Berg, the Hot-Blooded

The circumstances of Berg's origin and upbringing are fairly unremarkable. He was born into a tribe of leonin, a warrior culture; they were well versed in the art of battle. However they were a well-sated people and did not go to war for glory or land or spoils. They were nomads by philosophy, and did not seek these material attachments that would hold them back. They fought for the sake of fighting, for in battle you were truly alive. Your sense at their peak, your body pushed to its very edge, every synapse in your head firing at full speed. When your very existence is on the line, you appreciate it all the more the believed. To which, they rendered their services to their less cultured neighbors. Those that still clinged desperately to such trivialities.

The day finally came when Berg would be accepted as a man. You see, his tribe's coming of age ritual was for a young warrior to be chosen as a champion by one of their 'clients' and be successful. And Berg was finally chosen. He was elated. He had trained for years, honing his skill with every weapon he could get his hands upon, and even practicing Magic from those that could teach him.

The opponent was worthy, the fight was glorious. Berg pushed his opponents well beyond their limits, and they pushed back. He could feel every cut and blow they threw at him, but still he fought on. He felt light-headed. He was losing a lot of blood. "This is fine," he thought "there can be no dishonor in a fight well fought." As his consciousness faded, he slipped away. Through the veil between worlds. Tumbling, falling, changing. Something was different. Burning, churning, igniting. He felt empowered, his thoughts returning despite the madness he could never hope to fully appreciate surrounding him. He felt amazing! He was something more than a mere fighter now; he was a Planeswalker!

He came to on an unfamiliar mountaintop. A new man. A changed man. Battle would never be the same to him. His previous efforts; finger-paints. Now he was an artist! His strength grew exponentially. His power, his magic, his tenacity. Everything! Anything a foe could throw at him, he could throw back tenfold! His mind drifted from reasonable expectations and rose to those of a god of war. He wandered the planes, taking on any foe that he considered interesting. He fought all kinds, chosen champions and wretched despots, brigands and noblemen, machines and monsters; it did not matter. What they believed in? What they fought for? These did not matter. All there was was battle; to be alive!

Eventually, he came upon a plane. A grey murky plane that seemed blighted somehow; there was a dankness in the air. The spirits were unsettled, and the clouds never seemed to part. He found the plane rife with monsters. Demons and devils and haints and the undead. He destroyed them without a second thought, but more came. And more. And more. And more. His battle drifted. From mountains, to forests, and to the plains. Towns were caught in his wake, but he did not care. They were in the way of his expressions of life. It was their own fault. This continued for a time until one fateful day.

A great and powerful angel appeared before him. She was clad in black which stood in sharp contrast to her stark white form. She carried a spear and her face bore no expression. She informed him that he was a blight upon her flock, that his mere presence wrought destruction, and that it was here eternal duty to stop him.
She could try.

Their fight was the stuff of legend. Lasting for days. Blows were traded. Magics exchanged. Any foothold gained was quickly taken away. The angel had had enough. She lead him towards a citadel. He followed; how could he not, this was the most exhilarating moment of his entire existence. She turned to face him and lunged. Her spear plunged into him and he was flung away. She pressed him against an enormous chunk of silver.

"What cannot be destroyed will be bound."

Something happened. He was losing himself. Like when he walked, but different somehow. This time it felt wrong. He couldn't control it, couldn't feel it, couldn't perceive it. His body was lost, it was everywhere and it was nowhere. He was surrounded on all sides by pitch black mana. It was angry and bitter and vengeful. There were cursed towards a woman's name and vows of revenge. He was trapped in some horrible prison.

And so it was for many years. He maintained some semblance of self by fighting off the blackness. But he did not enjoy it. It was different than before. Before he fought as an expression of self, now he fought to maintain it. Before there were whole worlds to fight, but now it was one giant inky black mess that never ended. Without boundaries it had no meaning. Without pause, there was no room for growth. This continued on longer than Berg could ever imagine.

Crack. A light shone through the darkness. Crack. It grew bigger. Crack. It spider-webbed, spreading all over; permeating the void that he knew. An explosion. There was a sharp tugging at his chest and he was jerked towards the light. He was flung back into the world, landing on his hands and feet. It hurt. It wasn't like before he was trapped, there was a sharpness to the pain that he thought he would never feel again. The darkness around him was reforming. Demons. Hundreds of them. Fleeing every which way. There was a battle before him. Hundreds of soldiers and zombies, knee deep in gore. Angels overhead, hacking flimsily at the escaping demons. A light shone behind him; the witch that had trapped him rose up out of the smoking crater in which he lay.

"Never again" and he fled away into the wilderness to make some sense of all that had happened.

For the third time in his life, everything was different. His power, it felt so far away. His body felt hollow somehow, like it had been voided of something impossibly large. When he stretched, he could feel every ligament and bone ache. The spells he attempted to cast, shadows of their former glory.

For the first time in his entire life, Berg was afraid.

Appearance:
Berg is a smilodon leonin standing almost 12 feet tall. His fur is rust colored and kept short except for tufts located at most of the major joints (shoulders, knees, elbows, etc), where there are tinges of grey. He is covered head to foot in scars of varying sizes and severity, prizes of the battles he has fought. There is a bite sized chunk missing of his right ear. His right fang is about 8 inches long, his left is size, the bottom two inches appear to have been broken off. He's afraid that it affects his speech.

He wears simple bracers on his wrists, shoulders and shins, and wears a simple loincloth. His fur keeps him warm enough on most planes, that he chooses not to wear additional clothes unless it is necessary.

He carries a particularly large war-hammer, the back end of which is sharpened to a point, resembling an over-sized pickaxe. The underside of the point is bladed.

Personality:
Berg was raised in a culture that worshipped the fine art of battle. To his people, you were the most alive when you were so close to death. To that end, he has spent most of his existence seeking out greater and greater challenges; an easy feet considering his planeswalking abilities. When he would come upon foes worthy of his self-expression, he could gauge them based on the power level and hold back accordingly, he's almost never fought at his full capacity as a Planeswalker.

But now that the mending has occurred, and he's been brought back down to normal, he has to cope with a few mighty significant challenges to his worldview. His immortality never really excited him. His people taught him not to fear death, it was merely the high cost of living. To live as a warrior you had to learn to accept death and be ready for it at any time. It is the sudden change in power that worries him.

He only had the one battle before his ascension for a point of reference, so every other battle he has been in was fueled by the power of a pre-mending spark. He was a big fish and every world was a small pond. Now the pond has gotten so much smaller, and he is truly afraid. The idea that he cannot hold is own in battles that he once could terrifies him to his very core.

Also related to the first and only 'normal' battle he had; he had never considered the possibility that not everyone actually enjoys fighting. On his world, it was such an enormous part of the culture, it was expected that one knew how to fight properly or would have someone who could on your behalf. While he was a God, any objections to his presence fell on deaf ears. It is hard to hear people so far below you. Now he is back on their level, and the idea that his battles might not be appreciated by others is starting to dawn on him. Now that he can think as a man again and not a God, he is coming around to the idea that his actions have consequences. And it scares him.

Powers:
Berg is a warrior through and through, so most of his talent lies in the fine art of hitting things. He has learned to channel that into spell craft however, and he has become quite good at the fine art of breaking everything in spell form. Any spell that results in the destruction of things is right up his alley, so things like Stone Rain and Shatter are second nature to him.

He's never really gotten on-board with the idea of "teamwork", so many of his spells are highly indiscriminant. Things like Wildfire , Chain Reaction , Rite of Ruin , Meltdown etc.

His powers are fueled by his passion; the more into a fight he is, the more powerful his magic. To that end, spells that escalate well, or better yet, out of control are also well-suited to him.



This is my entry of the fifth of the Planeswalker Creation contest. Round 5's theme was "oldwalkers". I wanted to find a way to preserve a walker from the mending til now, and getting sealed in the Helvault seemed like the best way to do it.

I've always wanted to do a scaling Wildfire/Destructive Force on a card, and making it as a Planeswalker ultimate seemed like a great way to do it. Though Berg damages players and other walkers as well.

I'd love to hear your opinions and get your vote!

Also, Aria is in a runoff vote for first place in the Round 3 contest!

A vote for Hairless Thoctar is a vote for great justice!
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/29110815/Planeswalker_Creation_Contest_3:_Third_times_the_charm?pg=42

Aria, the Blood Witch

Aria had lead a privileged life. The daughter of a well-to-do noble deep in the province of Stensia, there was very little she did not have access to. The best clothes, the best food, any manner of entertainment accessible. She was born into more money than most people on Innistrad could count to. Everything most people could ever hope for was provided for her on a platter.

Her parents were quick to remind her that she was special, that she was destined for greater things than most. And she believed it; how could she not? Her family brought in the best tutors for her, she excelled in every subject. Foreign languages, history, mathematics, magic, and even the alchemy that the prudes in the capital would call heresy. There was nothing that she could not do. She was clearly better than everyone else.

Everything changed on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. She was greeted in the ballroom by half of the village. Nobles and bankers and clerics. Everyone of import from her village. But something was wrong. As she walked into the room, some of them began to shimmer, an illusion was fading. Their skin paled, and their eyes began to softly glow above sharp, crooked smiles. Many of them were vampires.

They informed her that she had her family was part of a project, she had been bred specifically for the purposes of being integrated into a vampire clan. Her entire life up to this point had been planned to the every last detail, to create someone of significance that would lift their clan out of the shadows, or at the very least provide a tasty snack. They assured her that would love it with them.

As the patriarch approached her, her world collapsed around her. Had her whole life been a lie? Had she ever made a single choice for herself? Was she actually as smart and strong and wonderful as she thought herself to be, or were those all pleasant lies to keep her complacent. She was horrified. She was enraged. She began to cry. Nothing made any sense anymore.

He assured her that she would come around. "Welcome to the family", was the last thing she remembered before she passed out from shock of the bite upon her neck.

Aria awoke in a cell. They did not want their investment escaping before she turned, it would seem. She spent the next three days in a a stupor. Her mind wracked with doubts about her life up until now, being whispered with propaganda from her captors, about how they were once one of the twelve great families, and her and others like her would raise them from their squalor, and her body slowly undergoing the transformation.

In three days time, her sire returned, the final stage was prepared. He cut himself, and filled a fine goblet with his blood. She could smell it, everything she had eaten since her bite tastes increasingly like ash in her mouth. That which was in the goblet smelled more wonderful than anything she had ever experienced in her entire lifetime. She gulped it down in a single breath.

Almost instantly, she felt better. The doubts and fears and regrets that had flooded her mind were still there, but now they felt dimmer, more far away. They could not hurt her now. She had clarity and purpose now. She turned towards her sire, and approached.

"What was it you said? 'Welcome to the family?'" She brought her hand up and brushed his cheek, and then plunged her fist up to her elbow through his chest.
"I don't like my family very much."

What little color was in his face faded almost immediately, the contorted look on his face stuck there as he died. Guards rushed into the room to see what was the clamor, and she dispatched them just as quickly with her magic. It was much stronger now.

She stood there , in the bloodstained room. The puddles of blood glistened softly, reflecting the moonlight. She observed her reflection, horrible and distorted. A monster. She felt like a monster. But she was her own monster.

She would be no one's thrall. No one's puppet. No one's convenient lie. She would not live a second longer a cog in someone else's machine. She had been raised to be special, and now she was. She knew in her heart that now she truly was. And with this insight, she was whisked away. Her spark ignited, taking a monster away to planes unknown.

Appearance
Aria was a stunningly attractive specimen before turning, as to be expected of someone chosen to be sired. Her figure is somewhat understated as she had not finished growing into herself before turning, a point that irritates her profoundly that she will not be "mature" for a very long time, given vampire's slow aging. She has long, straight, crimson hair that flows down to her chest. Her nails are long and somewhat unkempt. Her clothes are tattered and matted with blood, but were quite splendid once. She thinks very little of her physical appearance, and it shows.

Aria is spoiled rotten, being raised as the only daughter of a wealthy nobleman. She had spent her entire life not only being told that she was better than most, but actually being taught to be so. She is incredibly well verse in etiquette, language, history, weaponry, science, and magic; though most that meet her would not suspect as much because she doesn't like to talk about her past and she prefers living impulsively in the moment. She is of poor temperament and is quickly prone to violence and aggression.  She deeply hates being lied to, deceived, or being told what to do, and doing any of those things is the fastest way to get on her bad side. She eats who she wants when she wants, and cares not for the consequences; she feels like having the life she knew taken away from her entitles her to get away with most anything.

She has a bittersweet relationship with her vampiric condition. She truly enjoys the power and freedom that it affords her, but she's bitter and resentful about her origins. Sometimes she sinks into a deep depression about how inconsequential most of the choices she made during her human life were, and wonders if anything has really changed. She tends to get even more violent during these periods. She will often seek out and drain someone who is happy to make herself feel better.

She claims that she is not above turning others, but she has yet to ever do so. It is quite likely that she considers draining someone to death as a form of "mercy", that they are better off dead than a monster like herself. One of her very few redeeming qualities.

She does not like to admit it, but she is not a particularly happy woman, but she lacks the forethought to make any drastic changes to improve her life.

Powers
She is well versed in sangromancy. She can take command of blood spilled in battle and shape it as she wishes into weapons and shields and any shape she desires. She has dabbled in other forms of vampire magic such as shape-shifting, glamer, and hypnosis; but none of them have taken particularly well, preferring the brute force approach of her blood magic.

She can draw strength from her foes from wounds she has inflicted upon them or even from her very presence. If she has drawn your blood in battle, woe upon you, for she can easily aggravate the condition with very little effort . She can extend such powers to those in her vacinity, but such alliances are few and far between and only for the sake of convenience rather than a lasting desire for camaraderie.

Flight was the first vampire power she put any effort towards, and she has become quite accomplished at it since she has turned. She is immesnly fond of it, and the times she flies are among the very few times that she is truly happy. Her problems and doubts seems so far away and inconsequential when she is in the air.


This is my entry into the Gleemax forums "Planeswalker Creation Contest 3; round 3, female villains"
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/29110815/?sdb=1&pg=last#520180087
I'd love to hear what you think and to get your vote!