Nikias

Nikias (Scenesys ID: 1556)
Quote
"What? Oh no, you definitely shot me. Twenty-seven times if my count is correct. And now that you know that, you have to die....Not that I was going to spare you anyway, having shot me twenty-seven times and all..."
Profile
Full Name:	Nikias of Sparta
Gender:	Male
Species:	Immortal
Theme:	Original (OC)
Occupation:	Mercenary
Citizenship:	Lots of Places
Residence:	New York City
Education:	Agoge
Status:	Shelved
Groups:
Other Information
Apparent Age:		Actual Age:
Date of Birth	24 October 500 BC	Actor:
Height:	188 cm (6'2")	Weight:	95 kg (209 lb)
Hair Color:	Blonde	Eye Color:	Green
Theme Song:	Princes of the Universe, by Queen

Profile

An immortal Spartan who has wandered and fought since the world was young, keeping the tradition of the ultimate soldier alive in the modern day whilst battling his fellow Immortals to be the last one standing, inheritor of The Prize.

Sheet

Description

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Desc: Casual:
A somewhat frumpy looking man, probably in his early to mid twenties, with messy blonde hair and dull green eyes half hidden behind lazy lids. He is wearing an old Black Sabbath t-shirt under a black leather jacket, with grey sweatpants and brown steel toed boots. He maintains a playful smirk almost every waking moment, occasionally revealing his picture perfect teeth to light up the room.

Desc: Work:

A clean shaven young man wearing splitter camo face paint, probably in his late teens, early twenties, with blonde hair pulled back tight into a short ponytail, mostly hidden under a black military style helmet and barely covering the top of an ear piece in his left ear, his green eyes sharp and alert, darting to check every movement or sound. He's wearing a tight black T-shirt under an equally black combat vest, with, say it with me, black gloves, tight to the skin and missing the thumb, index, and middle fingers on both from the tip of the finger down to the second joint. For pants, he is wearing black fatigues, carefully tucked in at the black sock level and disappearing at his black combat boots. He is visibly armed with a pistol at his side, and a rifle slung across him.

History

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History:

Long ago, on a farm at the outskirts of the city-state of Sparta as the sun first began to peek over the horizon, the farm's owners found a baby left abandoned in the fields. The couple, despite their best efforts, had for years failed to produce a child of their own, and believed the babe to be a gift from the gods, adopting him as their own and initiating him into Spartan society. His life truely began at the age of nine when, like all Spartan boys, he was sent to the agoge for training and education to become one of the city's famous soldiers. For the next ten years, he added fuel to the belief he was sent by the gods, as he excelled in his training at a seemingly preternatural level. Eventually, as always inevitably came to Spartan, war called, as the great tyrant Xerxes marched on Greece. Nikias joined King Leonidas and the joint forces of Greece at Thermopylae. On the third day of the fateful battle, Nikias died along with the rest of his now legendary brothers, crushed under a Persian cavalryman's horse when one of his brother's spears felled it. Nikias awoke some days later, when the Greek forces returned for their dead, and was sent back to Sparta. Where he was quickly branded a coward who hid under a horse to avoid being killed. With all the witnesses being either dead or Persians hundreds of miles away, Nikias was banished from Sparta, and his name struck from the records for his cowardice. Nikias continued to aid in the war as the only job available to someone of his skillset, a mercenary, eventually meeting an Athenian Immortal by the name of Adrastus, who took the young Immortal in and educated him in his new lot in life, as custom dictated. The two remained close for fifteen years before parting. Over the next two and a half thousand years, Nikias wandered from place to place, selling and by extension improving his services around the world, joining bandit clans and pirate crews when the contracts dried up, and taking several hundred other Immortal's heads as the battlelines put them at odds. In recent years, Nikias has moved his base of operations to a private warehouse in New York, still selling his age old services to the highest bidder.

Personality

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Personality:

Nikias is, in general, rather easy going. He's quick with a joke, slow to offend, loves lazy days, and is slow to judge others without seeing things from both sides of an argument first hand. However, when pressed, he proves to be a cold blooded and vicious predator, absolutely pitiless to his foes. However, Nikias, for as quick as he can be to cut and run on those he barely knows, is nothing if not a team player. For a friend, he will go to hell and back for them in their hour of need without so much as a grumbled complaint. Due both to his Spartan upbringing, and his thousands of years at one war or another, Nikias is nigh unshakable, having seen virtually every atrocity known to man, usually several times. Despite his often morbid sense of humor and general lack of scruples when it comes to his job, there are a few lines the ancient Spartan wont cross. While he's happy to steal anything not nailed down, and kill as many combatants as he is pointed at, he takes an unflinching stance against murdering helpless people, all forms of rape, and leaving civilians without the means to shelter and provide for themselves. A stance he is more than happy to fight for, even if that means turning on powerful and high paying clients on a dime.

Abilities

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Alleged Demi-God:
Whilst Nikias is known to boast of being as strong as Herakles, faster than Hermes, and being more precise than Artemis, these are simply untrue. However, due to having undergone hundreds of Quickenings over the two and a half millenia of his existence, Nikias has gained some level of the superhuman prowess he boasts. His strength, albeit only just, exceeds peak human, at a deadlift of roughly fifteen hundred pounds, his stamina is obscene to the point he is near impossible to tire, and his eyes are sharp enough to count the beats of a fly's wings. That said, he is only of peak human speed, and is no more durable than any other Immortal.

Hammerspace:
A rather poorly understood ability of Immortals is the apparent ability to pull they're most attuned weapon out of seemingly nowhere, even if they clearly could not have concealed it on their person. This seems to apply only to their most attuned personal weapon/weapon set, and cannot be used for other purposes. So long as they make even a token effort to be capable of concealing it, bulky clothes, some type of holster, etc., they can never really be considered unarmed if not taken by surprise.

Healing:
As an Immortal, Nikias enjoys a rapidly accelerated rate of healing, that will cause almost any injury to heal and dissipate in a matter of seconds, with a few noteworthy exceptions. If killed, Nikias will enter a state indiscernible from death, only to awaken fully healed within a few minutes. The cause of 'death' effects the time, with most firearms either failing to 'kill' or causing a 'death' that lasts only seconds, while something like being crushed could last until freed.

Immortal Sense:
No matter how hard an Immortal may try, sneaking up on another Immortal is simply impossible, as they can innately sense one another based on proximity, though they can only sense that another Immortal is there, not necessarily who it is. Immortals can also sense pre-Immortals, those who are still fully human but should they die of unnatural causes will rise again as a full Immortal, upon meeting them, it is a similar but much fainter feeling than the intuition of sensing another full Immortal, and thus very easy to miss unless the sensing Immortal is actively looking for it. However beyond this, Immortals cannot inherently sense danger on a supernatural level, leaving them vulnerable to potential ambush by non-Immortals if they aren't careful.

Immortality:
The eponymous connecting thread of the mysterious group of beings known only as 'Immortals'. Time has little effect on them, the only thing seeming to change physically about them over time being hair growth. Immortals do not age, no matter how much time passes, and should anything manage to 'kill' them, they will heal and awaken shortly after with little to no long term impact on them.

Pain Tolerance:
Almost every Immortal displays an inhuman threshold for pain, such as being able to casually walk through a raging fire, or literally shrug off being shot and killed hundreds of times in rapid succession. There are limits to this threshold of course, but it would require a concerted efforted to inflict pain, rather than to cause damage, such as torture, or dubstep.

Perfect Memory:
Immortals often show the capacity for incredibly detailed recollections of events down to the smallest details throughout their entire lives. Nikias is no different. The one downside to this, aside from the soul crushing burden of centuries of memory build up, is that the vast majority will fall into the aether of the mind, only being recalled when prodded for by external stimuli.

Water Breathing:

As an Immortal, Nikias is capable of breathing underwater, and can easily withstand all but the most crushing depths the oceans of Earth have to offer, and any able to kill him would only be capable of doing so temporarily, leaving him to awaken as good as new within a few minutes.

Skills

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Blacksmithing:
As with many Immortals, Nikias is trained as a blacksmith in order to maintain his own weapons and armor, or create replacements should such an emergency arise. Nikias' abilities with the forge are fairly average for the time that he was trained, except with his weapons of choice, the sword, shield, and spear, which he can forge to a masterful quality if sufficient materials are available.

Linguistics:
Millenia of wandering the globe has resulted in Nikias being capable or fluent in a vast library of languages, including but not limited to, Ancient and Modern Greek, English, Spanish, French, Ancient Egyptian, Latin, Chinese, Arabic, German, Hungarian, and Swiss.

Navigation:
Many years spent on the sea has permanently ingrained in Nikias both the importance of and ability to discern where one is and the best method of getting where they wish to be. Using either a map, mental markers, or knowledge of the natural environment, Nikias can easily find where he wishes to go almost anywhere in the world, or potentially beyond, should the laws of reality hold firm across the board.

On the Run:
A skill picked up from both running from his fellow Immortals, and evading the law during his times as a mercenary, bandit, and pirate, Nikias is exceptional at cutting and running when he needs to. In general, none but the most determined bloodhound like pursuers will be able to both find and catch him for a confrontation when he doesn't wish them to.

Spartan Training:
During his early years in Sparta, like all the boys, Nikias was put through an extremely rigorous training program, designed to mold him into the Spartan ideal. This included extensive military training, including weapons training, military strategy, logic, culture, reading, writing, arithmetic, survivalism, stealth and espionage, unarmed combat, and of course, the intense general discipline every Spartan was required to have. Nikias has maintained this regiment in private throughout his long life, resulting in his primary skills never dulling, and he is more than happy to put others he deems trustworthy through the old paces, as harsh and unforgiving a taskmaster as any Spartan could hope for.

Weapon Master:

Like almost any Immortal who has outlived their first year, Nikias is an expert in virtually every weapon known to man, or at least every melee weapon, including improvised weapons like chairs, bottles, and chains. However, one weapon stands out above the rest. The noble sword. Having refined his technique, with the threat of over Immortals hunting for the heads of their fellows to spur him ever on, for over two thousand years, Nikias is a nigh unrivaled swordsman, far beyond the abilities of all but the greatest mortal warriors the world has ever known. Nikias is not the best swordsman of all time, but it is well known to other Immortals, and all with access to The Watchers' chronicles, that he is one of the most brutal and talented fighters in the known history of the Immortals.

Resources

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Aliases:
Over the years, Nikias has crafted a variety of aliases to help him blend into different cultures and time periods. Some of his favorite fake names are, Wesley Barroman, Francis Elroy, and Ash Varrow. Other names may be thought up on the spot, but none of his identities have any documentation, including his real name. By all official accounts, he doesn't exist.

Backup Weapons:
Beyond his personal blades, Nikias maintains a large stockpile of weapons, as keepsakes, trophies, and of course, for work purposes. The ones he most uses for his modern work as a mercenary are a heavily customized M16, a similarly custom M1911A1 pistol, and a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle, customized once more. Last worth mention, used only in extra special ritual-esque occasions, is a hand crafted set of Spartan battle armor, complete with shield and spear. It, above all others in the collection, is maintained with a nearly religious reverence.

Money:
Nikias, being a mercenary, tends to both make and spend very large amounts of money of all kinds. While he rarely has that much on hand to play with, he can easily maintain his equipment and living space, as well as his travel expenses, so long as his offshore accounts remain untampered with.

Personal Weapons:
Every Immortal has a weapon or set of weapons that resonates with them, that they carry with them throughout the ages as their only truely trustworthy companion and unflinching confidant. For Nikias, this takes the form of a matched set of a longsword and a dagger, perfectly balanced and made for his hand and his alone. The blades are fairly undecorated, save for the handle of the sword being carved into the visage of a raven, with the spread wings forming the hand guard, and a small emerald pommel clasped within the talons, and the dagger sporting a wolf's head pommel. The pair are light as a feather, and as sharp as the claws of a demon. However, they are not indestructable, as they are made of mundane metal. Sufficient force or misuse will ruin or break them, necessitating repairs or replacement.

Weapons:

Every Immortal has a weapon or set of weapons that resonates with them, that they carry with them throughout the ages as their only truly trustworthy companion and unflinching confidant. For Nikias, this takes the form of a matched set of a longsword and a dagger, perfectly balanced and made for his hand and his alone. The blades are fairly undecorated, save for the handle of the sword being carved into the visage of a raven, with the spread wings forming the hand guard, and a small emerald pommel clasped within the talons, and the dagger sporting a wolf's head pommel. The pair are light as a feather, and as sharp as the claws of a demon. However, they are not indestructible, as they are made of mundane metal. Sufficient force or misuse will ruin or break them, necessitating repairs or replacement.

Weaknesses

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Ancient Ties:
You cant escape your past, and the long you live, the more there is that can come back to haunt you. After over twenty-five hundred years, Nikias has a huge and varied history, not all of it well remembered. During his travels, he has crossed countless people, ranging from normal bums, to age spanning mystics. For any capable of sussing out his true identity, there is a good chance he fits the description of someone who crossed or killed one of their ancestors, or worse, they themselves.

Immortal Hunters:
Few mortals know of the existence of Immortals. Some of these few built an organization known as The Watchers, to observe the contests of Immortals and try to shoo them away from interfering in the lives of mortals, without directly interfering in the lives and battles of the Immortals themselves. From this group, rose another far more malevolent group, who know and hunt Immortals throughout the world, jealous of their immortality. These hunters are not bound by the rules of The Game, and do not register to an Immortal's sense, making them extremely deadly and unpredictable foes. Nikias himself has had few dealings with the group, and fewer still with similar non-affiliates. But the main shard knows of him and keeps a sizable file on what they've been able to dig up on him, with more than a few eager to be the one to put Sparta's last son down.

Limitations: Healing:
While an Immortal can survive nearly any injury and heal the damage away to the point it will leave no scar, some things are beyond this inherent defence. For instance, an Immortal cannt regenerate. Should a limb be severed, it will not grow back, no matter how much time passes. The limb can be reattached by placing it against the severing point and holding it there for a few seconds, at which point it will reattach with no long term damage, but if the limb is lost, or destroyed, nothing can be done to regain it. While prosthetics can replace missing limbs, missing organs may be harder to deal with, as performing surgery on an Immortal would be nigh unto impossible as the incision would constantly try to close, potentially leaving them in a state of eternal agony or repetitive death until they are mercifully killed for good. Lastly, wounds to the neck are the one area that an Immortal can suffer truely lasting harm. If their neck is cut, but their head is not removed, they will heal from it, but it will leave a grizzly scar on them for all time after that, potentially effecting their ability to breath and speak.

Limitations: Immortality:
While no amount of time will ever end an Immortal's existance, they are not invulnerable. The main way that an immortal can die is by being decapitated, which transfer the slain Immortal's memories and powers into either their killer, should the killer be an Immortal, or the nearest Immortal in the area should another be present, in what is known as The Quickening. Failing these conditions, their essence will burst forth into the sky, disappearing from the world altogether. While this is the most dramatic and potentially beneficial manner that an Immortal can truly die, there are other methods. Disintegration, melting, and explosion, would all result in death for an Immortal.

Pride:
Nikias, for all his snark and casual behavior, is a very proud man. No insult is forgotten lightly, and no challenge ever goes unanswered, even if not compelled by The Game to accept it. Furthermore, even though Sparta has been long since reduced to nothing more than a memory, he is loath to tolerate insult to it. While common misconceptions will be overlooked, albeit with an explanatory lecture, genuine insult will NEVER go unanswered, from anyone.

The Game:
All Immortals are bound together in what is known amongst them as 'The Game' regardless of whether or not they wish to play. The Game is simple. Immortals will battle amongst themselves, taking each other's heads and absorbing their power until in the end, there can be only one. The last Immortal standing will win 'The Prize' an unknown reward awaiting the last Immortal that will decide the future destinies of not only them, but every living being everywhere. Should a good Immortal win it, then it is believed they will usher in a golden age of prosperity and enlightenment. But should an evil Immortal win The Prize, they will bring about doom and despair from which there shall be no recovery, leading to the complete ruination of all things throughout space and time.

The Quickening:
While it is the source of power for all Immortals, The Quickening comes with a few downsides. For one, it is EXTREMELY noticeable, often destroying the immediate area when it happens. Second, it is immensely taxing to undergo, leaving the Immortal drained and sluggish for a time afterwards. And finally, it represents a possibility of stealing immortality to some of the rare mortals that know of it, believing that if they kill an Immortal, they will absorb their power and thus become an Immortal. This is wrong, Immortals are born, not made, but it doesn't stop Immortal hunters from trying.

The Rules:

Taken from the Highlander wiki.
There Can Be Only One - Immortals must fight until only one is left alive. In support of this rule, immortals are subject to the effects of the Gathering, which forces them to seek out other immortals.
Safe Only On Holy Ground - No Immortal may take another's head on consecrated ground, no matter which consecration it may be under.
One on One Duels - No two or more immortals may attack another simultaneously, or interfere with an immortal duel in any way. While considered a major rule, this rule has no real consequence other than preventing other immortals from sharing a Quickening or gaining an unfair advantage. Thus, it is the rule most often bent or broken by evil immortals.
Lesser Rules - Beside the three major rules, immortals have the following commonly understood and accepted rules and custom.
1 - They must keep their challenges and affairs secret from the mortal world.
2 - Immortals normally do not fight or discuss their business in public. The only exception is within relationships, as immortals sometimes share the entire truth of their existence with their significant other.
3 - Immortals who "die" in public are expected to leave the area, in order to avoid contact with those who knew them.
4 - New / young immortals are assumed a brief "grace period" in which they receive training and protection from an elder immortal.

Logs

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Title	Date	Scene Summary
Holiday in Gotham: Rats Far From a Wharf	November 8th, 2019	Rick Flag, Hailstorm, Roundhouse, and Ash, launch a four man strike on the General, attempting to reclaim a shipment of munitions stolen weeks earlier. Poor planning makes the mission go gonzo, and the General holds off the opposition, killing two members of the Suicide Squad but losing valuable blood.
The Ageless Question	October 22nd, 2019	A trio of Immortals converge on the Memorial for a Hero, and have a drink for
Two Immortals And A Runaway	October 10th, 2019	Summary needed
A deal gone awry.	October 9th, 2019	Chun-Li arrests Nikias' former 'Employer' and Rave keeps her lunch down.
Industrial Fight	October 8th, 2019	A encounter between Zorro and Nikias ends in arson
Stayin Alive	October 4th, 2019	A fight breaks out in a penthouse
Warriors from Two Worlds	October 30th, 2018	Summary needed
Spartans, Gods, and Italians, Oh my!	October 23rd, 2018	Summary needed
An Immortal meets an immortal	October 20th, 2018	Summary needed

Cutscenes

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Title	Date	Scene Summary
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Gallery

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