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Name: Relius Clover
Gender: Male
Age: 44, while he is still around one hundred years after he created the Black Beast, he did not actually experience them, having been warped to the future by the Cauldron.
Race: Human
Family: Clover Family, Ignis, Ada, and Carl Clover.
Appearance: Relius is a striking, rather handsome figure really. When just taken for his plain features with no regard to how he holds himself at least. He is tall, a little over an inch past six feet, and he has shimmering blonde hair that spikes back towards the back of his head. His eyes are a light, sky blue, when they're visible at least, and his body is lean and toned. The body of someone who keeps themselves in excellent physical condition. More often than not he has a slight five o'clock shadow upon his chin and cheeks, not very much though, just a small amount, he shaves regularly of course, but it tends to grow quickly.
However, one's physical appearance is only half their plain, basic physical features, the other half is how they hold themselves, how they comport and compose their body and face. The body language they often convey to put it another way. When that is taken into account, Relius becomes less handsome and more...intimidating, perhaps even frightening. He always seems to look at people as tools, in fact many would comment that it's as if he doesn't see a person at all, as if he's looking through them, and the way he holds his body always looks as if he's beckoning or reaching for someone, as if he's just a blink away from trying to grab someone for whatever strange or worrisome purpose.
Statistics:
Date of Birth: June 1
Birthplace: 2nd Hierarchical City of Iwatsuchi
Height: 186cm (6'1.2")
Weight: 85kg (165.3 lbs)
Blood type: A
Hair: Blond
Clothing of choice: Regardless of whether on duty, off duty, or whatever else, Relius always seems to wear the same ensemble. The first thing that people usually notice is the golden mask that covers the top half of his face, keeping his eyes from being well seen, and giving him a rather sinister cast, as if he really needed help with that. Directly beneath this is a heavy violet cloak with a tall, flaring collar, the hem coming to just past his knees, it is clasped with a heavy golden clip. Then for his shirt he wears a simple violet long sleeved shirt with a black border. His hands are always gloved, simple white cloth to provide a small amount of protection. His shirt is not tucked in and he seems to eschew a belt, his white breeches tailored to his size such that he does not need one. The white breeches are tucked into his knee high boots, which are also in purple, with golden metal caps on the toes of the boots for additional protection. This ensemble is what he wears at all times, the cloak can protect against foul weather, and he seems to not even feel heavy heat.
Loyalty: While he is a Colonel of the NOL, his loyalty is first and foremost, to his own research.
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Occupation: Relius Clover is a Colonel in the Librarium's Experimental R&D department.
Personality: Relius is perhaps one of the most inhuman and cruel human beings in existence. A man who sleeps, eats, and breathes but one thing, knowledge. He is obsessed with information, particularly of the human soul and magic in particular. To him any human, beastkin or even vampire that manages to pique his interest is nothing but an object, a tool to be used. He doesn't see people as people, no matter who they are, no matter how they act, they are nothing but tools, objects to be utilized and refined at his whim. Of course this isn't a willing thing that he does, Relius' mind is literally incapable of seeing people as anything but. The only way to get him to even slightly acknowledge that you are anything but a tool or material for his experiments and the furtherance of his knowledge and goals, is to have some ambition, some drive that can actually get him to be impressed, it's the closest Relius will ever come to respecting you.
Still, whether he sees people as people, or as forks or knives, he is still a human himself. He has a rather obsessive need to keep things neat and organized, and in fact nothing makes him happier than when he is organizing something, whether it be the massive influx of information that is coming into his brain at any given moment, or even a stack of books in a library. As much as he likes organizing things though he hates leaving this disorganized, if he sees something disordered he either fixes it, or it just keeps irking him as long as he's there. Still if something is already ordered or well done he can greatly appreciate it. He even has a certain interest and like of the artforms, opera in particular, such ordered strains of music...they are quite pleasant to listen to, to him at least.
Weaponry: Puppet pieces- Inside Relius' cloak, often appearing as if by magic (which is actually exactly the case) Relius often calls upon a variety of puppet like pieces, from heavy, mechanical arms to punch and punish his foes, to even large, platform based piston like fists to send them hurtling up into the air. He has a wide repertoire of such things and uses them to great effect against his opponents.
Fluctus Redactum: Ignis
Also known as the Detonator, Ignis was once Relius' loyal, loving wife. However, using the knowledge he gained during intense and thorough study of Nirvana, study that also claimed his daughter and made her nothing more than part of the Nirvana, he turned her into the Fluctus Redactum. The Fluctus Redactum is based on the science to make a Nox Nyctores, and thus could technically be considered a Nox Nyctores herself. However if she is, then she's one of the most powerful Nox Nyctores ever made, in fact, she may very well be comparable to the Lux Sanctus: Murakumo, if not come up very close behind it in terms of power and ability. After all Ignis is one of his greatest creations, and surely that must count the Murakumo and Prime Field Devices among them.
So, just what is Ignis capable of? A good question, in order to properly discuss her capabilities, it is best to start with the basics. Ignis, like Ada, is capable of independent movement, able to react and move to defend Relius even when he has seemingly not even called her, and seemingly able to 'talk' with him even if no one else can hear her. She is also very fast, able to attack with remarkable speed, and hitting with a significant amount of power. She's also very hard to damage or injure, whatever materials Relius' alchemy whipped up, they are quite plainly quite strong. Her hands end in sharp, slightly hooked claws, quite dangerous should anyone be hit by them. However, the purple colored puppet has a few far more dangerous tricks up her proverbial sleeve.
Ignis is capable of shifting her clawed hands into other shapes, most typically and commonly being spiraling, piercing drills for heavy, painful thrust attacks. In addition, those long tails on her head can be used as blades, she can spin her entire body turning herself into a giant buzzsaw for ramming into enemies, and at last, she can throw her hands, letting them detach and whirl at an incredible speed. Basically turning her hands into cutting, deadly boomerangs.
Those are perhaps the basics of what Ignis is capable of, in addition to those she is able to teleport, often appearing and disappearing as and when Relius requires her usage. In addition she doesn't walk as Nirvana does, but hovers and dashes about, she can even fly for short periods of time, although she can't fly indefinitely before going back to just a few inches above the ground.
Finally though, Ignis has two last capabilities that are truly dangerous. Both abilities are centralized in her long, clawed arms. Both abilities are vaguely similar though. Ignis possesses a powerful energy, and can emit it from her hands, she can focus it between them into a dark black sphere. She can then rush forward to strike them with it. Those struck find themselves caught in a dark sphere that then detonates rather painfully, it can inflict a rather heavy amount of damage to foes, but it is perhaps less troublesome than Ignis' ultimate function. Ignis' final function is to capture and detain test subjects, individuals who Relius sees a reason to experiment upon and examine. If Ignis can manage to grab onto an opponent's head, pressing her 'palm' to their face, she can release a powerful paralyzing field of energy that immobilizes them and allows her to teleport them and herself to Relius' own personal laboratory, where they will be restrained until such time as he can afford to give them the proper examination they so richly deserve. HOwever, this paralyzing field has very little effect if the person's head is not held in Ignis' hand, and is thus not used very often. All in all both these rather dangerous functions are quite costly to even Ignis' formidable energy supply, and thus Relius rarely has her use either.
Abilities: Even without Ignis Relius is a rather formidable being in his own right. His knowledge of all things, whether they be magical, scientific, alchemical or even of the Boundary is nearly unmatched. He possesses more information in his brain than most any man could hope to possess in five lifetimes. While he is not in fact a mage such as Kokonoe, Nine, or Celica, he is still capable of synthesizing many forms of powerful materials and devices, and can even peer straight into one's soul. In fact, were it not for his mask, he would be able to do see people as nothing but small, blue spheres of concentrated light. A side effect of his trip through the Cauldron so long ago.
Perhaps thanks to this ability to see the true form of people, he is also able to affect their souls. In a process that has been described as having a hand squeeze one's brain, Relius can peer into one's soul, learning all of a person's deepest thoughts and secrets, dragging up their most terrible experiences and can even use their greatest values and worst vices to 'topple' their soul, destroying their memories and leaving their soul as a perfect blank slate for Relius to use in his experiments and quest to create the perfect human. Perhaps also as a result of this, at times just his presence, just having him look at you, can cause all but the most strong willed individuals to freeze up in terror, for the interest of Relius Clover is something few could want and many would should strive to avoid.
History:
Relius was born in what is now the 2nd Hierarchical City of Iwatsuchi. Back when he was born, it wasn't of quite the import that the hierarchical cities hold now, after all at the time the world was not completely drowned in Siethr. How could it be, when the creator of the Black Beast was but a babe mewling at his mother's breast? Indeed Relius was born during the time before the Black Beast existed, a more peaceful time by far. During his youth it was apparent, very apparent, that the man was an absolute genius. He was miles ahead of his peers in schools, and was skipped ahead before just being given a private tutor, a tutor who struggled to keep up with Relius' constant demand for new and more challenging problems, knowledge and more. It was a minor disappointment when it was discovered that he himself could not wield magic along the likes of Nine and such, but he took his talents to other areas, alchemy, science, and virtually everything else. In fact, such was his knowledge that he eventually found himself working alongside none other than the father of Nine and Celica: Shuichiro Ayatsuki.
Even Shuichiro couldn't help but view Relius as an absolute genius, a great benefit to his research and work and yet...even with the both of them tackling the problem of the Boundary, even with the two of them trying to create their cauldron and harness those strange energies, they were making no headway. The Boundary remained a complete enigma something they simply couldn't figure out and harness...until Terumi appeared. The strange being showed up and offered them knowledge, an in depth knowledge of how to make the cauldron of how to harness the boundary. To this day Relius still has not even the slightest clue as to just what or who Terumi really is or how he got ahold of such useful information. Regardless he accepted Terumi's request of a body, creating the existence known as Kazuma Kuvaru, for when Terumi should need it. Using the information granted by Terumi, Relius and Shuichiro were able to create the very first Boundary Interface Prime Field Device, and sent her into the Boundary to see what they could discover. There something unusual happened, that prime field device became the master unit, Amaterasu, gaining god like ability. Much to Relius' disdain, the majority of humans wound up rejecting her, becoming terrified. They tried to destroy her and failing that, sealed her away deep, deep within the boundary. Relius was rather unperturbed though and went about his work...until it happened.
He was performing a test run on an experiment involving the Cauldron, another invention gained only through Terumi's mysterious, in depth knowledge. Yet, when he ran it, something went awry, instead of going as planned the Black Beast emerged. It reigned destruction upon the laboratory, injuring Shuichiro greatly and sending Relius plummeting into the Cauldron. This removed him entirely from the war, and most likely saved his life utterly. If this had not happened he probably would have been killed either by the Black Beast, or by the heavy seither exposure it would have forced upon him as a side effect. Instead, instead he was blown forward, forward through time, some eighty years in the future, to a point long after the Black Beast had been crushed by the Six Heroes, long after the formation of the NOL and Sector Seven, to a time when the only habitable areas of the planet were the hierarchical cities, anywhere lower rendered uninhabitable for humans due to the heavy, toxic clouds of seither that drowned the planet.
Of course, when Relius first arrived he was aware of none of this, in fact it was a miracle that he was even alive. When he arrived his thoughts were scattered, his mind blank. In fact his brain was so shattered that he could not even make out what he was seeing, it was just a vast flow of unprocessed, unrecognized visual input that had no context, meaning or value. It was in this vulnerable state that he was found by the one person he could trust to help him get by, even if he couldn't actually trust that individual to do anything but keep him alive as a tool. Still it was a start, he helped Terumi gain another new body, modeled after the first one Relius had built for him, and spent a great deal of time organizing his mind. It was much like organizing a massive bookshelf, a particularly favorite past time of his. It was quite the feat really, something that most people would find completely impossible really, yet he accomplished this in a matter of just a year or so.
Once his mind was completely whole again he began his research anew, and in that time met Ignis, a woman who he found interesting. After all, even at that time he was knowledgeable enough to recognize a truly powerful soul when he saw it. As for what Ignis saw in him...who can say? Maybe it was arranged and had little to do with actual love. Regardless the two were wed, Ignis and the Mad Puppeteer, and she begat two children for Relius. Ada and Carl Clover. Then he went to Sector Seven, and the events began that would set his son and daughter on their terrible tragic fate began. For a long while Relius had been utterly fascinated with these Nox Nyctores, weapons of incredible power that had been created after the Black Beast, and thus he had missed out on them in their entirety. As such they fascinated him, even more than the prime field devices that had been created in an attempt to imitate his own. He wanted to make one, and went to one of the few people who had the ability to do such, Professor Kokonoe of Sector Seven. He chose his time carefully as well, arriving at a time when his ability would be the most valued, when they had just attained the Nox Nyctores Nirvana.
It was a simple matter to get himself a lab and continue working on restoring Nirvana while helping Kokonoe with the construction of her very own cauldron. During this time he harvested his daughter's body, using Ada and her powerful soul to reconstruct the Nirvana but with much more dangerous offensive capabilities. Using what he learned about the Nirvana he created a much more powerful weapon using his wife's body and her own soul. Unlike the Nirvana she was made solely for combat and capture, the Fluctus Redactum, Ignis. Kokonoe was rather surprised when she saw Ignis, but did not immediately realize the threat it posed. It wasn't until Relius opened the cauldron and revealed a Black Beast, that Kokonoe truly realized how she had been played for the fool. He had merely wished to see the power of the Great Magister Nine, power that Kokonoe had access to, and manipulated her into condensing the beast created in the hopes of collecting that soul to power Ignis even further, and in the process refining the 11th, 12th, and 13th prime field devices. Unfortunately Kokonoe was able to intervene, and Relius had to retreat with heavy, serious injuries, but he still had Nirvana and Ignis, and even managed to take the three new prime field devices with him.
From there he was solely involved with the NOL, although in truth it was entirely with Hazama. He helped retrieve Saya and Jin from Celica's church, and spread the 11th, 12th, and 13th field devices around the other hierarchical cities, beginning the smelting on the 13th in Kagutsuchi, while the eleventh and twelfth were written off on failures...or they were supposed to be. Imagine Relius' surprise now that he's heard that Noel Vermillion, the twelfth, is the new Eye of the Azure. What had before simply been idle curiosity over how she even survived had changed to genuine interest. It is time he visited Kagutsuchi himself, there are supposed to be many interesting souls there, and the twelfth prime field device...oh how he would love to get his hands on her once more, to see what he had missed.
Subject: Relius Clover 
Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:44 am
