What have I done

[Teddy]

Corvus, King of Naraka

Description: Like a few, Corvus is typically male. He’s an extremely tall, powerfully built man. His hair is usually an unkempt mess, and he almost never shaves. He dresses in rags, typically a very tattered and shabby suit. Though, there are signs of a much more regal bearing. Yellow eyes glitter in sleepy sockets, like he’s laughing at you behind them. He smiles, showing teeth that are a little too sharp, too perfect to be set in a human mouth.

Despite his size, Corvus walks with an easy grace. He’s usually very calm and thoughtful looking. A few streaks of grey go through his beard and his hair. He’s tired, he’s haggard, and speaks with a fatherly voice most of the time. Though he can quickly dispel this illusion in a split second.

Personality: Corvus, despite many claims to the contrary, seems to be a good person at heart. He’ll stand up for the weak, save children, and all of that other good stuff. However, he does it by his own bizarre code of laws. He’s a stubborn son of a gun, and will only defer if it benefits him in the end. He lies, he cheats, and he curses most of his dreams of his past self, because it’s caused him so much trouble.

He’s a willful jerk, wheedling, charming, and sometimes threatening his way into situations that people probably judge him for. He’s never proclaimed himself to be a saint. Or if he did, he was lying. His bizarre laws extend to the realm which he holds dominion over, where he reigns supreme, unquestioned. And alone.

Abilities: Corvus could be likened to a god at most points, but is limited from his own blind pursuit of power, and ended up throwing away himself. Corvus can only bring his full power to bear when properly motivated, when the concepts he’s risen to embody are directly challenged, or if, on some dark whim, he’s feeling especially vile.
Typically though, Corvus, when not in Naraka, is limited. Though saying Corvus is limited is saying that a hurricane has only dropped one magnitude. He’s a master of many martial arts, with enough physical strength to break most everything. Space, time, planets... His magical art is unrestrained and wild, able to wreak great havoc and change, if the mood strikes him. Luckily, he still has to obey his own strange laws.

Corvus stands for Tyranny, for the almost Anarchic rule of the Strong over the Weak, where he Answers only to Himself, though acknowledging his own faults. He is a Controlled Strength, though it conceals a Deep and Burning Hatred underneath. He stands for Love in all of its forms, extending to his Family, his Lovers, and his Children. For Fatherhood and for protecting the Weak. Hatred for his Peers and Everything More Terrible Than He runs deep in his veins, but not as strong as his Comraderie for those that he considers Friends.

It’s said that he can also control time, and has bent it to serve him as he strives to bend or break all things. But for what end? For what purpose? Because he simply can.
History: Trying to peg Corvus down to history is hard, because of his recent development of time screwing. He’s gone back and changed a few points of history, or was behind making himself what he is. He was the driving force for his past self, according to some sources (Shadow, so if this is even trustworthy…) driving him to higher goals, larger acts of genocide, and the eventual forcing of emotions onto him.

In addition to vast swathes of magical strength, Corvus is an expert martial artist, and even removed from his magic, would be a terror. His physical body is stronger than most physical materials and has been built up to the point where blades can barely pierce his skin. His mastery of martial arts is threefold: He knows the simple, yet effective blows of Heroes. He strikes with the cruelty and power of the Dead. And he has all of the strength and rage of Monsters. He has blended all three into a fighting style that is best called 'violence.'

What is known is: that Corvus is a splinter of an ancient entity that was slowly decaying and losing itself. He inherited much of its raw power as well as its cruelty. He went around terrorizing people, places, and threatened reality with a horde of demons. Shade viciously bested him in single combat, as multiple ‘chains’ were placed in the lack of a soul. Memories that belonged to Shade. Emotions. And with that, Corvus shrugged off his wounds, and looked at everything with a renewed drive and love for reality!

Just kidding. He was still king of the jerks. He solved his little bit of an identity crisis by brutally murdering a few creatures that considered themselves ‘ravens’: An angel, an old warrior, and an ancient guardian spirit. None actually answered his questions about self-worth, even as he devoured their essences and added them to himself.
He took a sabbatical, leaving Shade to relax his grip on his blade. Corvus hunted for meaning to his existence, besides the wreckage he had left behind. The odd feelings for an angel helped nothing, and he contemplated oblivion. But he was too emo to even plunge himself into nonexistence so decided it’d be better if he just went back to MSF and caused trouble, for that was his meaning.

This would’ve worked perfectly if everyone didn’t decide he was adorable and married women didn’t start piling at his doorstep as he contemplated the slow murder of everything around him. Through all of the seducing he started (both of the male and female persuasion, in several forms), he started to become an irresponsible jerk. And this too would have been good for Shade (who started to fade from the stage). He fathered a few awful terrible half-whatever’s and was generally just a nuisance.

Until responsibility foisted itself squarely on his massive and stupid shoulders. It came in the form of a young mute girl who, by all rights, Corvus should have just eaten and added his powers to his own repertoire. It was something he was doing in those days. But he didn’t. He thought she was the most adorable thing in the entire world and decided he would be a father. Of course, this was a slow process of the girl basically adopting him as a parent.
(he would later go on to murder her entire magical race by accident, proving that no matter what he touches, it sours in some way.)

It was a brave new (terrifying) world. With responsibility came things Corvus felt like he would have to defend and hold on to. Like Jemma. Like the blonde angel who had tried to kill him enough that he took her violence as the closest thing to an actual relationship he knew. He (and possibly a meddling future him) pushed Shadow and Shade to the far corners, far from him, leaving them both to their own devices.

He tried to raise ‘pet heroes’ to fight for him against other forces of darkness because he was notoriously lazy, but this too backfired. So he decided to work with Shadow to produce something terrifying and propel both of them into a space where they only dreamed: Into the footsteps of the Titans, who could forge new realities. This Titan Engine took everything that Corvus had. It took him and forged him into a higher being, yes, but he also lost his sense of self, splintering his soul and his mind into thousands of pieces.

But with this, he made a new self. Gaira was sealed into a fallen Titan, where Corvus forged alliances and studied them for his newfound state.
The problem was that while these Titans were fallen, and broken, Corvus/Gaira was not. The dragon was dark and by most rights evil, but he had not been neutered like the others. This rubbed everyone involved the wrong way and in a horrific culmination of events, Gaira broke free of the other Titan’s bonds and promises, and forged himself a new reality from his nightmares and his dreams.

Naraka lies between dreaming and the dead, and here Gaira sits, watching, waiting.

Plotting.

[Teddy]

But seriously!

On the Titan Engine:
Fueled by an unknowable magical formula, both Shadow and Corvus have one of these stuffed inside of them. When active, each engine has a myriad number of uses, some custom for their user, but a few general functions exist between the two of them.

Each Titan engine 'blights' the area around the user, making it much more comfortable for them to exist in their own little 'pocket.' This is also defensive, making it harder for others to agree with the pocket. Corvus' pocket spirals him near to Gaira's level of strength, if he's being antagonized. While Shadow's pocket allows him to suck life and magic from the surrounding area.

Creation. Each Titan Engine has the power to forge a soul world and hierarchies of minions/demons/what have you for it's user. With Corvus, he built Naraka. It's unsure what Shadow has done with his, if anything. While in their soul world, the user can quest, exploring themselves! And possibly dragging people along with them. Quests! Also, mostly terror, since the worlds are also what have driven the users of said engines insane.

Due to the formula that powers these magitech marvels, the user can also draw on them to fuel their own magic and their own abilities. However, this is limited by their own nature. If acting against their nature, the user can pull little, if any power from their engine. Sadly, this makes them less of a thinking, rational being, and much more of a caricature of what they were.

On Naraka:
Naraka lies between the realms of the dead and The Dreaming, ruled by a mad Titan of the Sky. Or so the people who live there believe. Some think they're damned to a place lit only by a blue glow that disappears seemingly at random, to be at the whims of the thirteen constellations, to be fodder for the demons that prowl the streets and at night. Some think they're lucky enough to live in an environment where they're forced to survive.

Naraka is not quite a city. Oh, sure, it has traits of a city. People have made buildings out of adobe or wood. A few have found deposits of a strange dark blue stone that they have started to forge into homes. But there's also the vast swaths of almost fleshy forests of fungus, where the so called 'Orcs' live and pay tribute to the sky and to their Golden King. There are the 'bad lands' where nothing seems to exist besides solid winding roads of darkness, where an unseen monster hunts and lives only to devour.

Time flows oddly in Naraka, at the whim of the first and the thirteenth constellation, Ophichius. Those who die do not, and are seen in a few days time, usually found in the place where they live, bewildered. This adds to some of the native human population thinking they're in some kind of hell. Somedays, time works backwards and people start their day by going to bed and finishing it by waking up. It's become a fact of life for most.

There are even the 'Far Places' around Naraka, places where none have yet explored, and indeed, most are too terrified too. The Golden King offers rewards for exploring. Corvus, the reigning 'Sky Tyrant' remains silent about it. And Gaira stirs under the ground, inside the spire that seems to be the axis mundi for this mad house, and waits for it's soul, it's world, itself to be fully explored.