![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hearsthecube[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: Nox
Age: Actual age is around 230. Apparent age isn't really known since he's a robot mummy thing, but he was probably in his 30s when he acquired the cube and his time powers and started down the road to Xelor mummification.
Gender: Male
Canon: Wakfu
Timeline: Immediately after activating the Eliacube at Mont Zinit (episode 26)
Background:
Nox began his story as the clockmaker Noximilien Coxen, a married man content with his family life but bitter that none of his innovative inventions had become popular, leaving him in debt and often depressed about his inability to provide more for his children. One day on a family outing he discovered the ancient artifact known as the Eliacube in a cave, and thought at first he was scared of it he later changed his mind and brought it home to study. Over the following weeks he became obsessed with the cube, claiming that he could think he heard it speak and that it helped him see the world differently, and he began to develop powers associated with the most capable Xelor (time mages; followers of the god of time. Also the name of the god of time) where before he had lacked any talent for magic. He soon completely ignored his family, snapping at them if they interrupted his work or worried over his behavior, and eventually his wife and children left. At this point Nox almost walked away, accepting their offer to join them if he would leave the cube behind, but in the end his obsession proved stronger and with the thought that his work would only take a little while longer he turned his back on them for the cube. Some months later his moneylender brought the news that his family had died when the island they had moved to had been flooded by Ogrest's Chaos (the ongoing calamity that afflicts the setting). Though at first he thought it was only a lie his magic allowed him to see that it was true, and what was left of his sanity snapped. At first he despaired, blaming the cube, but then the thought occurred to him: ‘when is it too late to change for someone who has mastered time?’ Convinced that the cube had shown him the possibility of traveling to the past to undo his mistakes, he took on the shortened name ‘Nox’ and began to build an army.
The series proper begins when his scout machines detect the immense wakfu (life energy/soul, basically) of a gnarled old man pushing a baby carriage. When set upon by Nox’s minions he quickly defeats them, and Nox himself appears to interrogate – and attack – the mysterious presence. The old man names himself as Grougaloragran, and he easily breaks Nox’s time-stop magic and defeats the Xelor with a huge blast of flame. Though defeated, Nox realizes that his quarry is truly a dragon, and resolves that he will defeat the legendary creature and take its wakfu as the final step in his plan. For his part Grougaloragran completes his mission of finding a suitable parent for the baby Yugo in the retired adventurer Alibert.
Nox spends most of the series as a distant threat, appearing once early on to interrogate and threaten the main character, Yugo, but ultimately deciding that his best chance of finding Grougaloragran is to follow the young hero's own quest to find his family from a distance. His role changes when Yugo finally finds Oma island, Grougaloragran's home, and is told by the old dragon that the Eliacube was an artifact of their own people, the symbiotic culture of the Eliatropes and Dragons, and that Nox could do immense damage if he misuses it. Nox follows Yugo, whose party is forced to flee when Grougaloragran teleports them away, and finally has his chance to take a second shot at defeating the dragon and fulfilling his plans once and for all. Nox is nearly broken in his physical confrontation with the dragon, but on the verge of defeat he falls back on the Eliacube, using it to boost his time-stop magic to unprecedented heights and trap the dragon. However Grougaloragran self-destructs in a huge blast, ensuring his reincarnation, denying Nox most of his wakfu, and badly damaging both Nox and the Great Clock.
After this Nox's demeanor changes; having lost Grougaloragran he sees the Life Tree of the Sadida as his last hope. Whether from the damage he sustained, desperation for his own cause, or knowledge that he will be committing the genocide of an entire people Nox becomes much more unbalanced thereafter. In the final battle he uses most of his forces as bait to lure the superior Sadida-Cra army to its borders while he teleports the Great Clock behind their lines, leaving him a clear path to the Tree of Life with only Yugo and his band of heroes to oppose him. Only Yugo and Adamai reach the final confrontation with Nox, and while they battle the Life Tree is drained, filling the cube. In his desperation Yugo is finally able to touch the cube, and the Great Clock is teleported to the far-off slopes of Mount Zinit. Nox is enraged that Yugo has drawn wakfu from the cube, Yugo for his fallen friends, and two meet in one last clash. Yugo, empowered by the cube, takes the upper hand, but before he can deliver the final blow he's distracted by the cry of the legendary Ogrest atop the mountain and Nox strikes him down. With none left to oppose him Nox commands the Eliacube to take him back in time to see his family again. The flow of time reverses, restoring Yugo and Adamai and undoing Nox’s genocide of the Sadida, as Nox triumphantly declares that only those in the clock would remember, and all his mistakes would be undone. But the reversal of the flow ends too soon, a mere twenty minutes before instead of the centuries Nox required. With the cube drained the great clock collapses, and Nox digs through the rubble for the cube, yelling at it for lying to him. Yugo tells him that he’s insane, that the cube never had sentience, but seeing Nox utterly broken he has a moment of sympathy as he reflects that, having touched the cube itself, he could understand its potential to corrupt. He halts the Sadida army as they close on Nox, and the Xelor teleports away without the cube. The ending credits imply he visited and probably died by the graves of his family.
Personality:
Why is your character a good fit for the setting of Soul Campaign, and what will they do once they are in the game?
Thematically Nox's focus on consuming life energy and madness make him pretty appropriate to the Soul Eater setting. As a character Nox's chief motivation will be to finish his journey back in time; he may cooperate, but only grudgingly and towards that end. However it's also possible that he would grow interested in the nature of weapons and their ability to harvest life energy as a possible means of completing his goal, especially if he discovers Quilby's dormant copy of 'his' Eliacube.
Of course being a flippant insane villain he'll probably make his share of enemies too, and he's certainly the sort to pursue his own goals at the expense of others if he sees the opportunity.
List the abilities your character will still have in Soul Campaign:
Losing all his Xelor magic will leave Nox without much in the way of abilities. He's a decent swordsman with his clock hand in the show and pretty spry for a centuries-old mummy but his martial skills, while impressive enough, were still less than the most capable characters in the setting; his own bodyguard puppets outclass him considerably in this respect. He will remain inordinately tough; Nox was, especially for a squishy mage type, incredibly resilient in the show, and he's going to keep that here - almost immune to pain, doesn't go into shock, etc. He's still perfectly killable but he won't stop fighting until he's dead. He retains his immense skill with building clockworks; he depended on the Eliacube to give his creations perpetual motion and autonomy but he was still capable of creating fantastic designs before he found it, such as a flying clock that followed its owner.
List the weaknesses your character will gain (or lose) in Soul Campaign:
The chief weakness Nox is losing is that he won't depend on stolen wakfu to extend his own life anymore.
[ WEAPON ]
Soul Description:
Obsessed flippant irritable insane proud dedicated. His soul reflects his clockwork theme and is toothed around the edges like a gear. Like his mask, the face is blank, with just two empty, staring eyes. Its color is the blue common to wakfu and Xelor magic.
Weapon Form / Ability:
Nox's weapon form is the clock hand, traditional weapon of the Xelor. It is different from the one he wielded, but the basic idea is the same - it's a blade/wand in the shape of a clock's hand, used to slash at opponents or project blasts of temporal energy. When moved it sometimes gives the impression of proceeding in discrete leaps, like its namesake ticking from marking to marking on a clock face. Since its ranged attacks are generally a secondary feature they will be inferior to normal weapons' ranged attacks, and share the usual limitation of not being useable without a wielder.
His ability is, of course, time manipulation, aka Zeno's Parrydox. At its most basic level, attacks moving in the direction of Nox in his Clock Hand form will slow as they approach, allowing them to be countered more easily, and conversely attempts to parry his own attacks will be very slightly slowed, causing the opponent's timing to be off unless they learn to adjust for the effect. Foes dealt light wounds with the weapon will find themselves moving sluggishly, making them easier targets. However this ability does not function well or at all against more powerful characters (weapons with more souls or witches).
With better resonance more dramatic time manipulations may be attempted, creating a difference in time flow between Nox's meister and the rest of the world which allows them to put on what appear to others as short bursts of extreme speed while they perceive themselves to be moving normally. The closer he is to an opponent and the more spiritually/magically powerful they are the shorter and smaller the time differential is, so it can be used to great effect when repositioning or attacking mooks but when attempting to actually strike a peer opponent the direct combat advantage conferred will not be as great.
[ SAMPLES ]
First-Person
[The view from the communicator pans upward, mostly smooth but with a few jerks and the soft ticking of turning gears, revealing Shibusen's very own clockwork robot mummy man, Nox. Who has apparently built himself some sort of mechanical pedestal for the thing.] Hello, neighbors! [Even if it wasn't thoroughly sarcastic, there is no way that greeting would actually sound friendly in Nox's tinny mask-clad voice. And as it is thoroughly sarcastic... well, let's just say he doesn't exactly scan as actually pleased to be addressing any of you.]
My name is Nox. Were it a pleasure to meet you, I would say so. Instead, I have business to discuss. I am told we are here to steal lives and provide weapons of war, both, hmm, pastimes of mine. But as a connoisseur I find these methods... inefficient. [His wide, glowing eyes narrow.] A waste of my time. We all have other business to attend to. So, be heard. Who of you has an interest in finding... alternate uses for these energies we are supposed to accumulate? And who dares to have their own ideas on the matter?
Do not keep me waiting.
Third-Person
There was no feeling in the world that could compare with this. He and the Eliacube between them held the whole universe in their grasp, and at their command the winds of slowed, stopped, and began to blow again where before they could not - in the direction of that which had been. The Dragon, the Eliatrope, they all had been wrong. The world would survive his work. And he, at long last, would see his family again. Nox would again be Noximilien Coxen, and all the mistakes he had made would be no more than sad memories, a guide for his new life. The Great Clock brightened as its leap to stormy Zinit was undone, and it appeared once again in the Sadida lands-
And then there was darkness. "What-?" There was a moment of confusion, blind apprehension. It lasted only as long as it took him to confirm that cube was no longer before him, or anywhere at all. "NO!" He screamed. "Where are you? Where is this! This isn't what you promised!"
The masked head swung frantically back and forth; in his panic he had not even noticed the absence of his powers until he tried to call on them, attempting to teleport past the great doors to see where he was, where the all-important Eliacube might have vanished to. If his powers were gone, this could only mean... "Xelor! Is this your doing? Your jealousy? I surpassed you! Gougaloragran, the Kingdom of the Sadida, the Eliatrope have all fallen to me! If you interfere don't think I won't topple you too!"
It was an impossibly empty threat, if the god had really robbed him of both the cube and his own magic, but he was too angry and desperate to care. He had worked too long for this. No, this was the only reason he had worked, continued to live, at all. It couldn't simply slip away now, at his moment of triumph...!
Notes
I guess I wouldn't mind some guidance on how realistic any clockworks Nox might build would have to be, since Soul Eater does have vaguely steampunky stuff like Baba Yaga's castle and the mechanized Death City from the anime. Also whether there's any possibility of actually managing to use souls to power machinery per his usual MO, or if that could somehow be made into a weapon ability.
Name: Nox
Age: Actual age is around 230. Apparent age isn't really known since he's a robot mummy thing, but he was probably in his 30s when he acquired the cube and his time powers and started down the road to Xelor mummification.
Gender: Male
Canon: Wakfu
Timeline: Immediately after activating the Eliacube at Mont Zinit (episode 26)
Background:
Nox began his story as the clockmaker Noximilien Coxen, a married man content with his family life but bitter that none of his innovative inventions had become popular, leaving him in debt and often depressed about his inability to provide more for his children. One day on a family outing he discovered the ancient artifact known as the Eliacube in a cave, and thought at first he was scared of it he later changed his mind and brought it home to study. Over the following weeks he became obsessed with the cube, claiming that he could think he heard it speak and that it helped him see the world differently, and he began to develop powers associated with the most capable Xelor (time mages; followers of the god of time. Also the name of the god of time) where before he had lacked any talent for magic. He soon completely ignored his family, snapping at them if they interrupted his work or worried over his behavior, and eventually his wife and children left. At this point Nox almost walked away, accepting their offer to join them if he would leave the cube behind, but in the end his obsession proved stronger and with the thought that his work would only take a little while longer he turned his back on them for the cube. Some months later his moneylender brought the news that his family had died when the island they had moved to had been flooded by Ogrest's Chaos (the ongoing calamity that afflicts the setting). Though at first he thought it was only a lie his magic allowed him to see that it was true, and what was left of his sanity snapped. At first he despaired, blaming the cube, but then the thought occurred to him: ‘when is it too late to change for someone who has mastered time?’ Convinced that the cube had shown him the possibility of traveling to the past to undo his mistakes, he took on the shortened name ‘Nox’ and began to build an army.
The series proper begins when his scout machines detect the immense wakfu (life energy/soul, basically) of a gnarled old man pushing a baby carriage. When set upon by Nox’s minions he quickly defeats them, and Nox himself appears to interrogate – and attack – the mysterious presence. The old man names himself as Grougaloragran, and he easily breaks Nox’s time-stop magic and defeats the Xelor with a huge blast of flame. Though defeated, Nox realizes that his quarry is truly a dragon, and resolves that he will defeat the legendary creature and take its wakfu as the final step in his plan. For his part Grougaloragran completes his mission of finding a suitable parent for the baby Yugo in the retired adventurer Alibert.
Nox spends most of the series as a distant threat, appearing once early on to interrogate and threaten the main character, Yugo, but ultimately deciding that his best chance of finding Grougaloragran is to follow the young hero's own quest to find his family from a distance. His role changes when Yugo finally finds Oma island, Grougaloragran's home, and is told by the old dragon that the Eliacube was an artifact of their own people, the symbiotic culture of the Eliatropes and Dragons, and that Nox could do immense damage if he misuses it. Nox follows Yugo, whose party is forced to flee when Grougaloragran teleports them away, and finally has his chance to take a second shot at defeating the dragon and fulfilling his plans once and for all. Nox is nearly broken in his physical confrontation with the dragon, but on the verge of defeat he falls back on the Eliacube, using it to boost his time-stop magic to unprecedented heights and trap the dragon. However Grougaloragran self-destructs in a huge blast, ensuring his reincarnation, denying Nox most of his wakfu, and badly damaging both Nox and the Great Clock.
After this Nox's demeanor changes; having lost Grougaloragran he sees the Life Tree of the Sadida as his last hope. Whether from the damage he sustained, desperation for his own cause, or knowledge that he will be committing the genocide of an entire people Nox becomes much more unbalanced thereafter. In the final battle he uses most of his forces as bait to lure the superior Sadida-Cra army to its borders while he teleports the Great Clock behind their lines, leaving him a clear path to the Tree of Life with only Yugo and his band of heroes to oppose him. Only Yugo and Adamai reach the final confrontation with Nox, and while they battle the Life Tree is drained, filling the cube. In his desperation Yugo is finally able to touch the cube, and the Great Clock is teleported to the far-off slopes of Mount Zinit. Nox is enraged that Yugo has drawn wakfu from the cube, Yugo for his fallen friends, and two meet in one last clash. Yugo, empowered by the cube, takes the upper hand, but before he can deliver the final blow he's distracted by the cry of the legendary Ogrest atop the mountain and Nox strikes him down. With none left to oppose him Nox commands the Eliacube to take him back in time to see his family again. The flow of time reverses, restoring Yugo and Adamai and undoing Nox’s genocide of the Sadida, as Nox triumphantly declares that only those in the clock would remember, and all his mistakes would be undone. But the reversal of the flow ends too soon, a mere twenty minutes before instead of the centuries Nox required. With the cube drained the great clock collapses, and Nox digs through the rubble for the cube, yelling at it for lying to him. Yugo tells him that he’s insane, that the cube never had sentience, but seeing Nox utterly broken he has a moment of sympathy as he reflects that, having touched the cube itself, he could understand its potential to corrupt. He halts the Sadida army as they close on Nox, and the Xelor teleports away without the cube. The ending credits imply he visited and probably died by the graves of his family.
Personality:
Nox is first and foremost a man obsessed, one who has bent the entirety of his talents, the godlike powers of the Eliacube, and the centuries of life it has given him to the task of reversing the flow of time so that he might live in a world where he did not abandon his family; all his time is spent, as he says, ‘building machines and taking lives’. When the goal appears near he carries a manic energy about him, and when he is frustrated in his intentions he is quick to anger and more random in his violence. The sole entertainment he allows himself is to watch crude mechanized puppet-shows of his old family life so that he does not forget for what he is working; he exists for his given purpose and nothing else.
As Milien the clockmaker he was, though often depressed about his financial situation, a generally goofy, fun-loving man whose answer to distracting his children from their troubles or his wife from her attempts to persuade him of… pretty much anything were to joke around to defuse the situation. Even in his bitterness and when twisted by the Cube he tended towards sarcasm, and this trend continues in Nox, who still carries a somewhat grim sense of humor despite the bleakness of his task and often mocks his opponents or makes flippant asides or melodramatic little speeches. Between this and his penchant for breaking into peals of insane laughter whenever things are going his way he projects a pretty straight fantasy villain image, all insane speeches and omnicidal tendencies with a side of executing (or at least, throwing off of high places) minions who question his decisions or wake him up too loudly. However Grougaloragran, with his ability to see souls, was of the opinion that Nox’s attempts to appear almost childishly evil were deliberate and that his true nature was not so cruel. It might be supposed, then, that he projects such an intentionally villainous image in order to harden his own heart so that he can act as ruthlessly as possible. To Nox, who believes with the certainty of the mad that he can travel back in time, there are no consequences: once he succeeds any atrocity he committed to achieve reach his goal will be undone. Any despair (and he does admit that he feels such a thing to Alibert) or hesitation he might feel about what he does must be quashed, because to fail or give up half way is the greater crime, allowing all his prior acts to go uncorrected. This view of his situation, where the end necessarily justifies any and all means, is what allows him to act against what remains of his morals so easily.
That said, Nox does have quite an ego, frequently referring to others as 'insects' or 'microbes', and is a jealous guardian of the Eliacube who is outraged when Yugo is able to use its powers intuitively where he required long years of study. Milien, likewise, justifies his initial use of the cube in part with his dreams of becoming a renowned clockmaker after years of being ignored despite his innovations. And even in the depths of his madness when he first realizes his family is dead, his declaration of intent includes a personal challenge to Xelor, that he will do what the god of time cannot.
Why is your character a good fit for the setting of Soul Campaign, and what will they do once they are in the game?
Thematically Nox's focus on consuming life energy and madness make him pretty appropriate to the Soul Eater setting. As a character Nox's chief motivation will be to finish his journey back in time; he may cooperate, but only grudgingly and towards that end. However it's also possible that he would grow interested in the nature of weapons and their ability to harvest life energy as a possible means of completing his goal, especially if he discovers Quilby's dormant copy of 'his' Eliacube.
Of course being a flippant insane villain he'll probably make his share of enemies too, and he's certainly the sort to pursue his own goals at the expense of others if he sees the opportunity.
List the abilities your character will still have in Soul Campaign:
Losing all his Xelor magic will leave Nox without much in the way of abilities. He's a decent swordsman with his clock hand in the show and pretty spry for a centuries-old mummy but his martial skills, while impressive enough, were still less than the most capable characters in the setting; his own bodyguard puppets outclass him considerably in this respect. He will remain inordinately tough; Nox was, especially for a squishy mage type, incredibly resilient in the show, and he's going to keep that here - almost immune to pain, doesn't go into shock, etc. He's still perfectly killable but he won't stop fighting until he's dead. He retains his immense skill with building clockworks; he depended on the Eliacube to give his creations perpetual motion and autonomy but he was still capable of creating fantastic designs before he found it, such as a flying clock that followed its owner.
List the weaknesses your character will gain (or lose) in Soul Campaign:
The chief weakness Nox is losing is that he won't depend on stolen wakfu to extend his own life anymore.
[ WEAPON ]
Soul Description:
Obsessed flippant irritable insane proud dedicated. His soul reflects his clockwork theme and is toothed around the edges like a gear. Like his mask, the face is blank, with just two empty, staring eyes. Its color is the blue common to wakfu and Xelor magic.
Weapon Form / Ability:
Nox's weapon form is the clock hand, traditional weapon of the Xelor. It is different from the one he wielded, but the basic idea is the same - it's a blade/wand in the shape of a clock's hand, used to slash at opponents or project blasts of temporal energy. When moved it sometimes gives the impression of proceeding in discrete leaps, like its namesake ticking from marking to marking on a clock face. Since its ranged attacks are generally a secondary feature they will be inferior to normal weapons' ranged attacks, and share the usual limitation of not being useable without a wielder.
His ability is, of course, time manipulation, aka Zeno's Parrydox. At its most basic level, attacks moving in the direction of Nox in his Clock Hand form will slow as they approach, allowing them to be countered more easily, and conversely attempts to parry his own attacks will be very slightly slowed, causing the opponent's timing to be off unless they learn to adjust for the effect. Foes dealt light wounds with the weapon will find themselves moving sluggishly, making them easier targets. However this ability does not function well or at all against more powerful characters (weapons with more souls or witches).
With better resonance more dramatic time manipulations may be attempted, creating a difference in time flow between Nox's meister and the rest of the world which allows them to put on what appear to others as short bursts of extreme speed while they perceive themselves to be moving normally. The closer he is to an opponent and the more spiritually/magically powerful they are the shorter and smaller the time differential is, so it can be used to great effect when repositioning or attacking mooks but when attempting to actually strike a peer opponent the direct combat advantage conferred will not be as great.
[ SAMPLES ]
First-Person
[The view from the communicator pans upward, mostly smooth but with a few jerks and the soft ticking of turning gears, revealing Shibusen's very own clockwork robot mummy man, Nox. Who has apparently built himself some sort of mechanical pedestal for the thing.]
My name is Nox. Were it a pleasure to meet you, I would say so. Instead, I have business to discuss. I am told we are here to steal lives and provide weapons of war, both, hmm, pastimes of mine. But as a connoisseur I find these methods... inefficient. [His wide, glowing eyes narrow.] A waste of my time. We all have other business to attend to. So, be heard. Who of you has an interest in finding... alternate uses for these energies we are supposed to accumulate? And who dares to have their own ideas on the matter?
Do not keep me waiting.
Third-Person
There was no feeling in the world that could compare with this. He and the Eliacube between them held the whole universe in their grasp, and at their command the winds of slowed, stopped, and began to blow again where before they could not - in the direction of that which had been. The Dragon, the Eliatrope, they all had been wrong. The world would survive his work. And he, at long last, would see his family again. Nox would again be Noximilien Coxen, and all the mistakes he had made would be no more than sad memories, a guide for his new life. The Great Clock brightened as its leap to stormy Zinit was undone, and it appeared once again in the Sadida lands-
And then there was darkness. "What-?" There was a moment of confusion, blind apprehension. It lasted only as long as it took him to confirm that cube was no longer before him, or anywhere at all. "NO!" He screamed. "Where are you? Where is this! This isn't what you promised!"
The masked head swung frantically back and forth; in his panic he had not even noticed the absence of his powers until he tried to call on them, attempting to teleport past the great doors to see where he was, where the all-important Eliacube might have vanished to. If his powers were gone, this could only mean... "Xelor! Is this your doing? Your jealousy? I surpassed you! Gougaloragran, the Kingdom of the Sadida, the Eliatrope have all fallen to me! If you interfere don't think I won't topple you too!"
It was an impossibly empty threat, if the god had really robbed him of both the cube and his own magic, but he was too angry and desperate to care. He had worked too long for this. No, this was the only reason he had worked, continued to live, at all. It couldn't simply slip away now, at his moment of triumph...!
Notes
I guess I wouldn't mind some guidance on how realistic any clockworks Nox might build would have to be, since Soul Eater does have vaguely steampunky stuff like Baba Yaga's castle and the mechanized Death City from the anime. Also whether there's any possibility of actually managing to use souls to power machinery per his usual MO, or if that could somehow be made into a weapon ability.
