Asturias Cervantes

### Relatives

Alfonso Cervantes (The Ashen Drake) - Younger brother; has pyrokinetic powersTeresa Cervantes (Hurricane) - Younger sister; manipulates the weather in a small area

Carroman Cervantes (Nightfury) - Youngest brother; has umbrakinesis

Raquel Cervantes (Living Saint) - Mother. Heals using food.

## Physical description

### Eye color

Gold

*"Have we lost sight of why we rose up against the world's governments? For whom did we topple the powers of this planet? Just ourselves, or for the greater good of everyone?"*

Asturias Cervantes is the Lord of Maharlika, formerly the Philippines. He is unique amongst the lords in that he is not actually 'alive'; rather, he is a wraith placed within a powerful construct. Despite being undead, he wields the same powers he had in life, and so remains as a mighty waterbender, which had given him the moniker of 'Sea Dragon'.

## **Personality**

Asturias is deceptively intimidating with his seven foot frame and hard, marble-like exterior, but he is actually a very swell kind of person. He genuinely cares for the people of his realm, and the notion of avenging the numerous assassination attempts that he had gone through is all but lost to him. Asturias simply wants to move Maharlika forward into the future, turn it into a far cry from the destitute nation that it had become at the hands of its past dictator. Asturias also happens to have a hard stance against the Resistance, seeing them as upstarts that want to return his country to being a pawn of colonial powers.

Asturias is seen as exceedingly selfless, a quality that has made him adored by much of the masses.

## **Abilities**

**Darkstone Construction:** For the last ten years, Asturias has been a ghost interred inside a Darkstone Construct, though he has kept the powers that he wielded in life. His frame is made from at least three dozen independent pieces that are kept together solely through his ghost, which can rearrange themselves at his whim, taking on whatever kind of form he wishes to take. Usually, he would take on a humanoid shape, though Asturias turns into a draconic construct at times of war. Or when he’s traveling through the oceans.

Due to the material’s nature, Asturias is highly durable and has a slow regenerative process when outside combat. He deflects firearms, and resists most explosives and kinetic weapons. He has also been freed from the mortal constraints of needing sleep and food, though the fact that food could no longer be enjoyed has been a depressing thing for him.

**Hydrokinesis:** Despite being dead, he retains the powers he had in life. Asturias is able to manipulate a great amount of water, being able to turn it into any of the three states (Iiquid water, steam/vapor, and ice) seemingly at will. There are a great number of applications for this ability, limited only by the versatile nature of water itself and the fact that his senses are somewhat dulled by being a ghost.

## **Biography**

Asturias Cervantes is the firstborn scion of Felix Cervantes, the lord of the Philippines that came to power during the Millennium Coup, who was also known as the Stormlord. He and his siblings aided their father in taking over the country, taking Malacanang Palace with little in the way of fanfare or publicity. Felix, however, died soon after due to being shot by snipers that tried to retake the Palace the day after the coup ended, and Asturias was quickly placed in line to take over the nation.

Before all that, though, Asturias was born in a turbulent segment of his country’s history. It had been taken into martial law by the Marcos regime, whose presidency had turned into a full blown dictatorship that allowed no dissent and sent those that voiced their disapproval of the nation’s downward spiral into debt into black sites that few ever came back from.

At this time, though, much of the metahuman Cervantes family had been dual citizens, and most of them were staying in the United States when news of how their home country fell into authoritarianism reached them. The side of the family that was in the Americas could do nothing about it as they were beholden to the whims of the American military. And so they watched as the events of the following decades unfolded. The assassination of Benigno Aquino, then the return of democratic rule as a peaceful revolution ousted the regime. Had things been looser, the Cervantes metahumans, Asturias included, would have intervened and caused great death. Fortunately, they did not, at least until the plane bearing the Marcoses to Hawaii mysteriously disappeared. It is believed, however, that Felix and Asturias destroyed it over the high seas, killing all of them in the process.

As the years went on, though, metahumans became little more than property of the state. Asturias especially resented this, as he was often doing the thankless job of protecting the people of Cebu City while receiving little in the way of praise. That would end, however, when Hammer and Columbia collaborated with Felix Cervantes and other metahumans to take over the governments of the world. The Cervanteses were especially sick of the systemic corruption that had seeped into every stratum of the government, and were all too eager to wipe it out. Much of the Senate and Congress would simply die that day; it is said that every official that held a high position while being convicted of criminal cases such as graft were incinerated in a vast cone of hellfire by Alfonso Cervantes. When the coup ended, the Cervantes Dynasty had asserted itself as benevolent rulers of the land, if not taking over through a coup de etat.

Felix would die from sniper fire the day after the Coup, and Asturias eventually realized that he too was a constant target of assassination by ex-government forces. Five times did he manage to get away from car bombs and rifle wielding assassins, but his luck eventually ran out. On September 26, 2010, a few weeks after the Philippines had been renamed into Maharlika as a symbolic way of breaking away from its colonial past, Asturias and his brothers Alfonso and Carroman were killed in an explosion.

Fortunately, however, there was a certain visitor in the country: Kondrad Sierakowsky, Lord of Poland. Having come to Maharlika in order to enjoy a vacation in the tropics, the Ghostlord instead ended up bringing out the wraiths of the three brothers and interred them into custom-built Darkstone Constructs at the request of their mother and sister, as well as Asturias himself, who expressed a desire to keep steering the nation towards it upward drive in economic and military strength. He also wanted to destroy his killers himself, so there was that.

Imagine the shock of his assassins as Asturias emerged from Manila Bay as a transforming construct, manipulating the waters with the same proficiency he did in life. He hasn’t found them yet, but with the Resistance crushed, Asturias feels he doesn’t have to.

And so, he and his brothers are now known as the Dragons of Maharlika, ruling along with their sister and mother as those who know and do what is best.

## **Appearance**

When in his normal, humanoid frame, Asturias looks just like the ‘lesser Ghostknights’ wielded by the Polish ASSR, though are numerous segmentations that indicate that his form is not one, continuous body, but rather, a construct made from many separate parts that could transfer and shift into different forms at will. In addition, Asturias’ frame is painted over with ocean blue, nicely fitting in with his constant sojourns through the seas.