Skulduggery Pleasant

Skulduggery Pleasant is a sorcerer, detective, dead man and soldier. Centuries ago, unknown to humanity, a war was fought in the shadows between two factions of powerful magic-practitioners known as sorcerers. On one side, Mevolant. A sorcerer as powerful as he was evil, determined to find some way of bringing his dark Gods known as the faceless ones into reality to rule over the world. On the other side, the sanctuaries- magical communities created to govern and protect sorcerers by keeping their existence a secret from ordinary people- or mortals as they are known.

On the side of the sanctuaries there were many skilled fighters, but few- perhaps none- were the equal of Skulduggery Pleasant. In magic, combat, shooting and possibly most importantly intellect, Skulduggery Pleasant won battle after battle. And so, in a bid to shift the tide, a man on the side of Mevolant known as Nefarian Serpine chose to stop it. He set a trap, capturing Skulduggery’s wife and child, before luring him into meeting him and then executing them before his eyes. As Pleasant grasped a dagger in rage, he realised too late that the handle had been poisoned. For days, Serpine tortured Pleasant. Cutting and searing his flesh, inflicting pain in ways most could not muster enough malice to even begin to imagine. Before he finally used his red right hand- a skinless appendage that caused unimaginably agonising death to any it pointed at- in order to end Pleasant’s life. After that, his body was burned and his bones were stuffed into a bag and hurled into a river.

The worst part was that it worked, the moral damage from losing one of their finest in such a gruesome and cruel way caused the sanctuaries forces to begin losing ground and men. It was clear that the tide had indeed shifted, and that Mevolant was bound for victory. Many believe that’s what brought the Skeleton back, the idea of his nemesis achieving victory. Whatever it truly was, back he came. As his bones rejoined together and forced their way out of that bag, and back into battle. However Skulduggery, or as he was now known the skeleton detective, was not done suffering yet. For in his rage, grief and despair he began to stop just enjoying violence, he started to exist for it. And so he left the battlefield for many years, no-one knows what he did in this time. But when he finally returned once more, his presence provided the final rallying cry for the sanctuaries’ victory.

## Profile

Destructive Power: **Small Building level**. With Air magic. Rapidly Cooled a ballroom. **Building Level** with fire magic. Ignited coal covering the floor of a room.

Striking Power: At least **Small Building Level** (Can physically contend with vampires who can casually crush bone in their human forms. His physical strikes can hurt sorcerers, who can survive air magic.)  possibly higher. (Can cause damage to sorcerers wearing armoured clothes, which allow them to survive magical attacks that are superior to air with no harm. However this is likely from targeting specific points.)

Speed: At least **Subsonic** (Faster than regular cleavers, who were described as starting a chase at the speed of an Olympic sprinter, only to accelerate rapidly Comparable or superior to vampires like Dusk and Moloch, who could cross large rooms before a young Valkyrie Cain could react.)

Lifting Strength: At least **peak human** (grappled with Tesseract, who dug himself out of a six-foot hole after being paralysed by a spider bite and buried alive.) Likely **Superhuman** (Physically contends with Vampires, who can casually crush bone.)

Durability: At least **Small Building Level** (Can survive attacks from air magic, which was what he used to cool down the ballroom in the calculation.). At least **Building Level** with armoured clothes (Can block energy streams, which should be far more powerful than fire magic)

Stamina: Extremely high (Does not need to breathe, so cannot tire from physical activity. However he stated that using magic can still drain him.)

Range: Standard melee range with physical strikes, hundreds of metres with revolver or magic (magic has been stated to have range nearing a sniper-rifle, with less accuracy.)

Equipment:

.38 Smith&Wesson revolver- A gun Skulduggery appears to care a lot for, it has a lot of stopping power and can hurt sorcerers.

Deadmen armoured clothing- Armoured clothing made by Skulduggery’s friend Ghastly Bespoke. It is extraordinarily light and resistant to all forms of damage, allowing him to ignore attacks that would cause him severe harm ordinarily.

A spike bomb- It’s a bomb with a spike in it. While simple, it was sufficiently powerful to stagger the Grotesquery- a Faceless One hybrid with enough power to completely ignore magical attacks from Skulduggery, crush a skull like an egg and shrug off dozens of attacks from Cleaver Scythes which can slice a person in half top-to-bottom without losing momentum.

Intelligence: Genius. Skulduggery Pleasant is arguably the most intelligent character in the series, his mind is renowned world-wide for its sharpness and has saved his life more than either his magic or his strength. He has tricked opponents such as Darquesse- a being who could learn everything there was to know about quantum mechanics in just sixteen days. He has memorised and studied “every” type of magic known by the sanctuary, and he once successfully deduced that a man was a murderer upon glancing him after walking into a bar.

Weaknesses: If Skulduggery’s bones are separated in enough places, the magic binding them together will dissipate and he will effectively die. Skulduggery’s limbs appear to become detached from each other rather easily, which while easily reversed by placing them back into the joint, is extremely painful.