Onyx

Official image of Onyx, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

Onyx Mayfell is a Player Character of Arc 5 and played by Pax.

## Description

Onyx is a Tabaxi, built and marked like a cheetah. He is tall and skinny, but still strong: he gained his strength from his job as a smith. Usually, he wears a belt with his smith's tools.

He is a smith and specialized in weapon making. Many of the weapons he makes are enchanted later on, which leads to him knowing a decent amount of magic and arcana, but he himself does not enchant the weapons. His weapons are perfectly good without the enchantments, though, too: Onyx is good at what he does, and pays a lot of attention to the details. His main specialty are shortswords and daggers.

Onyx has social anxiety, also because he doesn't really realise how tall and strong he really is. He is not, however, generally easily scared, on the contrary: he is more than willing to face threats he could easily avoid if it means helping his friends. In crowds, though, he gets anxious. Additionally, he is not very good at picking up social clues.

Usually, he is accompanied by his familiar and pet dog, Ann. She often gives him emotional support and calms him down when he is close to panicking. Ann is very well behaved, but not much of a fighter herself. Her main duty is to regularly casually bump into Onyx to remind him that she's there, and he's not alone. Onyx would love to be able to just have her talk for him.

Onyx himself also does not fight often. The weapons he carries around are wares he built, not really weapons he uses that much, and he has it as a rule to not attack unless provoked.

On multiple occasions, Onyx prooves that he is a quick and determined learner.

In general, Onyx thinks about his future more than about his past, and more about his goals than about where he has been.

Onyx came to the Festival of the Dawnfather's Rest to find a specific commune or guilt of smiths and other artisans. They make maybe the most famous enchanted weapons, but are very exclusive, and don't even live on the Material Plane. They only come there to sell their wares at festivals and similar occasions, including the Festival of the Dawnfather's Rest, and Onyx hopes to be able to overcome his social anxiety and apply for a job with them. Because of this, he carries with him a lot of weapons he crafted himself, they are going to be his resume when he applies.

## Backstory

He went to the Arcane Academy in Tyle, where at some point, he met Booker Sailship, who taught him some magic, including the spell Find Familiar. When Booker and he parted, he hadn't quite mastered the spell yet, but by the start of Arc 5, his familiar Ann is his regular companion.

He learned his craft from multiple members, who did not regularly praise him. Booker was one of the best teachers he ever had.

Even though Booker and he have not seen each other a lot, and Onyx knows very few things about him, he trusts him.

## Character Arc

For the beauty pageant round of Snowdrop, the people helping him getting ready decide to work with the "sexy smith" idea and dress him up in a nice vest without an undershirt. He has his belt, but the tools in it are not his usual, actually functioning tools, that are visibly used, but impractical, silver plated tools instead. Additionally, he wears some of the armbands and bracers he made himself, that were supposed to be enchanted later.

When time resets for the first time, Onyx remembers most of the things that happened, but at first assumes he had a very elaborate hallucination.

In Episode 4, Onyx has to face the "worst possible version of himself" in the mirror maze in order to get through it. The version of himself he sees in the mirror at first glance seems to be very similar to the real him, but Ann is not next to him. The mirror Onyx has no hammer, no magical focus, no bag of weapons, and just looks lost. While he does mimick all of real Onyx's movements, something in his face is just missing, and he does not keep eye contact with real Onyx. As Onyx tries to address this mirror image, mirror Onyx sits down and puts his head in his hand. This worst possible version is Onyx if he did not try to get out of his anxiety.

During the different loops, Onyx tries to get better at talking to strangers by practising in a setting where nothing he says to people outside his party will have consequences six hours later, but still, it is quite difficult for him.

## Trivia

* The free expertise Pax chose for Onyx is Arcana.
* Onyx fully believed that Wren and Lily were just business partners.