Ghaden "Para-Habol" Mehikan

**Ghaden Mehikan**, also known as *Para-Habol* or *The Pursuer* is an Aprósopi from Clan Tejido De Sangre and a member of the Snake Tong. Originally a Foundling, Ghaden, or Den to most members, is a highly trained Faceless Warrior and a skilled tracker, hence her moniker. She can keep track of a target from a mile away using her magic and know their exact location, while keeping a low profile and preparing for an unseen strike. Like many of her fellow Clan, she focuses more on weapons than armor and while she does hide her face during combat, she is not one to keep her face hidden from others. She was assigned to Unit 16 with other Faceless from her clan, and acts as the tracker of the Unit and a skilled fighter.

## Background

A foundling picked up by Clan Tejido De Sangre, the Bloodweavers in the world of the Faceless, Ghaden was named after a famous member of the Clan, and was brought up to be a warrior ready to serve both the Tejido De Sangre and the Snake Tong. Educated in the Creed of her clan, she was taught to value loyalty to one's clan and comrades, and to revere combat as an essential part of her life. Like many Tejido De Sangre, she slew her first magical beast, a Winged Shark in the clan's Border Realm hunting grounds, at age 6. By age 12 she earned her "Suit" and became a fully fledge warrior and agent of the Snake Tong. Unlike other Aprósopi clans, hers specialized in making their armor appear as light and inconspicuous as regular clothing, and was even the inspiration for the Snake Suit. Unlike the regular Suits, Clan Tejido De Sangre turn Aíma Tu Ári or "The War God's Blood" into threads and textile, a process they mastered for centuries, and creating armor that looks like clothing and allows them to blend in with the crowd without the very obvious armor and helmets worn by other Faceless, hence their name of Bloodweavers. In her career, Den has had a lot of success in missions and earned several Bloodweave clothes for different situations.

She was assigned to Unit 16 at age 12, and continuous to be a member of the Javelin assault squad. While she loves fighting as much as the next Faceless, her main role is to track down, pursue, and take out escaping or hiding targets, hence her moniker. Den always enjoyed the thrill of beast hunts as a child that it carried over to when she hunts down the enemies of her Clan and the Tong. So much so that she always volunteers even outside of her Unit's work whenever a mission requires a skilled tracker. Den also teaches and trains other foundlings or younger clan members, especially when during hunts.

Despite her devotion to her clan and the Shiai-shi, she has been in a relationship with a sleeper of all people who knows completely nothing about her Aprósopi and Snake origins. While her clan would normally not get in the way of the relationships of its members, there have been concerns that Den has been seeing a man who is not even a warrior. When asked why she fell for such an unlikely man, she simply states "I admire his nurturing side". Others think him being a chef and someone who gladly cooks all sorts of meals for her is another reason. Her boyfriend of 5 years thinks that Ghaden is an deep-undercover agent working for the police, which would be considered an extreme insult by most Faceless and Snakes. Nevertheless, the forged documents and her "Credentials" from the Philippine National Police academy has made it clear to him that he just has a "Very muscular cop gf". And whenever she is on a mission, Den uses the excuse that she has undercover work. Regardless of all the secrecy, the two seem to have a very stable relationship, at least from what the Snake records would tell its members.

## Personality

A model Warrior of Clan Tejido De Sangre, Ghaden is a fearless fighter that prefers to face danger head on. Ever since she was a child, the older clanmates would recall how she would eagerly track down their targets during hunts in the woods and would even chase them all the way to their nests or dens, axe in hand. Even when her prey are intelligent and human, she'd still choose the shortest "route" and maintain close distance to the people she is hunting down, relying on a mix of stealth and athleticism to not alert them. But when the order is given, she is quick to pounce and capture or eliminate her target. She is not one to mince words or over exaggerate, and has the typical blunt straightforwardness of an Aprósopi. The only time she has to be careful with her words is when around her boyfriend, and even then she has slipped up many times but thankfully he did not find them suspicious or dismissed it as a silly joke. Such times include him asking her to buy a burner, which Den mistook for him asking her to buy him a burner phone. She got a burner phone from a Shiai-shi equipment cache and proudly gave one to him and declared "Here, it's untraceable". Confused, he quickly corrected her stating they needed to buy a new burner for their stove. He dismissed it as his girlfriend being a ditz and found it cute when she got flustered.

Domestic life aside, she is a proud Aprósopi warrior and like many in her clan, prefer letting offense be their defense. Since Bloodweave clothes sacrifice the full protection of normal Faceless Armor for blending in with the public and lightness, they focus more on weapons and hand-to-hand combat creating the defenses for them. Aggressive and relentless, Den is a deadly fighter when she uses skirmish tactics where she runs circles around her opponent and wearing them down before delivering a killing blow. To keep her athleticism in peak fighting condition, she regularly exercises and prefers hobbies and recreation with lots of physical activities, be it hunting with melee weapons , basketball, or morning jogging with her boyfriend on their days-off. Because of this, she is also a big eater, especially if it's her boyfriend's pro chef-level cooking. Many in her clan tease her that she is dating him because he's a walking gourmet food dispenser.

She greatly respects her fellow clan members, always polite to her elders and those that earned her admiration, such as fellow Unit 16 members Lydia and Iona. And despite Lydia being adopted into the clan as opposed to her being a foundling raised by the clan, she looks up to her as their Unit leader and trusts the tactical capabilities of the veteran warrior. She also has a soft side to the younger clan members, and gladly accompanies them during training and hunts.

She is an avid collector of weapons and has learned Binding magic just to make sure her weapons become bound to her and her alone, and grants her this psychic connection that she knows exactly where they are and she can have them fly to her hands when they are within a range of 20 meters from her. This magic has also allowed her to compliment her tracking capabilities, but it's more of a happy side-effect to her insurance method for her weapons. She prefers to use large axes as she used an axe for her first hunt kill as a child, and would always carry her childhood axe to hunts whenever she is invited or when she accompanies younglings. She dislikes using guns since she finds that it does not give the same satisfaction of actually exerting the force in killing an opponent. And as such, she almost always throws away a gun if there is a melee alternative. Or when forced to use a gun, she'd quickly unload all the bullets, never bother to reload, and use the firearm as a makeshift club.

Den admits she feels kind of guilty for lying to her boyfriend of her actual life. But she figured that it would be best for him to not know of her Aprósopi and Snake Tong Background. He's worried about her enough as a fake undercover cop, so she wants to make sure he doesn't get even more stressed out at the fact she fights mages and supernatural beasts instead of infiltrating crime syndicates and drug bust operations (which she considers boring and as dangerous as fighting a dragon that just hatched from the egg and can barely stand). The Clan does wonder if she has considered marriage to the Sleeper and how it would affect her life as an warrior and agent. She admits she has never thought about going that far, but figured that she'll just figure things out with him once they get to that step. Many joked that they should adopt her "Husband-to-be" and make him the Clan chef, and maybe teach him a thing or two about fighting, but Den acts all possessive whenever they do mention it. "His cooking only belongs to me!" she would say. Others are quick to point out that he cooks for other people for a living, and his cooking has definitely been tasted by other people.

## Abilities

### Martial Arts

Integrating Forest Fist but with weapon-based styles, Den is highly skilled in both melee and hand. While she hasn't mastered a particular weapon, she is a jack of all trades when it comes to using different weapons, be it a sword, an axes, a spear, and even blunt weapons like clubs. When it comes to hand-to-hand combat, she specializes in disarming and even stealing opponent's weapons. Whenever she steals guns, however, she usually throws them away instead.

### Tracking Skills

Since childhood, Den has honed her ability to track both human and inhuman targets. She has a vast arsenal of skills, including studying footprints, signs of disturbance, broken foliage, and other traces left behind by the target. Sharp observation is also key to spotting even the faintest clues. and notice changes in the environment and follow the trail's nuances. The ability to study her targets before hand is also another essential skill. Prior to starting a hunt, gathering information about the target's habits, history, associates, and preferred territories provide valuable insights.

### Magic

As a Snake Tong agent and Faceless Warrior with magical capabilities, it is a no-brainer that Den trained in the use of Reinforcement as another weapon that lets her reinforce the strength and durability of her weapons and body. While she has rather average magical potency, she is able to focus less on learning advanced sorcery and improve on the magic she already knew. Binding is the other magic she learned, specifically the Binding of objects to her, mostly her weapons. By learning binding rituals, all of the weapons she has made all of her weapons usable only by her, and anyone that tries to use them will be left with a useless object that will lose all sharpness or weight and impact whenever used for an attack. The ritual is called **Soul-Binding** and while she normally does not have the mana to perform the rituals on her own, she utilizes mana batteries like gems or bottled mana. Weapons bound to her soul also allows her to "Command" the weapons to return to her when they are within a 20 meters radius of her, allowing her to have throwing weapons that she does not need to run and pick back up again. A variant of Soul-Binding she also learned accidentally is Forcefully Binding a person to her, allowing her to know their general presence in a mile radius for a maximum time of 17 minutes before it needs to be re-cast again. Due to the impermanence of the binding, it is not as demanding in mana, but she'll need to physically apply the Binding via touch. And the more resistant a person is to hostile magic, the shorter the duration of the bind is or they can even resist being affected by it all together. While a useful tool, it is not something she realizes on too much and can still hunt down targets through skill alone.

### Equipment

**Snake Key**

The standard butterfly knife or "Balisong", and considered more of a tool than a weapon. The blade itself was made with special materials that are not necessarily strong enough for heavy combat. The pride of the Pranaja Empu smiths, the steel during forging blessed the property to disperse mana. Since it disperses magical energy, the blade of the knife can't be reinforced with magic. However, the reason why it's named a key is because users can create holes within certain points of a Bounded Field. Since the blade merely disperses mana and not outright destroys it, it creates thinned and weakened areas in a Bound Field that is more susceptible of being bypassed physically without triggering an alarm for the owner.

It can also be used against an enemy using Reinforcement on his body. If the Key is stabbed onto the target's arm, for example, the magical energy of the reinforcement spell disperses to other parts of his body and his arm is now more weakened thanks to the lower amount of mana for reinforcement.

**S11 'BB' Bulletproof Body Suit**

Standard issue magic armor that Snake Tong provides its members. It is a black suit which was made to be bulletproof (tested with 9mm, 7.62, NATO/.308) and provides magic resistance, dispelling low level spells. It is considered to be one of the iconic uniforms of the Shiai-shi. The suit is made with a composite of multiple magical materials, a major one being Huohuan Bu Silk from a Spider Yaoguai. This makes the Suit durable (enough to withstand modern gunfire and magical projectiles), easily enchantable with magic, and has innate fire resistance. If the Suit was stained, one simply needs to burn the area with the stain and the mess will soon disappear without damaging the cloth.

Despite being the standard uniform, Den only wears the suit during formal occasions, as her Bloodweave clothing is more protective.

**"Shroud Ties"**

Shroud Ties are standard issue magic armor and head protection, cleverly disguised as neckties that allow them to blend in with the Bulletproof Snake suit style. By pulling down the tie and channeling mana through them, the ties transform into balaclava masks that provide full coverage of the head and neck. The material is made to be as bulletproof as the suits and also provide the same magical protection. The Shroud Tie can be deactivated by the user removing the mask, and it will turn back into their necktie forms.

Since she prefers her Bloodweave, Den has the standard issue black Shroud Tie without any particular customizations.

**Bloodweave Clothes**

The armor of Clan Tejido De Sangre consists of pieces that appear to be regular civilian clothing and formalwear. Den has a vast array of Bloodweave, ranging from dresses, face masks, jackets, shirts, and even a baseball cap. They are made of the Wargod's Blood turned into threads and cloths, allowing for light and inconspicuous armor. While it's not as protective as regular Aprósopi armor, it comes with the advantage of blending in with civilians, and not to mention the element of surprise. While outclassed by conventional Faceless armor, it is still a tier above in terms of protection compared to the standard issue Snake suit thanks to the Aíma Tu Ári integrated into their cloth-armor.