#parasite-core

JUSTIFICATION:

"She deserves it. Also then she could be a cat lady, and have girl’s night with Beau and Veth." - @parasite-core

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When their hands brush for the first time, Dariax takes Dorian by surprise. He grabs Dorian's hand and holds it up.

"Man, your fingers are like icicles, buddy", he says and looks at Dorian's fingers as if he can find what's wrong with him just by looking at Dorian's hand.

Dariax' fingers are calloused and very warm. Dorian's heart skips a few beats before restarting with doubled speed.

"Don't worry about that, it's normal for—"

"I got you, buddy", Dariax says and before Dorian can say anything else Dariax intertwines their fingers and keeps holding onto his hand as they walk. Dorian stares down at their joined hands and then up at Dariax' face.

Dariax seems unconcerned.

"Uh—Dariax?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"Warming up your hands. It's no big deal, I run really hot, you know. It's the dwarven hardiness, blood of the mountain and all that. We can switch sides in a bit so I can get your other hand too."

Dorian catches Orym's slight smile as they're walking and he clears his throat while his body keeps going crazy. There is a tingling sensation spreading through his body from the point where their hands are touching and Dorian has trouble to concentrate on where he's walking because his mind is so occupied by the feeling of holding Dariax' hand.

People who see them walking like this will assume that they are a couple.

Dorian's face feels hot.

After twenty minutes of internal turmoil Dariax lets go of his hand.

"Side switch!", he proclaims loudly and destroys Dorian's hope of getting back to normal as he saunters over to Dorian's other side and grabs his other hand.

"Oh, this one isn't as cold!", Dariax says.

"Uh—yeah. I'm. I'm feeling pretty warm", he rasps. Opal snorts from a few steps behind them.

"Awesome, then my plan worked", Dariax says, obviously pleased with himself. Dorian hopes that his face isn't as purple as it feels.

So he’s my pathfinder PC. He’s a necromancer Bone Oracle, although he doesn’t know what an oracle is. He has amnesia and doesn’t know where his powers come from. He just remembers he was in a cave on his way back to his homeland of Irrisen waiting out a winter storm, when he cut his hand on something set in the wall, heard a strange voice, and passed out. He woke up a year later in a grave surrounded by dead bandits in Taldor—a country on the opposite end of the continent from where he’d been before.

He was originally a pretty boy, a playboy, utterly selfish, only acting in his own self interest. When he woke up he found he’d lost his good looks—he looked sickly, his skin jaundiced. He also couldn’t be healed by healing magic, only negative energy as if he were undead, even though he didn’t detect as undead to any magical means.

So he had to rely on his silver tongue to get things done, and could only rely on himself to keep himself alive. He was still very much a selfish ass—and now he was suddenly a selfish ass with necromantic powers.

He travelled with a party of people—Nestian the shapeshifting bear, Aenland the elven archer, and Edeya the winter witch. They ended up entangled in saving Baba Yaga, who had gone missing, becoming her Black Riders after her previous Black Rider died in front of them. He discovered that the Black Rider somehow knew him, but for some reason couldn’t speak of it. The Black Rider made reference that he would be returning to the capital of Irrisen when they went there—it was a place that to his memory he’d never been, so clearly he’d gone there during his lost year.

The party, after walking through a winter portal into Irrisen, met a woman named Nadya whose daughter was kidnapped by the Winter Witches. Calio took offense to this because as a child he’d been kidnapped by a Winter Witch and used in some kind of ritual he doesn’t know the effects of, and he to this day doesn’t know how he survived the encounter. So he was eager to kill the ones behind the child kidnapping.

It turned out the ones behind it knew Calio—in fact, he’d been friends with one of them during his lost year. The other he suspects was a spurned lover.

Nazhena Vasillanova and Radosek Pavril. The party killed Radosek and saved Nadya’s daughter while Nazhena was out of town in the capital Whitethrone.

Then the party plus Nadya went to Whitethrone. On the way, Calio started worshipping the god of murder and secrets, Norgorber, with the promise he’d kill Nazhena in the god’s name.

In Whitethrone Calio met Greta, a winter wolf in human form and guard of the gate to Whitethrone. And this is where things started to change for Calio. Up until then Calio had thought only about himself, first, foremost, and exclusively.

Calio had volunteered to get the party into Whitethrone by disguising himself as a winter wolf in human guise (which rather than a regular human, they have pale skin, silver hair, pale blue eyes, and a specific scent) using a magical item they’d made on the way to town. Greta had taken an interest in him, believing he was a handsome and well travelled winter wolf, and agreed to let his group pass without the proper paperwork in exchange for a drink together at the local tavern. Calio immediately bit, having not had anyone show interest in him since he’d lost his memories and his looks. As they spent the day together, he found the two of them clicked immediately, in a way Calio never had with anyone before.

Later that evening, after meeting with a resistance group and agreeing to go to the opera to slip a debilitating poison into Nazhena’s drink there, he asked Greta to join him at the opera. They had a wonderful time (despite a close encounter with Nazhena, which is when Calio discovered that she’d known him in the past year), and afterwards they shared drinks at Greta’s favorite bar. There Greta told Calio that she was tired of life in this city, and she wanted the excitement that seemed to follow him (given all the illegal shit she’d seen him and his friends do in less than 24 hours). Calio hesitated—he hadn’t yet revealed to her that he wasn’t a winter wolf. He told her that he needed to talk to her about something tomorrow, and she could decide if she wanted to come with him after that.

He didn’t want to ruin the perfect night they’d had by telling her then.

So before going to slay a white dragon the next day, he did something far more terrifying than dragon slaying—he told Greta the truth. He laid his heart bear to her, telling her that he’d wanted to cling to the fantasy for as long as he could because no one had looked at him like she had since he’d lost his memories and his looks. She asked him to drop his disguise so she could see what he really looked like. So he did—never breaking eye contact, because he needed to see her reaction. She appraised him, expressionless, then said that she could hardly tell one Human apart from another but to her he seemed plenty handsome.

It was at that moment he fell in love with her.

Greta said, considering she’d be in a different form if she went with him, she’d be a hypocrite if she were upset with him for having another form. And he’d told her only a day after they’d started seeing each other. So it was fine. She still wanted to come with him—if he’d have her. Which of course he would.

From then on, he has been devoted to Greta. He risked his life and sanity in the Eon Pit getting magical gauntlets that would allow her to take human form anywhere she liked, rather than just in Whitethrone—which was normally the only place her kind could take a human guise. He’s sworn to himself not to lie to her or keep secrets from her—something that does not extend to anyone else. And after seeing how afraid she is of fire—the greatest weakness of winter wolves—he’s been trying to get ahold of a Ring of Fire Resistance to give to her.

His devotion to her has opened him up to being more thoughtful to others in the group as well. He considers Edeya his best friend, and is protective of her. He respects Nestian, and started wearing a distinct lapel to help him to recognize him despite his difficulty with faces. And while he had an extremely rocky start with Aenland, now that the elf finally apologized for being a bit of a prat initially, they’re getting along much better, and Calio watches the archer’s back in battle—and pays back any harm done to him in triplicate.

Calio has also gotten a dragonkin steed recently named Talsune. The two of them are linked mentally and emotionally—which was *extremely* weird for Calio at first. Hearing someone’s thoughts didn’t bother him, but feeling someone else’s emotions really felt weird to him and set him on edge initially. He’s a bit of a sociopath and thinks empathy is a made up thing people pretend to have, so *actually* feeling another being’s emotions is very jarring.

Despite getting better, he does have a bad influence in his life, too. He met the man who taught him necromancy—a nine-tailed kitsune named Kaisuke. Master Keisuke encourages all his worst traits. The others in the party don’t trust him, but unfortunately it turns out he also brought Calio back from the dead when Calio actually died in that cave back when he ‘passed out’ at the start of his memory loss, so Calio feels extremely indebted to him and trusts him implicitly.

Also since he’s a necromancer, can’t end an info dump without mentioning his undead. He has a skeleton troll named Reggie, a skeleton dragon named Leviathan (Levi for short), and a spirit bound to him named Nikolai.

First of all, i hope you are fine

Secound of all: wow - my reaction after reading

I loved it, amazingly

Also, as i am tired i gonna tag only the characters i remember, sorry:(

Oh stars I would need to rent a motel room for a month if one got in my bed and bit me (people say they don't bite, that is a filthy LIE I've been bitten before, too)

I'm usually good or neutral with most insects, there's just a handful of bugs and other critters I can't handle. But of course one of those just had to decide the house was a great place to hang out. ;_;

I really hope you can get your problem taken care of soon, too--they're so terrifying.

First off, many animals you would expect to be domesticated in this world are; such as dogs, cats, cattle, and the like.

But some fantastical pets include Okuronan Riding Rhinos, Stalanese Terrorbirds, and Kazinadan Elk.