Post by Heron on Jul 29, 2018 0:13:06 GMT
Name: Arieh Harel | War
Race: Spirit Shard | Horseman of the Apocalypse
Age: 30? | Infinite
Sex: M | M
Appearance: As Arieh, the Horseman of War stands at roughly five feet and ten inches, not terribly tall but not short enough to be remarkable either. His frame is slender, wire and tone rather than bulwark and bulk, but his actual musculature is easy to miss unless he walks around shirtless -- which is a rare occurrence enough to render his whipcord gristle doubly startling when he does. His ink-black hair almost glows blue in direct lighting, contrasting nicely against his warm Israeli complexion and falling to his shoulders. Unusually for a person of his skin color, his eyes all but glow a sharp star sapphire. Arieh has a somewhat regal face, long, high in the cheekbone, straight nose. Lips that were made to form expressions and do so at every opportunity, never failing to betray his mood with a curl, a smirk, a downward turn, a snarl, a grin, a grimace, a nervous bite. He favors sensible jewelry and practical fashion, dresses for the expected weather, and generally tends to try to balance form against function as closely as possible to prevent either from becoming too distracting.
Arieh can always at least be found wearing a small silver Star of David on a matching necklace chain and favors hiking boots for whatever situation he's in.
For the moment, War isn't much different from his randomly-issued stock personality in appearance beyond the obvious accoutrements. War wears armor. War wields weapons. War rides a flaming horse. Arieh can sometimes be found atop Vesper's back, but War can never be found without her. The infamous quartet is actually an octet, after all. Can't have a Horseman without a horse.
Things may change, however, if the Ride of the Horsemen is ever officially called, which will, under ordinary circumstances, dissolve Arieh as if he never existed, memories and all, and release War from within the cage, an unstoppable juggernaut of conflict, slaughter, destruction. Armor impervious to harm, weapons aflame, nameless, faceless, soulless, remorseless, and ultimately eternal -- but the part that is Arieh desperately hopes this day never comes.
Personality: One probably expects a certain arrogance from something as potent, ancient, and volatile as the Horseman of War. And the primordial, eternal thing that is War can be construed as arrogant, perhaps. War is confident in the way of a machine, not built or programmed to understand fear, failure, submission. War is also decisive, deliberate. War acts.
Arieh dreams. He ponders over even insignificant decisions if he has the luxury of time. He fears death. He frets over small things and allows himself the full range of sapient emotion. He loves. Moreover, Arieh hesitates in situations when the automaton of War really shouldn't. Arieh clings to life and the idea of living, of existing, in ways unbefitting any warrior, least of all the paragon of all warriors, but there is something about knowing that his existence is smoke and mirrors, a costume, a storage closet to hide War in until War is needed again that makes Arieh fiercely, tenaciously determined to survive. A soul shard should let go easily when its purpose has been completed, but Arieh has a ferocious will to continue singularly out of place to his intended purpose.
He is also much softer than most anticipate when they have an inkling of what Arieh really is, under the surface. Temperance, compassion, patience, kindness, wisdom, these are not things that belong to War. Arieh enjoys the companionship of children and elders, smiles when young maidens bedeck him in spring flowers, rescues lost animals from the street, shelters beggars from rain and hunger. He learned what he learned about being human from his years in Israel. His memories may not be real, but he holds them precious all the same. From his mother -- from the mother he remembers, though she was never his own -- and from the people of Israel, he learned about the enduring spirit and the ability of the soul to withstand constant strife and attack and maintain its purity of purpose and capacity for love, the ability to never forget how to be merciful, even to one's enemies. The Star of David he wears around his neck is not a symbol of faith in God, for Arieh, but a symbol of his faith in people. His faith in the strength and the compassion of the community.
History: Arieh himself doesn't have much of a history to speak of. His memories of family and childhood are largely borrowed, likely belonging to a real person somewhere else in the world upon his creation. A fictional existence for a fictional man whose only purpose in life is to be a storage closet for the Horseman of War while War is not needed. Every Horseman is assigned a Spirit Shard between Rides, just a randomly generated name and personality to abide by before the next Ride is called.
His point of origin this time is Israel, is often Israel, because Israel is a node of conflict. A small country surrounded by enemies and under constant attack, Israel is one of the most consistent respawning points (if you want to call it that) of War. Arieh shouldn't really know this, as every Spirit Shard that has come before him has been totally obliterated, but as with computers, memory files can only be deleted and overwritten so many times before shadows and static start to accumulate underneath the current data. Arieh knows enough to know he's part of something ancient, and he knows enough to know he doesn't want to die. He also has partial access to War's knowledge, though he finds that part of his mind abhorrent and uncomfortable to make use of. He prefers his memories of olive groves and goats and the mother who was never actually his own mother, who never in reality raised him to be a good person but whose gentle voice persists in his ear today, guiding him toward the path of the protector rather than the destroyer.
Arieh marks his age at thirty because he has thirty years of memories as Arieh Harel, though he'll be the first to admit that because his memories are fictional in the first place, he has no idea how old he actually is in this incarnation. He could be fifty. He could be two. Time means nothing in this context.
Behind and inside the softer, exterior mask of Arieh lies War, Horseman of the Apocalypse, as named in the biblical Book of Revelation. War is older than that, though, as old as life, as old as conflict itself.
The Horsemen began as Famine, War, Pestilence, and Plague, originally, long before humanity ever tried to describe them. Famine, the sense of emptiness and need and desire for more, be that sustenance or ambition or lust or connection or material objects. War, conflict, strife, the many myriad inducements man has to strike man down. Pestilence, conquest, the invasion, heralded by armies of soldiers and swarms of locusts and rats and fleas . Finally, Plague, illness from within, the Horseman who brought with her disease and crippling infirmity, contagion, sickness virulent enough to wipe out entire continents.
Ironically, however, in the days of the Biblical age, humanity tried to put names to their greatest fears to encapsulate the sheer horror of it all...and somehow managed to de-fang the Apocalypse just a smidge. In the penning of the Bible, specifically Revelation, Plague was rolled into Pestilence, and in her place now rides Death -- or Deaths proxy, as Death himself is quite busy. Death was always the end result, of course, but was never supposed to be a Horseman. The new composition of the quartet hampers their effectiveness and their lethality, though for the people for whom the Apocalypse comes when they Ride, that probably isnt very comforting.
Although humanity has largely thought of the Ride of the Horsemen as a global, all-encompassing thing, the Apocalypse as the end of all Creation (and oft the beginning of something new in the ashes of the old), the reality is far simpler and perhaps far scarier to consider. The Ride -- always called by one of the sacred artifacts, such as the Horn of Gabriel or the Trumpet of Pandemonium -- happens far more often and far less universally than that. Someone's world is always ending somewhere. When Christopher Columbus brought the Spaniards to North America's shores and decimated the Native Americans, the Horsemen rode. When the Aztec were crushed by the Conquistadors, the Horsemen rode. When Egypt fell to Rome, the Horsemen rode. During the Crusades, the Horsemen rode. World Wars One and Two were both probably the largest examples in (comparatively) recent human history of the Apocalypse, though their longest Ride to date probably spanned from the Reformations to the American Revolution. Always, always, four riders, four horses, and a swathe of devastation to mark the cataclysmic destruction of someone's world.
Lest it be forgotten in the vastness of what Arieh represents in being the Horseman of War, no Horseman can exist...without a horse. The biblical quartet is actually, technically, an octet, as Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War could not BE without Ahlmalaya, Elegy, Bhedimey, and Vesper, respectively.
Vesper is the steed of War, and of the four mares she is the most calculating and the most dangerous to engage on a battlefield. She has a temper, too, but that is a slower-burning thing. She fights smarter as well as harder, a warrior's spirit with a tactician's mind. She is a large-boned mare, shades of cooled-lava black in her pelt and orange-kissed crimson flames for her mane, tail, and fetlocks, sporting spiked armor across her rump and chest. Her eyes are fiery bloody crimson, and more intelligent than any base animal's, leaving no doubt that this horse is fully sapient and probably smarter than the average person. Meaner, when provoked, but unlike the Firemanes of Teragaia that her appearance calls to mind, she never strikes the first blow unless the Ride has been called, and by that point, it is business, not malice, that drives her attack.
Powers and Abilities, Arieh
Soul Sight -- As a fragment of an artificially-created soul, Arieh often gets flashes and insights into other souls if he stares at them too long. He learns too much about people, too many secret private details he would feel far more comfortable not knowing. Pain, triumph, shame, guilt, pride, joy, despair, hope...things best left to their owners and unseen. Above all what Arieh sees is the inner truth of people, although in all honesty he would really rather not.
Limited Immortality -- For all that Arieh is a temporary thing scheduled to die and be forgotten when War next emerges, he can't really die before that. He is here until the Ride is called. His injuries heal quickly enough, though not especially fast compared to beings with accelerated regeneration, and mortal wounds simply do not do him in, though they may cripple him until they heal.
Recognition -- Even with War dormant within, Arieh can still recognize the resonance of things forged with War's essence. These things call to him in ways he's not entirely comfortable with, threatening to awaken War to at least subconscious awareness. Weapons and constructs are the most common things, but there are others. The other things that call to him are the artifacts that can, if used, call the Ride of the Horsemen and begin an Apocalypse, though unlike the tools of War, these artifacts are not merely unsettling to Arieh; they're bloody terrifying.
In Desperate Times -- War is mostly dormant while Arieh exists, but if Arieh is too far pressed, in too much danger, he can tap into the smallest bit of War's power. A thinner, less powerful version of War's armor, a flaming sword, War's knowledge of how to use both. It really isn't much, but it's more than Arieh normally has access to.
Powers and Abilities, War
True Immortality -- The Horseman of War is not something that can be hobbled easily, he cannot truly be wounded, and he cannot be killed. As long as the idea of war exists, as long as there is conflict in the Cosmos, War lives.
Juggernaut -- Impenetrable armor, unbreakable weapons, and a tireless horse make War not the kind of opponent anyone wants to meet in combat. His lack of empathy also makes him not anyone's ally either. War is never on anyone's side in any given conflict, merely the herald of conflict and its inducement.
Agent of Strife -- No matter how peaceable people like to think they are at heart, being too close to War at full power will bring out the violence in anyone and everyone, even the gentlest souls. War radiates an aura of paranoia, aggression, hostility, every feeling in the spectrum that makes sapient creatures strike each other down, usually without thinking too deeply about it.
Flaming Weapon of Whimsy -- War, being War, is the master of all things that sapient life has ever used to commit violence. His longsword usually manifests as a longsword, although he can easily and in an instant transform it into any weapon he pleases, and it will still be on fire.
