Skelly

## Physical Information

Skelly is a fighter, participating in the Ministry Succession Tournament. Fighting Cookie in the 2nd match of the first round.

## Appearance

In his youth, Skellios had a bright, hopeful disposition, as well as short purple hair and light brown eyes. His attire at the time consisted of gilded white robes, indicative of royalty. As he aged, he began to wear orange and maroon robes, similar to an Indian monk, along with a white turban. Skellios' current appearence as undead is that of completely fleshless skeleton. Around his eye sockets are black markings, and where his eyes should be are two glowing red dots. His true nature is typically unseen, as he covers his face with an ominous mask, as well as donning dark purple and black robes in order to conceal himself.

## Personality

Despite his intimidating appearance, Skellios is normally a wise, calm man. Due to all the tragedies that happened in his life, he’s normally contemplative and melancholic, but he means well. He values life a lot and doesn’t like for others to commit the mistakes he did while he had flesh. As he’s tasked to take care of the graves of the fallen Ministry members, Skellios is skillful and takes a lot of care in preserving the graves and making the place of rest of the fallen a cozy place.

Though he values life, as a necromancer he doesn’t fear using those who threaten what he treasures as part of his undead army. He’s a bit more reserved in using humans, but doesn’t doubt at the time of turning gods and demons into his servants. He in particular resents gods for trouncing the attempts of humans to gain happiness. He rarely loses his cool, being overall analytical and perceptive.

While his creepy look may suggest otherwise, he also enjoys dirty jokes. One of his favorites is one involving balls and jaws. He has a good relationship with Illyricus and his Maids, due them being non-humans in a mostly human environment.

## History

Skellios was born as Samprati, a prince from India. He spent his childhood living a good life, ignoring the situation from the outside world. It was in his teenage years when he realized the harsh truth: the world was a place devastated by war, plagued by famine and misery, with the poor people suffering the consequences of the greed of the men and the pride of the gods. From that point onwards, Samprati decided to make the world a better place the best he could. He became an ambassador to negotiate peace with other countries, made laws to help the population and was a huge supporter of non violent conflicts. He became king at the age of 36 after his father passed away, turning into one of the most beloved monarchs of India.

However, tragedy struck him six years later when the war took the lives of both his loving wife Satiávati and his oldest son Kanishka, leaving him grief stricken. To make matters worse, his heir became now his second son Shámtanu, a warmongering, cruel man who would ruin the country if he would reach power. This made Samprati paranoid and fearful of what his son would do if he were to reach power. After lots of thinking, Samprati decided the best thing to ensure his reign wouldn’t collapse would be achieving immortality. He investigated lots of mythological and historical sources, favoring Western necromancy, as it would allow him eternity and a powerful army that could detract any nation from attacking India. He started to practice magic and neglect his kingdom, even forming a court of royal mages from different parts of the world to obtain immortality. He finally succeeded in creating a magical circle that would bring him eternal life, but his ambition was stopped when the mages told him he would need to sacrifice tons of human lifes, horrifying Samprati, who canceled the project, not wanting to kill innocents, even if for the greater good.

Samprati as a human met his end at age 79, when India was attacked by the ruthless warlord Bernice. Bernice raided the royal palace, overpowered Samprati’s army and shot him in the stomach with a gun, leaving him grievously injured. Not wanting to die and leave his country to perish, he crawled to the magical circle and, unknowingly activated it with his blood. The magic from the circle killed everyone in the palace and absorbed their souls into Samprati, who avoided death and gained an immortal body, as he always wanted. However, power didn’t come without a price: Samprati had been devoid of any flesh and turned into a demonic skeleton. The horror he suffered after the realization made him scream in utter horror. The scream was so powerful it raised all the people he killed, who became an undead army and attacked Bernice’s and his men, never stopping unless fully dismembered. Horrified, Bernice was forced to escape for the first time in his life.

Samprati came to his people in his undead state, but they were horrified to see such a demonic creature and ran scared  at the sight of him. Realizing what kind of monster he became, Samprati kept protecting India on his own with his undead army, until one day the gods caught him. Enraged by the fact a human managed to achieve immortality (a severe taboo), they condemned him to spend eternity on Helheim. However, Samprati did not give up and quickly adapted to the hellish realm. He killed and turned demons into his slaves, creating a powerful army that allowed him to become one of the top dogs of Helheim. He even turned into undead slaves 4 powerful demons: Durgamasur, Bali, Susna and Vritra. Changing his name to Skellios, the Undead King, he became a shield to avoid demons from invading other realms and hurting others. However, his watch ended one day, when a portal came from the sky of Helheim and two beings came to recruit him: The human Graff from the Ministry along with the mysterious dimensional traveler Illyricus. They offered him the chance to join them to achieve world peace, having discovered his existence from old Indian texts. Though he refused the first times, he eventually got convinced and joined the Ministry. Using a mask to hide his appearance in public, he was tasked with taking care of the gravestones from the fallen ones of the Ministry, a task he keeps doing to these days.

## Abilities

**Necromancy**: His main ability. As a result of the magic ritual that changed his life forever, Skellios can rise the dead. The only condition he needs is for him to find a corpse. Once he revives the corpse with his black magic, the new undead will become Skellios’ mindless subject, obeying any command he orders. Depending on how decomposed the corpse is, the soldier will be either a reanimated skeleton or a zombie. He can summon his dead army at any point, as they reside inside a stone he helds. The army contains undead humans, gods, demons, giants, ogres, dragons and other kinds of mystical beings. Being basically walking corpses, these soldiers have less endurance and strength than when they were human, with their main strength being their numbers.

**Physical Damage Immunity**: Due his magical undead body, Skellios is immune to physical damage, as he can momentarily turn into dust to repel the attack. Cutting, slashing, stabbing, punching etc. are useless against him. The only way you can hurt him with magic. His main weaknesses are light magic and water magic.

**Pyrokinesis**:  As a result of spending so much time in Helheim, Skellios developed the ability to use blue fire. These flames are hotter than any orange flame and can burn everything. He can use these blue flames either as normal fire or shaped attacks.

**Staff Proficiency**:  Though his staff is mostly a tool to summon/control undead soldiers, Skellios can still use it as a weapon if he’s forced to.

## Equipment

**Necromancer Staff**: A staff serving as catalyst for summoning and controlling the dead. Skellios can use it for combat if necessary, but its main use is casting spells more efficiently.

**Necromancer Stone**:  A small purple stone where Skellios keeps his dead soldiers more comfortably.  With this he can transport them in a more effective way and summon them whenever he desires. Destroying the stone would mean releasing the entire undead army, so breaking it is a sound mistake.

## Techniques

**Dead Wall**:  Positioning his dead soldiers as a shield, Skellios blocks enemy attacks directed at him. The defense can break if the attack is stronger than the combined defense of the soldiers.

**Will-O'-Wisp**: Using his pyrokinetic abilities, Skellios shapes his blue fire into small skull-shaped flames. These flames will pursue the enemy until they land on them or something else, producing a violent fire explosion.

**Four Undead Heavenly Kings**: Among Skellios’ army of undeads, these four are the strongest on his arsenal. These four powerful demons were slain in Skellios’ time in Helheim after a lot of effort, and are a force to reckon with, though he can only summon two at a time. The members include:

* **Great Skull King, Bali**: A giant undead with many other skeletons inside him. With no legs and moving by crawling, he’s very slow, but his body serves as a perfect defense. Unlike other undeads he’s incredibly tough and cannot be destroyed easily. A single slap of his palms to the floor makes the ground tremble.
* **Swallower of Light, Susna**: A skeletal werewolf-like undead. Fast and with claws that can tear into steel with ease. It can swallow any light to a certain extent, thus protecting Skellios from light based attacks.
* **Fallen Swordsman, Durgamasur**: An undead swordsman with four arms, very quick and swift, his moves are fast yet strong, and at maximum speed he can create gusts of winds around him.
* **Serpent of Drought, Vritra**: The strongest demon from Hindu mythos. A gargantuan undead serpent that evaporates all the water from the zone it is summoned, eliminating another of Skellios’s weaknesses. Due to how destructive it is by sheer size alone, Skellios only releases it if the other three Heavenly Kings are destroyed.

**Phenex**: Named after one of the demons from Ars Goetia. Skellios summons from his hands a magnificent, blue flaming phoenix. He then throws it to the enemy. Unlike Will-O'-Wisp, the opponent can dodge the attack and end unscathered, but taking a blow of this attack will  almost surely reduce the enemy to ashes. Skellios only uses this technique if he’s sure he’s gonna kill someone.