Book of Stories OCT - Telique

Holy bejeezes, I tried SO HARD to pare this down to a more readable length... but it refused to be anything but unreasonably long. So... here it is. I'm sorry!

For anyone who gets vertigo just looking at that history section, note me and I'll be more than happy to just give you the highlights. If I hadn't written it, I'd never want to have to wade through something so long myself...

Character reference sheet for .

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Name: Telique Calenarien (tell-EEK kal-ehn-AIR-ee-ehn)

Species: Half-Elven, Half-Demon

Age: 33

Physical Description: Telique is wiry but well muscled, and stands at about 5'10"... a little shorter than average for both elves and demons, a fact he tries to hide and ignore whenever possible. His skin has sort of a yellowish tinge and is otherwise slightly paler than average. His eyes have black sclera, gold irises, and slitted pupils. He sports four main fangs where the upper and lower canines would be, and two (eight total) smaller fangs on either side of these. Telique has shaggy white hair, which would hang at about shoulder length if it were not perpetually sticking up on end. Two black bull horns protrude from his hairline. He has a matching black bull tail with a white brush at the end. His wings each have a single black-furred pinion, and instead of feathers or webbing, boast a blaze of silver flame. They can be fully retracted into his back at will, disappearing into small pocket-like folds on his shoulder blades. The flames leave small silver tattoos immediately beneath them when they disappear. Telique usually prefers to leave his wings out, though, liking how they make him look larger and more intimidating. For this reason, he usually wears either ponchos or cloaks with no shirt, or halter-tops so there's nothing in the way of his wings and he doesn't burn through any clothing. Telique enjoys being a spectacle, and is never seen not decked in jewelry. Finally, he detests shoes... Telique will never, ever wear shoes.

History:Telique’s mother was a child of nobility in hell, member of a well-respected and powerful family of demons... however, somewhere along the line, probably due to her spoiled upbringing, she developed an unsavory taste for the company of lesser beings. Her family was too preoccupied with socializing and matters of appearance, to notice her excursions to the aboveworld until large portions of the family fortune began to go missing, in particular some especially familiar artifacts and treasures from their hoard began popping up in the aboveworld and causing havoc when their various protective curses started to activate on the unsuspecting people who had them in their possession.

As soon as they realized what was going on, the family, outraged that their daughter would not only stoop to the low of defiling herself with a non-demon, but needlessly pay with their money to do so, confined her to their estate under a close watch... but she was too stubborn to let that constraint stop her. This time, instead of making the trips herself, she contacted a trader... and within a week, he had procured for her a young male elf and smuggled him under the noses of the guards and into her clutches... after, of course, being paid with more family treasures.

The family, expecting a much more volatile reaction from their daughter, began to suspect something when, in the following months, she kept to herself and remained unusually quiet. Upon investigation, it did not take long for them to find their daughter's pet chained up in a seldom-visited section of their dungeon, and upon confronting their daughter, they found her with child. The young elf was immediately deposited back in the aboveworld, and the girl was immediately disowned.

Telique was born on the streets of hell, and lived the first decade of his life by scrounging to survive in a land with little sympathy even for its own, let alone for a bastard half-breed. His mother proved largely unsupportive... she provided for him as best she could (which wasn't very well) out of an instinctual obligation rather than an emotional love. Telique, consequently, grew up very fast and learned early how to fend for himself in what was literally a survival of the fittest environment. When he wasn't fighting against the other urchins for basic needs, he was fighting against other urchins who took offense to his mixed lineage.

Luckily for Telique, the superior strength he inherited from his noble bloodline allowed him to win most disputes, and even garner some respect and a few friends... or at least followers. Despite the harsh treatment he received, he rarely held grudges against other children - they were living the same difficult life that he was. Also, he was desperate for whatever companionship he could get, and couldn't afford to make any lasting enemies.

Telique also, on occasion, got into altercations with demons who weren't his own size... which was a much different matter. Stronger, meaner, and usually even more belligerent in response to Telique's social stigma, whenever he was caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing (which was pretty much all he did as a child) by an older demon, he was usually left at their mercy to suffer any punishment they pleased until his mother was able to track him down and bail him out... and she was never concerned enough to rush. All of this fermented into an intense distrust of adults, a sentiment that lasted even after Telique himself grew into one.

After all this time, the constant hardships of just living, let alone keeping tabs on her adventurous son, had wearied Telique's mother. She finally decided that maintaining her stubborn pride was no longer worth the effort, and returned to her family, begging to be admitted back into their good graces. By that time, the scandal she'd created had blown over, and their rage had cooled. They had only one request of her before allowing her back into their household - get rid of Telique.

For ten years she'd hardly been a mother at all, so this wasn't a sacrifice she found particularly crippling. However, the same deep, demonic instinct that had helped her hold out this long kept her from taking the simpler road of just killing the boy. Instead, she formally banished him to the aboveworld - cut him off from the power and protection of hell and disallowed reentrance. Since her family's attention never strayed outside of hell anyway, she figured that as long as her son wasn't walking the streets of their world, they would be satisfied. She certainly was... and as she saw it, half of him belonged up there anyway.

Telique, on the other hand, was terrified. Not knowing what to do himself, and with no-one to vouch for someone like him, he found himself thrust up into a place different from anything he'd ever known. He may not have had a real home in hell, but he had the comfort of familiarity, and he'd had friends... in a sense. However, given no other choice in the matter, he put fear aside and forged on with his life.

Fortunately, Telique found, street life in the aboveworld was much easier than street life in hell. People were more sympathetic there, it seemed, kinder... also weaker. Where he was only evenly matched with other children down in hell, here he could easily overpower almost anyone despite himself being a child of only ten. Because of his friendly attitude and the huge asset he served as a protector, it wasn't long before he had a veritable gang of urchins following after him. Telique couldn't deny that he enjoyed being in charge like that... but even after three years of hero treatment, he still longed to return to the world he grew up in, rather than stay in this still-foreign land.

During his time away from hell, a thought occurred to Telique. If his mother could win her family's favor back by leaving him, perhaps he could prove himself to them somehow as well. Taking the trouble of ducking the guards at the hellmouth, plus all the usual street patrols only to return to the alleys for the rest of his life simply wouldn't be worth it. If he was going to go back, he was going to go back in a blaze of triumph and live in style. He hatched a plan to recover all of the lost family fortune that his mother had spent during the 'wild years' of her youth. He'd heard plenty enough tales of regret from her in his short life to decipher the type of person she was back then (and still was now, really), and to realize the circumstances of his birth.

As he began the process of tracking down each of the artifacts, Telique was relieved to discover that his mother had never strayed all that far from the hellmouth whenever she visited, meaning that the majority of what he needed to find was all still within the city right above it - where he currently lived. He made decent progress in good time with only one recurring road block - it seemed as if many of the treasures he needed were being snatched up by another collector. At the time, Telique was both too focused on his goal and too naive to recognize how odd it was that anybody besides himself would have such an interest in those specific artifacts... He just put it out of his mind and continued on the task of getting ahold of those pieces which he could find.

By the time he was fifteen, Telique was confident that he'd gathered everything not already in the hands of his rival collector. He was also confident that he'd almost completely worn out his welcome in this city, as often his methods for acquiring the treasure he needed had been less than polite or legal, and because the roving gang of children he commanded caused an awful lot of trouble. Through his frequent encounters with the now-former owners of his family's treasure, Telique learned both the identity and whereabouts of his rival collector - they were a noble elven family who lived not far from the hellmouth itself. The place wasn't difficult to find... and after only a little anxious observation, Telique formulated his final plan - stash the treasure he already had in some nondescript midway point between the elves' mansion and the hellmouth... go in the night, take all they had, throw it into his own collection and make a mad dash for the gate below.

When the time came to set the scheme into action, he was pleasantly surprised to find the elves' home virtually unguarded. He made off with everything they had, got to his own store without a hitch, and descended. He did note that both sides of the border seemed suspiciously unmanned, but chalked it up to luck and continued on to his family's home. When he reached it, however, he found it in ruins. Most of the guards who were meant to be watching the gate were gathered around there. Sensing that now was not at all the time to be seen breaking his banishment, he hung in the background and simply listened.

Telique eventually gathered that a light battalion of elven warriors had stormed in, wielding holy magic and vengeance. Faster than any of hell's legions could act, they'd marched right into the unprotected estate and laid waste, burning the building to the ground and slaughtering everyone inside. The guards supposed it had been a revenge strike, as apparently one had recognized one among the elves as having been a captive of the family's some fifteen years before whom he'd been given the unusual task of returning to the aboveworld unharmed.

It didn't take long at all before Telique decided he had heard enough, and beat a hasty retreat up above while he still could. The irony of the situation was bitter. The elves who'd just killed his family were the elves he himself had just stolen from... why else would they too be gathering all of his family's treasure than to track it back to them? Their plan had been longer in the making than his had, and on that very same night, it too concluded successfully... yet Telique was unsure how to feel about that. He'd never lived in that house... never known any relatives other than his own mother, and felt little sorrow at the knowledge of her death. His entire demon bloodline was now gone... though his elven one, he now realized, lived just around the corner... but he also realized he had even less connection to them - none at all really. He wasn't desperate enough for ties to get himself killed by approaching, and not angry enough to bother with revenge.

Telique took his riches and ran. He'd already left far too large a mark in this city anyway... and now more than ever it seemed he had far too many connections within it for it to remain safe for him. It was time to see more of the aboveworld... learn a little by travel, find something worthwhile to do. This didn't take very long. Telique became generous with his fortune, built for himself a life of lavish ease on it, and invited the urchins of the aboveworld to do the same with him, offering both comfort and protection. He would change up cities about once a year, some followed, some stayed behind, and everyone only ever did as they pleased.

However, after some years, his old family fortune ran out, which Telique, despite being quite used to living on very little, simply wouldn't stand for. Anything short of opulence was unacceptable. In order to keep up his funds, Telique decided to partake in a time-honored demonic tradition - fooling the gullible into unfair contracts. It had once been fairly common practice amongst the now-wealthy and idle demons in hell, and still was among the slightly less wealthy and slightly less idle below. The practice allowed a demon to draw on the nearly infinite power of hell to grant even the most ridiculous wishes to whomever asked... while in return, they gave up their soul at the end of their life. For a citizen of hell, a contract was binding, and a demon who'd entered into one was obligated to act on and live by it until it was fulfilled, at which point they received their payment by soul and replenished the supply of energy they'd until then been draining to sustain the conditions of the contract. This process had worked for even the weakest among hell's legions for eons, there was no reason why it couldn't work for him.

Well... there was. Telique had been banished... and the powers of hell were unavailable to him. Any impossible wish he tried to grant would take enormous amounts of his own energy, and was therefore incredibly risky. However... one thing was different about his deals - he had no interest in souls... only in treasure. Most of the people who might even consider making a contract with a demon in the first place were so delighted to be asked for jewels and gold instead that they readily agreed to Telique's stipulation of being paid in full up front... after which he might grant their request if he was able, but more likely he would simply walk away with renewed riches.

It was while relaxing and enjoying these riches, no thoughts of contracts on his mind, that Telique was approached by a strange, severe woman in a long black dress...

Personality: Both of the races to which Telique can be said to belong are immortals... given that, Telique is, by comparison very young, and he acts it. He is immature - a sore loser and a gloating winner, and quite emotional. Quick to anger, and easy to agitate, if it weren't for the longevity of his automatic distrust for most people and his long history as a trickster and con, he would not be quite easy to manipulate by these means. He is practically incapable of keeping his emotions bottled inside of him, as so many do, but at the same time does not know any good ways to work through them openly, aside from resorting to violence... this may mean punching a wall or breaking a jaw, it all depends. Fortunately, he is as quick to happiness as he is to anger, and easy to keep entertained, able to appreciate many joys from the simple (watching someone he doesn't like fall down the stairs) to the complex (observing an artisan at work). As long as he has something amusing at hand to distract him, he can keep up a good mood. Despite being used to expecting the worst of people and preparing for the same in life, in general Telique has an optimistic outlook... after all, he's made it this far.

Telique's two favorite things in the world are treasure and children. He has a very keen eye for shiny things, has learned how to accurately measure their quality, and derives just as much enjoyment from spending and trading them as he does from collecting them. Unafraid of showing off his riches, Telique has developed an indulgent lifestyle and he can almost always be seen wearing an ample supply of jewelry, most of which are the last pieces he still owns of his family's old hoard. He is also likes and is almost always liked by kids. Because of his own childhood (or lack thereof), he instantly sympathizes with every street rat he meets, and in each consecutive city he moves to, consistently pours the majority of his fortunes into establishing and keeping up a safe-haven for both himself and them - somewhere they can duck guards, sleep at night, and - most importantly - be protected by him. Telique believes very strongly that children are innocents, that it is by the cruelty of others alone that they grow cold and hard-hearted. He would never do deliberate harm to any child... however, the kill or be killed mentality he grew up with is a hard one to shake. His instinct for self-preservation is by far his strongest. In a life or death situation, his own life always comes first. He is not afraid of risk, but would never put himself in unnecessary danger unless there was some considerable reward.

Abilities: Growing up, Telique became quite adept in the use of a self-taught and highly improvisational fighting style. He puts his faith in sheer brutality rather than finesse, seeing no need to waste time fooling with his opponents, preferring to dispatch them quickly with accurate and powerful attacks. He also prides himself on his ability to turn just about anything into a weapon. His skill with conventional weapons has been learned largely through first-hand experience during his many travels, and his fighting style with them is resultantly exotic and unpredictable.

Every demon possesses an inherent proficiency with black magic (wish granting, curses, voodoo, etc.) and Telique is no exception... however this type of magic takes an incredible amount of energy to use. Most demons rely on the power source that is hell itself to cast their spells, but Telique, being banished, is not able to do this. He can still use dark magic, but it drains him considerably, and the most powerful spells are beyond his capabilities to perform without risking his life. From his elven side, Telique also inherited an aptitude for holy magic, however this also wears him out quickly. Demons are weak against holy spells, and using them hurts Telique almost as much as it does whoever he's using them against. As for elemental magic, an overwhelming majority of demons possess control over fire, including Telique's family. His abilities in this respect, however, are extremely limited. He uses the flame of his wings to fly, but that's about it. In terms of offense, he can use his wings to light fire to things, but cannot conjure flame wherever he likes. Overall, Telique is no skilled sorcerer, but can call on what powers he does have if he's in a pinch.

Since Telique is from two noble bloodlines, he did not suffer much loss from the mingling of species. The average demon is stronger than the average human, and Telique is stronger than the average demon. He has elven grace and reflexes to make up for a lack of demonic speed. Unfortunately, any extra toughness or endurance he might have inherited from his demon blood was cut by elven fragility. He may be stubborn and sport a high pain tolerance, but in the end he's just as easy to bring down as any human. He has acute hearing and practically unaltered night-vision, but draws no other demonic advantages in his senses.

Chosen By: Lady Ink

Construct: The Weapon