

WHO I IS
- Name: Archedemus
- Date of Death: 1319 B.C.E.
- Age at Death/Physical Age Now: 43
- Physical Description:
- Special Features:
Archedemus, like all of his bound brethren, exists within the cold husk of a suit of armor. However as it can immediately be seen his armor is distinct. Whole portions of the entire suit are absent, while the remaining pieces eerily float and move as if tugged by something unseen.
The spirit within glooms more than glows, nipping at nearby luminance more than adding to it. Gaping faces occasionally form out of the ghastly aether, pouring seemingly from the ground upwards into the revenant's core.
This metallic spectre appears reminiscent of death itself, and this is no coincidence.
- Description of Armor:
For revenants, the shell of their armor represents the shell of their body, second only to their body's original skin in intimacy and importance. Those revenants with damaged and missing armor betray the inner injuries to their own core and soul. Therefore one must truly wonder what remains of the Shade known as Archedemus.
Only his core, hands, and head remain armored. They are the only necessities; the areas that cannot afford to be without form. His hands are his manipulators, and his head and core act as shielding for his Signil. Even without legs, he manages to float towards what he desires. Everything else, everything superfluous, was left behind. In a broken but functional machine only that which is needed to make it all work remains.
The choice of scythe is subtle but poignant; in life Archedemus was a farmer and oft to harvest his crops. The scythe was the tool of choice come the harvest-time, and with all the pragmatism of a farmer the association of bringing together the dead never differentiated itself from collecting the crops.
The shield is a holdover from his days as a line-man during his former life's battles. While not one for battle, the idea of protecting one's body from harm ingrained itself into his psyche at a fundamental level. The body was, after all, what kept death away from life. What was there to keep death away from the body?
- Overall Appearance:
Archedemus' armor too much resembles a reaper. The scythe, the hood-like helm, and the skull-patterned shield all point to some connection, or obsession, with death itself. The lack of a full form, and face, reveal a broken Shade bereft of wholeness and even identity. Many have questioned whether Archedemus is truly his name or just the one given to him.
WHAT I AM
- Faction Allegiance: The Legions - Fear
- Occupation: Fearmonger
It is hard to inspire the fear of death into those who are already dead, and among the most nihilistic of Acheron's denizens even the threat of the Nothingness seems to have become contrite (at least to all outward appearances).
However it is exactly up to the Fear Legions to do exactly that, to coerce and corral the myriad Shades into whatever alignment necessary through panic, dread, and terror. But what threat can be instilled into the already dead? Nothing that can be done to them. Which is why the fear must come from within. Archedemus' role comes into play long after the seeds of doubt have been placed by his comrades. A most chilling idea and one of the few that can inspire true terror in a Shade.
Those who desperately crave the life they once had will always naturally flee from the figure of a reaper. Meanwhile those who have accepted their demise and even enjoy the comforts of unlife only do so at the behest of the fact that they are, indeed, dead. The only true terror left to them then is the doubt that they are not. That they have not yet completely escaped that crude, feeble and heavy body, ruled by irrational chemicals and subject to the doldrums of time -- and worse yet, having to relive the increasingly anxious wait for Death all over again.
It is a common sight, and the most piteous and loathsome, to see the damned who still delude themselves that they are alive. They are clearly mad and fantastical. Which is why the notion, the doubt, that the dead aren't actually so is such subliminally disturbing.
- Personality:
- Likes / Dislikes:
Archedemus craves the dead. He is drawn to the presence of Shades and will often just stare into them seemingly without end. Gazing at Shades, whether intimately or from afar, is what he is always doing when not currently performing other tasks. He is also fond of conversation, though not of his own. It is akin to talking with someone too absolutely fascinated and intrigued to say hardly anything at all.
Though he is fascinated by the Shades and the spirits of the dead, and clearly no stranger to dealing death and suffering, he reviles the notion of self-infliction of any sort. Death is the taking of life, meant to be taken, not given up. The idea of suicide drives him into a rage.
- Interesting Quirks:
When not wielding his scythe Archedemus will often touch the faces of Shades, disturbing in its own right for breaking such personal barriers but also subconsciously reminding them of their physical forms. His grasp upon the shoulders, arms, or hands represents death being so intimately close, a notion Shades have not had to deal with since their demise. The familiar feel of it buries under their skin and irritates them to madness.
- Overall Personality:
Archedemus is cordial, unhurried, and unnervingly persistent. He often only speak just to return the present conversation to a long-past point, challenging the memory and tugging at the strings of forgetfulness and doubt. His patience is a vice and he engorges like a glutton on lackings. The lack of any hatred in his voice is the most insulting thing of all.
He is styled after death, after all.
HOW I CAME TO BE
- Nationality: Achaean (Greek)
- History:
- Before Death:
Archedemus was originally a farmer of Achaean tribe, one of the four founding tribes of ancient Greece. However, he was more than just a farmer. He had learned the simple basics of medicine from Athenian traders some time ago, however he never applied them towards healing. Instead, he used them towards treating the deceased. He was, for all intents and purposes, the town undertaker. He took to the position with inappropriate vigor, and though many fellow Achaeans mistrusted them they nevertheless called upon him whenever a villager lay dying.
When the Dorians came to the Argolis in order to oust them from their lands Archedemus was conscripted like many other farmers to fight back. While not the most able warrior, he often found himself on the shield-wall line; one of many soldiers designated to creating a literal wall of shields for defense while the seasoned fighters took to hand-to-hand combat.
Nevertheless, the Achaeans were forced to relinquish their homelands and flee towards the neighboring territories of Aegialus. So embittered and desperate from the fighting, the Achaeans descended upon the natives without mercy to claim the area for their own.
Meanwhile throughout all of this fighting Archedemus spent his time off the frontlines acting as hospice, treating the dying and then overseeing the mass burials. He saw to it that the dead were duly separated and were adorned and interred according to all the sacred rites and traditions.
Perhaps it was just the feeling of "momento mori" that ingrained itself into his mind. Or perhaps it was a budding fascination that was just gorging on so many more opportunities. Either way he started spending more time in the graveyards and pacing along the bodies of the slain after each sortie. He'd stare into the gaping eyes of corpses for hours, even talking to them and stroking their cold limbs. The old traditions had the dead treated with respect and proper circumstance, but his comrades found Archedemus' intimacy with the corpses to be incredibly disturbing.
The Achaeans finally forced the Aegialians from their land and took it for themselves. Archedemus resumed his life as a farmer, and his lands became quite rich indeed. However no crops sewn by his own hand ever grew there. Only weeds and wild grasses spouted, verdant and bountiful as they lived off his hearty soil. Nutritious indeed, as the plants grew off the dissolving masses of buried bodies.
The other Achaeans grew to fear him, not even daring to call upon him like they did before. They left him to is own devices; what those could be none wished to know. Children used to share frightful tales about his estate, daring each other to tread where supposedly entrails hung off fences, limbs dangled from chains and an old man talking to bloated upright corpses.
Rumors spread that finally the villagers nearest his had finally had enough, and sent a runner to the temple of Thanatos to plead with the god of death to recall his servant. The rumors remain only that, but within the decade Archedemus must have finally breathed his last, for no more lanterns ever flickered alight from the shambles of his house any more.
- Lineage / Family Background:
Archedemus was the son of a farmer, and father of none. Like his people's conflicts and exploits, he is lost to the dusts of history.
- After Death:
Archedemus entered the underworld when Charon was still just a ferryman, and stood before Hades, lord of the underworld and embodiment of it. It was a simpler time, when all of the afterlife existed simply within the depths of the dark lord.
And then things changed, or rather, they just became more prominent and reassigned. Elysium was now called Heaven, and the deepest bowels of Tartarus were renamed Hell. Same place, but different names and conceptions.
And then Heaven and Hell disappeared altogether, or perhaps just the conception of them was forgotten. Either way, Hades was long since absent, and for the souls left behind and abandoned by the rivers no gods would come to their aid. That was when Charon, the ferryman, arrived and with no higher power appointed himself Dreadlord and established Acheron.
Archedemus held no outstanding thoughts to Charon's ascension, or even the passage of Heaven and Hell. He respected the authority of the Dreadlord, but his mind inclined towards and preferred the old rather than the new. In his true belief there was only one emperor of the dead, Hades, and even he was not the true holder of life.
Thanatos, the Keres, Atropos....the lost gods and daemons of death itself. There were entire realms of death; some peaceful, some violent. He longed to find them, to speak with them about the nuance that was life and how it so seamlessly sunk away into the lack-of, death. But the gods were gone, and with them any answers.
- History with Faction:
He joined the only institute of order apparently left in the underworld, the Legions, and found a patron for his fascinations. Archedemus' long years of studying death in life, and now long eons studying life in undeath, attracted the attention of the Legion of Fear. Archedemus found himself an outlet with which to continue to feed his fetish; the opportunity to peer into the depths of Shades and to do so with all the resources and enforcement of as vast an organization as the Legion.
- The Armor:
- Armor:
The most distinguishing feature of Archedemus' armor, aside from its stylized motiff, is the minimal amounts of it compared to many other revenants. While the all-important signil is well hidden and guarded, the rest of the aether that extends from it remains very much exposed.
The faces seen in his ethereal trails are not his. Instead they are reflections of the emotions and intentions latent in the air and ground itself from nearby Shades. Archedemus himself does not feed or absorb these feelings. Like the cold face of Death itself, he is usually apathetic to the peculiar passions of a Shade, but will mirror them nonetheless. When no Shades or emotions are present no faces will form; and as tensions rise the expressions seen in the faces will twist and contort appropriately. It is a convenient tool befitting his role as Fearmonger.
If the armor of a revenant is supposed to physically represent the rigid psychological barriers of distinction that separate a raw, fleeting soul from all Else, then it is clear that for Archedemus little enough mind remains to be shielded. In perhaps the truest sense of things, all that is left of "him" is but a ragged shell.
Like his otherworldly kin, but to an even worse extreme, the revenant of Archedemus is a hollow frame of desires, wants, and needs; barely driven by the faintest shadows of intentions towards the inner cravings he held in life. He is more a (un)living weapon, tool, or instrument, guided along his inclinations at the behest of those knowledgeable in how to point him.
- Signil:
The signil inscribed within the core of Archedemus' chestplate is the symbol of a torch turned upside-down, representing the "fire of life" that, while burning, no longer sustains the flames of true mortal life itself. Fitting for any shade, but especially true for Archedemus who arguably is even less of a soul now.
Also especially fitting, as it is the symbol of Thanatos -- the god of the eternal, unchanging life of death -- itself.
Of Note on the Author
- Name: Idy
- Experiences with Roleplaying:
I have one other character, Tycho Densmore, already in use here on this forum, as well as much roleplaying experience on my own board, Roleplayers' Hall, and elsewhere.
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Rabbi Copperfield
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- Apr 10, 2010
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