Thursday, June 6, 2013

NPC: The Galmi Twins

Reddit user De_Vermis_Mysteriis recently uploaded 1848 character portraits. I haven't gone through them all, but I have come up with what I consider very interesting concepts. This first one I think has a lot of potential, and I'm not sure if I entirely did it justice with this. 

Names: Judah and Bezalel Galmi
Race: Construct
Alignment: Lawful Neutral


Appearance:
  Both of the humanoids you see look as though they are not alive. As far as you can tell, they don't breathe, and remain perfectly still at times. They keep their faces obscured, and all of their skin is covered by their clothing. When they move, it is with an inhuman precision. They are proportioned much like ordinary humans, one male and one female, but nothing in their behavior or movement seems at all natural.
  The male stands, wearing an immaculate suit of fine clothing. His face is covered with a black mask made of metal, and two large white domes cover where his eyes should be. Though his sleeves are long, you think you can see the imprint of metal armor showing. His hands end in long, vicious talons, though he usually keeps them in his voluminous pockets. When he speaks, his voice sounds distant and hollow, yet has an eery cheeriness that never seems to waver. He struts with a gentleman's pace, perfect to the point of absurdity, and stands rigidly still when he finishes. 
  The female wears a red cloak that conceals almost her entire body, though you catch brief glimpses of leather armor underneath. She wears a red mask of cloth over her face, and only dark grey goggles over her eyes are visible. She moves quickly and lightly, almost dancing through crowds and around people. She seems to be faster than any human has any right to be, and also goes rigid if she reaches a destination. Her voice sounds like an echo from a distant place, and she generally speaks in riddles or otherwise nonsense. 

Profile:
  The Galmi Twins are golems, imbued with the fractured soul of their creator. A wizard grew desperate to have an heir, and yet was unable to ever conceive a child. So he constructed his own, and to make sure they would be "true" heirs, he gave them each a part of his own soul. This consequently drove him mad, and he died shortly thereafter. The twins have lived on in secret ever since, although the townsfolk are very suspicious of their origins. Their "father" was a prominent mage, and he seemed to go senile shortly before introducing his "children" to the city's nobles. 
The twins are socially active, though in different ways.
  • Judah Galmi is the male. He is in every way a proper Victorian-era gentleman, and always wears the suit his father created for him. His very cheery and polite, and is a freakish master of proper etiquette in all social situations. He attends every social event in the city, though the other nobles tend not to approve of him. He doesn't notice. Judah is very proud of his "heritage," often extolling the wisdom and discoveries of his late father. In combat, Judah is mostly a melee warrior. His claws rip through armor with ease, and he is highly mobile. His feet also have extenders that allow him to jump higher than one would expect. His magical specialty is Abjuration, and he has taken to maintaining and improving both himself and his sister.
  • Bezalel Galmi is the female. She is much more roguish than her brother. She speaks only in riddles, and is actually incapable of being straightforward with anyone. The only one alive who can understand what she's saying is her brother. She avoids the social scene of the city, preferring to wander through dark alleys and interact with the criminal underground. She has become an infamous thief, unknown to all but her criminal boss. In combat, she is a ranged rogue. She has hundreds of knives built into her body that she is capable of throwing without interrupting her movement or clothing. Her magical specialty is Illusions, and she often uses these to perform her heists or gain an advantage in combat.

  The twins have carried on as though their father never died, as he never had time to "finish" them properly. As such, their directives have left them confused, and they're not entirely sure what they're supposed to be doing. They are more advanced than normal golems, and so have actively taken to exploring the city to determine what their purpose is. The possibility that they were never given a purpose has not occurred to either of them. Judah is assuming that through proper social interactions, he will discover what his father wanted of them both. Bezalel thinks that going through the criminal underground will show her the same. Neither of them thinks the other is wrong, per se, and they do care for each other as deeply as they are capable of doing. They do recognize that they are each imbued with the soul of their father, and that they have different parts. They also recognize that their father is dead, they just don't understand what that actually means. 
  A few members of society have discovered exactly what the twins are, and seek to manipulate them. They are very powerful constructs, capable of independent thought and having some amount of reason. They are being subtly manipulated in different directions, to varying degrees of success. 
The twins continue to live in their father's old home. His body has long since rotted away, though his bones remained untouched. Neither of the twins were ever told that you were supposed to bury people. The ghost still howls through the mansion, though neither twin is capable of seeing nor understanding it. 

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