Caleb Blackmore

Also known as The Returned

## Backstory

### Before The Cabal

Caleb was born of a family sometime around 4600 AR near Alkenstar in the Mana Wastes and had two siblings - his brother Ishmael and sister Gabriela. His parents, Abraham and Josephine, were not exactly the best people - they were hedonists by nature and often cared more for their next drink than the next meal for their children. So, Caleb, being the youngest, was often cared for by his brother and sister but was teased for being 'weak' and 'useless', but were a family none the less.

They taught him how to hunt animals, how to fish in the river that was close to their home and the most important skill - how to shoot a gun. He was no quick-draw queen like how Gabriela was, nor was he the sharpshooter like his brother Ishmael - but he was instead somewhere between the two in terms of skill by the time he was fourteen. Once they were attacked by two ogres while out fishing, but they were no match for three skilled gunslingers, no matter how young.

By the time he was sixteen, his parents had left them to move out of this god and magic-forsaken lands, viewing their children as weights that would just slow them down. Of course, he was old enough to realize their views and their reasoning for leaving him and his siblings - but he held and still holds a grudge.

Ishmael decided to leave the Mana Wastes around the same time, wanting to learn about the world of magic beyond these lands... and headed south towards Geb. Gabriela decided to stay near Alkenstar, but one day mysteriously disappeared. Alone, the now seventeen-year-old Caleb found his calling as a Gunsmith at the newly created Gunworks near Alkenstar.

This lasted for a few years but as Caleb grew to be more and more of an adult... he found himself more attracted to the bottle and the cards and quit his job, living his life as his own twisted version of what a 'Cowboy' was - A gunslinger with a loose set of morals who drinks, smokes and shoots his way through life, living each day like his last. He became a local menace and a leader of similarly minded bandits and gunslingers in some of the towns near Alkenstar for a good couple years... Until he found... Her.

### Ophelia and The Cabal

Caleb found Ophelia in a burnt down homestead, crying and screaming and utterly insane. But from what he could gather from her near incomprehensible ramblings, she and her husband were members of an evil cult called the Cabal, who worshiped the Demon Lord Orcus. When her husband later tried to leave the Cabal they responded by torching their homestead, killing him as well as their young son... Something about Ophelia, either her situation or her pure beauty, was attractive to Caleb... And he took claim of her, taking her to protect her and love her. The gang he rode with didn't exactly approve of Ophelia, some calling her often insane ramblings to be 'omens of bad things' but Caleb ignored them.

Ophelia persuaded Caleb and part of his gang to join The Cabal, acting as a doorway into the ranks of this horrid cult. Caleb had his first taste of true magical power - being granted his ability to manipulate the dead and the magicks themselves by Orcus. Of course, this drove him and Ophelia to climb the ranks of The Cabal through either tasks of evil for the Dark God or through infighting... eventually reaching the rank of Chosen.

Through the cult, he was reunited with his siblings Ishmael and Gabriela - Ishamel becoming a Lich through perfecting his magical prowess and Gabriela becoming an assassin. The four were Chosen, beings whose own souls and power were intertwined with the Dark God's own. The four acted as powerful agents of Orcus, preparing the world for the day that Orcus would cross into the Material Plane and take it as his own. They were figureheads of The Cabal, seen with both respect and ire from the lessers of the cult.

### The Betrayal

Due to being connected to the Dark God, their lives were extended and their bodies became akin to corpse-flesh... but as the years gone by and the Four Chosen did their work... Orcus quietly planned. Summoning the four to His Realm, the chosen expected to be granted new orders from their Dark God... Only to be told that they had failed Him. In truth, Orcus wished to devour their souls to grow more powerful himself.

But before he consume them... three of his lieutenants attacked and stole away with Ishmael, Gabriela and Ophelia, betraying the Dark God. Infuriated, Orcus threw Caleb from the plane and into a bottomless pit - stealing his power and soul in the process and leaving him with one phrase; "Consider My power, in a hollow grave". Eventually, the darkness took him... and the Endless Void that was the afterlife for the soulless began...

### The Returned

Caleb remained dead for quite a long time, but eventually... something willed him back to life - either a God's own power or through his own fury at his God - forcing him to erupt from a grave. It was now around 4720... and he knew what he must do; reclaim his lost strength, find the three lieutenants who had kidnapped his family and his lover, kill them and go after Orcus himself for this betrayal and to get his soul back.

The three lieutenants were; Tzerkiel The Mad, a Demi-Lich whose own attempt at lichdom failed and left a thousand screaming victims to always echo in his skull - He stole away with Ishmael and his phylactery. Then was Jorgal The Broken-Blade, once a Red Mantis assassin turned Chaotic Half-Fiend when false resurrected with the soul of a slain Balor, granting him some of a Balor's own strength - He stole away with Gabriela. Finally there was Mazzqalia Of The Spiders, a Succubus who uses her powers to feed her ever-growing following of demonic spiderlings - stole away with Ophelia.

After ten years of searching, he found his way to Absalom... finding that the three were somehow involved with each other still... and Absalom was the key.

## Description

Caleb stands rather tall, a tad bit over two meters in height, but isn't exactly muscular per say - more thin or starved than one might expect.

He has pale corpse-flesh that seems to suck onto his bones, with piercing burning yellow or flaming red sockets that could barely be described as eyes. Looking into them reveals his literal soulless gaze, often times more reflecting one's own soul back instead of the other way around. Not exactly handsome, his yellowed teeth and crooked nose describe that of someone whose life was as violent as his death. He has a few scars along his face and a bullet wound under his cheek, showing just a few molars as it didn't heal quite right.

He commonly wears classic wild west clothing - a brown leather duster, black leather boots with spurs, brown canvas pants, a white button up silk shirt, and a brown leather cowboy hat. Ruddy, dirty and covered in holes. Often times what accompanies his clothes are his wounds; often times having arrows, bolts or even whole blades sticking out of his body at one time - though he doesn't seem to mind it too much.

## The Thompson

AKA The Tommy

In terms of weaponry on his body - he's often seen with his machine gun, the so-named Thompson, or Tommy. A hand-made rifle of his own design, mostly made out of old adamantine magitek that he's come across over the years...

The Thompson has two separate feeds - the Semi-Auto and Full-Auto feeds. The Semi-Automatic feed fires a single .308 caliber rifle cartridge per squeeze of the trigger. The Full-Automatic feed fires approximately 800-900 .45 ACP rounds per minute on a held trigger. One can tell when the gun is either in Semi-Auto or Full-Auto depending where the drum magazine is on the weapon. If it's on the left-hand side of the gun, it is in Semi-Auto. If it's on the top of the gun, it is in Full-Auto. While in Semi-Auto, one can see the bolt-action mechanism, along with the top-fed port.

In order to change from Semi-Automatic to Fully Automatic, the bolt-action must be pulled back and locked into place - then the drum magazine is pulled along a lever mechanism and pressed into the top of the port, allowing for active feeding. The porting along the barrel and shroud reduces recoil in both modes, and spent cartridges are either shot from the top-fed port (in semi-auto) or from a opening that opens up when turned full-auto. The gun has two triggers - one on the inside of the butt/secondary handle, usable when resting the gun on a solid surface, and a squeezable lever on the bottom.

It has been enchanted with two kinds of magic - classical magical enchantments and runic inscriptions. Two words written in Abyssal - Bloodthirst and Deathstrike. These seemed to have been written in some sort of silvery metal along the flat back of the gun and glow red when the weapon is in use.