Name: Tanis
Race: Snake?
Age: Unknown
Height: 6’3
Weight: A bit light for her weight
Appearance:
Physical Attributes:
Strength: Incredible
Agility: Heroic
Durability: Incredible
Other Abilities:
Serpent of Man: While she lacks natural regenerative abilities Tanis can rapidly heal even the most grievous by consuming the flesh of humans or beings closely related to humans. Simply drinking of their fresh blood could seal normally fatal injuries. Actually partaking of their bodies is enough to practically heal her of anything, allow Tanis to regenerate more than half her body faster than she can blink. By devouring their brains she can attain their knowledge, skills, and memories as well. While eating a mage’s brain may not give her magecraft she can certainly acquire the knowledge of all the spells they know and how they function. However the sheer ecstasy and satisfaction from the meal blinds her to potential threats and leaves her incredibly open for several seconds.
Fang and Tail: From her body Tanis can sprout about ten chains with knives at the end. They are slower than her at Fantastic speeds but have similar striking power and durability. She can also yank herself across the battlefield with them as the blades are notoriously difficult to remove if they pierce someone. At that point they are rooted as if they were the jaws of a being with incredible strength.
The blades and chains have poisonous properties that are corrosive to the spirit. Wounds inflicted by the blades and sustained contact with the chains can lower the durability of part of an opponent. For example if one is scratched by the blade on the arm or wrapped in a chain for a moment their durability will not go down immediately. However, the poison will spread over time. A single cut or a chain that is quickly broken will achieve little on its own, but a series of them or a chain that isn’t removed can cause a notable drop on say a limb over the course of a few seconds if she focuses on it. The effects will remain for some time, lasting at least an hour unless a healer whose purview is souls can be acquired.
Tanis can also remotely control her chains and it is common to see them slithering across the ground like serpents in the dozens. If this is done they are weaker and are ranked as Exceptional/Amazing/Amazing. The danger here is less their striking capacity and more the fact that they are all still poisoned.
Inside Out: These bladed chains are smaller than the ones that she uses for combat. They are incredibly fragile and could be broken by a human. However their purpose is to be used on relatively intact corpses. So long as either the brain or heart is in one piece the chains will venture down to the organs in question and wrap around them, jabbing the blade into them. This allows Tanis to use the corpse as a living puppet, and if the brain is the organ left whole it can even reasonably act similar to its host.
While the corpse will eventually rot it takes far longer while infested, upwards of several weeks. Furthermore, the insides of the target begin to transform into metal identical in make to the chains that sprout from Tanis. Over the course of an hour the mass of metal is fashioned into additional chains on the level of her remotely controlled ones. The chains can burst from the body to harm foes, drag it along to speed it up, or remain dormant. So long as the organ being used isn’t destroyed or the body doesn’t suffer catastrophic damage it can keep going. Tanis can control about five of these hosts at once.
Ouroboros: The serpent which devours its own tail is something that Tanis has inherited (or maybe stolen) from humanity. This soul is connected to her, sheltering her own mind and soul from attack, and has taken the form of this massive serpent. As it devours its own tail it grows larger and longer, feeding into itself endlessly. So long as it is in this state Ouroboros cannot be harmed as it is in a state of constant renewal. The only time that it ceases its own devouring is when it senses the souls of humans are left in the air, although it can tell humans and their kin apart from other beings naturally. Its primary function is to swallow these spirits.
The digestive process of the Ouroboros is functionally endless. It consumes the soul which then falls to the very end of the massive serpent. Within it time dilates and a single second could last thousands of years at the lowest and most base coil. As they are digested, they suffer torment and violations unimaginable until they have served their sentence and risen above that coil. Once they do, they are renewed into a whole state with their suffering eased as they have transcended it. As one rises in the coils the dilation effect is also increased exponentially forming an unending chain of greater time and longer torments. However, rising above the serpent and to freedom is impossible. Not only does the serpent have innumerable coils, but it is also growing more as it lengthens and feeds off itself and those within it. By the time one has finished the first coil countless more have already been made.
While Tanis cannot directly harm spiritual enemies Ouroboros is more than capable of sensing and fighting them. It can achieve a partial manifestation so long as she refrains from calling forth even a single chain and ceases controlling and giving commands to those outside her body. When brought forth in such a matter the Ouroboros is a Heroic/Incredible/Legendary spiritual entity the size of a building that has no power over the physical world. It may only harm ghosts, spirits, and other things of that nature. That isn’t to say it has no influence in the physical world. Its presence and overwhelming hate can be felt even by normal humans in this state and provokes unimaginable terror. Utterly frozen in fear, their unsettled minds can result in hyper realistic visions of the serpent and being devoured by it. It is frightening, a nightmare made real, but for those who have fought many battles and confronted their own demons it is not a force they cannot stand against. However, getting eaten by the serpent is almost certainly a death sentence for any spiritual being.
Second Skin:
A single death isn’t enough to deal with Tanis. While her body fails she can choose to revert to a form similar to her origin, just barely taking on the trappings of humanity. Exchanging power for subtlety, all her stats drop two ranks and her chains are lost but she gains several powers. First and foremost her presence completely vanishes. She cannot be sensed by passive soul sight or mind reading, emotional reading and aura sensing moves over her as if she was part of the natural world. In dark areas she becomes indistinguishable from the area around her to avoid detection by sight and she gives off no sound or scent. Even forms of nomenclature based magic and mystical scrying will only view her corpse as the form she has taken on is the ‘primordial basis of Tanis’ and not quite the modern one.
The only exception to this requires that the person endowed with supernatural senses needs to be looking for her specifically. They need the ability to focus and magnify that form of sensory prowess to realize she is still there. The only ability of hers that still functions in this state is Serpent of Man. All others are suppressed into near nonexistence due to her lack of power.
Origin: Once in freezing land a woman took pity on a serpent that had fallen into a deathlike slumber. Bringing it to her chest and providing it warmth, the serpent awoke and bit her. She quickly perished from the venom and the creature crawled into her body and made a home of her. Before the body grew utterly cold the serpent had already become something more and departed.
Tanis is an Elite that has earned little trust among her peers. Her methods are extremely violent, the glimpses that they see of the serpent unsettles them, and she quite frequently remarks on her hate of everyone. However, she has only ever taken up good causes for her work. But no matter how many lives she saves there’s just something off about her.
Weakness: She has no defense against magic and has no defense against attacks which target a large area.
Likes Pocky, chains, snakes.
Dislikesmans, humans, humans.
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