Exceedingly Exiled:Akehekh

Akehekh

Home Reality: Placeholder
Civilian Name: Ashraf "Ash" Kalb
Origin:
Power Level: 10
Gender Identity: Cis male
Age: 19 (biologically, chronologically 21)
Appearance and Demeanor: Egyptian Arabic

Abilities

Strength: 0
Stamina: 1
Agility: 3
Dexterity: 3
Fighting: 4
Intellect: 3
Awareness: 3
Presence: 1

Defenses

Dodge (AGL): 8/3
Parry (FTG): 8/4
Fortitude (STA): 1
Toughness (STA): 12
Will (AWE): 3

Offenses

Initiative: +3
Blast (Lightning): Damage 3, +9 (DC 18)
Claws and Teeth: Damage 8, +12 (DC 23)
Grab: +7 (DC Spec 14)
Sand Grit: Damage 1, +6 (DC 16)
Throw: +3 (DC 15)
Unarmed: +6 (DC 15)

Skills

Acrobatics: 1 (+4)
Athletics: 3 (+3)
Close Combat (Brawling): 6 (+10)
Deception: 3 (+4)
Expertise (Egyptian Magic): 2 (+5)
Insight: 2 (+5)
Investigation: +2 (+5)
Perception: 3 (+6)
Persuasion: 1 (+2)
Ranged Combat (Blast: Lightning, Damage 3): 6 (+9)
Stealth: 2 (+5)

Complications

Motivation:

• Acceptance: He’s too happy to be alive to bemoan his state, but Ash feels alienated from the living and the fact his life depends on the whim of a god of chaos and upheaval. At his core, he desperately wants people to accept he’s still human in the ways that count.

Other Complications:

• Monstrous: When it comes down to it, Ash is a mummy - and one whose true form has distinct animal features. He doesn’t look like a zombie, but he is both clearly supernatural and clearly undead, with a head that partly resembles a dog’s needing effort to fit in with the living around him.

Advantages

Assessment
Close Attack 2
Daze (Deception)
Equipment 1
Evasion 2
Fearless
Grabbing Finesse
Languages 2
Ritualist
Tracking
Tracking
Uncanny Dodge

Powers

Blast (Lightning): Damage 3 (DC 18; Increased Range: ranged, Penetrating)
Chimera Form (Activation: Standard Action)

Claws and Teeth: Damage 8 (DC 23; Affects Insubstantial: half ranks, Penetrating)

Thick Hide: Protection 3 (+3 Toughness; Impervious [2 ranks only])

Various Refinements: Variable 3 (Slow)

Wings: Flight 2 (Speed: 8 miles/hour, 120 feet/round; Innate; Wings)

Desert Storm Power: Environment 1 (Heat, Impede Movement (1 rank), Light, Radius: 30 feet; Selective; Check Required: DC 10 - Intellect)
Disciple of Deception: Illusion 1 (Affects: Three Sense Types - Hearing, Sight, Touch, Area: 4 cft., DC 11; Illusion Area, Independent; Limited to One Subject)
Forms of Chaos

Alternate Form (Particulate) (Linked; Activation: Move Action)

Elongation: Elongation 1 (Elongation: 15 feet, +1 to grab)

Immunity: Immunity 0

Insubstantial: Insubstantial 1 (Fluid)

Movement: Movement 1 (Slithering)

Sand Grit: Damage 1 (DC 16)

Alternate Form (Shadow) (Linked; Activation: Move Action)

Concealment: Concealment 4 (All Visual Senses; Limited: Darkness and Shadow)

Immunity: Immunity 0

Insubstantial: Insubstantial 4 (Incorporeal)

Movement: Movement 2 (Slithering, Wall-crawling 1: -1 speed rank)

Disguises: Morph 2 (Linked; +20 Deception checks to disguise; Narrow group; Precise, Subtle: subtle; Activation: move action)

Hardy: Protection 8 (+8 Toughness; Innate; Noticeable: Visibly undead)
Immortality: Immortality 1 (Removable, Return after 2 weeks)
Instincts of the Sha: Enhanced Trait 11 (Traits: Dodge +5 (+8), Parry +4 (+8), Advantages: Tracking, Uncanny Dodge; Noticeable: Saluki features, Permanent)
Undying Will: Regeneration 3 (Every 3.33 rounds; Persistent)

Equipment

Binoculars
Holy Symbol

Languages

Arabic
Egyptian
English

Power Points

Abilities 36 + Powers 85 + Advantages 13 + Skills 16 (31 ranks) + Defenses 0 = 150

Backstory

To understand Ashraf "Ash" Kalb, now known as Akehekh the Unbound (though he finds the title embarrassing), one has to first understand his version of Earth was made as an experiment - or rather, as a set of experiments. Much as how the planet Eurth was made in image of other worlds by the Shaper of Worlds and Living Tribunal to understand heroism in a context of a wild world of sword and sorcery rather than a world dominated by science and large governments, his world (officially Earth-1991, but often termed Eita in hidden Greek-descended cosmology due to records initially made by the magocratic city-state of Illion before they annihilated themselves in reckless hubris and retribution for their careless experiments, triggering the Bronze Age Collapse in that world and becoming the basis of the Trojan War) was made to examine how heroism will manifest in a world where wonder is an intrusion. Something that does not manifest in a world of science "naturally", but a core part nonetheless, denied for a sake of safety. If all miracles were also monsters, they wished to see if marvels were still born from them.

To that end, they made a world set up to become something that desperately pretended to be mundane and normal, but the daily life of humans was a thin veneer over a surging mass of secrets, strange events, and supernatural beings, many of whom were once human. Vampires, ghosts, werewolves, sorcerers, fae - all lived under a human facade as they sought dominion over the shadow world, in many cases simply because to not conquer was to be conquered. But not a heartless world - simply a fearful one. To become other than human in Eita is to become other - not less, not inherently. And so, without fame beyond infamy as urban legends and rumors of hidden angels, did heroes rise above the various curses that made them monsters and prove they weren't defined by darkness - and villains who embraced it, or only suborned it to human evils.

Here, Professor Steven Strange, surgeon turned necromancer by necessity to reclaim his skills and ability to save lives at all by understanding the veil between life and death, made a discovery that a cult of vampires too caught in a half-remembered glorious past were planning to destroy the "impure" modern world by resurrection of the god-king En Sabah Nur, said to have been born a god with skin that shone like the Nile. To that end, they planned to feed a hundred murderers to something they called Ammut, the Devourer of Evil Souls in Egyptian Myth, and restore her power to tear a hole between life and death to let his soul into a prepared corpse - but besides having too many tentacles for a being said to be a hybrid between hippo, crocodile, and lioness, she seemed only interested in the hearts of killers who did so in self-defense, leading to a spate of abductions from abuse shelters, low-security prisons, and homeless camps. Not something that could be called quite "evil," at least by traditional means. During his investigations in Cairo chasing the mysterious cases, he picked up the son of one of the sacrifices, a petty thief and courier named Ashraf Kalb - who should not have seen Strange at all to lift his ankh, let alone recognize the pitted metal was something he needed to find his ailing mother. After a rather long and eventful adventurer involving tomb raiding, negotiating peace between warring jinn, and stopping an outbreak of zombies caused by a fleeing vampire (a recurrent issue on Eita - thankfully, the plague's victims can only digest monstrous flesh thanks to the magic, so they do not seek to actively spread), the nicknamed Ash tricked "Ammut" into devouring his heart instead of his mother's as part of a deal with Sutekh, the God of Chaos, to remove her illness and safeguard his younger siblings, sickening her and letting Strange banish her back to the spirit world.

Of course, the things about Gods of Chaos is that they tend to be tricksters and enjoy twisting deals - even if it's to be more generous than seemed. Sutekh, while not a nice being by any stretch of the imagination, is also the god that helps prevent the dark serpent Apep from devouring the sun - if mostly because the sun is also his father, Ra. People who are dedicated to their families touch what little soft emotions he has in his scheming heart, and seeing how fearless Ash was in this - he decided to creatively interpret "your body is mine to see as I do with", and replaced the heart with the same original ankh charged with his own chaotic power, bringing Ash back to life as a mummy - and one with some of Sutekh's same power over shape, darkness, and desert storms. In particular, he can now assume the shape of the griffon-beast that is one of Sutekh's sacred animals (and the source of his hero moniker). The downside is that he clearly isn't human anymore, not without effort to maintain a human face - even beyond being undead and pale, Ash now has bestial features of another sacred beast of Sutekh, saluki sighthounds. Not the worst mutation by any means, but hardly anything that can be waved off as simply a skin condition (especially because his head isn't entirely a dog's - he has sharp teeth, pointed ears, and patches of fur rather a full canine head, looking rather fearsome when he growls). Recognizing this was his life now, he donned the name of Akehekh and vowed to protect the world from people who would rather it be ruled by the past than marching towards a hopefully better future - and hopefully getting a place for himself rather than just exist on the streets.