Xenophon Thanos (W.I.P.)

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IamLEAM1983
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Xenophon Thanos (W.I.P.)

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Maybe that'll get some ideas going for Meris...

Name: Xenophon Thanos
Age: approximately 1500 years old
Gender: male
Species: Void Weaver

Strengths: standing as the near-immortal ruler of all Void Weavers – their annointed Augur – Thanos exists at the intersection of all Squid abilities in their strongest and most refined forms. An accomplished telepath and telekinetic, he can project his thoughts across oceans, if need be, and pinpoint singular minds in the thickest of crowds. Despite what his physique suggests, he can rely on his mental strength to lift objects weighing several metric tons without much effort, or to stop a myriad of small objects hurtling towards him at breakneck speeds. Conversely, he can also whisper moods and concepts to someone's subconscious, and displays pinpoint accuracy in the displacement of individual molecules. Abominations created directly by the Augur are as stable as stable could be – sometimes to the point of blending in with the surface world's society or biosphere. He doesn't make it a habit of creating birds or humans out of nothing and still prefers to slap organs, serrated appendages and an urge to kill together in something beastly and effective – but he absolutely can be frighteningly subtle in his creations, something which he has to take great care in order to hide from his Chamberlain.

Graced by the Others as Their champion, Xenophon is the living font of Their Will. Being Harrogath's lust and hunger personified, he survives his own crushing weight of some five hundred pounds thanks to extensive and ongoing mutations, as well as occasional Pickwickian episodes. All this excess flesh makes it difficult for anything short of high-powered rounds to penetrate his hide and kill him. Carrying Dar-Larath's bloodlust, his supporting muscles are preternaturally strong, enabling him to walk, run, hit or potentially bull-rush opponents despite his morbid obesity. Conversely, Amaxi's inhuman charm and seductive abilities gift him with a sex appeal that seemingly ignores his appearance, and compresses his weight and girth through Non-Euclidian means, when he operates behind his Flesh Mask. Thanks to Her, his perceptible mass is reduced to a plausible three hundred pounds.

While the Architect favors him less than It does Gammell, It still gifts him with the rather nifty ability to use the Black Speech as a means to foster extreme entropy, instead of chaos. Being able to submit isolated organs or body parts to his will, he essentially reproduces Darth Vader's Force-based strangulation trick, as well as a few other means of inflicting harm that would probably feel more at home in a Saw sequel. He can also use this to force certain states onto others, further strengthening his enlightened or supposedly divine persona.

He doesn't look like much, but Eithne and Anton could both testify to the fact that he is not to be trifled with. Deploying Amaxi's charisma and his long, long years of practice in the art of goading crowds, he is the one Void Weaver with the most personal followers on record. More akin to an international guru than a simple cult leader, he could put Gregory Rendell to shame with his ability to summon people who would be willing to suffer or die for his embraced causes.

As such, Xenophon has only rarely been exposed to physical harm. With bodyguards, lawyers and PR goons lying in wait at every corrner of his organization, he is a very difficult man to reach, let alone to kill.

Eldrich abilities aside, Mentalists would be surprised by the earnest calibre of his expressed empathy. You don't push Scientology aside on the European spectrum without incredible huckster skills – or a genuine capacity to connect with people. What starts as an inhumanly effective tool is effectively rooted deep inside him, in a display that's probably shameful for the most zealous of all Squids out there but still far too useful to deny. As murky as his deeper connections are, his social capital is a difficult thing to destroy, as his followers aren't so much traditionally brainwashed as they're made to experience liberation from their personal problems and foibles. Hope, in a sense, is his most powerful weapon, and stands as the crux behind his faith healing-based media empire.
Weaknesses: chief among them is the fact that he is a rather controversial leading figure on both sides of the proverbial brine pool. He can be killed if you shoot or stab him enough, he would probably suffocate in his sleep if Amaxi ever decided to let him go, and every bit of physical vigor he has on display is supernatural in nature. Unfortunately for him, the Others are still unsure as to how far their support of the Augur will go.

On the one hand, he causes controversy on the surface world because of the overtly successful nature of his New Age movement, which he simply calls Renewal. Gorging himself on tax cuts and slyly obtained government subsidies, he's managed to spend the last forty years growing Renewal into something that feels like a non-aggressive and borderline beatific relative of Elysium. As can be expected, this kind of success story triggers suspicion in the proper authorities, which means his status as a guru is more fragile than it appears. The only thing saving him from embarrassing PR leaks would be the fact that apart from his eating habits, he appears almost saintly to the outside world.

On the other, events that took place centuries before his emergence turned an attempt to con a prisoner into carrying his child into an honest romance the likes of which Dalarath would never understand or accept. Having understood how kindness is a powerful opiate in its own right, he fails to display the exact kind of moral turpitude you'd expect out of a surface-visiting Augur. His motives for serving the Others have turned personal, while he still does denounce the supposed arrogance of the surface world to the Prelacy during his homelies.

Now working to bring the Darkhallow into the waking world for reasons which are all-too intimate for any self-respecting Squid to tolerate, Xenophon is ripe for a coup and knows it perfectly well. As with all Augurs before him, he's learned to keep an eye on his Chamberlain, and to display occasional and contrasting feats of wickedness, in order to allay any fears that might end with his taking a dagger to the back.

More importantly, his conflicted nature makes it so his allegiance to his own species only goes so far as to the emergence of the Darkhallow. The memories of blessed nights and of a special someone's restorative touch made it so he has grown disgusted by the rejection he is sure to be forced to endure on both sides, if he ever came clean prematurely. Considering how his only other option is to find her, apologize and renounce the Others, he finds himself torn. His very life depends on Their support, and any attempt to normalize himself into healthy habits while on Their leash would also be his undoing. Being cut loose could also cost his few loved ones very dearly, something of which he is deathly afraid of.

So, stuck between a rock and a hard place, he has no choice but to play the villain and to try and bring about some variant of the Apocalypse, hoping that the clean slate that would result from it would set him free.

Appearance: as far as eyes, cameras and scales are concerned, Thanos is five feet nine for a chunky three hundred pounds. He tends to joke that there's maybe two pounds of beard to account for, as like Anton, he presents what looks like a furnished, frizzy and unusually long beard. Thanks to his belly, however, it doesn't quite reach his navel.

With dark eyes, bushy eyebrows and features that still look fairly Mediterranean even if they're generously smoothed out, the only things that really stand out are his insolently white teeth and his perfectly bald pate. Seemingly blessed with a tan that refuses to go away, he still has the burnished and healthy look of someone who spends quite a bit of time outside and tends to pack more vitality in his gait and posture than is typical of someone his weight. There's a kind of quiet joviality to be found if you're meeting him for the first time, as though his eyes were kissing you on the mouth and his handshake were some sort of means to extract a precious liquid from your fingers. A distinctly European fellow, he's known for being excessively huggy and boisterous – only to surprise guests or attendance by suddenly dropping the Greek charm and laying down the groundwork for what it is he actually does, which is find people who supposedly need to “renew” themselves.

Acting a bit like a cross between Doctor Phil and a non-specific televangelist, a show that involves as much honest empathy and a bit of a flair for troubled sorts as it does astroturfing guests into pre-designated seats then takes place. Earnestness and apparent honesty are part of his usual deck of cards, as he makes no bones about the fact that he has his own problems. He's helped others, as he likes to say, but couldn't pretend to have the same exact discipline when it comes to helping himself. That honesty shines through in what he does, preventing most of Renewal's shows from having immediately obvious airs of hypocrisy.

In fact, he's understood that large presences can be comforting for some. Clad in impeccably tailored white suits with a simple black tie and a scant few items of jewellery, he squares off his round frame as much as possible and does everything he can in order to project emotional and mental well-being – even if he isn't always genuinely experiencing those two things. By carefully ignoring some of the tricks of typical paranormal or Faith Healing shysters and structuring Renewal shows like a sort of ad-hoc talk show, he lets unknowingly pre-selected guests come to him and spill their own beans. With his almost indeterminate Generic European accent and his poise, he then tries to act like a non-official psychologist. Empathy and wisdom seemingly radiate out of him according to his followers, and his touch has a strangely calming and soothing effect. Showcasing just the right kind of poise and authority, he avoids his audience immediately projecting onto him and has seemingly never abused of his privileges in order to spend the night with someone. According to most, there's a special something about him that makes it unthinkable to try and repay his kindness with an impromptu liplock – as if he were always a surrogate father, grandfather or brother, but never someone's surrogate lover.

Keep going like this for a few decades and you're bound to earn yourself quite a bit of cash. He has, and is pressured by both his surface-dweller staff and his Void Weaver acolytes to show obvious signs of prosperity. Thankfully, Thanos Productions rakes in enough millions for him to be able to afford his sleek and streamlined ostentation without his followers' donations counting on his expenses record. As part of his Honest Joe routine (and the fact that he really couldn't bring himself to fleece these people, as despicable as he's supposed to be) he either puts these donations to good use or uses them to further various outreach programs that do pack some objective use.

Considering, some people have joked around, calling Thanos an “iVangelizer”. His clothes are white, formal and sleek, his residences all feel like rejected sets for Tron Legacy's Kevin Flynn moments or like inflated Apple ads – and they all pack a few Grecian touches, dabs of blue adobe or olive-green vegetation. It all looks very expensive, but also lovingly placed and selected – the hallmark of an impeccable sense of taste and of a gently Epicurean persuasion.

Of course, the other Squids tend to wince at that. Pretending to embrace life and simulating the process of biting into it – if it gleans followers and perverts the established order – is all well and good. Doing it in honesty, however, is one more slight against the current Augur and one more barb that digs into his chest when he's forced to destroy something he honestly considers to be beautiful for the sake of one of his people's ceremonies.

Of course, when he's inviting friends over to one of his residences, Xenophon shows just how it is he couldn't bring himself to follow his own Extreme Transformation package. When his mind isn't wracked with guilt or conflicting desires, he soaks in not only food or drink, but also art, literature and music with a gusto he's deluded himself into thinking is part of his cover – when he really likes every bit of it. When people from Renewal's staff visit him, they find his fridge and cellar to be models in restraint. When people from outside the sect visit him, there's typically one or two cakes on standby, a small smattering of cheeses, some expensive bottles and enough carbs in various forms to leave you disgusted by the sight of food for a whole week. He has no real self-control at your average table and likes to boast about it as being some kind of earned luxury. If he's doing this in front of Squids, he paints it as a form of service paid to Harrogath.

As said before, the fact is you don't have to look further than his beaming smile to realize that he's a sort of unconscious double agent. He might be able to affect evil relish and goes so far into establishing it that he might believe in it for a few hours – but if there was no cost to pay, he'd be running for any competent authority between the closest Archmage or any Quantum Physics specialist, and would more than gladly spill the beans on all things Eldritch and world-destroying.
Behavior: as far as the Prelacy is concerned, Xenophon is a luminary. A boiling and bombastic cauldron of hate and world-rending lunacy as only the Others could spawn, he gives words to Their desires and projects airs of infaillible authority as to Their interpretation. He's learned how to gaze in the Darkhallow's abyss and to hear what stands at the heart of that silence, to see what's at the core of that black and cold void. They wait, a thousand and a hundred tattered universes clinging to their ravaged and diseased star-spawned bodies, and Xenophon's job is to turn their wailing and gibbering into the sort of sounds a simple Prelate would swoon to, eyes closed in religious ecstasy. Celebrating our undoing means several things, from elevating gross repulsion and vulgarity to High Art to defiling every single shred of nobility the supposedly indomitable human spirit is said to pack. Somewhere between a Roman orgy, a Cannibal Corpse album cover and a Hieronymus Bosch painting, you'll find the libations of the Void Weavers and the tributes they pay to the Gods That Were.

He has to sell the Apocalypse to beings who still are carbon-based as much as they wish they weren't. You can imagine the amount of charisma that's needed to pull that off.

Of potential worth is the fact that like most other Weavers, his would-be true name is too complex and too mutable to be translated in any utterable sequence of syllables. Having been the Augur for most of his life and literally nothing but, he's more or less adopted Xenophon as not only an alias, but a convenient surface-dweller calling card.

Petition the followers of Renewal and you'll hear an entirely different story. To them, Xenophon is a modern saint, someone who's been said to heal cripples with his touch and to banish existential troubles with nothing but a warm smile, a deep and gentle hug and a few encouraging words – or sometimes with bold buzzwords and dynamic conferences that give the impression he's a bundle of energy despite his girth. He loves without compromise or undertones, they say, and listens better than anyone ever could. Conferences sponsored by Renewal are typically sold out within the first hour and, like it or not, despite Azardad's seething hatred of that fact, some good comes out of them.

Yes, some people find serenity. Some people heal on a metaphorical level after being offered simple contact with him. Search online and you'll find stories about how his hands radiate the weirdest kind of warmth – something that doesn't quite feel like a mage's work in restorative magic, but rather like some sort of mind trick made manifest. The problem is he does something that's far worse than the usual Void Weaver fare of mentally kicking someone who's already down until they cry uncle. He's found out how to inspire millions so they'd love him, an emotion most Squids can hardly comprehend. To them, love is a weird and needlessly complicated mix between blind devotion and maintained sanity, a kind of odd conditional madness that only serves to make or unmake couples. There's nothing productive in love and as such, Void Weaver society largely discounts it as a form of weakness.

On the one hand, adapting said “weakness” to the human spectrum makes perfect sense. We're social creatures and the Void Weavers want our real estate. They couldn't hope to trick us into letting it go with raw antagonism. On the other, many Squids are believing that their Augur has altogether too much experience as far as love is concerned. Why does he bother to affect honesty with everyone he meets? Why try and cure everyone, when establishing a core control group surrounded by shams would be much more effective?

The short of it is that no matter how he tries to occasionally present a traditionally offensive visage back in Dalarath, plenty of people down below believe he's just not doing enough of it. Starting, worryingly enough, with his own Chamberlain.

Considering, he's learned to affect two wildly differing moods. With other Squids, he paces, snarls, pouts and bellows at anyone who would dare to question his authority, before doing his best to present his latest scheme in a suitably devious outlook. He struts and thrusts his belly forward, puffing out his facial tentacles like Victorian gentleman of some years might their walrus mustache. There's a measure of earnestness in that, seeing as he still does want to have the Darkhallow emerge. As long as his motives aren't questioned, he can appear to be as vile and as black-hearted as required. When no-one from Dalarath is looking, however, he snaps back to the real modus operandi of his own attempt at wordly corruption – wholesale and occasionally cheap love and empathy. Having been on the surface for forty years, he's much more akin to acting like a cross between Santa Claus and Chtulhu than with twisting his fingers into talons and swearing death and destruction upon his enemies in the most mind-rending of proses.

Herein lies his dilemma, as he's earnest about two things in equal measure : he loves, but he also wants to use that love as a stepping stone to utter annihilation, all for the sake of maybe – just maybe – giving that love a chance of actually working out. Stick a Mentalist in the crowd during a Renewal show and you'll find a quiet and poignant tinge of lovelorn melancholy at the heart of his mushy or sometimes grandiose displays. He projects that love onto every face he sees, every person he's ever touched – even poolside – and uses that as an anchor to get through everything he encounters, from a kid suffering from lukemia and in need of a great big supportive hug to throngs of gibbering and tentacled maws filling the cavern's depths with unimaginable hatred.

That key of his is something he has to guard jealously. He'd love to extend it in order to broker a truce between himself, Eithne, Anton and others like them – but doing so would doom him. He'd love to showcase just how nice everything is on the surface, as compared to Void Weaver standards, but doing so would see him be torn to shreds. He'd love to tell them all that loving a single woman is what allowed him to put all of this together, but speaking out would endanger her and mark him for immediate termination.

As you can expect, that manifests as a hidden core of anxiety, which he hides behind Harrogath's depredations. When his body's pressing need to re-oxygenate itself forces him into lethargy, he takes to a corner of the Darkhallow where he's erected a pale copy of the world he'd like to live in, a shade of what he'd like to experience. When technically lethal sleep apnea just doesn't cut it, he doubles down on the Lustful's urges by trying to eat and drink his uncertainties away. The same Other does throw Its monstrous libido at him on a regular basis, but Xenophon's inability to bring himself to defile a surface-dweller is telling. He only ever beds slaves from down below or frail Weavers from low castes, otherwise not experiencing anything carnal that he truly considers as being his.

He essentially does everything he can to deny Harrogath anyone who reminds him of his lost love, and otherwise denies himself any sort of personal release, perhaps as a show of faithfulness. Being largely abstinent on the human spectrum, he's irritated quite a few Prelates who keep expecting some sort of mocked repeat of his bedridden years, a kind of parody of what linked him to the best slave he'd ever owned, and also the only one he is notorious for having unable to prevent from escaping.

As far as Void Weavers are concerned, this is another check on the list of reasons as to why Thanos could be considered to be ineffectual. Why the Others still insist on sponsoring him, they have no idea. As it is Their Will, however, the Prelacy blindly follows. The ties go both ways, as Xenophon can't simply piss it all away, get himself a new public face and try and go for an honest reneal of old flames.

Behind the curtains, it'd be fair to say that Xenophon is depressive. He sleeps too much, eats too much, drinks too much and veers between intense cheer and deep and sullen moments. Only his closest of all PR goons – and the Chamberlain – are aware of this, but the head of Renewal can't quite seem to renew himself. He's yearning for something and seemingly has no idea as to when or how he could possibly express it. There's also quite a bit of guilt on hand, as keeping his cover meant he had to repress something that happened which he believed to be joyous – and to pervert it to suit his needs.

If he ever speaks out, the Chamberlain thinks, it'll be Thanos' head on a platter. The indoctrinated hordes might pose an initial problem as they would try and protect their savior, but the Weavers have means to reach anyone on any social strata. One way or another, the corrupted Augur would fall.

Goals:
Renewal, Xenophon insists, isn't a religious group. He's structured it as the all-encompassing call of self-realization, promising the support and praise of dozens upon dozens of local followers. He's worked tirelessly to propose his New Age philosophy to idlers, criminals on the rebound, closeted homosexuals or lesbians – virtually anyone with a secret Self to express and no means as to accomplish it. Never waving more than the prospect of, well, renewal, he's avoided attaching symbolic or religious connotations to it, except perhaps in how certain aspects of Buddhism have been co-opted as meditation aids. Like any sect, he encourages voluntary donations and has found himself forced to espouse a structure similar to Scientology, thanks to pressure from his subterranean “advisors”. Courses are varied, some are useful and some aren't – but all are fairly expensive, requiring substantial investment on the part of people who sometimes don't have that much money to burn.

This has allowed Thanos to build a multi-billion media empire in a few decades, Thanos Productions spanning everything from self-help documentaries to children's educational TV shows. His disciples count actors, intellectuals, musicians and laypeople alike, with Renewal being infamous for how independent its own structure is. Its lawyers and PR goons are part of the sect, so are its accountants, content producers, coaches and spokespersons – everyone right down to the janitorial staff in each local Organization's seat.

Motivating this is the return of the Others to the seat of Creation, so that They may rend it to pieces and rebuild it in Their image. Amaxi has serenaded him with promises of reciprocated love and the acceptance of his existence by the masses, but anyone who would be entirely lucid would see this to be a bold-faced lie. Unfortunately, Thanos is too hopeful, too lovesick and too lost in his assumed persona to see it.

Behind that, there's a puckered scar at the base of his right vertebrae, where an impossibly gilded knife was slipped and poison seeped through his veins. Healing that would gave him time to be touched by one of the beauties of the surface world – and for his conniving spirit to be profoundly altered.

Unbeknownst to both the Renewal followers and Dalarath's Weaver contingent, Thanos has also set a contingency plan in place. Should he ever manage to free himself from his decidedly cumbersome status without dying, several procurations and court orders needing only a phone call to be enacted would disband Renewal seemingly overnight, while DNA from his Flesh Mask could be used to create an inert and lifeless double. Xenophon intends to use this procedure to die in the eyes of the law – hopefully in order to be able to finally give himself a chance at renewal. One quick Mask swap and he'd be free to assume another alias and bury his current life.

History:
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