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mollymocked) wrote2018-04-10 11:13 am
(no subject)
Title(s): N/A
Age: 2 (as Molly), ambiguously twentysomething physically
Gender: Genderfluid (uses male pronouns)
Species: Tiefling
Marital Status: N/A
Family: The Mighty Nein
Religion: Follower of the Moonweaver
Occuation: Former carnie, current murder hobo
Education Level: Jared, 19, and doesn't care enough to read
Threadjacking: Y
Forth-Walling: N
Mindreading: Y
Fighting: Y
Injury: Y
Romance: Y
Smut: Y
Offensive Subjects: N/A
Age: 30
Timezone: CST
Contact: PM this journal
Molly is ambiguously gendered to the point of it being difficult to pin him down (which is fair- he's very much genderfluid, regardless of his pronoun usage), roughly 5'11 with lavender skin and thick purple hair that has a little bit of curl to it, and a long tail that ends in a devilish point. His two horns are ram-like and curl almost around his pointed ears, and have been covered in different jewelry and piercings. His eyes are solid red and have no discernible pupil and he has a peacock tattoo on his neck (with a single red eye within one of the feathers) that stretches up the side of his face and works its way into a much more ornate tattoo on his right shoulder of a floral piece with another red eye in the middle, the floral piece extends down his right arm becoming two snakes that terminate on the back and palm of his right hand with the same red eyes on each snake. These specific red eyes are the spots that bleed when he uses his Blood Hunter abilities, and there are nine in total. He also has a pyramid tattoo on his back just below the hairline with an eye in the middle and illuminated above it. Connecting and flanking that tattoo like a mantle are a sun and a moon. His chest and arms are also covered in pale hatchmark scars.
For more detail on the tattoos and their symbolism, you can go here
Molly's attire is extremely ostentatious. He wears a white cloth shirt that remains open, exposing his chest, tucked into a pair of purple, black, and blue breeches with diamonds on one side and stripes on the other, and thigh-high brown boots. The most noticeable part of his attire is his extremely loud and ostentatious burgundy coat with dozens of symbols on it, including suns and crescent moons with faces, moon phases, arrows, peacock feathers, dragon scales, various odd and potentially arcane and alchemical symbols, and simple designs of the symbols of The Lawbearer, The Matron of Ravens, The Dawnfather, The All-Hammer, and The Knowing Mistress. The entire teal blue underside of the coat appears to be nothing but crescent moons. He wears a Platinum Dragon brooch around his neck on a silver chain as well as a Periapt of Wound Closure necklace.
"Mollymauk Tealeaf" is a persona constructed over the course of two years in a circus by a lonely tiefling who crawled his way out of a grave with no memories of who he was or what happened to him. Rather than attempt to uncover his missing memories, Molly deigned to leave whoever he was before buried in the ground, and he has absolutely zero interest in ever digging "Lucien" (the name his "former life" went by, AMONG OTHERS) up to the point where the mere idea terrifies and repulses him. He's come by who he is honestly, and he likes who he is now. He doesn't want to find out that he's not the person he's decided he is and be forced to feel beholden to the cold reality he's forgotten.
As it stands right now, Molly is colorful, larger-than-life, and has the theatrical personality of a person who has been "raised," for a lack of a better term, around circus performers. He doesn't seem to believe in doing anything unless he can do it dramatically, often going all out when he sets his mind to a scheme. He has no sense of personal space or boundaries and frequently touches, kisses, and generally gets in the faces of the people he's around. He likes making people uncomfortable and keeping them off-balance and is described by his player as "made of wank," because he's just a giant bullshitter who doesn't seem to have much interest in the truth (for good reason) and prefers spectacle and tall tales to reality. Life is short and most people only get one, so he wants to be happy and make other people happy in whatever way he can. He is the most happy nihilist you'll ever meet.
Despite being a liar and a con (though never maliciously, unless the person deserves it), he is a decent person (more kind, than good) with a very strict moral code- he never betrays people, he only takes from people who could stand to have a little less, never takes more than what he feels he's earned, never steals from the people he's around (and expects his party members to do the same), and always follows through on a promise. He seems to see the best in people, to some extent, and encourages people, sometimes through mischief and violence, to do better. In fact, he even uses his skills at Tarot (though he lacks any actual magical divination talent, beyond a slight preternatural feeling) to set people on what he perceives to be the right path (through trickery and sleight of hand most of the time), and when someone points out that he can't possibly know what the right path for those people are, he indignantly protests that he left every town better than the way he came to it, and that he would never seek to send a person down a path they wouldn't choose, explaining that some people just need guidance and a direction, and that he's only telling them what they want to hear. This is never more true than when he stops a fight with some bandits, gives them a stirring speech about getting their lives together or else, and then gives them all some gold, and sends them off. When encountering them again, he rewards them for keeping to their promise, as that's how a person should act.
On the converse, however, Molly is the center of his moral reality, meaning that everything revolves around what he thinks is moral and right, which can be sketchy, at best. He firmly believes that he would never do anything wrong except on accident, so anything he does on purpose must be right. This justifies some of his more iffy moral principles and contradictory ethical decisions, and while he is overall a decent person, he is still an arrogant bastard who, rather than be warped by the world, stomps his feet and tries to make it warp around him instead.
Either as a hold-over from Lucien or because he's had to observe a lot of behavior to create this persona and work in the circus, Molly is extremely good at reading people. He's keenly observant, and tends to make very snap judgments on people, which seems to be because he doesn't care about anyone's past or reasoning for their behavior, but rather who they are in the moment. He doesn't care about his past and he doesn't let that define him, so he doesn't let it define other people. How you present yourself in the present is all that matters to him, which means that he's capable of forgiving or just actively not caring what a person has done in their past so long as they're not a royal shitheel in the present. This wisdom also helps him con and lie his way through awkward situations, because he can observe people's reactions and play to their expectations. It's less that he's a good liar and more that he's good at knowing what people want or expect to hear. The minute he starts to expand upon his lies, they risk falling apart, as he tends to go to extremely dramatic fabrications, rather than keeping it simple (as evidenced by his conversation with Cree the Tabaxi- he was fine allowing her to lead and just babble his way around things, but when he began to make up a story about a potential betrayal, she got suspicious). Truth be told, unless the situation is dangerous, he doesn't even care if he's caught in a lie. That story he told about how his family are worshipers of a demon that lives in a volcano? Of course it's a lie! But it's a good story, isn't it? The truth is overrated. People don't want to hear the truth. It only upsets people.
Because of living in the circus where all they had was each other, Molly is extremely loyal to the groups he travels with (and can only operate in groups as he hasn't been alone for longer than 24 hours since he crawled out of the grave, and it's one of the few things that scares him), even if he doesn't necessarily like all of them (and he will often insult and playfully belittle them too). He and Beauregard, for example, have a mutual dislike of one another, but on several occasions he's stopped her from getting hurt and the first thing he did after the fight with the Xhorhassian was make sure she got healed. He's a liar, in his own words, but not a betrayer, though this doesn't preclude him from shady or sometimes "tough love" tactics, like charming Nott into making her tell him why she wanted to steal from Fjord or slapping Caleb out of PTSD episode, but they're meant for the betterment of the group so it's justified in his mind (even when they're reprehensible or, at the very least, rude). It should be noted that due to most circus performers not being hindered by social propriety, these were probably standard tactics in dealing with dishonesty and anxiety among the group, and he just honestly doesn't know any better, nor does he particularly care about learning otherwise. He's pretty set in his ways for someone with only two years of memories, and he won't be convinced to do better, because of his belief that what he thinks is right generally is.
Despite being quick to make snap judgments, Molly doesn't seem to care that people make snap judgments on him. You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat you, after all, and if someone is cruel and disrespectful to him, then it's basically giving him permission to do whatever he wants to them, whether by being rude or by ripping them off. He's extremely comfortable with his body and who he is, and lets no one shame him for anything. In fact, when asked why anyone should trust him since he lies and bullshits, his response is "Because I always lie and bullshit." He might make up stories, but he's honest about who he is as a person, because it separates him from Lucien. Due to being a tiefling, a lot of people are immediately distrusting or suspicious of him, but he can shrug it off like it's nothing. In fact, it takes a lot to get him legitimately angry. He can be stern and unwavering when he's made up his mind, but mostly he lets things breeze on by. Life's too short and full of new experiences to really bother with being unhappy about anything. The closest he ever comes to being genuinely upset is when faced with any aspect of his past before he lost his memories- that can drive him into an absolute fearful panic, and can even make him snotty to the point of cruelty if people continue to push buttons he doesn't want them to push.
The one holdover from Lucien that he accepts are his Bloodhunter abilities, which seems to be an act of necessity, rather than something he enjoys- it allows him to protect himself and his people, after all, and you most definitely don't want to fuck with his people (he believes STRONGLY in taking care of his own in whatever way possible). And even then, he tries to adapt the abilities with his own personal style- the red eye tattoos (which bleed when he activates certain powers) he had when he first came out of the ground couldn't be covered up, so, because they were so recognizable, he just inked around them until he had a more elaborate tattoo, distracting from them. Because he can turn anything sharp into a radiant or ice weapon with his blood, he wields two carnival glass scimitars, instead of a proper weapon. He's ostentatious to a fault, even when it comes to combat, and has been known to essentially shout gibberish in Infernal to terrify and intimidate opponents- unless there's a person who also speaks Infernal present, then he just shouts actually threatening, but cliche things. He is not a battle-hardened warrior except in instinct, and even then he hams up those instincts to ridiculous degrees.
Hunter's Bane — Though Molly has no memory of the process, at some point Lucien would have consumed Hunter's Bane, a "poisonous alchemical concoction that alters your life’s blood, forever binding you to the darkness and honing your senses against it." With this, Molly is extremely adept at tracking fey, fiends, and undead creatures and, through accessing some parts of his Lucien memories, he can recall information about these creatures. And he does not like that shit at all.
Rite of the Frozen — Molly's first Crimson Rite. By drawing blood (presumably over one of the four red eyed tattoos), Molly can imbue anything (literally ANYTHING) with the power of ice at the cost of 5 Hit Points that cannot be healed back until the rite is deactivated. This allows him to deal an extra 1d4 of ice damage to his normal weapon damage.
Rite of the Dawn — Same as Rite of the Frozen, only with radiant damage (which deals extra damage equal to his wisdom mod on undead) and only takes half the normal amount of HP. Molly can use both rites on one each of his two swords until he's forced to drop the weapons or chooses to end the rites.
Summer's Dance — Molly's +1 magical scimitar (used in his main hand). It's a golden blade that can cast Misty Step (allowing him to teleport up to 30 feet) once per long rest. Molly's off-hand weapon is a carnival glass prop scimitar that can be juggled. It's best not to juggle Summer's Dance.
Blood Maledict — Molly's personal favorite attack, particularly to keep people from hitting his friends in combat. His primary Blood Maledict is "Blood Curse of the Eyeless" which makes his opponents bleed from the eyes, temporarily blinding them and forcing disadvantage on their attacks. His secondary Blood Maledict is "Blood Curse of Purgation" which allows him to attempt to remove status conditions from his allies by drawing the poisons out of their body through the eye on his palm.
Devil's Tongue — Because Molly is a Devil's Tongue variant tiefling, he can cast the Vicious Mockery cantrip (his other favorite spell even if he is TERRIBLE at it) that, if successful, does 1d4 psychic damage and imposes disadvantage on the target's next turn. He can also cast Charm Person as a 2nd level level spell, which he uses to get information, calm people down, or generally... Get his way. He even uses it on his friends with only a little bit of guilt. What a great guy. And finally, he can cast Entrall, which forces his opponents to only focus on him, giving it disadvantage to notice other people that may be attacking or flanking it.
Other — Molly is resistant to fire and has dark vision up to 30 feet.
Once upon a time in Wildemount, there was a Bloodhunter named Lucien.
This is not a story about him.
For an overview of Molly's canon history, go here
For headcanon about pre-canon bullshit, and inevitably jossed Lucien information that I'm using for reference, as well as various and sundry other headcanons, go here