Nero Sejanus

CHARACTER

Name: Nero Sejanus

Age: 21

Gender: Male

Symbol:

Spoiler:

Occupation: 2nd Year Beacon Student

Appearance:  6 foot 3 inches, platinum blond high and tight buzz cut.  Scar on left cheek bone ridge that runs down to jawline.  Very muscular, approx. 230 lbs, various persistent scars and prison tattoos on body.  Has a Star of Chaos tattoo on left shoulder.  Symbol is tattooed onto right pectoral.

History:

 Nero was a well-known fighter before his time at Beacon Academy.  However, unlike other students who came as celebrated fighters to Beacon, Nero was known for his skill in pit fighting.

 Nero lived the overwhelming majority of his life in one of the prisons of Vytal.  His crime: being born.  Nero knew neither his mother nor father.  His mother was on death row and was granted a stay of execution while carrying Nero.  After he was born, she was promptly executed.  She never told anyone the identity of her child's father.  Technically, Nero was never a criminal, having been born a ward of the state.  However, the region his prison was in still struggled against frequent Grimm incursions, unlike the Kingdom of Vale.  This naturally made it an easier location for the White Fang to set up shop, as distracted against the Grimm as the local government was.  Freeing a ward was the least of the administrator's concerns

 Being a child in a prison is not quite the same as being an inmate in the prison.  On one hand, most prisoners, as vile as they were, had personal codes of honor that prevented them from harassing a child without prior provocation.  On the other hand, growing up watching how the prisoners treated each other left Nero cynical, slow to trust, and rather amoral.  The jail warden taught Nero how to read and write and did his best to provide books to develop the child's mind.  However, Nero's claim to notoriety would be his skill in the fighting pits.  

 Prisoners often challenged one another in the fighting pits over issues of perceived honor.  Other times, prisoners fought simply because it provided an excellent vent to their frustration from years of imprisonment.  Over time, the fighting pits became sanctioned by the prison attendants, as it provided a good, if risky, source of income for anyone who was willing to place bets on fights.  To keep fighters fighting, officials promised prison comforts, reduced workloads, and sometimes even freedom, though hardly even the best fighters were ever victorious enough for freedom.  At a rather early age, Nero descended into the pits and became a regular fighter as a way of adding meaning to his otherwise purposeless life.

 Stories of the prison child born a fighter found its ways past the prison walls and attracted the attention of a Beacon professor on sabbatical.  Traveling to the prison, she watched several of Nero's fights and noticed both the fighting potential he had as a hunter and the relative innocence he maintained as someone who has known no other life.  The professor introduced herself to Nero and offered him the chance to see life beyond its prison walls.  He took it, and the professor made arrangements for his freedom.

Personality:  Nero is a rough person.  He is cynical, slow to trust, and highly confrontational.  In fact, early in his years at Beacon, Nero frequently got in fights with other students, both in and out of the practice arena.  Nonetheless, Nero realizes the value of a trusted friend, in both having one and being one, and he works to be a team player.  Still, Nero's years in the prison have left with a cruel streak that can be seen when dealing with those that are of no value to him.  Part of this stems from an Nietzschean outlook on the world where, as in prison, might makes right. Morality values are merely parts of the legacy of the victor and as such lacked any real basis without power.  As a product of the prisons, Nero has a hardened, tough mind with a firm grip on the here and now.  At the same time, he is very concerned with questions such as the meaning of life and his own personal calling.  Due to the circumstances of his childhood, these questions were never posed, as he had assumed his life to both begin and end behind bars.  Even after coming to Beacon, he realizes that this new purpose was given to him, thus making it entirely contingent, and not necessarily his to take for himself.  

Strength:  Nero is at his physical peak and is very strong and highly reflexive, but the attribute that kept him winning in the fighting pits is his amazing endurance.  He loves to get up close and habitually fights to break his opponents, while humiliating them, if possible.  In fighting, this tends to mean joint targeting, grappling, and bone breaking, especially considering his skill in unarmed combat.  Out of necessity in the prisons, Nero is not adverse to cheap shots, or even killing, which has made Beacon's professors reluctant to assign him to missions were the prospect of fighting non-Grimm is likely.

Weakness:  Having been raised to fight physically, Nero possesses a strong, but underdeveloped aura.  Using aura is far from second nature to him.  Furthermore, Nero's fighting history and style lends itself greatly to close combat, but leaves him very vulnerable at range, as evidenced by his choice of weapons.  As a team member, Nero is not the easiest person to get along with, despite his efforts to be a reliable member.  It'll take some time for team members to get over his solitary, but aggressive nature.

Semblance:  Truesight - Nero, being unfamiliar with aura use, has seen his semblance develop from his innate combat intuition, reactions, and agility.  Truesight functions like a series of subtle visions that predict the actions of others, while fighting, and suggests the best course of preventative or retaliatory action for him to take, which his body seems to carry out almost autonomously.  Though called truesight, it is not purely based on his vision, and instead incorporates all of his senses to create an accurate reading of combat circumstances.  Think of it as having an effect akin to Fuhrer King Bradly/Wrath's Ultimate Eye.

WEAPON

Name:  Imperialist

Primary Form: large dust-powered chain-drill lance

Secondary Form: Double-Sided Trident and chain cable - the Imperialist can be separated into the constituent parts of the core shaft (the trident) and the powered drilling body (the chain cables).  The chain cable is a large-gauge teethed cable intertwined with a central power cable.  Imperialist's dust engine, being always attached to the cables, can accept various dust types to give the chain cable varying effects.  Commonly-used effects include turning the cables into a thick electrocuting whip or turning it into a chain mine, in which nodes along the length of the cable become outlets for shaped explosive blasts.  The trident can be attached to the cables and engine and fired as a harpoon, providing for a devastating, if highly inefficient ranged alternative.

History:

The Imperialist was a weapon that Nero built from the ground up with assistance from several of Beacon's professors.  Its method of use earned comments from those professors, calling it inventive, but crude and barbaric, which suited Nero just fine.  It felt right in his hands, and as he was the user, that was all that mattered.

Everything looks okay to me, save for a small concern. Due to his past I can assume that the character is a ripped, bulky type. Which implies a larger build, but at 6'3" and 202lbs he is very light, which sounds like more of a gymnast's build.

One thing a lot of people don't realize is that muscle is much denser than fat, so someone with a lower body fat percentage actually weighs more than someone of similar height and build and a higher fat percentage.

But regardless, +1

Hmm Ok then.  I think i'll up him about 10 pounds to 215.  I was using the measurements of my cousin who benches 315.  Also, I was figuring that at 21, he wouldn't really be consistent putting on all the body weight quite yet, even if he is lifting heavier.  I'm 21 and my weight fluctuates almost 10 pounds every day.  Of course, I'm a lot shorter than 6'3'', and my metabolism hasn't really seem to tapered out, yet, so maybe that's different.

Thanks for the input

Looks good. +2

I made 2 small changes:

I changed Nero to a second year student, age stayed the same. It shouldn't really matter that he's old because he's a jailbird and it wouldn't seem out of place.

second change. I made the second form of his weapon a double-sided trident rather than a standard trident, because that's cooler.