Merce

**Merce** is an adventurer who travels from planet to planet, collecting items from across the universe to be sold in his shop. He occasionally runs into the Council while adventuring.

## Appearance

Merce has messy, somewhat spiky, black hair with a slightly desaturated yellow complexion. His eyes are soft and pale yellow in color. Due to injuries that he sustained from his ex-girlfriend, Lona, Merce has whip scars on the back of his legs.

Due to his powers of self-age manipulation, Merce can take the physical form of himself at any age within his lifespan. Most notably, Merce uses this power to transform into a child in order to trick potential customers into buying items out of pity.

While adventuring, Merce wears a black shirt, blue pants, and brown adventure boots. He wears brown arm bracers and his Core Offering as a necklace. To counteract his light sensitivity, he wears black goggles with blue-tinted lenses and a turquoise hooded cloak.

## Personality

Merce is a diligent, passionate individual that enjoys exploring new planets and collecting exotic items; he seeks excitement wherever he can. Despite that, he also enjoys relaxing and telling his adventure stories to others. Being friendly and upbeat, Merce is quick to go out of his way to help others whenever necessary.

Contrastingly, Merce also has a more devious side to him, which typically shows up when he uses his self-age manipulation ability to transform into the physical appearance of a child to guilt-trip customers into spending more money on his merchandise.

Even though he is typically willing to talk about his past and many of his adventures, he refuses to talk about memories involving either his ex-girlfriend, Lona, or his childhood friend, Mist. This is because neither are currently present in his life, and he doesn't like to dwell on memories that make him unhappy.

## Abilities

**Self-Age Manipulation:** Being Aetilian, Merce possesses the innate ability to manipulate his own age. He uses this to his advantage by transforming to a younger age to become more evasive in combat. Additionally, he also uses this ability to affect other's perception of him.

**Telepathy:** As an Aetilian, Merce was born with the ability to passively read and communicate with others mentally. This ability is useful to him as an adventurer, as it allows him to easily translate languages found throughout the universe.

## Equipment

**Goggles:** Due to his light sensitivity, Merce wears black adventure goggles with blue-tinted lenses so that his eyes adjust easier to the brightness of other planets.

**Hooded Cloak:** Merce wears a hooded cloak in case he ever needs to shield himself from bright light on adventures.

**Core Offering:** As an Aetilian, Merce received a Core Offering which manifested itself as a brown cog wheel. His Core Offering holds a physical space inside of it which Merce has chosen to built his store in. Spinning the cog wheel will transport you to the physical space. As more items are stored inside of it, the cog wheel grows bigger.

**Merce's Sword:** Merce's main weapon of choice is currently a nondescript sword because I am tired and cannot think of any cool attributes or a cool design for his sword.

## Trivia

* His Core Offering was originally small enough to be worn as a bracelet.
* The idea to boost sales by deceiving customers with a younger physical form came from Merce's childhood friend, Mist.