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[gathersnomoss]

Player Information

Name: Stareyes
Age: 37
Contact details: beccastareyes
Other characters: None, formerly S’reee

Character Information

Name: Zelgadis Greywords
Canon: Slayers
Canon Point: Post-series
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: Early 20s.


World Information: Slayers can best be summed up as ‘D&D fantasy as viewed through the lens of Japan, plus humor’. The world is roughly medieval, but magic (and comedy) means such things as cruise ships, tennis tournaments and sunglasses totally exist. Magic is common enough in Zelgadis’s part of the world that people don’t find it too alarming by default (just when it leads to ‘everything is on fire’). Typically magic is broken into four schools — black magic draws on the power of the Monsters/Evil Tribe, holy magic draws on the powers of the gods, shamanism draws on the powers of the elements (earth, air, fire, water and the astral plane), and white magic is a set of healing, support and exorcism spells that (word of Author) are a specialized school of shamanism using the astral plane.

So, about those gods and monsters. The world was created by the Lord of Nightmares out of chaos that was also herself. She created Flare Dragon Cepheid which represented creation and Ruby-Eye Shabranigdu which represented destruction (as well as three other pairs of beings for three other worlds). Cepheid and Shabranigdu fought to a standstill — Cepheid split Shabranigdu into seven pieces which were sealed into humans in hopes that their mortality would slowly wear the pieces down, but Cepheid had exhausted her own body in the struggle. Both had lieutenants to continue the fight — Cepheid created the four dragon gods, which worked with intelligent dragons, and Shabranigdu had five lords, who had created many lesser beings (‘monsters’ in the English translations, the Japanese word roughly translates to ‘evil/demonic tribe/race’). These beings primarily existed on the astral plane (having the create a body to interact with the physical plane), so were a lot more alien than the being with physical bodies. (Asexually-reproducing immortal spirits that fed on negative human emotions does that to you.).

Roughly 1000 years before Zelgadis’s birth, Shabranigdu’s lieutenants discovered one of their master’s pieces in a human mage. Four of the lieutenants used their own power to create a barrier keeping three of the dragon gods out and disabling holy magic in the region. The awakened piece of Shabranigdu (let loose by the horrors his human host witnessed) and Shabranigdu’s remaining lieutenant Chaos Dragon Gaav, challenged the Water Dragon Lord Aqualord Ragradia to a fight. This was another stalemate — Aqualord was weakened severely (to the point of being mostly a collection of knowledge and a guardian spirit), but put Gaav in a human body, and sealed the piece of Shabranigdu in ice. Several of Shabranigdu’s lieutenants also lost high-power subordinates.

One other piece of Shabranigdu was discovered recently, in the body of a man named Rezo, the Red Priest. Rezo ended up awakening the piece himself, first out of a mistaken belief that he could remove it without his own death or that Shabranigdu might have enough gratitude to restore Rezo’s sight (Rezo had a LOT of internalized ableism about the blindness caused by having Shabranigdu lodged in his body). In the decades leading up to Rezo tracking down the needed ingredients, he was publicly known as a miracle worker, while having several hidden atrocities as his experiments on ‘remove Shabranigdu without dying’ lead him down a darker path. This included studying the creation of chimera, beings that are hybrids between several different species, and the mechanics of trapping souls, creating construct bodies and performing body swaps.

Personal History:
So that bit about Rezo? Zelgadis is Rezo’s descendent — Zelgadis isn’t sure if Rezo is his grandfather or great-grandfather. Word of Author is that Rezo killed Zelgadis’s parents when Zel was an infant to get custody. A teenaged Zelgadis led mercenaries to fight bandits and donate the loot to Rezo's various charitable works, rationalizing his violent career as keeping his sainted grandfather’s reputation safe while getting the funds to keep it going. Zelgadis knew both swordsmanship and a bit of sorcery, but was mediocre at both, so when Rezo offered him power, Zelgadis took it.

Rezo turned Zelgadis into a chimera. While Zelgadis was physically and magically enhanced, he also scared the piss out of humans. Still, Zelgadis was okay with it until he discovered Rezo's actual motivation was using his grandson as a guinea pig. Zelgadis couldn't break away from someone both powerful and well-respected when his own reputation was at best ‘demonic-looking mercenary’, so he bided his time until Rezo sent him after a powerful magical amplifier, the philosopher’s stone. Unbeknownst to Zelgadis, that was the final ingredient Rezo needed to unseal Shabranigdu. Unfortunately, sorceress Lina Inverse got to the Stone first. Zelgadis tried to buy it off Lina, then kidnapped her to get its location. However, rather than turn Lina over to Rezo, Zelgadis helped her escape. They reunited with Lina's partner, Gourry (who had been slipped the stone by Lina before her capture), but the trio surrendered the stone to Rezo once a desperate and unmasked-as-an-antagonist Rezo threatened to murder entire towns for it.

Then Rezo unsealed Shabranigdu — Rezo had told Lina that that had been Zelgadis’s aim (in an attempt to play good cop to Zelgadis’s bad cop), but Zelgadis had been blindsided by the revelation that his grandfather was even more awful than he thought. Unsealing Shabrangido consumed Rezo's body and Shabrangido shrugged off Zelgadis's spells and killed the mercenary friends who had stuck with Zelgadis after he turned against Rezo. Shabrangido was defeated because Lina had magic to call on the Lord of Nightmares, Gourry had a legendary artifact sword, and Zelgadis was able to appeal to Rezo's soul, who actually did still have some lingering desires to ‘not destroy the world’.

Zelgadis, uncomfortable with near-strangers, parted ways to seek out a way to become human again, now that he no longer needed the edge for defeating Rezo. However, he kept being drawn back into Lina's vicinity. First, they’d discovered that Rezo had made a clone of himself, and the clone had a few lingering creator issues that needed to be resolved by overcoming his creator’s killers. Then one of Shabranigdu’s lieutenants had noticed Lina’s magical affinity, and came up with a plan to drive Lina into destroying the world by calling on the Lord of Nightmares. (The plan ended up involving killing all of Lina’s friends, and only was saved because the Lord of Nightmares decided She was good with the world as it was.). The most recent incident started with an official trying to arrest Lina and ended with the discovery that Rezo has sealed his soul into a jar, so wasn’t actually dead. Zelgadis broke away from the party to interrogate the soul jar about how to restore himself, and got told it was impossible and Zelgadis should just smash the jar if he hated Rezo so much. Zelgadis resisted, and Rezo's soul was planted in another body (who had consented to that if Rezo saved his people… from a disease Rezo had created decades ago). That was when the group discovered Shabranigdu (or the fragment of him) was still attached to Rezo’s soul, and they had to fight him again.

Zelgadis’s post-canon point has him at a bit of a loss. His goals since ‘halfway through season 1’ has been ‘restore my body to human’, and suddenly that is off the table from someone whose expertise he trusts. One of his friends asks him how he is, and he says he’s fine, but it’s not really clear what he’s doing beyond ‘resuming traveling’ in the epilogue.

Personality: Zelgadis is a dour person and rather a pessimist. In a comedic universe, he can usually be relied on being the 'straight man', if he's not the butt of the joke. He's got a decent chunk of both intelligence and common sense, tempered with cynicism and downright ruthlessness.

In flashbacks, we see that Zel was a lot more optimistic and generally cheerful: he believed that Rezo was a genuinely selfless person helping the poor and sick and blind, and that Zel's actions of robbing from bandit gangs to fund Rezo's activities helped not only directly, but to avoid tarnishing a great man's image with even the hint of foul play. Needless to say, when Zel discovered that he had been used as Rezo's guinea pig without a thought for his own wants or desires, this crushed out most of Zel's belief in other people. He only retained a small glimmer of faith in decent people because his own gang still treated him as their friend and leader, with two of them (Zolf and Rodimus) being willing to follow him when he finally turned against Rezo. It took years for Zel to warm up to his current friends in the same way.

Zelgadis can occasionally be roused to almost manic bursts of activity, usually regarding becoming human again. He is quite willing to ignore his common sense, cynicism and sense of dignity when it means that he might have a chance of humanity again. Rezo and his situation are the two things guaranteed to make him snap at someone. Finding Rezo's soul in a jar, years after Zel assumed the priest had died, was one of the few things that caused him to break with his friends over what to do about it. To be honest, Zel wasn't sure if he wanted to finish killing Rezo or beg him to fix Zel's body. Both Rezo's definite statement that such a thing was impossible, and Rezo's restoration and second death seemed to give Zel some sort of closure (judging from the tiny amount we see Zel in the finale), even if he's still fully working through the ramifications.

While he's self-conscious about his appearance and identity as a 'monster', Zelgadis is very confident in his abilities and will even show off. Zelgadis knows that he's a skilled mage AND swordsman in a world where being good at one is impressive, and that he has a number of useful skills and knowledge. He doesn't brag, but states things in a manner of fact way. This can even verge into the more useful aspects of his chimerism -- he will remind his opponents that you can't use a (nonmagical) sword on him. Zel can occasionally overestimate things like his ability to soak damage -- usually it requires magic to hurt him, but enough blunt trauma will do the job.

Zel's relationships with most people tend to be self-serving. He seems to take delight in being seen as a 'heartless sorcerer swordsman' and being distant, and he avoids cities when he can. Early encounters with the people who would later become friends often featured him going off on his own errands at inconvenient times. He still occasionally pulls such stunts, but has a better idea of what is and isn't acceptable to his friends. Zel also has some professional integrity on various mercenary jobs -- or at least the pragmatism to note that a mercenary that breaks contracts left and right will be unemployed.

Key themes: Response to and recovery from trauma. Trust and mistrust of others. Perception of being ‘too cool for this’, while clearly being as ridiculous as the rest of the cast.

Main Motivation: Zel’s motivation for the entirely of the series is ‘return body to original human form’. (Well and ‘try not to die due to whatever nonsense Lina has dragged me into’.). He’s just realized that that isn’t possible in his world… while being sent to a game that involves many other worlds. It remains to be seen if he doubles down on his existing goal or starts with the ‘what now?’ goal.

Skills:. Zel is a jack of all trades and master of... well, actually a few. He's a good enough swordsman that he can at least defend against a master swordsman like Gourry. He can both use and throw a dagger (as well as using his own hair as darts). He also has a bag of tricks that seem to encompass things like picking locks, making maps, playing the guitar, ocean navigation, chess, and being familiar with all sorts of information, including seemingly useless things (for instance, he knows what gunpowder is before seeing it).

Zel is also a chimera, being 1/3 blow demon and 1/3 rock golem. His golem parts give him rock-hard skin that can turn blades, wire hair, and increased strength, endurance and weight (not so good for things like swimming, but you can't shove him around). His demon parts increase his speed, letting him occasionally get the drop on people, and his senses. He also has increased magical endurance (he can cast more spells before running out of steam).

In addition between his learning and enhanced magical reserves, Zelgadis can cast a number of spells. Astral shamanism is his primary area of focus, and he's able to cast the Rah Tilt, the most powerful spell in that school. Astral spells work through the astral plane -- they hit the target's soul first, then any energy that doesn't go into the soul can explode into the physical world. He also seems to know a few spells in the other schools of shamanism, including some seriously powerful elemental magic, and a few basic white magic spells.

Suffice to say, his magic can be incredibly lethal elemental magic, including things that attack from the spiritual side so affect ghosts or demons or what have you. He can also control air, earth and water, fly, create light, heal himself and others (if they are not seriously injured), do various status-effect sorts of magic, like hold someone in place or knock them out, and create wind barriers to work as defense.

Item: His cloak

Sample: https://voidtreckerooc.dreamwidth.org/60544.html?thread=8595840#cmt8595840
https://voidtreckerooc.dreamwidth.org/60544.html?thread=8592000#cmt8592000

Notes: