Apate Gadarik

## **General Information**

One of the main characters, Apate is the 3rd oldest of his family. He has six other siblings (in order from oldest to youngest: Arita, Amari, Akari, Atore, Akyo and Assio) and for the majority of his life he tried to take care of his family.

## **Background / History**

Born in a planet named Re’gross, Apate grew up in a very big family with no parents around to take care of them.

Because of this, from a very young age he took the role as caretaker along with his two older sisters Arita and Amari, who both had dropped out of school and worked regular jobs to support their family.

He wanted to drop out like them so he could be able to help, but his sisters were firmly against it as they had already given up on their education and dreams and outright refused to let him give up his as well.

## CHARACTER INFO

### Location(s)

- Re'Gross (age 0 - 18)
- Hyperborea (age 18 - present)

### Relatives

- Arita (oldest sister)
- Amari (older sister)
- Akari (older sister)
- Atore and Akyo (younger twin sisters)
- Assio (youngest sister)
- His Mother

### Connections

- Veritas Wye (partner)
- Cambucha (contractor)

## STATUS

**ALIVE**

That disapproval never stopped him though, and it wasn’t long before he started secretly working several part time jobs, only to end up sleeping during his classes because he was working very hard during the nights. Apate always wanted to become a concert violinist and was so good he had a very high chance to eventually live a comfortable life because of it. He would even play for the sailors and pubs near his house to make some extra money, but his ever changing jobs ruined his hands to the point that he had to lock that dream away in the backrooms of his mind.

Whenever he had some free time he always spent it with his sisters. They particularly loved playing together with the instruments that Apate had totally not stolen for them.

Apate, Akyo and Atore were much closer than the rest of the family and they basically grew up together, almost as if they were attached to the hips. They were a great source of comfort and peace to each other, but unfortunately that didn’t last much longer.

Sure enough, when Apate turned 18 their planet got destroyed by the bug living in it and the youngest Gadarik sibling, Assio, who was only 8 years old at the time, went missing in the aftermath, only to be presumed dead. The rest of the family managed to escape and moved to Hyperborea.

Their bond was already quivering after losing one of the siblings and they tried to get through it as best as they could while also trying to build a life for themselves from nothing in this new terrible place. Things don’t seem to get better any time soon for the Gadarik’s though, because they got in trouble with the local real estate system and not paying a few months of rent resulted in their sister Akari, who was 17 at the time, to be killed for it.

In a fit of vengeful anger Apate decided to leave and seek those who did it, forgetting behind his family who had taken yet another hard blow and was now alone to deal with it.

At that point it didn’t take him long to get deep inside of the criminal organizations of Hyperborea, who turned out to be much more of a big deal than what he initially thought and he got himself into quite some trouble: he linked his body with the Bug (which is the reason why he got his super strength) and he made a terrible blood contract with “The Doctor” from the last Layers: for years he was obligated to commit crimes and kill other people in the name of his family’s safety.

At one point though, one very unusual person comes into play: Cambucha, one of the most influential people of the entirety of Hyperborea, personally took him out of that contract to bind his services to her.

The contract is entirely in her favor, but at least paying off this debt to her doesn’t make him kill people anymore and she actually pays him like a regular employee for his work. And it is exactly because of these new affiliations that Apate is one of the highest wanted criminals of Hyperborea’s bounty system, but these new powers he had gotten had granted him the extensive reputation as one of (if not the) strongest people in the city, keeping the majority of the hunters far away from him.

After a total of 8 years after leaving his family, he comes back to their doorstep very badly wounded. His older sister Amari was very mad at him for showing up after many years in those conditions, but he managed to get better and somehow slowly reconnected with Akyo.

At the present time he meets Veritas in the streets of Hyperborea by accidentally kicking him in the head.

## **Fun Facts**

He is a great swimmer and likes to read cheesy romance novels.

He is embarrassingly bad with technology.

He’s a great cook and used to cook for his sisters growing up and holds so much love inside of him, he showed Veritas what it feels like to feel love and to feel loved. Apate reads him poems, talks about their meaning and metaphors and when Veritas tells him that he does not understand them, he reminds him that there's nothing to understand about poems, only to feel, before reading them again until Veritas feels it.

His power requires him to consume a massive intake of calories per day to sustain itself and his general strength is very explosive: his body favors massive peaks of strength at the cost of his stamina which lets him throw some exceptionally powerful punches, but he gets tired very easily.

## **Notable Items**

He wears some very special **gloves** that help him deal with his constantly growing strength: they were made of the same rare metal as his earrings (named “Myrill”, or “Scales” when in its raw form since its pattern resembles faintly dragon scales) and they compress his arms to reduce the amount of power he has, so that he can do things like opening a door without instantly breaking the handle.

The major issue with his power is that he keeps getting used to the gloves and it’s almost as if his body trains itself to get stronger to beat their compression, which results in him having to recalibrate the gloves very frequently.