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a_wicked_pissahPlayer Name/ Personal Journal: Nick
Email: Willing to disclose via PM
AIM: Willing to disclose via PM
Other Contact: n/a
Character Name: Philip Cade
Character Journal: http://a-wicked-pissah.dreamwidth.org/
Physical Description: Phil appears to be in his mid to late 20s. He is generally unkempt, sometimes forgetting to shower unless Monkey reminds him. His hair is a mess, he has constant five-o-clock shadow, his clothes are wrinkled, and he constantly looks like he needs more sleep. However, since meeting Caitlin, he's tried to clean up a bit...but decades of habit are hard to break. He is about 5'7, thin but not scrawny, and tends to also constantly look like he needs a sandwich.
Age: 66
DOB: May 8, 1948
PB: Andrew Bird
Character Location/Home: Boston, MA
Alignment: Hero
Relatives: His wife is Caitlin Hunt, Sorceress Supreme of Limbo. All other relatives are deceased, but he is in intermittent contact with the ghost of his nine year old niece, Allison Cade.
Abilities:
Magic
Psychic Vampire: Phil is a high powered psychic vampire. If someone is within sight, he can sap life energy from that person to improve his own health, maintain his youth, and if enough energy is absorbed he can be supernaturally strong, fast, and resilient for a while. This ability can be used to kill someone by fully draining him or her.
It's not as glamorous as it sounds, however. This ability goes beyond conscious use and into instinctual. Phil is at the end of what he would consider his natural lifespan, but he cannot die. He has tried to kill himself, but the psychic vampirism kicks in and draws energy from any living thing within range of him and slowly brings him back to life. He views the psychic vampirism as a curse and he loathes his immortality.
Also, it has its side effects. If he drains too much from any one person, he temporarily takes on aspects of that person's personality, which really messes with his own identity. If he draws too much from a large group, then it is like having a mob in his head, which makes him even more wonky for a while.
Blood Magic: Through much experimentation and reading, he has learned to use his very blood (or the blood of another) as a magical tool. Below are a sample of the uses of this kind of magic.
1. He can ignite blood into what he calls "Bloodfire", which essentially acts as a kind of magical napalm fueled by his or a victim's own blood. He can also fling what amounts to a Bloodfire Fireball that can deal splash fire damage. This ability can quickly cost him dearly in blood. It is useful for quick damage, but not sustained combat. Even if there are others around to draw life essence from, there is a limit to how much he can regenerate in a short period of time. Psychic vampirism leads to regeneration, but it is NOT immediate regeneration in and of itself - he cannot materialize more blood in his system immediately.
2. He can form blood into a solid weapon that has a slight acidic effect upon contact in addition to dealing normal weapon damage. The more blood, the bigger the weapon - but the weaker he is for having lost the blood.
3. Blood can be used to heal even grievous wounds. In this instance, he is sacrificing some of his own life force to heal another - an act that he obviously cannot do for himself since it would require spilling his own blood to heal himself, a counterproductive act if ever there was one.
4. The most evil act of blood magic, even if it can be quite useful, is to use an opponent's blood to control that person's body, making them into a kind of unwilling puppet. This requires a lot of concentration, however. Also, the movement is stilted and unnatural - hardly any good for any but the most basic actions.
The weakness of blood magic is that it always requires the sacrifice of life essence. It is an appropriate power for Phil because he can always get more life essence elsewhere via his psychic vampirism - but as stated above he does not regenerate like a regenerator. Blood magic is good for short bursts of power, but its use is more often an act of desperation followed by fleeing.
Another critical factor to note when dealing with Blood Magic is that to use it on someone else, he needs to be in direct physical contact with that person's blood. He can't just snap and make it happen. So, for example, if a person is bleeding from a cut, he can touch the blood and ignite it, sending a fire trail into that person's body following the blood. He can NOT just look at a person and make that person spontaneously combust.
Magic Experimentation: While not a power per se, Phil does spend a lot of time experimenting with magic. At first it was to find a method of locating his niece, but as time went on it became a kind of obsessive hobby. He is familiar with many different schools of magic, even if he is not proficient in them. One that he is particularly good at, however, is Runic magic. His talent and skill for using pre-existing runes and creating others of his own is by this point prolific. After all, runes are much more easily practiced than blood magic -- and can serve far more uses.
Monkey: At one point during his magic experimentation, Phil was attempting to figure out how to be a shapechanger - a were-something. He experimented on multiple animals, but with one something went wrong (or right) and he was never able to duplicate it again. Through the use of psychic vampirism and experimentation with a monkey's blood, he somehow instilled some of his own human essence into the monkey. Because of this, the monkey became bonded to Phil, attained quasi-human intelligence, and could understand and be understood by Phil and Phil alone. Also, for reasons unknown to Phil, Monkey (Yes, that was what he named it, because he is just that creative) acquired the ability to fly (or levitate). Phil suspects that this was the influence of a spell on the next page of the book he was working with - a levitation spell. Either way, from that day forward he was stuck with something of a flying monkey familiar that took a liking to little suits, handguns, and annoying Phil as much as monkily possible. (But Phil is easily annoyed by a Monkey nagging him or just chattering at him incessently). He will never admit it, but Monkey provides good companionship and is a good friend.
It should be noted, however, that Monkey's life essence is connected to Phil's. What hurts one will to a lesser degree hurt the other, and the death of one would completely traumatize the other for an unknown (as it has not been tested since Phil doesn't really die) amount of time. Needless to say, Monkey doesn't really like Phil's suicide attempts.
Weaknesses and Flaws:
Despite great magical talent, Phil is still human. He can be beaten up, mutilated, and killed just as any other human can - he just is highly likely to come back unless locked away from any life essence.
Also, he can be quite an ornery human at times. His life sucks and he is what amounts to a cranky old man about it. Despite this, he has a definite weak spot for children, especially young girls. The gentleman and the man that always wanted to be a father in him can grow very attached to girls to the point where he becomes almost overprotective of them. He is less likely to become as attached to young boys, for as a product of his times he expects them to be tough and emotionally distant. Needless to say, his fondness for children can be used against him.
As already noted, Phil can be self-destructive and moderately suicidal at his lowest points. This has resulted in alcoholism at points, and he is an unrepentant chain smoker. Neither of these vices will ever result in death for him, but he has never claimed to be rational. Also, the smoking may result as much from the era in which he was born and raised as any self-destructive psychology.
Personality: Despite appearing to be in his mid to late twenties, Phil is a gruff, grumbly old man who has known much heartache. The weight of his experience weighs heavily on him even before the weight of his current position as Sorcerer Supreme. He is friendly and loyal if he knows you, but only to a point. At times, if annoyed, he can come across as abrasive, but generally he is just kind of exasperated with the world.
Backstory:
Philip Cade was born in 1947. He was born a normal human being, and he lived a normal human life. While his older brother, Jake, went into the military and off to Vietnam, Phil graduated high school and got a job as an Insurance Agent. He had a secret crush on Jake's wife, his sister-in-law Caroline Cade, but he never expressed it for obvious reasons. Instead, he was a constant figure in Jake and Caroline's life, and the lives of their children. While Jake was away, he filled in with the fatherly duties, playing with the children and watching them when Caroline needed him to. They lived the 1960s American Dream.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck. Jake was killed in the Vietnam War. Phil, Caroline, and the kids were all devastated. They mourned the passing of Jake for a long time. Phil continued to fill in as a father figure, and he and Caroline grew closer. A bit of a romance blossomed between them, which as one might imagine filled both with guilt even a year after the fact. Even so, life appeared to be looking up for the Cades until tragedy struck again; Caroline's youngest daughter, Allison, was kidnapped. Months passed, and as it became clear that she would not be found, Caroline began to slowly lose her mind.
Phil devoted his life to finding Allison. Her older boys were at the point where they could take care of themselves and their mom, and a psychologist was coming three times a week to see her. Phil moved out and resorted to unorthodox methods of finding his niece. Where the police and the FBI had failed, he thought that perhaps the occult could succeed. It was a long shot, but he spent a lot of time and money in dusty old bookshops with forbidden books. At least, they were forbidden to him as the Cades were a very Catholic family. He didn't care at this point, though. Despite being quite devout himself, he put Allison's welfare first.
His occult pursuits awoke a latent psychic vampirism ability in him, and in his obsession he practiced it, honing his skill in the ability until he was what some might call an expert in it. This ability offered him the strength and the vitality he needed to continue his search. He also taught himself blood magic, hoping that it would allow him to track Allison down by the very blood that flowed within her veins.
Years passed, and he did not find Allison. His other two nephews grew old enough to go to college and move away from home, and Caroline's condition worsened until she was admitted to an asylum. Still, Phil's quest did not let up. Years became decades, and those he loved grew older where he did not. Eventually even he knew his quest to be a fool's errand, and one that had destroyed his life and left him with an empty, immortal existence. He took up odd informant jobs, eventually landing in the employ of organized crime. More than life energy came with psychic vampirism - by stealing the life of others, he also managed to steal some of their knowledge, and some of that knowledge had a price tag to the right people. Over time, he amassed a considerable amount of money that he invested well until he could live off of the interest it accrued alone. Phil never lived well, but then he never wanted to.
One day, Caroline died. She had only lived 59 years, but as her mind deteriorated, so did her body. Phil, heartbroken, tried to commit suicide -- three times. Each time, he came back. His life was over, but he could not end it. Caroline was dead and Allison would never be returned to either of them. He did the only thing he could - he lived on.
Yet more decades passed, and Phil led the life of a recluse, forgoing most meaningful social contact. He took on various private investigator jobs, often those with a decidedly supernatural bent. That became part of his reputation - if you had a problem or a mystery that conventional methods couldn't solve, maybe Phillip Cade could help. Except, there was no "maybe" about it. His success rate was nearly perfect. These cases, combined with his own mystical research, added to his library and experience of the arcane. Despite largely avoiding people, Phil's reputation began to precede him, and dark forces learned to fear the mention of his name. Phil was a force to be reckoned with, and one with a "good" heart, and as such he eventually came to be noticed by the Vishanti. They designed a series of "tests" for him in the form of investigations into the arcane, but he was unaware of their being behind the investigations until, when he completed the final one by exorcising the Spirit of Vengeance from an errant Ghost Rider gone evil, they bestowed the title of Sorcerer Supreme upon him, along with the Eye of Agamotto and the Cloak of Levitation (which, of note, appears as a basic tan trenchcoat on Phil).
The title, and the responsibilities that came with it, were not anything Phil wanted, and yet the Vishanti had chosen well. Despite not willingly accepting the job, Phil did begin to perform it to the best of his abilities because he knew how important it was. He was the gatekeeper of this dimension, and the only one that could hold multiple realities' worth of dark forces and demons at bay. Also, the power was a whole new thing to experiment with and, given that his obsession was all things arcane, he could not resist studying it even as he used it.
Currently, Phil is married to Caitlin Hunt, the current Sorceress Supreme of Limbo (and an OC played by a friend of mine who may join the game at some point, but will remain an NPC until that time). His title as Sorcerer Supreme has brought him out into the world more, and forced him to cross paths with other beings of power such her. She has been nothing but good for him, further distancing him from the early life that had haunted him for so very long. Together with the ghost of his long-dead niece (that he eventually found with his newfound power as Sorcerer Supreme) and Monkey, they make quite the unconventional "family".
Sample Post: Here.
Email: Willing to disclose via PM
AIM: Willing to disclose via PM
Other Contact: n/a
Character Name: Philip Cade
Character Journal: http://a-wicked-pissah.dreamwidth.org/
Physical Description: Phil appears to be in his mid to late 20s. He is generally unkempt, sometimes forgetting to shower unless Monkey reminds him. His hair is a mess, he has constant five-o-clock shadow, his clothes are wrinkled, and he constantly looks like he needs more sleep. However, since meeting Caitlin, he's tried to clean up a bit...but decades of habit are hard to break. He is about 5'7, thin but not scrawny, and tends to also constantly look like he needs a sandwich.
Age: 66
DOB: May 8, 1948
PB: Andrew Bird
Character Location/Home: Boston, MA
Alignment: Hero
Relatives: His wife is Caitlin Hunt, Sorceress Supreme of Limbo. All other relatives are deceased, but he is in intermittent contact with the ghost of his nine year old niece, Allison Cade.
Abilities:
Magic
Psychic Vampire: Phil is a high powered psychic vampire. If someone is within sight, he can sap life energy from that person to improve his own health, maintain his youth, and if enough energy is absorbed he can be supernaturally strong, fast, and resilient for a while. This ability can be used to kill someone by fully draining him or her.
It's not as glamorous as it sounds, however. This ability goes beyond conscious use and into instinctual. Phil is at the end of what he would consider his natural lifespan, but he cannot die. He has tried to kill himself, but the psychic vampirism kicks in and draws energy from any living thing within range of him and slowly brings him back to life. He views the psychic vampirism as a curse and he loathes his immortality.
Also, it has its side effects. If he drains too much from any one person, he temporarily takes on aspects of that person's personality, which really messes with his own identity. If he draws too much from a large group, then it is like having a mob in his head, which makes him even more wonky for a while.
Blood Magic: Through much experimentation and reading, he has learned to use his very blood (or the blood of another) as a magical tool. Below are a sample of the uses of this kind of magic.
1. He can ignite blood into what he calls "Bloodfire", which essentially acts as a kind of magical napalm fueled by his or a victim's own blood. He can also fling what amounts to a Bloodfire Fireball that can deal splash fire damage. This ability can quickly cost him dearly in blood. It is useful for quick damage, but not sustained combat. Even if there are others around to draw life essence from, there is a limit to how much he can regenerate in a short period of time. Psychic vampirism leads to regeneration, but it is NOT immediate regeneration in and of itself - he cannot materialize more blood in his system immediately.
2. He can form blood into a solid weapon that has a slight acidic effect upon contact in addition to dealing normal weapon damage. The more blood, the bigger the weapon - but the weaker he is for having lost the blood.
3. Blood can be used to heal even grievous wounds. In this instance, he is sacrificing some of his own life force to heal another - an act that he obviously cannot do for himself since it would require spilling his own blood to heal himself, a counterproductive act if ever there was one.
4. The most evil act of blood magic, even if it can be quite useful, is to use an opponent's blood to control that person's body, making them into a kind of unwilling puppet. This requires a lot of concentration, however. Also, the movement is stilted and unnatural - hardly any good for any but the most basic actions.
The weakness of blood magic is that it always requires the sacrifice of life essence. It is an appropriate power for Phil because he can always get more life essence elsewhere via his psychic vampirism - but as stated above he does not regenerate like a regenerator. Blood magic is good for short bursts of power, but its use is more often an act of desperation followed by fleeing.
Another critical factor to note when dealing with Blood Magic is that to use it on someone else, he needs to be in direct physical contact with that person's blood. He can't just snap and make it happen. So, for example, if a person is bleeding from a cut, he can touch the blood and ignite it, sending a fire trail into that person's body following the blood. He can NOT just look at a person and make that person spontaneously combust.
Magic Experimentation: While not a power per se, Phil does spend a lot of time experimenting with magic. At first it was to find a method of locating his niece, but as time went on it became a kind of obsessive hobby. He is familiar with many different schools of magic, even if he is not proficient in them. One that he is particularly good at, however, is Runic magic. His talent and skill for using pre-existing runes and creating others of his own is by this point prolific. After all, runes are much more easily practiced than blood magic -- and can serve far more uses.
Monkey: At one point during his magic experimentation, Phil was attempting to figure out how to be a shapechanger - a were-something. He experimented on multiple animals, but with one something went wrong (or right) and he was never able to duplicate it again. Through the use of psychic vampirism and experimentation with a monkey's blood, he somehow instilled some of his own human essence into the monkey. Because of this, the monkey became bonded to Phil, attained quasi-human intelligence, and could understand and be understood by Phil and Phil alone. Also, for reasons unknown to Phil, Monkey (Yes, that was what he named it, because he is just that creative) acquired the ability to fly (or levitate). Phil suspects that this was the influence of a spell on the next page of the book he was working with - a levitation spell. Either way, from that day forward he was stuck with something of a flying monkey familiar that took a liking to little suits, handguns, and annoying Phil as much as monkily possible. (But Phil is easily annoyed by a Monkey nagging him or just chattering at him incessently). He will never admit it, but Monkey provides good companionship and is a good friend.
It should be noted, however, that Monkey's life essence is connected to Phil's. What hurts one will to a lesser degree hurt the other, and the death of one would completely traumatize the other for an unknown (as it has not been tested since Phil doesn't really die) amount of time. Needless to say, Monkey doesn't really like Phil's suicide attempts.
Weaknesses and Flaws:
Despite great magical talent, Phil is still human. He can be beaten up, mutilated, and killed just as any other human can - he just is highly likely to come back unless locked away from any life essence.
Also, he can be quite an ornery human at times. His life sucks and he is what amounts to a cranky old man about it. Despite this, he has a definite weak spot for children, especially young girls. The gentleman and the man that always wanted to be a father in him can grow very attached to girls to the point where he becomes almost overprotective of them. He is less likely to become as attached to young boys, for as a product of his times he expects them to be tough and emotionally distant. Needless to say, his fondness for children can be used against him.
As already noted, Phil can be self-destructive and moderately suicidal at his lowest points. This has resulted in alcoholism at points, and he is an unrepentant chain smoker. Neither of these vices will ever result in death for him, but he has never claimed to be rational. Also, the smoking may result as much from the era in which he was born and raised as any self-destructive psychology.
Personality: Despite appearing to be in his mid to late twenties, Phil is a gruff, grumbly old man who has known much heartache. The weight of his experience weighs heavily on him even before the weight of his current position as Sorcerer Supreme. He is friendly and loyal if he knows you, but only to a point. At times, if annoyed, he can come across as abrasive, but generally he is just kind of exasperated with the world.
Backstory:
Philip Cade was born in 1947. He was born a normal human being, and he lived a normal human life. While his older brother, Jake, went into the military and off to Vietnam, Phil graduated high school and got a job as an Insurance Agent. He had a secret crush on Jake's wife, his sister-in-law Caroline Cade, but he never expressed it for obvious reasons. Instead, he was a constant figure in Jake and Caroline's life, and the lives of their children. While Jake was away, he filled in with the fatherly duties, playing with the children and watching them when Caroline needed him to. They lived the 1960s American Dream.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck. Jake was killed in the Vietnam War. Phil, Caroline, and the kids were all devastated. They mourned the passing of Jake for a long time. Phil continued to fill in as a father figure, and he and Caroline grew closer. A bit of a romance blossomed between them, which as one might imagine filled both with guilt even a year after the fact. Even so, life appeared to be looking up for the Cades until tragedy struck again; Caroline's youngest daughter, Allison, was kidnapped. Months passed, and as it became clear that she would not be found, Caroline began to slowly lose her mind.
Phil devoted his life to finding Allison. Her older boys were at the point where they could take care of themselves and their mom, and a psychologist was coming three times a week to see her. Phil moved out and resorted to unorthodox methods of finding his niece. Where the police and the FBI had failed, he thought that perhaps the occult could succeed. It was a long shot, but he spent a lot of time and money in dusty old bookshops with forbidden books. At least, they were forbidden to him as the Cades were a very Catholic family. He didn't care at this point, though. Despite being quite devout himself, he put Allison's welfare first.
His occult pursuits awoke a latent psychic vampirism ability in him, and in his obsession he practiced it, honing his skill in the ability until he was what some might call an expert in it. This ability offered him the strength and the vitality he needed to continue his search. He also taught himself blood magic, hoping that it would allow him to track Allison down by the very blood that flowed within her veins.
Years passed, and he did not find Allison. His other two nephews grew old enough to go to college and move away from home, and Caroline's condition worsened until she was admitted to an asylum. Still, Phil's quest did not let up. Years became decades, and those he loved grew older where he did not. Eventually even he knew his quest to be a fool's errand, and one that had destroyed his life and left him with an empty, immortal existence. He took up odd informant jobs, eventually landing in the employ of organized crime. More than life energy came with psychic vampirism - by stealing the life of others, he also managed to steal some of their knowledge, and some of that knowledge had a price tag to the right people. Over time, he amassed a considerable amount of money that he invested well until he could live off of the interest it accrued alone. Phil never lived well, but then he never wanted to.
One day, Caroline died. She had only lived 59 years, but as her mind deteriorated, so did her body. Phil, heartbroken, tried to commit suicide -- three times. Each time, he came back. His life was over, but he could not end it. Caroline was dead and Allison would never be returned to either of them. He did the only thing he could - he lived on.
Yet more decades passed, and Phil led the life of a recluse, forgoing most meaningful social contact. He took on various private investigator jobs, often those with a decidedly supernatural bent. That became part of his reputation - if you had a problem or a mystery that conventional methods couldn't solve, maybe Phillip Cade could help. Except, there was no "maybe" about it. His success rate was nearly perfect. These cases, combined with his own mystical research, added to his library and experience of the arcane. Despite largely avoiding people, Phil's reputation began to precede him, and dark forces learned to fear the mention of his name. Phil was a force to be reckoned with, and one with a "good" heart, and as such he eventually came to be noticed by the Vishanti. They designed a series of "tests" for him in the form of investigations into the arcane, but he was unaware of their being behind the investigations until, when he completed the final one by exorcising the Spirit of Vengeance from an errant Ghost Rider gone evil, they bestowed the title of Sorcerer Supreme upon him, along with the Eye of Agamotto and the Cloak of Levitation (which, of note, appears as a basic tan trenchcoat on Phil).
The title, and the responsibilities that came with it, were not anything Phil wanted, and yet the Vishanti had chosen well. Despite not willingly accepting the job, Phil did begin to perform it to the best of his abilities because he knew how important it was. He was the gatekeeper of this dimension, and the only one that could hold multiple realities' worth of dark forces and demons at bay. Also, the power was a whole new thing to experiment with and, given that his obsession was all things arcane, he could not resist studying it even as he used it.
Currently, Phil is married to Caitlin Hunt, the current Sorceress Supreme of Limbo (and an OC played by a friend of mine who may join the game at some point, but will remain an NPC until that time). His title as Sorcerer Supreme has brought him out into the world more, and forced him to cross paths with other beings of power such her. She has been nothing but good for him, further distancing him from the early life that had haunted him for so very long. Together with the ghost of his long-dead niece (that he eventually found with his newfound power as Sorcerer Supreme) and Monkey, they make quite the unconventional "family".
Sample Post: Here.
