[FunkyMonkey]

Name: Auric Herz

Age: 32, born Saraal 8

Symbol: the Rising Sun vertically bisected by a spear with blade facing down

Occupation: Inactive Hunter, Political Activist and Journalist

Appearance:  6’3”, 200 lbs.; Toned and muscular on a medium-sized frame; dark brown/black eyes framed behind rimless, rectangular glasses; loose, chin-length black hair; long, straight nose; prominent cheekbones, eyebrow ridges, and chin; strong jawline covered in a moderate stubble; weathered-looking eyes; scars running from left temple to below left cheek and down left side of lip; eyes bear a look of intense conviction and confidence in his political beliefs that evokes more pure, somewhat-naive faith than it does intolerant self-righteousness

Generally, Auric wears a long-sleeve shirt and a vest or cardigan with dark blue slim-cut jeans, along with an afghan scarf and desert boots.  He also often wears aviator sunglasses.

History:
Auric is originally from Mistral, in particular from a small village in its western regions, and attended Sanctum primary school before moving up to Mistral’s hunter academy, Haven Academy.  There he performed well, though not particularly well so as to warrant any notable distinction.  After graduation, he became a hunter serving his home kingdom.
   For a number of years, Auric served Mistral as a hunter well.  Like the many other hunters, he frequently took missions, actively sought to curtail Grimm expansion, and defended the kingdom’s populated areas from Grimm incursion.  The adventurous life of the hunter suited Auric well, as he came to appreciate the high degree of personal freedom he had, where his only responsibilities where those to the people he swore to protect.  In this manner, Auric lived the life of a real, down-to-earth hero of the people, and though he drifted from village to village in order to meet the Grimm threat wherever it appeared, he integrated himself well at every village.
After several years as a hunter, disaster struck when an abnormally large Grimm congregation attacked the Mistralian village that he had assigned himself to.  Cooperating with a number of other hunters that also protected the several villages in the region, Auric prepared to stop the threat at any cost, for the sake of the people.  Auric, in particular, was given the task of defending the region’s orphanage and local convent, as was another hunter, with whom a romantic relationship was budding.  However, while the hunters fought valiantly, the number of Grimm was simply too great for them to handle.  Wave after wave of Grimm came, and eventually, Auric was knocked unconscious by a particularly large and vicious Death Stalker, severely injuring him and giving him the noticeable scars that ran down his face.  His partner rushed in to save him, and while she succeeded, it was at the cost of her own life.  By the time Auric awoke, the convent and orphanage was in ruins, and the bodies of orphans, sisters, and his fellow hunter lay among the rubble.  The village, as a whole, had been saved, thanks to the sacrifice of several other hunters.  Still the sight was too much for Auric to bear.  The villagers and surviving hunters found him he cradled the body of his beloved partner while at the same time surveying the death of the innocent children that came as a result of his failure.  The survivors tried to console him, stating that the attack was large beyond prediction and that he had done his best in attempting to minimize the death and destruction in his assigned area of the village.  Unfortunately, their words did little to ease his pain, as all he could think of was that his best was not enough and that he had failed both his beloved and the people under his charge.
After that particular Grimm incident, Auric spent several months continuing to drift from village to village, though he lacked the enthusiasm and enjoyment of life that he felt before the attack.  For him, it felt as if the world had simply lost his color.  Eventually, the villages contact lost with Auric, and the other hunters were forced to conclude that he was dead.
Almost a two years later, Auric turned up in Vale, having sought to leave Mistral and the shame of his failures that he associated with the kingdom.  Once in Vale, Auric still drifted around, as beyond being a hunter, he really did not have a direction in life.  To survive, he did odd jobs in the city of Vale, scraping up a very meager lifestyle, though due of his continuing depression, he lacked the will to really settle himself down and find a decent job.
One night, after coming back from a late odd job, Auric saw a two children being attacked by a members of a street gang.  As it turned out, the two ragged-looking children were faunus, and they had stolen a small amount of bread from a local bakery that the street gang had extorted protection money from.  However, it did not take much to see that the punishment sought to be doled out by the gangsters was far in excess of the crime.  With the gangsters yelling racial slurs, it appeared as if they were going to beat the children to death.  The sight tugged at the Auric’s old self-imposed duty to protect the defenseless, and he was galvanized to intervene.  Though he did not have his weapon with him, his hunter training still allowed him to be more than a match for the street thugs, and he defeated them, beating them down for preying on the impoverished and oppressed.  Having saved the children, Auric escorted the faunus children back to their home, which was an orphanage built specifically to deal with faunus children.  The sight of the orphanage particularly echoed with Auric’s past.  There, he spoke with the manager of the orphanage, during the which the orphanage simply was stretched thin by the number of faunus children that were coming in and the lack of funding the state was giving them, especially compared to what other non-faunus orphanages were receiving.  From the manager, Auric learned of the racial discrimination that faunus faced in the big city and that while it was often hidden, perhaps even suppressed, well in the more affluent districts, in the poorer, run-down districts, the discrimination was very much alive and well.  The manager’s only conclusion as to why the disparity in treatment existed was that the more affluent people, the people who could really make a difference in the kingdom, lacked real understanding of the faunus rights problem and were, either intentionally or unintentionally, simply ignorant of it.  However, the manager explained that she continued to have hope and that the hope was embodied in a young, educated faunus man whose mastery of oratory and incorruptible ethics led the drive in the local civil rights movement.  The more the faunus woman spoke of this man, the more it was obvious really just how much faith she was putting into him, and this faith intrigued Auric.
In the months that followed, Auric’s developed a growing interest in the Faunus Rights movement.  He had come to meet the charismatic faunus who held the hope of so many of his people in his hands, and after hours upon hours of discussion, Auric came to respect this faunus and see the virtue behind his cause.  Remembering what the faunus orphanage manager said to him before about the ignorance of the well-to-do Valish people, Auric resolved to do his part in bringing the charismatic faunus leader’s message to as many people as he could.  With this, he became a journalist, specializing in writing on a number of Vale’s social and government issues.
Over the years, Auric became increasingly involved in the Faunus Rights movement, and though he never became a member of the leading rights group, he was well-known among the community as a friend of the Faunus people and shared in their commitment to bringing about a post-race Vale at all levels of society.  Auric’s credentials as a journalist similarly developed over the years, and he landed a position at a major publication while also gaining a reputation as a brutally honest and respectable, if somewhat liberal-leaning investigator who was not afraid to get down-and-dirty and really dig deep to bring as accurate a depiction of Vale’s issues as he could.

Personality:
   Auric, at first glance is relatively laid-back person.  Perhaps developing from his time as a hunter among Mistral’s outer villages, he has a very much go-with-the-flow type of attitude in which he appears somewhat unconcerned with the past or present, but instead lives purely in the here and now.  In fact, Auric can be said to have a personality that has really lent itself well to his almost Bohemian lifestyle in which he feels little tie to any particular place and instead moves from place to place.  As a journalist who frequently takes to the field in order to really, in essence, experience the plight of those whom he writes about, Auric has great capacity for compassion and empathy, and he possesses a genuine, unqualified interest and concern in the well-being of all people, that allows him to easily blend in and be welcomed in each local community that he comes across.  On a personal level, Auric, is quite charismatic, and he possesses the very uncommon ability to put others at ease, as if his presence alone is reassurance enough that their problems are no longer problems, or at the very least, are no longer solely their problems and instead are a burden shared by Auric, in his typical style of compassion and empathy.
   With that being said, Auric is true believer in the mission to bring a better life to all people, particularly the downtrodden and the disadvantaged.  When combined with his career as a journalist, this often manifests as an insatiable search for hard truths, and more than once has he run into trouble for digging too deeply and questioning the status quo.  However, no matter what kind of adversity he faces on his searches, Auric has never been one to stop and yield to the pressure from others that would like to see his journalistic exploits put to an end, lest their sensitive secrets be leaked to the society at large.

Combat Behavior:
Interestingly, despite his Bohemian, laid-back personality and lifestyle, Auric fights as a lancer in a very technical and precise manner.  His fighting style emphasizes leverage, range, and positioning in order to bypass defenses or when necessary, pierce through them, embodying the lancer’s precision.  With Altai, Auric can unleash a quick barrage of thrusts, each targeted to throw a target’s off balance so as to open them up for the single fatal thrust.  Though it would be incorrect to say that he does not fight on instinct, as his understanding of a lancer’s technique has become closer than second nature to him, when he fights, it seems as if he does not allow emotions to impact his fighting style, and he keeps calm under pressure.  As a departure from the general lancer technique, however, Auric does not solely aim for a target’s main body.  He has been known to target an enemy’s exposed limbs, whenever the ability arises, with the aim of pinning the limb to the ground while using Altai’s separation ability to continue the fight.
As a lancer user, Auric is vulnerable against enemies who are able to engage him from beyond the length of his weapon, as he possesses no ranged weapon.  His semblance helps remedies this weakness, but it is in no way a sustainable way to fight at range.  Furthermore, Auric’s lance is somewhat longer than most weapons, and so is at a disadvantage against enemies who have shorter weapons and who manage to fight him from within the optimal reach within his weapon.  At this range, Auric has to rely on using Altai as a blunt quarterstaff, which he has had much training in doing, but it is nowhere near as effective as his normal fighting style focusing on Altai’s lanceheads.

Aura and Semblance: 
Auric’s semblance is the ability to toss a small aura projectile that harmlessly marks a target, with the aura mark giving him the option to suddenly teleport to its location or in the very near vicinity, briefly becoming a dark, wispy blur as he does so.  With the usage of a kinetic dust semblance focus, Auric can accelerate his speed after his arrival at the aura mark’s location.  He mostly uses his semblance so as to mark a target, jump to it, and then use the kinetic dust focus to create a very powerful and very fast aura-assisted thrust that can shatter most defenses.
   Besides using his semblance as a powerful gap closer, Auric tends to use his aura passively, preferring to employ it as a means of bolstering his natural agility and his combat technique.

WEAPON

Name:  Altai

Primary Form: 
Bident lance with the twin spearheads being more akin to prongs then actual spearheads.  Altai’s main body is completely metal and is formed from two long pieces of metal that twist around each other in a helix before ending in the twin prongs.

Secondary Form:
   Altai can ravel and unravel its twin prongs so as to join them together in a single stake, or to continue the split between them further down the Altai’s shaft.  Similarly, the rear butt of the spear is also made of twin shafts that can ravel and unravel like the forward twin spearheads.  The shafts can separate and reform into individual shafts so as to split Altai into two and give Auric twin spears.

Dust Functions: [/u]
   Each of the prongs have recesses in which dust charges can be stored.  Auric primarily loads lightning dust into each piece of the helix so that the prongs became electrified and an electric arc can exist between them, giving Altai an electrified quality.  Even when separated, the ability for the twin prongs to arc electricity between them, within a reasonable distance, is not diminished.  Alternatively, the lightning dust can be used to propel the electric arc outwards, using the twin prongs as conductive focusing rails to direct the arc into a ranged weapon.

Auric also uses kinetic dust loads for Altai so as to help strengthen the speed and add more momentum behinds his attacks with Altai. 

History:
   There is not much storied history behind Altai.  It was the weapon that Auric carried with him since combat school, and he has wielded it ever since, though for a while he rarely needed, given his retirement from the huntsman’s path, he finds himself needing it more and more as his journalistic endeavours place him in situations of ever-increasing harm.