Full Name: Edgar Gormly
Nicknames/Aliases: Ed, Patches, Serf, That guy.
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Gift: The ability to merge his being with dead or inorganic material.
Ed's gift essentially allows him to attach or replace parts of himself with dead or inorganic materials which take on the roles of the parts replaced. They hold together and act just as the body part they are substituting did.
Loyalty: Erubescian Serf
Description:
At current Ed's appearance is that of his natural born form. He's roughly one hundred and eighty four centimeters tall and his body is somewhat ectomorphic. His skin is a bit tan due to his days working outside though he works equally as much indoors as well. He's got medium length hair which is so black it makes the room he stands in seem darker. He's got one dark red eye, The other is sewn shut so he isn't hideous enough to be mistaken for some sort of failed medical experiment. His natural eye color is not his greatest irregularity however. His appearance is subject to change thanks to his ability so this section will change to keep the readers up to date on his most recent appearance.
As for things that don't really change he tends to stand with a bit of a forward slouch. His standard manner of speaking is a downtrodden grumble. He typically favors wearing either black or dark colored clothing when given the option to choose his apparel.
Personality:
He's a miserable sod, that much is certain.
If being born at the bottom of society wasn't enough of a buzz-kill having his twin sister living inside his head has worn him out to the point of numbly accepting the fact that his life is just going to be awful no matter what he does about it. While on the job he knows better than to raise a fuss, living by the time old method of keeping his head down and answering when spoken to, never before. Only occasionally does his grim sarcasm slip into his humble persona during his servitude.
To those who know him more personally he can easily be described as a killjoy who never enjoys himself and pretty much avoids fun like it is radiation. His reasons for this are largely due to his sister's often cruel sense of humour. While she will leave him be most of the time on occasion she will mess with Ed in a way which almost always ends poorly for him. She is a big contribution to the reasons Ed doesn't have any friends.
Ever since his parents died he has had a very negative opinion of pretty much everyone. He is a cynical misanthrope who sees the worst in everything. He has disliked a lot of people but out of everyone he's ever disliked he despises himself the most. Deep down he sees himself as about as worthy of respect as the dirt he walks on. He hates his life but he's too much of a coward to end it and he knows it. Even still he excuses it with the fear that if he were to die his sister might follow him into the afterlife and continue his torment for all eternity. In the end he only lives for those brief moments of sweet release from his own consciousness. Being able to slip into a darkness where he can't even hear his sister is an attractive prospect.
Deep beneath his calloused shell runs fiery emotions which still drive him despite being buried beneath the layers of misery. Id knows him well enough to know he's not a truly broken man yet. That fact is what keeps her around. She appreciates that remaining passion which still calls his bitter heart home. For example he still adheres to certain morals despite his atrocious view of his own character. He tries not to hit children unless circumstances are particularly strange. He dislikes hitting people who are too weak to fight back and can even show kindness at times. Hell will freeze over before he ever accepts thanks for a good deed though.
Skills:
Lets start with the traits of his gift since his actual skills will be short.
His ability allows him to take any material and merge it with his body, causing the material to act and function just as the living part it has replaced used to. He can feel sensations through the materials comprising his body as though it were his living flesh leading to some rather odd feelings at times. Depending on what he has bonded to his body this can make him quite durable. He's difficult to permanently put down since any part of him can be replaced, even his brain. If his brain is missing then his body will just automatically make it out of the closest material it has to work with since his mind cannot be there to decide what is used. It is not quite as simple as all that but that is to be explored in Weaknesses.
For skills he can read and write. He also knows how to carry stuff and clean floors. He's got basic combat knowledge due to his position in the military but it's nothing special. His only notable trait is that he has a surprisingly good grasp and understanding of grammar. His aspiration is to one day write a novel.
Weaknesses:
As with his skills we'll start with his gift though his personal weaknesses are many.
Firstly the material he adopts onto his body cannot be alive at the time of merging. Once dead the substance can be bonded to him but never before. Secondly his surrogate muscles cannot lift more than he could while his flesh was human, regardless of the material used. Thirdly his limbs, body and head cannot be larger than what they were back when his flesh was human and his own. Any excess material will simply slough off the part it was previously attached to. Machines that are merged with his body that have parts or a frame that is larger than his gift will support will come apart, leaving what parts that fit in his design still attached to him. Fourth weakness to his gift is that just as he can still feel the sensation of touch and temperature through the materials bonded with his body he can also feel pain. Damage dealt to the materials he's composed from will hurt just as much as it would were it all his flesh. Lastly his weakness regarding his inability to merge with living material is what leaves him vulnerable to destruction. While he'll merge with his environment even if he is mostly destroyed if he is completely destroyed or dissolved in acid while surrounded by living tissue or other matter then he'll have nothing to replace what is lost and finally be rid of the world.
Weaknesses not directly tied to his gift are many. He is not the brightest fellow for one thing. When he gets hurt he tends to hit first and think well past the point where it would of been useful to him. He'll tend to follow plans that appeal more to his emotions over plans rooted in logic which is often a poor idea given his lack of natural intuition. He's got a low self esteem which gives him a rather poor estimate for how likely he is to succeed. He tends not to understand higher concepts in science, math and art very well and does very poorly whenever he tries his hand at any of those. He's got little to no finesse with fighting. He is positively abysmal at diplomacy and generally not somebody to invite over to social gatherings. To top it all off he's got his sister who will occasionally make life harder for him because him simply succeeding at something through determination and hard work would be boring.
Brief History:
He was born a twin to his sister, Id. From the moment he was born his sister shifted her form, vanishing from view completely before crawling inside his mind. Ever since then they've done everything together. Id would almost never part from his mind as the world of dreams and ideas were so much more interesting than the real world. Eventually however she started to realize that she could do whatever she wanted to her brother and he had no way to stop her. Thus the abuse began early. She would pull pranks on him from time to time, always biding her time so Ed never knew when to expect her next cruel trick.
Ed's parents were pretty much bottom of the rung civilians. They worked staggered shifts so they could take more care of their children but they were often overworked and naturally poor of course. He spent most of his childhood finding new hiding places to avoid the bullies he had attracted thanks to his dear sister of course. It could easily be said that his was a rotten childhood, setting the tone perfectly as the rest of his life was a downward slide from there on forth.
In his teenage years their parents were killed in a Liberty mercenary attack on their town. They were eventually beaten back by the knights and everyone celebrated as the day was won. Everyone except for Ed that is.
Ed knew that the knights could of easily stopped them from killing his parents but the cold fact of the matter was that his parents were not important in the slightest. The knights had prioritized the upper-class districts leaving the common folk to the (lack of) mercy of the mercenaries who killed with little discrimination. The event was a lesson and it's teachings would never leave him from that day forth. He was used to being treated like dirt and now he knew that dirt was all the upper ranks of society saw him as. He was dirt.
Ever since his parents died money was not easy to come by. He tried looking for work but not a lot of folks were looking to employ some pauper off the streets. He wanted to be an artist which wasn't an unprofitable career path but there were some problems with that plan. He didn't have any talent for art and nobody wanted to see his work anyways. He only had negative things to say about everything, it was not an opinion many people shared. In the end despite his dislike for the hierarchy Ed signed up with the military. It was one of the few places where simply being a strong young man was enough and he could bite his tongue for the sake of living from day to day.
Of course it didn't help that he didn't get along with anyone. Superiors, comrades, there wasn't a single person who thought he was good company. He was picked on, mocked and derided. For years he endured, staying upon his miserable course without lashing out. His one respite was his writings, a book in the making. He could put up with a lot since it was just work. One fateful night however what used to be simply workplace enmity quickly got personal for him.
It was all gone. Someone with technopathy had deleted all his work and his backups were missing. What was worse was that his other squad mates knew what had happened. They were laughing.
He had enough. He didn't lash out, didn't yell or raise a fuss. All he did was pack his stuff and leave. He made sure to leave out the back where there was only one guard. The guard there got into the post simply so he could sleep out of sight of the others since there was little oversight around that entrance. Once out Edgar just kept walking, further still once he was past city limits. For the next couple of years he drifted about the few cities which laid outside the borders of Erubesco. These cities were neither Erubesco nor Liberty cities simply thanks to their minute size and significance. He lived a drifter for some time.
Of course this peaceful and quiet lifestyle was much too boring for his sister. One night while all were asleep she secretly phoned his former base and told them where to find him. When he woke up there were a bunch of angry Erubescan soldiers with guns pointed at him. He was marched right back and sent to military court where he was found guilty of desertion. He spent several months locked up until an alternative presented itself. They needed more hands for the fight against Liberty so they were signing up prisoners as serfs in exchange for a reduced sentence. Ed took the offer and right away he was sent off to work as a serf.
Work as a serf was hard but it wasn't anything he found too objectionable. His standards for what was unacceptable by this point were exceptionally low. Still, it was straight-forward. He could only hope things remained so.
If only life were so simple.
Other: He and his sister are deeply connected. Their bond from birth is a symbiotic link which serves them both. For Ed this connection serves to protect his mind from others when his sister deems such protections necessary.