[Original] Maxwell Tendas [A]

[Sumdood]

ORIGINAL or CANON: ORIGINAL





Series of Origin: N/A





What was the inspiration for them / do they embody a particular feeling or emotion?

The driving theme behind Max's character has always been headstrong perseverance, even at the cost of recklessness. As such, I will have a tendency to throw him into situations over his head, will likely always be putting him at constant risk of death, etc.





Name: Maxwell Tendas





Nickname: N/A





Age: 26





Gender: Male





Species: Human





Being Type: Somebody





Position: Chaotic Good





Appearance: Max stands at about 5'7" tall, has dark brown hair and brown eyes. His body is of medium build, and he is lightly muscled. This belies his true strength, which is greater than many would expect from him (though by no means superhuman). His body is also covered in numerous scars, most of them small. His most notable ones, though, are the scar through his left eyebrow, a slash scar across his chest, and another on his chest from being stabbed.



He wears a simple set of chainmail and light leather armor. He wears a shirt of chainmail over his normal cloth shirt, with a padded leather vest over that. The leather vest has the emblem of Dryden, a dragon clutching a sword and shield in its talons inside of a circle all in gold, emblazoned on the chest. On the left shoulder he also wears a leather pauldron to help protect that shoulder, since it is often left more vulnerable than his right. He wears regular, dark blue colored pants with light boiled leather greaves to protect his legs. On his feet he wears a pair of heavy, black leather boots and on his wrists he wears a pair of leather bracers to help support his wrists. In addition, this armor is very well and sturdily made. It does not break easily, and has been treated to be resistant, though not impervious, to corrosion.





History: Max was born to a poor family in the world named The Kingdom of Strife, in the central Kingdom of Dryden. Because of their location in the world, Dryden was almost constantly at the center of one war or another, as many of its neighbors were jockeying for its strategic position. Because of this, many homes, like Max's, were left destitute. They all managed to make a living and cope somehow. Max coped by running around the town with his best friend and partner in crime, Donovan Erot, another boy of a poor family. They would run around the town where they lived and get into all sorts of trouble. Then, at the age of 8, their elemental abilities manifested: Donovan was able to control fire, and Max water. They began experimenting with using it, and eventually ended up play fighting with it. By the time they were 12, they had started seriously sparring with their elemental abilities, Max gaining several small scars from burns, due to Donovan's fire. When Max was 13, they were both sent to the military academy for training in the use of their powers, and taught how to become soldiers.



While they were there, Max soaked up everything they were taught like a sponge. He gave it his all, both in the training yard with weapons and with his powers. He became known as a vicious fighter who would fight to exhaustion in the yard. There were times where his opponents yielded the fight, not because he had actually bested them, but because he had exhausted them by not staying down when they knocked him to the ground. He was trained to fight with his powers, and with many common weapons, including swords, spears, cudgels, maces, and various others. He showed great promise with the spear and sword, and so when he graduated the academy at the top of his class, he was assigned to a unit of spearmen, and sent off to fight the rebels who were attempting to overthrow the current Drydenian government at the age of 18.



It wasn't too long after, though, when the Heartless showed up. They came from the Twilight Cape, where the god and goddess of their world resided. Before anyone knew what was happening, the Heartless had completely overrun Dryden's easternmost neighbors, and all of a sudden she was fighting a war on two fronts against the Heartless and rebels. Most of the forces that had been assigned to fight the rebels, who until this point had been on the defensive, were taken to fight the Heartless. At this point, Max and Donovan were reunited, and fought alongside each other against the Heartless. This fighting quickly became known as the Heartless Wars, and Dryden was losing. Having to fight the rebels on their western side, and the Heartless to the east was straining the army to the breaking point. They kept being pushed back further and further on both fronts until, eventually, the only plot of land that remained to them was Fort Sentra, which was where the keyhole for their world resided (though this was unknown to them). The strain was too much for Donovan, who ended up losing his sanity during the siege. He attempted to breach the walls in an attempt to escape, but was stopped by Max and another small group of soldiers. Max, in the end, had to kill his closest childhood friend himself. Other incidents like this plagued the remnants of the Drydenian army holed up in Fort Sentra, where they stayed for months as the Heartless spread across the rest of the world like a plague. Nearly the entire world was consumed before Fort Sentra finally succumbed to the lengthy seige. As his world was destroyed, Max found himself fighting off large groups of Heartless in the heart of the fort, and then.....



He woke up in a strange town, which was constantly in a state of twilight. He evntually would learn that he had been deposited into a world named Traverse Town, delivered from the destruction of his homeworld by a strange twist of fate. Stuck in this new world, Max began working for a mechanic who worked on a rare kind of transportation, known as gummi ships. He helped the mechanic, who took him in and gave him a place to live in the Second District until, one day, Heartless attacked their home. Max got separated from the mechanic, and just barely managed to escape to the safety of the first district. After a while, he managed to make his way back to where he had been staying with the mechanic. Though the place was deserted, he waited there, to see if he would show up again. When he didn't show up after a week, Max took the last gummi ship that was left in his shop and decided to start trying to find a way to bring his world back. Since he did not know how to pilot the ship, he left the ship's AI to do the piloting for him.



Shortly after obtaining this gummi ship, he began to explore the other worlds outside of Traverse Town. As he did he stumbled across a world called Twilight Town, where he met Mikhail Rutherford and Erika Monika, both of which he would eventually make good friends with. He ended up fighting alongside them, as well as others, to run off strange white creatures that had suddenly appeared. After they ran them off, Erika agreed to help Max find a way to restore his destroyed world. And so, the two traveled across the worlds, searching for any information on how to restore a world lost to the Heartless. On the way, they encountered many different people, including a strange humanoid Heartless that seemed to retain its intelligence, a man who could manipulate shadows and use them to fight, and one man who even used his very bones to fight. During one excursion into Disney Castle, while fighting Heartless, Max began to go through his water abilities' Awakening, which caused him to lose control of them for a time while at the same strengthening them. Though it lasted for only a week, it was a very harrowing time, and one he and Erika were both glad to see the end of.



During an excursion to the underworld to save a friend they had made during their travels, Rubix, Erika sacrificed her own life to save their friend's. With the loss of the girl who had become one of his best friends since Donovan, Max tried to bring things together and continue his search. However, with each world he visited, he continued seeing the horrors that the Heartless wreaked everywhere, and so along with another one of his best friends he'd made since his world's destruction, Mikahil, he formed a small group that dedicated themselves to defending the worlds from the Heartless, and hoped to one day do away with them completely.



It wasn't long afterward that he'd ended up being attacked by a large group of Heartless, and was gravely wounded. Luckily, he was found by an old man named Merlin, who managed to help him recover, with the aid of magic, in just a few months. Upon his awakening, Max found Mikhail had come to find Merlin at his house, where Max was, just as the soldier got out of bed for the first time in a week. Merlin tested both of their abilities, and then sent them on their way. Max went to Traverse Town, where he'd been attacked by the Heartless that had nearly killed him, to look for his missing spear. Once he retrieved it, he managed to stumble across Mikhail again and his new mentor, Jadis the White Witch. Jadis charged Max with finding an associate of hers, a young woman skilled with locks named Rellen, and bringing her back to Traverse Town safely. Max accepted her quest and left for the place he was told to look for her at: Disney Castle. What he saw when he arrived there, though, was not what he expected.



He arrived in the throne room of the castle to see a pair of powerful Heartless, from the Dark XII, both attacking Rellen, who had brought a shield up to protect herself. One of them, a Heartless named Elaeus, left his companion, a fire wielder named Lea, to deal with Max. The soldier of Dryden barely managed to hold the Heartless back and escape with Rellen before he was dealt any serious blows. Once aboard his gummi ship, Rellen thanked him by synthesizing improvements for his spear, which allowed him to create a magical shield at the tip to help defend himself.



With his charge and newly upgraded weapon in tow, Max made his way back to Traverse Town, where he delivered Rellen to Jadis and joined in on the Ulysses expedition to Atlantis. During the trip from Traverse Town to the mystical world, he helped defend the Ulysses fleet from attacking Heartless. However, once they arrived on the world itself they encountered a foe he didn't know how to fight. The Leviathan destroyed all of the main ships in the Ulysses fleet, leaving the crews to find their way on small, escape gummi craft of from their own ships. Max, in his ship, did not make it out unscathed. During the escape, the Leviathan severely damaged his ship, which crippled it in the water. Knowing his only hope was to make it somewhere before he ran out of air, he used his water abilities to push the ship through the ocean, allowing the Leviathan to chase the others while it ignored him. He did get separated from the others of the expedition, but he also managed to find a cavern he could survive in. He left his damaged gummi ship there and began exploring the caverns, eventually discovering the city of Atlantis itself. However, he was too late. It had taken him too long to get there, and the others of the expedition had already come and gone.



Stranded in Atlantis, Max set about slowly salvaging what gummi pieces he could from the equipment the exepdition had left behind in an attempt to fix his ship. As he had to rely on his ship's AI to help him identify the parts he needed, the entire process was slow going. It slowed even further when Heartless began appearing on the aquatic world in great numbers. Max had to pause in his efforts to fix his ship altogether to help the Atlanteans defend their home from the creatures of darkness. Over the next several months, he saw a near identical repeat of the events that led to the destruction of his own homeworld, albeit somewhat faster. In the end, Atlantis suffered the same fate as the Kingdom of Strife, and was destroyed by the Heartless.



Inexplicably, Max once again mysteriously survived the total destruction of a world, and woke up in what he initially thought was Traverse Town. However, as he looked around, he realized he was in Twilight Town, except the sky was darker, many of the buildings were in ruins, and the moon was shattered into pieces. Bearing a fresh bout of survivor's guilt and confusion as to how he kept surviving the destruction of entire worlds, Max dusted himself off and set about exploring the "new" Twilight Town, hoping to discover what exactly had happened to the small city to put it in such a ruined condition.





Current Primary Objective: Discover a way to restore/return to Dryden in the Kingdom of Strife



Current Secondary Objective(s):

Find possible friends/allies

Learn what happened to Atlantis and Twilight town





Learning type:

Mixed





Personality:Max is the kind to not let much bother him. He merely takes what happens, and deals with it. Most from The Kingdom of Strife had to be the same way, due to the harsh nature of life there because of the constant warfare. Before, he did this by joking around with his friends more. However, the fact that he no longer travels with the army of Dryden in his old unit has changed his coping mechanisms greatly. Though he will still laugh and joke with whatever friends he has nearby, he now more tends to go into a kind of brooding state almost immediately after something happens. He gets quieter, and sits there and thinks about what happened the first chance he gets.



In difficult and trying situations, Max tends to move into action without thinking. If he sees someone being attacked by the Heartless, he doesn't sit back and think first, but instead rushes in to fight the heartless back from the person. On the same note, he is the kind of person to face his problems head on, face-to-face, rather than through other, sneakier methods. He has a strong sense of honor, which also compels him to take this mentality to how he fights as well. He refuses to stab somebody in the back, but instead prefers to face them head-on in an even challenge.



Max has a rather volatile temper, though he generally is able to keep a good handle on it. He can get frustrated rather easily, depending on what he's doing. It can take quite a bit to make him lose his temper. However, when he does, he becomes more reckless than usual, abandoning his usual defensive fighting tactics for blind aggression, which is something he is mostly unfamilliar with and leaves him much more open. He also hates the Heartless with a passion, and is more likely to lose his temper with them much quicker than he would with anyone else.



He is usually a rather kind person, even if he does seem somewhat callous due to how he deals with his experiences. He will usually try to help someone in need, when he can. He is, in general, a good guy.





Home World: The Kingdom of Strife

The Kingdom of Strife is a land almost constantly at war. As such, it's denizens have become very hardy and adaptable in order to survive the harsh conditions of their world. Large contingents of soldiers of all sorts are common in major cities across the nations of the Kingdom of Strife, as well as smaller units in the towns and villages. In the center of the single continent in this world is the Kingdom of Dryden. Due to its geographical location at the center of the world, and defensible positions due to the numerous mountain ranges that snake through its borders, it is a strategic location for anyone attempting to take control of the rest of the world. This has led to Dryden being the nation most often at war in the Kingdom of Strife. The constant wars and battling led to much darkness taking hold in the world, and eventually the Heartless began to show up. Before any of the nations' leaders could think to put their petty differences behind them, the Heartless began to move across the world en masse, a masive horde of darkness rolling across the land and engulfing everything in its path. The Kingdom of Strife's inhabitants' last efforts to fight back against them became known as The Heartless Wars. They ended up being mostly futile gestures, though, as the Heartless were appearing in numbers too great for them to overcome through their hardened martial prowess. The last bastion of defense for the Kingdom of Strife's inhabitants was Fort Sentra, in the heart of Dryden, where the world's keyhole rested. The fort's defenders held out valiantly for months before the Heartless finally overwhelmed them and took the heart of the world, destroying it.







Natural Affinities/Abilities/Skills:

Hydrokinetic Parasite - He is able to control the element of water though a kind of magical parasite that hasn't been encountered in anyone who wasn't born in the Kingdom of Strife. Though occasionally this parasite has been known to take control of its element on its own(these parasites come in different varieties, each with their own element), its power typically bends to the will of its host, who in this case is Max. He is not able to create water out of nowhere. The water must already be there for him to control, though he can pull moisture from the air in order to have something to fight with. However, when doing this, the amount of water he can get to use can be limited by the environment, as well as other factors, such as someone adding heat to the environment, etc. Anything that can remove(or add) water to the environment in some way will affect his abilities. Even in the best of circumstnaces, the amount of water he can get will likely be limited, unless he happens to be near some body of water.



He is able to control water on a molecular level to compress it into a near solid state. When he does this, it isn't able to hold a cutting edge, but is able to physically stop attacks, etc. by making a wall or some kind of obstacle out of solidified water which makes it good for shielding himself. However, he cannot shield himself from non-physical attacks with water. This includes projectiles comprised of magic(an example would be the magic missile spell from D&D. Not magic manipulating something physical, but just a manifestation of magical energy itself) but not things such as magically controlled fire(which will be stopped).



Since his Awakening, his powers have changed somewhat. He is able to not only control water in its liquid form, but also its ice and vapor forms as well. The ice he forms this way can hold a cutting edge, unlike water he compresses to a solid state. He can use this to form weapons should he ever find himself disarmed. He can also turn water to its gaseous form in order to create shrouds. When he does this, he can "feel" where things are in the mist through his power's connection with the water, which could potentially give him an edge over opponents he might otherwise be disadvantaged against.



Tapping into these hydrokinetic powers tires him, as the flow of magical energy between parasite and host burns quite a lot of energy. The effects are much the same as running (general fatigue through entire body, heavy breathing, etc), though the intensity of their usage will fatigue Max at different rates. However, the more he uses his powers, the stronger said endurance will become(again, much like running). Currently, Max's endurance can be considered to be at a "high" level, due to his good physical conditioning.



Ability Enhancing Armor - His armoar was modified by Merlin to help augment and strengthen his water controlling abilities, allowing him to use it more easily and for longer periods of time before tiring than he could have previously.



Spearman - Max is a trained military spearman, and was usually placed in units on the flanks of the main army to protect against flanking cavalry charges. As such, the units he was in had more primarily defensive roles. Naturally, this leant Max towards learning a more defensive style of fighting with his spear. Though at the core his style of fighting is still defensive, consisting of holding opponents off at range with his water controlling abilities and running them off further away with his spear when they get close, he is still very skilled with the weapon. He is capable of taking a more offensive style of fighting with his spear, though he doesn't have as much experience with fighting this way.



Tactical Mind - Max's training in Dryden's Academy taught him something of military tactics. He took to these classes rather well and quickly. Though far from a military genius, he does have a very solid grasp of military tactics. This means he is good at setting up effective ambushes, defenses of towns/cities, etc. This strength is somewhat tempered by his stubborness, which can often lead him to making a less than ideal strategic/tactical decision.





Limitations/Drawbacks:

Environmental Limitations - As mentioned in the above section on his hydrokinetic powers, Max's abilities to control water is limited by the amount of water in the environment around him. This includes standing water (such as lakes/ponds/etc), water in cups, etc. In environments either devoid of water or with little water, he is essentially down to just fighting without his powers.

Bullheaded Stubborness - Ironically, one of Max's biggest assets, his stubborn perseverance, can also be one of his biggest weaknesses. He never gives up, regardless of the circumstances. If he gets knocked down, if he's able to, he will get up and keep throwing everything he's got into whatever it is he's doing until he knows he can't succeed. Obviously, this can lead him into some rather dangerous and life threatening situations that would normally be less so. In combat scenarios, this weakness is somewhat tempered by his tactical mind (though by no means canceled out).





Passive:

Heartborn Tide





Weapons:

Max's primary weapon is a spear about 8ft long, crafted by Rellen after rescuing her from Lea in Disney Castle. The spear is very well made, and durable. The only special property it possesses is the ability to project a shield out from the tip at the push of an easily reached button.



Max also carries with him a magical bastard sword* (though its magical properties are unknown to him at this time). It has a 40" double-edged black blade with a bright silver fuller down each side, with a handle just long enough to hold with two hands. It is light weight and well balanced enough to be wielded with one or two hands. The hand-guard and the pommel are the same bright silver as the fuller, and the handle is wrapped with dark leather and silver cord.



Magical Properties - Quicksilver's blade dulls much more slowly than a typical sword (he has never had to sharpen it and it is still as sharp as the day he found it) and never rusts. It is also capable of reflecting/absorbing magical energy (only pure magical energy, not physical things manipulated by magic. To use the magic missile analogy from earlier, it would stop/absorb/reflect a magic missile, but could NOT stop magically controlled fire/water/etc any better than a normal sword). When it has absorbed enough magical energy, the sword's wielder can use it by swinging the sword through the air to create a sort of magical "shock wave" that is stronger (or weaker) depending on how much magic the sword has absorbed.

NOTE - while Quicksilver can always reflect/stop magical attacks, its wielder must concentrate and consciously use the magic inherent in the sword to absorb them for the shock wave attack. Therefore, it is possible to "accidentally" discover the more defensive nature of its enchantment (likely to happen in Max's case), but the "active" portions will be much more difficult to discover for one not well versed in finding such magics.



*Bastard Sword = proper name for the typical longsword found in fantasy





Role Playing Sample:

Max groaned in pain as he lay on the ground, his entire body aching. The last thing he remembered was trying to fight the Heartless back from the innocent Atlantean civilians as they overran the center of the city. He had helped lead their warriors in the fight against the creatures of darkness, but over the last month or two, he had seen what was happening. The patterns had been the same back on his homeworld when the Heartless had invaded there. They might have seemed to be holding them back, but all they were really doing was slowing them down.



He slowly sat up and looked around. He felt a pit settle in his stomach as he realized he wasn't in Atlantis anymore. He'd held out hope for the Atlanteans since he'd come back to consciousness, but it all faded as he realized he was now in another world. He wagered he had, somehow, survived the destruction of another world. He cursed under his breath as he slowly climbed back to his feet and looked around for his spear. He found it quickly, lying next to the wall of a nearby building. He quickly retrieved it and set about looking around, trying to figure out exactly what world he was in.



At first, he thought it might be Traverse Town due to the dark sky. However, the shattered moon hanging in the sky crushed all thought of that. He contemplated what might have broken the moon into so many pieces, and the thought sent a shiver through his spine. He continued his search around the town, which wasn't as ruined as he had initially thought it was. It was actually still in decent repair in some places, and as he moved through the streets, they became more and more familiar. He slowly began to realize that he had been here before, before the town had become ruined. He knew these streets...



He was in Twilight Town.



He looked around at the ruined buildings and the dark sky, wondering what had happened. Almost as soon as the question entered his mind, though, he knew the answer: The Heartless.



They had been running rampant lately, it seemed. They had taken Atlantis, and similar environmental changes had happened there during that time, too. There was no reason to think there was anything different happening here. Sure, there were still some people walking the streets, though nowhere near as many as he remembered there being here. More disturbing than the lack of people though was the unmistakable air of fear in the in the place, as if the citizens of the town knew their end could come at almost any point. Between the time he had spent in Atlantis and the siege of Fort Sentra, it was an atmosphere he had become all too familiar with.



He just knew as he looked around, contemplating all of this, that Twilight Town was doomed. The only question was how much time did it have?



Questions/Comments/Suggestions?

[Clio]

“Hello, Lucky One!” after such a long silence, the moogle’s chipper voice seems to demand your attention. How long has she been reading your documentation? “I apologize for nodding off so many times while reading. It seems it’s been hard to catch a wink lately, but I digress -” she brushed it off, getting on to matters of business. “After a very thorough examination," she giggles. "...And a nap, your file checks out!"  

She seems content with you as she stamps your papers, but hesitates as she returns them to you. “Wait… do I… know you?”