Umbralius

TW: Torture, illness, murder, death, cult activity, abduction, live experimentation/vivisection, imprisonment.
 
 
 IMPORTANT NOTE: Umbralius is a canon-inspired original character based on the Dark Urge from Baldur's Gate 3. As such, there will be spoilers related to the Dark Urge and BG3 in this article. Reader discretion is advised!
"My rancid blood whispers to me: kill, kill, and kill again. My ruined body yearns to reap death in this world, and when this foul Urge calls, it possesses my whole being. Injured beyond repair, I know nothing besides this: I must resist this Dark Urge, lest it consume my mind. I must discover what happened to me, and who I was. Before my twitching knife-hand writes a tragedy in blood."  ― The Dark Urge
File:Umbralius Complete Beast.png|Complete Beast Form
File:Umbralius Incomplete Beast.png|Incomplete Beast Form
*
== Canon-Based OC Status ==
=== Trivia ===
* Based on the Dark Urge, a special origin character in Baldur's Gate 3.
* Umbralius does not remember anything from his past life due to severe head trauma, in addition to being subjected to the SRI's rigorous experimentation.
* It is hoped that he will come across the Bloodthirst dagger.
=== Player Desired Canons ===
Any of the companion characters from BG3: Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Astarion, Gale, Karlach, Wyll, Halsin, Minthara, Jaheira, and Minsc. Would be open to any type of relationship, such as platonic, familial, antagonistic, etc. Level of involvement with Umbralius is entirely up to the other player.
In addition, any of the Chosen Three, with HEAVY emphasis on Orin the Red. Would love for there to be a continuation of their tense/antagonistic familial relationship.
==Supernatural Status==
*Gen 1 Shadow Monster/Original Beast. 
*Was previously "born" a drow Bhaalspawn.
*Umbralius has no recollection of this, but his former self was taken into SRI custody by force and subject to rigorous experimentation to host the fragment of a fabled Divine Beast. Now, he remains within Cedargrove simply because there is nowhere else for him to go, and he has accepted (with great reluctance) that this will be his final resting place.
*Was once in custody of the Supernatural Regulation and Intelligence (SRI) but is no longer. 
===Abilities===
Umbrakinesis - The ability to create, shape, and manipulate darkness and shadows. Can be channeled to a variety of effects, both as an absence of light and a solid substance. With this ability, Umbralius can create and dispel shields and areas of total darkness, create constructs and weapons, teleport himself through massive distances via shadows, and so on. 
Darkness Adaptation - The ability to survive and adapt to dark environments (especially nighttime conditions), with a circadian cycle programmed for nighttime activity and heightened senses to compensate the absence of light. Umbralius is able to see in dim light up to 24 meters (or approximately 79 feet) as if it were bright light, and in pitch-black darkness as if it were dim light. 
Spatial Perception - The ability to perceive spatial distances: the dimensions (length, width, height), distances between objects, shapes, and size of things. He can discern how far away something is and the exact measurements of the proportions of an object.
Shadow Camouflage - The ability to become undetectable as long as he is in darkness or shadow. He can hide within the shadows and remain undetected (neither seen, smelled, nor heard) which can be utilized to spy on individuals without leaving behind physical evidence. Some may feel an unsettling presence in the air while he is hidden, but cannot discern from where or whom it is coming from. 
Light Absorption - The ability to absorb light or its partial wavelengths while removing it from the source. This light can be absorbed into his body and utilized as an alternate power source in tandem with his other abilities for a temporary period of time. 
Dancing Lights - The ability to create up to four torch-sized lights that appear as glowing orbs. These lights are not powerful enough to cause any damage, but they are sufficient in illuminating the area. Each orb sheds dim light in a 10-foot radius for up to one minute. This ability can only be used when Umbralius has absorbed a light source.
Blood Manipulation - Umbralius can create, shape, and manipulate blood, an essential body fluid in humans and other animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. He can shape blood into tendrils to strike enemies from afar or use it to trap opponents in a prison of blood. He can concentrate blood into a single point, and shoot it out akin to bullets, or sharpen blood to the point that he can slice and tear flesh with ease or solidify blood to use as rock-hard ammunition. He possesses complete control over blood and all its components, such as: viscosity, temperature, blood sugar level, blood pressure, clotting, flow, and infection/disease. As an advanced user, he can not only control blood within himself, but in other creatures, allowing him to control them like puppets, induce nosebleeds or headaches, or cause blood-related diseases or conditions. And with enough concentration, he could instantly kill others by making blood explode from the inside out or forcibly causing their heart to stop or knocking them unconscious by restricting blood-flow to the brain. 
===Weaknesses===
Nocturnal Rhythm - Due to his adaptation to darkness, Umbralius tends to be more sensitive to light (which is why he often wears a mask with dark mesh built into the eye slits). In addition, he tends to tire out more quickly during daylight hours, as that is often when he needs most rest.
Spatial Limit - Umbralius is only able to perceive the spatial distance and energy of objects or people within a 1-mile (1,609-meter) radius of himself. Any futher than that will be much more difficult to discern, if not impossible.
Overexertion - As a Shadow Monster, Umbralius' abilities are only as strong as his body permits. Despite being an immortal creature, the use of heavy-duty powers in a back-to-back scenario can deplete him of his energy and exhaust him both physically and mentally. If he were to push himself too hard too quickly, he would be susceptible to the negative side-effects of being a Shadow Monster, such as succumbing to the symptoms of his Rot Sickness and Incomplete Form - or, at worst, falling into a feral state of mind that would leave him extremely fatigued afterward.
== Legend: Shadow Monster ==
=== Original Beast ===
* The Original Beast, Umbralius, lives within him and provides him with abilities related to shadows and blood. Its beast form is a cross between a spider and a dragon, and is known to be elusive and violent.
* Specimen ID SRI-000-013
* No good communication ever occurs between Umbralius and the Divine Beast fragment within him. Because his identity has become blended over time, he feels that the thoughts and feelings of his fragment are his own - yet there will always be a softer emotional force that tugs him in the opposite direction of volatility and anger. Feeling such a murky divide within him often renders him in a constant loop of panic and confusion, as he genuinely cannot tell whether his thoughts of paranoid ideation come from himself or something else entirely.
* Umbralius recalls virtually nothing from his past life. Due to the traumatic nature of his transformation, he is left with large, patchy holes in his memory and a weak sense of identity. He has even forgotten his real name, which is the reason why he defaults to the name of his fragment as no other name feels quite right anyway.
* Umbralius sees himself as nothing other than an anomaly - something that was never meant to exist in this world. He feels he does not belong among other supernaturals, and that he certainly does not belong among humans, either. Knowing full well what he is capable of (and knowing full well the SRI are hot on his trail), he considers himself too dangerous to be exposed to the general public. Therefore, he has condemned himself to an immortal life of solitude in an unmarked location within the forest.
* Umbralius' escape from Lab 13 was pure happenstance... and perhaps one of the strangest, yet most profound experiences he actually has the pleasure of remembering. A young child, of all people, was the one who stumbled across his dirty cell in the basement of the laboratory - a young, wandering boy who somehow possessed the deep, empathetic grasp of a full-grown adult. Somehow, this child had managed to undo the locks that held him into place for nearly a century, and without once showing an ounce of fear, disgust, or remorse... he simply let him go. And without looking back for even a moment, Umbralius slipped away into the cracks of the wall toward his first taste of freedom. To this day, Umbralius does not know who that child was or what became of him.
=== Shadow Monster Abilities ===
Beast Recognition - Will recognize its own offspring or other Original Beasts immediately.
Complete Beast Form - A difficult to maintain, fully formed Beast Mode.
Multilingualism - The ability to communicate in every language, period.
Prophetic Dreams - The ability to see into the future in short snippets.
Divine Sense - Just knowing things to be true without reason; essentially heightened intuition.
Liquid Body - The ability to turn their bodies into a black slime and slip between small cracks.
Magnetic Pull - The ability to pull living things closer through psychic ability.
Zoolingualism - The ability to talk to animal life forms and understand their reactions.
Immortality - The state of eternal life. Original Beasts never age, are completely self-sustaining, free from all bodily necessities, and can survive virtually any kind of harm. Any damage done would either be regenerated or simply remain non-fatal.
=== Shadow Monster Symptoms ===
Rot Sickness - An illness where they cough up black sludge that smells of rot.
Power Surges - Extreme surges of supernatural strength. Results in extreme fatigue after.
Fragment Presence - Weakness to their individual fragment of the Divine Beast, which will have its own personality and presence within them, may be extremely volatile or angry, whether or not they are aware.
Feral State - A state of extreme emotional upset where they attack anything in their path, even close friends.
Incomplete Beast Form - A condition where their bodies are reduced to black goopy versions of their beast forms with only a skull and glowing eyes, maybe some tentacles, limbs, or tendrils; this happens when extremely exhausted/resting.
Full or Partial Amnesia - Prior to being made into an Original Beast.
==Background==
===History===
 WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BALDUR'S GATE 3 AHEAD.
The Dark Urge was not brought into this wretched world by any natural means. He was never a seed to be sown in a field of fertile flesh. He never knew the comforting warmth of a mother's womb. In fact, his very existence was propagated from the gore of a singular parent, moulded and shaped by a quasi-deity — the Lord of Murder, and his Unholy Father, Bhaal. As a babe, he was purposefully left outside of the perimeters of his Father's cult, in the unforgiving streets of Baldur's Gate. But it was there that he was found and taken in by a couple: a pair of drow who escaped the corrupt clutches of the Underdark in favor of a more peaceful life on the surface.
And for a while, things were peaceful. The babe grew into a boy, gifted with the name Mourne and showered in the attentive love of parents who truly cherished him. That is, until the Urges began to manifest. The blood-whispers that swept through his body like wildfire, leaving him craving the pungent taste of metallic violence like a frenzied animal, ended up drawing him to the knife. And in a fit, he butchered all of his loved ones, including the pair of drow he once called mother and father.
Newly orphaned, the boy was approached by one Sceleritas Fel, a fiendish creature who claimed to be a butler in servitude of Bhaal. Sceleritas guided the young boy beneath the city of Baldur's Gate and through the complex sewer system underground until they reached the Undercity, where they returned home to the Temple of Bhaal. There, the boy was indoctrinated by the teachings of Bhaal's murder-cult well beyond his adolescent years and into adulthood. Now a cold and calculated man, he fully embraced the teachings of his Father and pledged to lacerate the world and end all life in existence in his name. This devotion earned Bhaal's favor, and as such, he became his father's Chosen, as well as the leader of the cult.
Soon after, he received prophetic dreams from his father, urging him to work with the other Chosen of the Dead Three so that he could fulfill his pledge. The plan was to create an army of soulless mind flayers, and with the help of this army, he would exterminate all life — and once he would be the last alive, he would take his own. With the intention of betraying them later on, he forged an alliance with Enver Gortash, the Chosen of Bane, and Ketheric Thorm, the Chosen of Myrkul. The three men set their plan in motion by stealing the Crown of Karsus, an extremely powerful item rumored to grant godlike powers, from the vault of the archdevil Mephistopheles. And with the crown in their possession, they initiated a raid on a mind flayer colony below Moonrise Towers to take control of the colony's elder brain and enslave it to their will. This plan would give birth to a new cult of their creation: the Cult of the Absolute.
But even the most infallible plan can be thrown off-course once an uncontrollable variable is thrown into the mix — and that variable was Orin the Red. A fellow Bhaalspawn, his younger "sister" and protégé, and a young changeling woman who resented him for all the power and attention he received from their Father. Not long after the raid on the mind flayer colony, Orin betrayed her brother by attacking him from behind, piercing his skull open with a dagger and infecting it with an illithid tadpole before leaving him for dead. After his broken body was discovered by a necromancer, he was dissected and put back together multiple times, before he was sent off on a Nautiloid ship — still alive, yet fully amnesiac due to the extent of his injuries.
But that would not be how Umbralius came to be. No, the SRI had been studying him long before he was brought into the present world — and using interdimensional travel, they retrieved his body right after the Nautiloid ship was fated to crash. With the aid of advanced scientific procedures and magical interference, the SRI was able to place the illithid tadpole in permanent stasis before removing it from his skull. Once he was rendered a blood-husk primed for possession, they proceeded to incorporate a fragment of the original divine beast within his body. And once he regained consciousness, he became a far cry from the lethal force he used to be.
For nearly a century, he was doomed to waste away in a black-water prison, trapped in a cell within Laboratory 13. It wasn't until the year 2000 that things took a turn, when a young child waded through the hellish waters surrounding his cell to free him from his prison. Thanks to this child, Umbralius escaped from the lab and into the impenetrable depths of the woods, where he took up residence in an abandoned mansion that had been claimed by nature within the reserve. To this day, he remains in hiding, away from society and from the SRI — all while trying to piece together his shattered memories.
===Motivations and Goals===
To remain hidden in plain sight, to stay as far away from human society and the SRI as possible, to live out the remainder of his eternity in solitude unperturbed, to find out who he once was, to figure out what to do about his darkest urges.
===Relationships with other Characters===
None currently.
==Living Situation==
===Home===
For the past twenty-odd years, Umbralius has resided in an unmarked mansion deep within the Cedargrove Wildlife Reserve. Not many people know of its existence - likely because the reserve itself is barred from public access. Those who are aware of the mansion's location are likely part of the SRI, and likely have the unfortunate assignment of taking the Original Beast down (which, so far, has been notoriously unsuccessful). It is safe to assume that the original owner of the mansion has long since perished, either claimed by the wildlife or... well, something else entirely.
The mansion itself shows its age in its poor condition, with broken windows and shattered glass, a front door that cannot close, and a dense overgrowth of foliage crawling from the exterior of the home inward. Nearly all of the furniture in the mansion has fallen apart from neglect, coated in layers of dust and grime, including a piano with broken ivories smeared with black streaks. The interior of the home is clammy, moldy, and perpetually dark, with no candles or electricity. The only source of light occasionally comes from a fireplace in the upstairs study - where Umbralius himself spends most of his days in insolation.
===Never Leaves Home Without===
His mask and his ritual pendants/necklaces.
===Travel===
Umbralius only travels by foot. That's it. Frankly, he wouldn't trust anything else.
==Plotting==
===Played by===
Salem
===Desired Ships/Plots===
Friends and enemies, 100%. I am also very interested in (read: REALLY excited about) the prospect of him meeting other Shadow Monsters, such as the Original Beasts and their offspring - including his own.
===Where to Encounter Umbralius===
Right now, he is most likely to be encountered within the Cedargrove Wildlife Reserve, though that may be subject to change as his personal plot progresses.
===No-Go's for RP===
Not really interested in romance, as I've already got a ship planned for him. No past lovers, either, since he's never had 'em.
Category:Salem
Category:Shadow Monster
Category:Original Beast
Category:Cedargrove
Category:Aware
Category:Canon-based OC
Category:Baldur's Gate 3