King Cryonics

**King Cryonics** is a playable character in Affinity Squad. He is the servant and friend of Khione, the goddess of winter, as well as one of two leaders and 6 original founders of Affinity Squad.

## Appearance

Caleb Collins is a young, Caucasian adult of above-average height and an average, slightly toned build. His hair is strikingly blond and intentionally a little bit messy. He has piercing icy blue eyes, which glow when he channels his powers. In his civilian identity, he wears a variety of streetwear, preferring plain t-shirts and long pants.

As King Cryonics, he wears a regal set of Greek-Inspired armor, consisting of a ceremonial breastplate, armored skirt, shin guards, and armored gauntlets, all made of a mixture of Brass and a darker blue metal, all of which is highlighted by a smattering of golden edges across his armor. Additionally, he wears tight fitting Greek style sandals and a long flowing blue cape, fringed with pure white fur. Tying together his regal appearance, he has a simple golden crown on his head, and a stylized golden scepter in his hand. This scepter glows with the blue glow of a Everwinter crystal embedded in the golden head, giving it a slight blue glow.

In his Blizzard Form, King Cryonics becomes a swirling vortex of snow, centered around his scepter and crown.

## Personality

Caleb is a confident and charismatic 21 year old, someone who makes friends in every room he walks into. Despite this, he can get overconfident, and is easily angered by underhanded tactics such as hostage taking and betrayal, something that is occasionally exploited by his opponents to lure him into traps.

Caleb is defined by his care for others. He spent his time in high school making as many friends as he could, before going to work at a soup kitchen twice a week. He's always had aspirational goals to try and do right in his community, and while he is a strong advocate for justice and peace, he's gotten into more fights than he should against punks that insulted one of his friends. Caleb's brashness is probably one of his greatest flaws, requiring a lot of focus to overcome and play safe, especially against enemies that pose a serious chance of killing him.

Caleb's confidence is well earned, as he is an accomplished academic in high school, and is attending online school while carrying out his super hero duties. He was a fairly decent athlete as well, but he always held a passion for learning, which ultimately led him on his fateful trip to the mountains of Greece.

As a hero, Caleb seeks to free Khione above all else, and spreading the word about Khione seems the best way to restore the strength of the long forgotten goddess. She does not need worship, simply recognition, and so as a result, Caleb wishes to be as loud and boisterous as possible in order to save her from her temple prison.

## Powers and Abilities

### **Powers**

#### Cryonic Biology

King Cryonics has had his entire body transformed into a living snowstorm by the magic of Khione. When he is in human form, he feels warm to the touch, and resembles a completely ordinary human, down to the biological level. However, any disruption to his human body causes the magic to revert to it's true form, exploding into a cloud of swirling sentient snow. None of his vital organs are truly important for his survival, meaning he is nearly impossible to assassinate, and nearly impervious to any attack that merely carves into his body, as he can just regenerate moments later. In addition, King Cryonics can freely change his entire body into a blizzard.

While in Blizzard form, he can cover a wide area, being totally aware of everything that transpires in it. He's capable of adjusting every aspect of the blizzard, allowing allies to maneuver freely while enemies are blinded by a torrent of sleet and snow. He can reform parts of his body from the blizzard at will, as well as create multiple copies of his usual body parts, such as more than 2 arms at once. He uses these to strike and grapple at any enemies caught in the blizzard.

Tragically, this Cryonic Biology comes with several downsides. King Cryonics's power is dependent on local temperature, weather conditions, humidity, and other factors, all of which can weaken or strengthen King Cryonics. In a raging blizzard, he could expand to titanic proportions, but in the middle of the Sahara Desert, he will struggle to become larger than a small room at most. He is also uniquely vulnerable to fire, and other energy attacks that can directly melt and destroy his ice crystals. Fortunately, he is rather difficult to destroy, as he only needs a single snowflake to survive in order for him to start regenerating. This puts a difficult toll on his regeneration, of course, but it is survivable. If the majority of his body is intact, he can regenerate in moments, but if reduced to less than a hand or foot worth of snow, he could take weeks to recover, being effectively comatose.

#### Cryonic Sorcery

King Cryonics is a skilled sorcerer, as Khione, having accidentally given him these powers, went to work teaching from her ancient books to show Caleb how to control his powers. He was a quick study, and being a font of magic himself, he found himself easily able to cast spells relating to winter and ice. His primary method of practicing this magic is to generate powerful cryonic blasts of pure cold, capable of freezing enemies in place. This magic is extremely potent, and even incredible strong foes like Bestiar and Syphon Gray do their best to avoid a direct blast from him.

This magic does have a limitation however. It draws on the inherent magic in Caleb's new magical body, and should his body be broken, his ability to channel the winter magic fades away. This means that while in Blizzard form, King Cryonics is unable to cast his cryonic magic.

Outside of combat, he can, with a few minutes of casting, open a portal to Khione's Sanctum, as well as travel from the Sanctum to other places in the world. He has a handful of other spells that he's learned and is learning, but his true specialty is his Cryonic Blasts.

### **Equipment**

#### The Scepter of Khione

A Scepter taken from Khione's Sanctum, and blessed with the goddesses magic, King Cryonics is able to channel his magic into the scepter, and use it's crystal to amplify the power of his cryonic blasts. In addition, it makes for a powerful anchor when Caleb is in Blizzard form, making it easy to whip up the winds without tearing himself apart.

## Relationships

* Khione: When Caleb heard Khione's voice calling out for help, he rushed in without hesitation, ultimately dying from the cold as he attempted to break her free of the Ice. When she was freed, she desperately threw everything she had into resurrecting him, to far greater success than she expected. This dynamic would go on to define their relationship. Despite being bound as the Champion of a God, Caleb and Khione are more friends than business partners. Khione was frozen for thousands of years, but she is really only as old as Caleb himself from her perspective, and that led to a quick friendship. They both have begun developing feelings for each other, but Khione is entirely unfamiliar with how to handle them, and Caleb feels that it would be wrong to act on those feelings when Khione is so reliant on him to escape. They are ultimately, very close friends, and spend a lot of time together, him educating her on the things she's missed while in the Ice(like movies and buttered popcorn), and she teaching him more of magic and the history of her people. Notably, despite Khione's godly ability to speak any language, Caleb is putting in the effort to learn her dialect of ancient Greek, so he can talk to her in her own tongue.
* The Creator: The Creator is a good foil to King Cryonics, conservative when he is reckless, calm when he is angry, and yet when he struggles to motivate his team and himself, no one is better at cracking a joke to cheer him up than King Cryonics. Caleb secretly looks up to the Creator, and sees him as a icon of strength and perseverance. At the same time, The Creator is inspired by the fiery passion in Caleb's heart, finding it a source of strength even in the darkest of times. They may not be particularly emotionally close, but they are good friends, and an excellent pair of team leaders.
* Artifact: Elijah and Caleb are from the same town, and while they never ran in the same circles, that gives them a lot of common ground. They've become fast friends, talking over the minutia of each others work constantly, and working together on projects.
* Bling Thing: Caleb sees Bling Thing as a respected peer, and a close friend. He likes to check up on her and make sure she's doing ok, especially after encounters with tough villains. Bling Thing looks up to Caleb, having gone to the same school as him, and remembering him as an upperclassman. She's slowly getting used to the idea of having him as a friend, but she's glad to have him around. She tends to express herself most when she witnesses him trigger his berserk button, being willing to step in and force him to calm down before he does something stupid.

## Background

Caleb Collins was a successful High School student that, after graduating, decided to take a summer trip to hike in the mountains of Europe. While somewhere in Macedonia, he suddenly found himself slammed with an unseasonable blizzard. As he began to make his way down the mountain, he heard a woman's voice crying out for help through the storm. Without hesitation, he turned around, and trekked deeper in into the storm, calling for the woman. Eventually, he stumbled upon a cave, and as he stepped in, he found that the cave was somehow even colder than the blizzard outside. Still, the woman called, and he rushed forward, determined to save her. What he found inside was breathtaking. A massive temple, buried beneath the mountain. And in the center, the source of this strange blizzard: A beautiful girl, around Caleb's age, trapped in a massive block of ice. Despite how he could feel his Limbs locking up, he took out his climbing axe, and began hacking away, determined to save the girl calling out to him. He hacked and hacked and hacked, until finally, his body gave out. He felt himself collapsing to the ground, felt his last breaths leaving his body as the numb cold took him. With his final flutter of his eyes, he was able to see the crack he had made start spreading.

The next thing he knew, he was disoriented. Everything was spinning, and he could see far too much at once. As he began to try and understand where he was, he felt his body being called down from all over the temple into a single point. The girl had awoken, and her magic, whatever it was, had saved his life. As he felt his mortal body knit back together, he had a torrent of questions, which the girl did her best to answer. After a long conversation, he discovered her name was Khione and she was the Goddess of Winter. Unlike the stereotype of gods, she was not a haughty arrogant being, but instead a young adult herself, her time in the ice nothing but a blur. She told him of her story, and what she best understood about the powers that she had accidentally bestowed on him in an attempt to save his life.