ACT 2 - Caleb The Dark Knight

**ACT 2 Ally - Caleb the Dark Knight**

Originally a simple farmer from a primitive farming community, Caleb would have remained perfectly ordinary were it not for a fateful trip taken one day into the base of an old well. Finding a mostly buried iron chest, dreams of pirate treasure filling his head, Caleb discovers naught but a set of old, albeit still sturdy, platemail. Upon removing it from the well he noticed that the metal would remain cold to the touch even in the light of day. When trying to melt down one of the pauldrons for much needed nails, both Caleb and the smith found that the metal of this armor refused to melt no matter how hot the flames of the forge got.

Caleb began to be haunted by nightmares of a figure in the amour, ruling over a dark castle and performing cruel acts of blood sports always under the cover of night. Not until he tried to don the helm did Caleb finally realize that the energies within the armor have persisted from it's last owner to him. He felt the amour hunger for the cold dark places of the world, teasing him with it's power while always prompting him to seek out battle and danger, hinted that such things would only strengthen it, and therefor, him. These growing energies eventually drew the cultists to kidnap him, though by then the armour had already attuned to a living host, sharing his soul as 2 parts of the same being, that is the Dark Knight.

Far from being alarmed, Caleb smiled as he was freed by Claire to join a group that seemed to do little but battle. The idea of traveling in the darkest of places in existence, the cold reaches of every sunless space. Without the warm embrace of the sun, the armours influence began to grow over Caleb daily, until the power at his command easily rivaled that of a hundred men.

*Teachable skill is **Crush Armour**.*

**Innate Skills**

**Gather Shadows** - His signature ability, dubbed the Shadow Driver, demands he spend a period of time gathering the dark energies of the cosmos around him, including those of enemies directed at him. Upon release, the target cannot block or avoid these unique forces, which temporarily make an enemy a dark nexus sapping the life of the enemies allies as well.

**Nullify** - The energies of the armor interfere with most natural forces. They drain heat from flames, take hold of the deepest chills, channel and ground electrical charges, distort the sound waves which cause sleep in most other creatures, latch onto any stolen mana while channeling it back to him, and instills a horrible focus that dampens any distractions. Simply being near him, as his focus continues to grow, disrupts these same energies even when directed at his allies, to an extent proportional to distance from him.

**Soul Eater -** Whenever an enemy is felled by Caleb, the toughness and power remaining in the corpse is drawn into him. Eventually he learns to infuse his killing blow with energies able to sever the link between soul and body, preventing foes from being brought back.

**Crush Armour -** An entirely natural technique to seeing the vital energies of a foe enabling Caleb to target a natural weakness, gap in armour, or flaw in structure of a foe. This bypasses a good part of a foes resistance mechanisms creating an opening for allies attacks to exploit for a short time.

**Drain Life -** Focusing some of their ever present negative energies upon a foe, then absorbing those forces with a fraction of a targets life forces, allows the night to fuel their own recovery. The weaker they are the more hungry these energies become, being fueled as much by hunger as their own mental fortitude.

**DarkBlade -** Calebs attacks are always bolstered with negative forces, bolstered bby a fraction of their own vitality, though this process can never acturally down him. This bolstering allows half of these energies to fully bypass any defenses, no mater how trained and fortified. Life lost this was brings them that much closer to unleashing an eclipse.

**Eclipse -** Whenever Caleb channels his darkness, it remains in the environment as a growing shadow over all nearby light sources, until massive enough to cause an eclipse, allowing Caleb to temporarily unleash the full forces within his armour. This force is directly proportional to a 1/3 of Caleb's overall vitality, able to draw upon half as much of all foes vitality as well.

**Sever Soul -** Caleb uses his mental training to focus on the magical energies of a foe, learning from his manipulation of darkness how to draw out these same forces. It cancels out a portion of their discipline, by temporarily blocking access to much of their training. If during this period the foe happens to die, their inability to access their energies and training will prevent them from returning back to life, if able.