CHARACTERName: Originally Damian Alarum, Currently Zitham Degas
Aliases: the soulless marauder, hunter of the hunters
Age: 32, born Tulikuuma 23, 48 AC
Species and Gender: Male Komodo Dragon Faunus
Symbol: Occupation: Professional Bounty Hunter/Huntsman and Huntress Slayer
Appearance: Zitham, standing at 6’1” and weighing 175 pounds, is a walking mass of scar tissue. There isn’t a single part of his skin that escaped the grease fire of his childhood, and he often displays this openly. His signature style of clothing is wrapping his hands and groin area with bandages while also wearing a destroyed black cloak and a grinning white and orange mask on his shoulders/head and face respectively. Underneath the mask, Zitham's face is clean-shaven and he is bald. Zitham’s complexion varies from almost black to gray to brown, depending on the patch of skin to which one is referring. Zitham’s faunus traits show through in the claws adorning his fingers and dull yellow vertical slit eyes. His faunus heritage also grants him an incredible sense of smell beyond most other faunus’ (as opposed to the multiple sense enhancements some other faunus possess). Behind the mask, Zitham’s face is the same scarred mess as the rest of his body, and he rarely removes the mask, not because he’s ashamed, but because the mask is simply more intimidating. Zitham rarely goes out in public during the day, but when he does, he hides under a large and heavy second cloak that conceals his identity quite well.
History: Damian Alarum was born to a family of quite unsuccessful cooks in Mistral. After the faunus civil war, they had settled in Mistral in hopes of starting a business, but discrimination prevented their business from thriving. From a very young age Damian was taught to cook and brought into the family business, a relatively small restaurant in the main city of Mistral, and they hoped that he would grow into a world where faunus were treated as equals. Their family was happy and their lives quite uneventful for many years, and until he was ten, Damian had no concept of the great evils in the world. There was, however, one problem Damian could not see: his parents were members of an underground crime ring (not unlike the White Fang further down the road, but sneakier and much, much smaller), and their business was used to benefit the group through food and monetary donations. One fateful day in the cold winter of 58 AC, a pair of hunters raided the restaurant in an attempt to bring Mr. and Ms. Alarum in for their participation in the aforementioned crime ring. Damian, however, did not know that his parents were on the wrong side of the law. He saw the huntsmen enter, he saw them threaten his parents, he saw his parents try to fight back, and then he saw a pan of flaming grease topple over onto the floor from the stove. Something in the chaos had tipped it over, and the resulting grease fire covered every inch of Damian’s skin as it consumed the restaurant. He dove through the back door and into the snow to save himself, but his parents weren’t as lucky, and Damian watched, immobilized by pain, as they burned alive. The hunters escaped with their lives, but not before Damian got a good look at their faces. That image burned into his memory like a molten brand that never faded. It wasn’t long before someone saw Damian and called an ambulance, but his parents were gone and damage had already been done.
Damian woke up in a hospital bed and found a stranger in a trench coat sitting in a chair across from him. This stranger was an old friend of Damian’s parents and a member of the crime ring, and he offered to care for Damian until he could care for himself. The boy, having nowhere to go, agreed to the arrangement, though he first requested a set of clothing that would cover every inch of his newly mutilated visage. This clothing style of heavy covering of his entire body and face stuck with Damian for the next 12 years of his life. The adoption was hardly standard, however, as a group of criminals removed the boy from the hospital as if it were a prison break and delivered him into the hands of his surrogate father. Damian never managed to connect with his father all that well, but he was, in a way, collectively adopted by the crime ring his parents had been a part of. He learned from every member about different criminal activities from illegally printing money to picking locks, and he absorbed the information like a sponge. There was a certain vengeful fervor with which the young boy learned, and as soon as the option was available, he forged entry documents to Sanctum with help from some of the members of the crime ring.
Damian’s eight years at the combat schools Sanctum and Haven were quite tumultuous, and he barely made it through the schooling without being thrown out. He consistently scored badly on any academic subjects he took, but the arena was a completely different story. He was the dream student of any sparring instructor that taught him, and he was always the top of his class in combat ability. The nature of his weapon and semblance, along with his ferocious fighting style, however, made Damian an opponent that few even wanted to fight. Often he would go out searching for strong grimm since his own classmates feared him too much to face him in combat. It was in these years that Damian not only became an exceptionally competent fighter, but it was also a period of mental degradation as he let old grudges fester and grow. Damian held the hunters responsible for the deaths of his parents, and he still remembered their faces. He imagined every enemy was a hunter, and he knew that every student at his school was trying to become one. It was all he could do to keep from killing them outright in the sparring matches. Damian’s own convictions were that hunters were not the guardians of peace, but violent oppressors, and the time he spent listening to stories in the underground didn’t help.
After finally completing his training at Haven, at the age of 21 in 69 AC, Damian made a triumphant return to the underground, but once again tragedy had struck. This time, he found that the crime ring had been broken when two of the key members were taken into custody and a third died resisting arrest. Once again the hunters had taken away those close to Damian, but this time he was prepared to repay them. He summoned the images of the hunters from 11 years before and began his search with them. First stalking mission boards and then tracking down records of graduates from Haven, it took him an entire year. Damian found the two hunters at their residence: a small cottage nestled in the shadow of a nearby mountain on the outskirts of Mistral. The team that had killed Damian’s parents, it seemed, were husband and wife. This only fueled his anger more, and he set out immediately for their location.
Damian, 22 years old, 70 AC, late Hitahita, arrived at the cottage with burning vengeance in his eyes and smashed his way into what could only be an infant’s room. There were the two monsters that had taken everything from him, bending over a crib but looking at him with such shock and terror that he felt a surge of giddy elation. The huntsman quickly stepped in front of his wife, and Damian responded by slashing at his chest. The huntsman blocked the attack with his aura, and the huntress grabbed their baby from the crib. He asked them many questions as he continued his assault: Did they remember what they had done? Did they remember him? Did they know what burning to death felt like? They only pleaded for their lives, claiming that it was all an incredibly unfortunate accident. Damian didn’t care, he knew they were liars. The huntsman whispered something and the huntress fled the cottage, grabbing her weapon on the way out. Damian then dueled with the huntsman in a destructive battle throughout and around the cottage, but in the face of a constant onslaught, he was unable to even locate his weapon, much less get to it. The fight ended with the huntsman bent over a stump used for wood chopping, his aura broken. Damian yanked the man’s head back and raised his free hand, covered in red, glowing death. He brought the hand down and slammed an effective mask of burning substance on the man’s face. The huntsman thrashed around and clawing at his face until the substance entered his mouth and exploded on contact with his saliva, splattering the stump red as Damian watched on with hatred. Damian’s next target had fled to the mountain nearby, and so up he went, trailing Greek Fire the whole way.
Damian cornered the huntress on a ledge about 2/3 of the way up the mountain. She fought hard, but in vain. She had to cradle her baby in one arm, and could only use her weapon, a huge and unwieldy greataxe, in one hand. The ledge was small, and Damian pushed her to the edge before she began pleading again. He almost listened. Almost. Then he sent her tumbling over the edge of the cliff to her death with the child in tow. Damian then looked down on all he had done: the broken woman at the bottom of the cliff clinging to her child even in death, the burning mountainside, the destroyed cottage and the barely visible stain of red on the stump outside of it. Then he looked further, all the way to Mistral, and saw grimm. Grimm everywhere. The creatures were pouring through a breach in the walls. Damian saw all this, and he choked out a sickly cackle.
Revenge proved as unsatisfying as it could possibly have been, and there was a distinct void in Damian that he couldn’t find anything to fill. That was when he remembered the thrill of excitement and the rush of energy when they looked at him with fear. This, and the thrill of the hunt, was what Damian clung to in order to fill the void left in his soul, and in doing so, he stopped being Damian. He tore off his heavy clothing as the laughing stopped sounding sickly and took on a robust, gleeful tone. Zitham looked once more upon what he had accomplished and embraced it all. He then descended from the ledge, hiding nothing either physically or emotionally. On the way down, he stopped at the corpse of the huntress. He cut off her head and carried it back with him to the ruins of the cottage, where he carefully removed the flesh and carved out his own mask from the bone. Raiding some broken supply drawers, Zitham found bandages which he wrapped around his crotch and wrists. Zitham was about to leave when he saw a partially burned black cloak laying on the ground next to a broken coat rack, and he decided to take a second trophy to celebrate his new self. And so this new horror, Zitham Degas, returned to the main city of Mistral in place of Damian. His first two hunter kills, a mask from the woman, and a cloak from the man, proved to be the only kills Zitham took trophies from.
Zitham’s murder of the huntsman, huntress, and their child was never found out. By the time Mistral had stabilized and the grimm had been driven off, the same creatures had managed to erase the bodies and cottage. They were assumed to have died in the “Longest Winter”, as it was being called, and life went on. Zitham was able to get by during the slow recovery through thievery and dealings in the black market. He didn’t rest though, because he wasn’t quite finished with revenge. He had blended back into the underground and started his own business as a bounty hunter with no moral code whatsoever, but in his time off, he searched for the identities of the hunters that had destroyed his adopted family. This proved substantially harder, but Zitham’s business paid well and he had patience. As Zitham grew stronger and more experienced, the hunters that had destroyed his childhood only got older and weaker and more relaxed. During this time, Zitham also grew to admire the new, more violent White Fang, and worked for them on a few occasions. After five years of searching, he finally found a lead and tracked down the exact three hunters who had broken up the crime circle.
He killed them one by one in relatively quick succession, catching them off-guard in their residences or on missions when they would be the most vulnerable. But this didn’t go unnoticed like the previous slaughter, and there were many groups of hunters and police trying to find the identity of the killer within a week. The problem with tracking Zitham down, was that there was no evidence left behind to study. He would torch everything once he was done, most often with molotov cocktails and fire dust. Anything that could have fingerprints was torched, and the only remains of the hunters left behind were charred skeletons. One of the less honorable black market dealers tipped off a hunter of Zitham’s whereabouts, and a team of three of them attempted to attack him at what would have been a meeting with a client. The deal had actually fell through, so Zitham unintentionally dodged a bullet, but he did catch word of what had happened. He tracked down the snitch and a few days later his skin was up for sale on the black market. From then on, no one who knew about Zitham had the courage to try and turn him in. By making himself a more frightening option than the law enforcement, he created a social shield for himself that dissuaded any would-be snitches from sharing his information. Thanks to his poorly documented past and two name switches to date, Mistral has been unable to track down Zitham. While both the White Fang within the walls and the Grimm without pose greater threats to public safety than a single exceptionally skilled bounty hunter, Zitham's actions have shoved his reputation into common knowledge and he must wear heavy clothing to cover his visage whenever he is out in public places, much to his own displeasure (though he's usually safe to dress how he wants in the company of other criminals). Many newcomers to the underground, understandably, don’t believe that an individual such as Zitham exists. In this way, he has become somewhat of a legend among the members of criminal networks in Mistral, and while some revere him, most simply fear that the stories are true.
In the time since that slaughter, Zitham has only taken a few requests to kill hunters (only one of whom he faced in a fair fight), and all of them have come from mob bosses in the underground, who are the few who are both rich enough to pay for such a service and are willing to pay for such a service. In fact, Zitham can charge huge amounts for murdering hunters because he's one of only a few people of his own skill level in his line of work. Otherwise, Zitham's more run-of-the-mill jobs include working for the White Fang, but vary based on whoever's paying.
Personality: Zitham is a violent individual, to say the least. His entire lifestyle revolves around killing other people, and he revels in this. He’s quite the sadistic individual and enjoys hunting down and killing targets; for him, the money’s just a bonus. Zitham is completely unashamed when it comes to his burns and he displays them openly. His very presence is incredibly volatile, and when he enters a space filled with those who know about him, the atmosphere changes to one of collective fear. He relishes this power of fear that he holds over others, and will do whatever he can to intensify it. Zitham has street smarts to rival the oldest criminals in the business, and he knows the entire underground of Mistral inside and out. That said, he lacks the foresight to plan long-term. He’s also very bad at intellectual things such as math, history, and science. Zitham, despite abandoning revenge as his sole purpose in life, has retained an extreme propensity to hold grudges. Thus, as a general rule of thumb, anyone who crosses Zitham will invariably become one of his targets at some point or another. On a relatively humorous note, Zitham actually has an irrational fear of kitchens and will not enter one if his life depended on it.
“At the end of the day, as long as there are two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead.”
-Zitham Degas’ unofficial business slogan.
Aura and Semblance: Zitham’s aura is a light crimson, and quite beefy thanks to thousands of combat encounters. His semblance is one of the most grotesque forms of an-eye-for-an-eye philosophy, and its name is Greek Fire. It allows him to create a crimson energy that has properties of both a viscous liquid and fire which doesn't stick to Zitham and which he is very resistant to. That said, he still must get the substance off of him soon after it is created, or risk injury at the hands of his own semblance. This energy can be thrown or otherwise controlled in any way Zitham chooses, so long as it remains in contact with his skin or extremely near it (like within his aura shield). It can also be blasted outwards at foes with a maximum range of 100 feet. Though Zitham most often uses his hands for creation of the Greek Fire, he can actually produce it from any skin or aura-covered area on his body. Upon contact, the energy sticks to almost any surface and burns as if it were fire at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, though the substance itself will only last for about a minute. This substance cannot be put out with water or other conventional extinguishing methods, and it actually reacts quite violently on contact with water (in much the same way sodium metal reacts with water), but ice dust can flash-freeze the substance into an inert state that doesn't burn. It can also be contained by removing the clothing it was attached to and isolating that to inflammable surfaces until the substance disappears, or smothering it with nonflammable objects. The energy does not spread like fire, but it can make flammable materials combust into traditional fire on contact. Using a handful’s worth as a standard, one handful causes Zitham very little strain, but amounts exceeding his own volume (about 300 handfuls) are nearly impossible for Zitham to produce without rest. He doesn't really begin to feel tired during its use until he reaches about 150 handfuls, at which point the strain is very noticeable, and from then on it continually increases until the 300 handful mark when he usually blacks out.
Combat Behavior: Zitham’s fighting style is incredibly fast, violent, and relentless. He is always trying to find openings in combat to strike at his opponent’s weakest moments, and he has considerable strength to make these strikes devastating. Zitham doesn’t care in the slightest about fairness, and he will use any dirty tactic available to him. His semblance also makes combat with him incredibly dangerous because Zitham can spread the Greek Fire everywhere and turn a normal field of combat into a giant hazard for the enemy. Zitham’s combat almost exclusively focuses on breaking aura shields, so he’s extremely good at killing people, but far less effective against grimm and other things without auras. Zitham is incredibly fit (he has to be in order to continue his work) and as such possesses extreme strength and agility, though his flat-out run speed is nothing impressive. He works best against individuals, but he has enough experience to hold his own against multiple opponents, and he has the endurance to last through long periods of combat. Zitham’s biggest weaknesses would be his lack of substantial range and an inability to work with other people. He also lacks the ability to plan in any intricate way, and has a tendency of getting caught up in the emotion of a situation, clouding his judgement and making him reckless.
WEAPONName: none
Primary Form: Zitham’s weapon is a pair of armored power gauntlets extending all the way up the forearms. The gauntlets move with Zitham’s hand and wrist movements, adding lots of grip strength in the hands (Enough to bend small amounts of metal or create a vice-like grip on limbs and other appendages.), but more importantly they allow the secondary form to function without breaking Zitham’s fingers. These gauntlets are each equipped with a set of five curved blades that fit into slots on the forearm section. Each blade is 1 foot long and extremely sharp. They look something like claws in that they are curved and double-edged.
Secondary Form: The same blades shift forwards on the gauntlets and lock into place on the second to last digit on each finger. Of course, each blade can be shifted to and from its storage state individually for convenience’s sake. These blades act like extreme extensions to Zitham’s natural claws, and with the help of the power gauntlets can be wielded with a good amount of precision.
Tertiary Form: In either primary or secondary form, two submachine gun mechanisms can fold out from the gauntlet and lock into place on either side of the blade storage in the forearm section. They look somewhat like
these. These submachine guns fire incredibly fast with a rpm of 600, but the clip size of only 60 means that each gun must be reloaded often. Reloading is done by placing clips (with varying degrees of intensity depending on the urgency) horizontally within a rectangular slot in the side of the gun. Whenever a clip runs out of ammo, it is ejected from the weapon automatically to streamline reloading. The maximum effective range of these guns is 75 m.
Dust Functions: Zitham often carries clips fire dust bullets to add a little more punch to his bullets when such a thing is needed. These dust rounds create small, fiery explosions on impact and, thanks to the high fire rate of the submachine guns, serve not only to damage, but to disorient and confuse.
History: Before Damian was a student at Sanctum, he was learning to fight with his natural claws so that he could hold his own in a fight, and when it came time to make his weapon, Damian decided to improve upon what he already knew. The power gauntlets were necessary to make the claw blades work, and the submachine guns were added further down the road when Zitham realized that he needed some form of range aside from his semblance.