the way. As the leg of his unforeseen saviour got blown away, Magnus lunged at the pirate captain, only to get knocked away and hit his head on the side, losing consciousness. When he came to, the pirate had disappeared, leaving destruction and havoc in his wake. The Sky Slayer's crew had then surrounded him, about to take him captive, when their captain called them off. Having seen Magnus act recklessly to save the civilians, Cole had realized that Magnus was not the type of pirate he was supposed to be chasing, saying Magnus was free to go wherever he wished.
To Cole's surprise, Magnus appeared at his quarters' door, saying he needed to repay the debt of having his life get saved. Or perhaps Captain Marionette wasn't surprised at all. The captain had a supernatural ability of making people want to serve him...
To this day, Magnus has still left piracy behind, and has grown close to the loudmouth captain, acting as his ship's First Mate. So even though Cole had lost a leg, he had gained a life-long friend.
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Lance Dartel's Profile
Just the biography and stuff for the OC Lance Dartel, the Scoundrel to Master Thief.
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