Shane Marksmith

Individual

Character's full name: Shane Marksmith
Alias: Shade
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown
Place of origin: New York

Appearance

Hair color and style: Hairless
Eyes: White, sometimes a very pale grey
Height: Varies, average 6’
Build: Varies, generally slightly overweight
Visible mutation: Extremely dark skin, almost black, inconsistent form
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Black markings around eyes
Miscellaneous clothing: Rough/beaten up coat and hat. Ripped jeans, boots falling apart (looks pretty homeless)

Character

Personality:
With a short temper and significant trust issues, Shane is far from a model citizen. Living away from humanity has done serious damage to his personality, resulting in him acting as a wounded animal would in most situations: scared and defensive.
However, Shane doesn’t have an evil soul. Remorse is an emotion that he is constantly dealing with, regretting every act of violence he has ever made (to various degrees). He wants to do better, but half of the time, he ends up feeling like he can’t control his own actions. He often has a hard time getting a grip on reality.
That being said, he has found himself addicted to the taste of blood, and although he has only just recently killed a human for the first time, he wasn’t as horrified by the outcome as he had anticipated he would be.

Special talents: Stealth, Hunting, Wilderness survival.

Morality

Neutral, leaning towards evil:
Shane isn’t all that familiar with the way society functions. Spending years alone, away from people, he hasn’t had much experience with them. He sits firmly in the middle of wanting to be accepted as one of them and despising them for the way they treated him when the mutation first took off.
He does have the capacity to begin to drift into the negatives though, and is not above killing for his own preservation, he’s hunted most of his life to survive; relocating to New York won’t remove that part of him very quickly.

Mutations

Mutation Cole’s Notes:
Shane’s body acts like a giant ball of clay*; he is able to mold his body into any shape he wants. When he changes shape, he needs to move the mass from one part of his body to another. He can increase his total mass by eating, and he loses mass by fighting. The bigger he is, the less control he has of his power and his mind.

*Just felt I should point out that he is not actually made of clay. Clay just seemed like a good analogy for the power.

Mutation Extended Description (super long, sorry):
This is a simple concept that might be hard to grasp right away. Shane’s body functions like a giant ball of clay. He’s able to “mold” it in almost any way he wants by moving the mass of his body around and forming the shapes that best fit his needs. (Example: If Shane wanted to make his hand grow or stretch out, he needs to take that extra mass from somewhere else on his body, like his other hand, or a leg for example. He’s basically moving the mass from one part to another.)
Using his powers drains him however; in the sense that he burns through this moldable flesh the way someone burns through fat when they exercise. His metabolism requires him to constantly be eating (often other living things) in order to use his power, which is always. Shane doesn’t have a specific form, so simply appearing in a human physique requires a passive use of his power. Battles burn through his skin faster then anything else.
As he burns through his flesh, he physically shrinks in mass. If left without food, he would eventually just wither away. The opposite it true as well, in that he can gorge himself in order to gain mass. This gorging also allows for a moderate degree of healing momentarily while his body is growing and changing, (sitting around a 3 on the healing speed chart). In both cases, deviating away from his natural size has psychological effects on him, as mentioned above.
In that sense, he kind of acts like a balloon with a leak in it. You can blow it up as big as you want, but it will keep shrinking regardless, and it becomes less stable if it gets too big, or too small.

Limits:
The larger Shane becomes, the more difficult it is for him to control his power. In addition to the lowered mental stability, it is physically exhausting for him to maintain his size (the equivalent of hanging very heavy weights all over your body). In the reverse situation, if Shane goes a while without eating, he will shrink, which will enable him more control over his power, but he will have far less of it to work with.
His size is also relevant to speed that he uses up his power. The larger he gets, the less time he can expect to stay that size. In his normal state, he can physically exert himself for 20 minutes before collapsing. If he was twice as large, it would take him half as long to get to that same point (10 minutes). It doesn’t work in reverse here though. If he’s already weakened he can’t run a marathon for 40 minutes, he’s just weak.
Finally, for clarity, I define physical exertion as anything that would make you sweat. Heat has the same effect on him as actually using his power. If he’s in a sauna, his shrinking rate is twice as high.

Strengths:
He has the ability to become a huge beast for a limited amount of time. Can manipulate his body almost anyway he wants. His flesh grows back as long as he eats again.

Weaknesses:
Requires food very regularly to stay sane/alive. Cannot last long in a fight. He does have most of a basic human anatomy under all this moving flesh, which is vulnerable (Brain, skull, heart, spine, lungs, mutated digestive system, etc…). Not the strongest mental stability. Heat speeds the entire “shrinking” process along. Wounds stay the same size, regardless of his size. Therefore, as he shrinks, his wounds become more critical.


Fighting Style

Explanation: N/A Shane doesn’t know how to fight. He is skilled in being stealthy and tracking prey, but has little experience in direct combat.
Pros for fighting style: He’s good at sneaking up on you and making you crap your pants when he does.
Cons for fighting style: He’s not very disciplined after that point.

Faction Allegiance
Unaffiliated


History Of Your Character:
Shane doesn’t remember much of his past. He had a fairly normal childhood with a loving family. His relationship with his father was especially strong. In his early teens he began to develop what at the time was assumed to be some kind of bizarre skin condition, but later revealed itself to be his mutation. Beginning with the colour of his skin darkening and the loss of his hair, his skin slowly began to become more elastic and less solid.
Sleeping often, and eating whenever he was awake for several weeks, it wasn’t until almost a month after the disease had first manifested itself that Shane was able to control his skin independently of the rest of his body. Showing no signs of going back to normal, Shane ran away from home.
It’s around this age that his memories begin to get hazy. Mainly just a mixture of images and sounds jumbled up together. Whatever the events that took place though, the final result was him being driven from civilization where he came to rest in a distant forest, miles north of New York. Spending years alone in the wilderness, he became as master hunter, climbing to the top of the food chain, as well as inspire a few urban legends in the surrounding area.
Recently, however, Shane has longed to connect with humanity again. Living as an animal was only making him into the beast that the people he encountered had feared, and he did not want to be that person any longer, or so he believes…


Roleplay
Where did you learn about this site?: Google
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: N/A
Sample RP:

The wind was whistling quite loud that night. The strong breeze was sending newspapers rocking into the air, only to get caught in the trees. But following such a humid day, the heavy breeze felt good. It had been a hot day, one for the record books. You could tell that a storm was coming, but for now the cool breeze made this evening ideal in the park.

Perched above them all, Shane laid motionless along an outstretched tree branch, his slim build blending into the dark shadows of the night. It had been days since he’d eaten a real meal, and he’d been slowly wearing away. Plant life may be in abundance in this park, but it just doesn’t bring the same level of fulfillment that the hunt does.

Below him, he can hear the familiar sound of paws tapping on the asphalt path. Lowering his head down to the lowest branches on the tree, he can see a large, Black Labrador eagerly walking up the path. His owner, a young girl, probably in her early 20s, nonchalantly follows behind him. Leash in hand, it’s drawn out to its maximum length.

Shane quietly slithers down the opposite side of the tree, coming to a stop in a large, leafy bush at the base of the trunk. Extending a small tentacle-like arm along the cool grass, he positions the tip of it facing directly it up into the air where he begins to move it in a worm-like fashion. Less then 50 meters away, he waits like a patient fisherman. His eyes constantly moving back and forth from his target to his bait.

As the pair approach, the dog spots the bait. Curiously wandering towards it, he pauses for a moment at the loud chime of a cell phone going off.

“Hello?” The girl answers in an exhausted voice. The dog immediately loses interest in her and focuses back on the mysterious object in front of him – only to discover it has moved to the edge of a bush. With a tilt of his head, his curiosity gets the better of him, and he pokes his nose into the bush to determine the source.

“”I’m just out walking the dog,” the girl says between yawns. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to pass out when I get home.” Feeling the line reach it’s end, the girl starts pulling on the leash. “Marco, let’s go!” she yells. No response.

Yanking on the leash one more time, the elastic comes flying back at her, wrapping up inside it’s handle with no collar or dog a the other end. Rushing over the tree he’d been sniffing around, the girl franticly starts calling out his name.

“Marco!”

A few drops of rain started to fall with a low rumble of thunder in the distance. Draped on a tree branch high above her laid a dog’s collar with the name Marco printed on it. Both the dog and Shane nowhere to be found.