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Individual
Character's full name: Bennu "Benny" Dosta
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Kerkes, Garuda, the Vermillion Bird... Most commonly, "Phoenix"
Gender: Male
Age: Appears to be around 26; actually around 5.0 x 104 years old. Yep.
Date of Birth(s): The Winter Solstice, on a rather regular basis.
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Africa
Nationality: Currently American
Ethnicity/ Cultural Heritage: African
Appearance
Hair color and style: Bennu has red feathers for hair. Immediately after a rebirth, these are downy and soft and rather pinkish; within a few weeks, a secondary layer of darker, stiffer feathers grows over the fluff.
Skin Tone: Deep brown/black
Eye Color: Gold
Height: 5'9"
Build: Thin and angular, like a bird
Visible mutation: Golden eyes, red feathers for hair, high skin temperature.
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Has two thick black lines tattooed around his left forearm. A scar near his heart looks suspiciously like someone didn't like him much. Didn't like him much, with claws the size of kitchen knives.
Other features: His skin temperature is usually in the range of 150–190°F; about the temperature inside of a good Finnish sauna. This is hot enough to feel noticeably hot to the touch, but not enough to burn a normal person. He's a pro at melting ice cubes with his hands, though.
Everyday clothing style: Soon after a rebirth: as warm of clothing as he can find. A few months in: ...as warm of clothing as he can find. Bennu is a freeze baby.
Uniform: None.
Sleepwear: Blankets. Lots of blankets. Under the blankets: probably clothing. Feel free to snuggle in and check.
Miscellaneous clothing: Tends to wear a skull cap. 1) Because it's cold. 2) Because feathers.
Character
Personality: Bennu is a generally affable fellow, primarily because he has terrible trouble remembering the people he's met. He could fight to the death with someone one day, and a week later, ask them for directions on the street on the best of terms; not because he likes them now, but because he doesn't remember hating them. He always errors on the side of valiant and loyal deeds if someone involved seems vaguely familiar. For example, if someone being mugged looks like maaaaybe someone he should remember being friends with, he'll rush to their assistance. On the flip side, if one of the muggers looks familiar, he might trip the mugee as they try to run, and hand the purse over himself with a friendly Hallo. For most of his life he—and those around him—considered him to be the deity who guarded their tribe. As such, he's rather protective of those he considers his, though he has always preferred to leave moral judgments up to his current tribe leader. A god needn't micromanage, after all.
Hobbies/ Interests: History and mythology. Specifically, his own. He's developed a somewhat convoluted and unreliable system of having past friends mail him his past research, if they can figure out where he's currently living. It's not uncommon for him to get letters from himself showing up randomly, with Russian stories of the firebird, or newspaper clippings about that time a pyromaniac went on a serial killing spree in Connecticut. This is helpful, given his utter lack of organizational skills, and general transient tendencies.
Job or part time job and description: Former tribal god; current vagabond.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: Gets a thrill of fear when asked to read something quickly, and chill fingers down his spine when doing math with numbers over one hundred; is known as an extremely generous tipper, because it's easier to figure out how many bills will more than cover a meal than it is to count how many would actually cover it. Russians: keep them away, or he will hurt them. Snakes are in a similar boat, because they're delicious little back-stabbers. Would really prefer not to try drowning. Or suffocation, for that matter.
Special talents: He can speak most ancient/archaic language forms, mostly centered around Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, including some that no longer exist. Of modern languages, he speaks English and Russian. F***ing. Russian. He can generally read the languages he speaks, as well, though that skill is far more dodgy; he generally has to sound words out to himself. He has other skills as well, mostly ones that seem quite unnecessary in the modern world—for example, he can cobble his own shoes, tan leather, or make a simple bow and stone-tipped arrows from scratch.
Morality
Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Extremely good. He is selfless, considerate, and honorable to a fault; he will face any threat against his friends and family without hesitation, even at the risk of his own life.
...Wait, murder? How was that murder? Murder is what happens when you kill someone in your family, not some random jerk who was—
Seriously? What do you mean, hide the body? All right, whatever; funeral pyre it is.
F***ing 21st century morality.
Mutations
Mutation description: Phoenix. In good keeping with his legends, Bennu is a minor fire elemental, and is reborn from his own ashes whenever death looms. In his bird form, he resembles a peacock with an eagle's head and beak; his plumage is fire red with gold highlights. He comes to a little over knee high when standing.
Strengths:
In both phoenix and human form, Bennu can create flames centered on his person, which can extend up to ten feet beyond his own body. These flames are hot enough to easily scorch flesh with a touch, or melt most metals with a few minutes of exposure; they burn up to 1500°C. Bennu is immune to heat and fire at his own normal temperatures, and his core temperatures run anywhere from three to four times average for a human, with skin temperature in the range of 150–190°F (hot, but still touchable for extended periods).
Once a year, close to the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, his internal temperature spikes beyond his control, triggering the rebirth in flames for which he is famous. The rebirth process heals any injuries from the past year, unless of usually potent origins. Mortal injuries trigger this same runaway heating and rebirth effect, minus the year of resting which his body and mind use to prepare for it.
Weaknesses and Limitations:
He can only manipulate his own fires, and only within a ten foot range directly connected to his own body; flames of about an inch to two feet in size are his most comfortable, with ten foot flames being doable only in short bursts. Like any flames, they need oxygen to stay alive, and water will dampen or extinguish them. His flames regulate his body temperature at the high levels normal for him, and he uses quick burns of them throughout the day to stay warm: in an Adapted's field he would rapidly cool to normal human temperatures, and be at a very real risk of developing hypothermia.
After a rebirth, he can't fly in his bird form for approximately three to four weeks, as he needs to wait for his flight feathers to grow back in. In the meantime, he's very, ah... fluffy. Even under the best of circumstances, with a body type most closely resembling a peacock, he's not exactly an aerial ace—he can fly for short distances only, and can't get much more than thirty feet off the ground. He cannot speak in bird form, though he does have a lovely cooing voice.
If his rebirth is triggered outside of its natural yearly cycle, he's left extremely weak and disoriented in the aftermath—this generally manifests as amnesia and a loss of control over his abilities. It can take him a few normal rebirths to recover his full abilities and memories.
On the subject of memories: his mutation made him immortal, but did not account for the effects of immortality on the human mind. In the same way that an adult finds years feeling shorter and shorter as they age, and new skills and technologies harder and harder to pick up, Bennu experiences... on the scale of millennia. He's virtually given up trying to remember the people he meets, unless they're also immortal; a person with a normal lifespan is to him what a random bystander met at a cocktail party is to the rest of us. New technologies, like using a spear thrower, riding a horse, or poking at an electronic screen to make it do things in the internet ether, are something he can only acquire over the course of several lifetimes at this point. That wasn't so bad back when technologies only turned over every few centuries, but everything since the Industrial Revolution has been one short, confusing blur for him. He tries remembering people by connecting them with past acquaintances that he actually remembers; with technology, he pretty much throws up his hands. How does a GPS work? Because a sorcerer trapped a voice in a box, that's how; now shut up.
Physical Abilities
General Physical Capabilities: Bennu's physical capabilities are average for a fit young man. But he has the option of being on fire when he does them.
Fighting Style: Is an excellent hand with a spear or non-compound bow, and knows his way around basic sword play and fisticuff fighting.
Fighting Style Pros/Cons: Nothing fancy. Nothing refined. Nothing invented in recent memory.
History Of Your Character
Bennu... does not remember much. He's pretty sure that he's not just a phoenix, but the phoenix; at least, he's never found traces of any firebird older than him. It wasn't until modern times, with the rise of paleoanthropology, that he was able to narrow down his date of birth: as far as he can tell, he was born early in the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, approximately 50,000 years ago.
His memories are scattershot; the human mind simply wasn't made to keep track of so much history, and his gave up long ago. Only a few vivid scenes remain. He remembers looking down at rippling water, and seeing green leaves reflected behind a young face with startling gold eyes that he didn't at first recognize as his own. He remembers having hair in that memory, but he can never remember what color it was. He remembers being twenty-six for the first time, and being challenged by a man who spun in a slow circle before their tribe and proclaimed He is no god; he remembers that that the fight killed both of them, but one of them walked away. He remembers millennia protecting his tribe, long after the faces of friends and relatives were replaced by strangers who only looked like people he used to know. Things got very cold for a long time, then warm again; the other humans, the tall ones and the muscled ones, became less and less until all he ever saw in their travels were the thin makers of weapons and art that would be known as Homo sapiens.
He remembers meeting other gods; fighting by their sides. He remembers when humans stopped wanting their gods to walk so closely in their midst. Being chased from a town where walls were made of stone. Being called a demon, a witch, a devil. Being burned at the stake—only funny in retrospect, believe him. Buying a gray page boy hat to cover his feathers, turning up his collar, and boarding a boat to see if this New World was something better.
He remembers the day when he realized "mutant" was not the English word for "god."
Bennu is a product of much simplier times: he would really, really like to just have a family to protect again, and a few other gods to believe in.
Roleplay
Where did you learn about this site?: Google <3
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: Calley, Slate, Rupert, and Maxine
Sample RP:
Bennu was fairly certain it was a joke.
"This ain't a joke, man," the kid said.
No. No, he was still pretty sure it was. "Did he put you up to this?"
The kid's eyes flickered to the side; just a flash, but enough to answer the question. He shifted his weight from foot to foot; started to pull up his sagging pants a little higher, than thought better of it, and kept both hands on the gun.
"Let me guess," Bennu said; "initiation, right?"
He knew it. It was that kind of area; broken glass in the gutters, weedy cracks in the sidewalks, and too many men hanging out in groups on street corners. He knew he'd recognized one of them—the one with the red bandana. He wasn't the tallest or the strongest looking of the group, but he was clearly the leader. Bennu knew the type, and he knew that man. He'd almost said hi as he'd gone past, but he hadn't been sure. The man had nodded as he'd gone by; and with that nod, this cute little punk had detached himself from the group's apron strings, and started tailing him. Definitely a joke.
"I don't know what you're talking about," the kid said, but he was sounding about as sure of himself as a wet cat.
"Uh-huh." That, Bennu believed. "So what, you were supposed to take my wallet?" He fished that piece of leather from his back pocket, opened it up, and turned it upside down. " 'Cause he knows I don't carry anything. I am purely a charity case. Take it if you want, though."
The kid eyed the outstretched offering, then shoved his gun somewhere back into the folds where his hoodie met his jeans. Bennu made his wallet disappear in much the same fashion.
"So what, you some kind of friend of his?"
"Oh, yeah. We go way back. I can't even remember when we met." Truer words. "Com'on, let's go say hi."
The scowl the leader reserved for his returning pup was truly impressive; almost as good as the one he sent Bennu. The kid shoved his hands in his hoodie pouch, and tried to look just as unimpressed as the man at his side as they both sauntered over.
"Ha ha, Jerome," the kid said. "Real funny. So who's your friend?"
The leader's answer was immediate, and unfortunate. "I ain't never seen this ****** in my life."
...It could still be a joke. Bennu tilted his head left, then right; a quick one-eyed peering gesture that would have been more at home on a bird than it was on a human figure. "Really? You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
A slow, golden eyed blink. "Oh."
Well, then.
That was the wrong answer.
"What the hell's up with your eyes, man? You some kind of mutant freak?"
Maybe they should have noticed that sooner. It wouldn't have really made a difference, though; Bennu was quite comfortable with what he was. He was less comfortable with strangers trying to rob him on the street. Really, what was the world coming to.
He let the kid live; he'd always been a benevolent god.
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