Alice Q & Kraujo
Aliases: Q, Bloodfiend
Gender/Orientation: Alice is a bisexual woman, Kraujo doesn’t care about gender
Species: Alice is human, Kraujo is a blood demon
Age: Alice is 29, Kraujo’s age is unknown
Profession: Alice is a former quantum engineer and physicist, Kraujo is unemployed
Theme Song: Red Right Hand - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Description
Alice is a striking woman with dark, intelligent eyes. She has short, dark brown hair and stands about 5’6”. She tends to dress in button up shirts, suspenders, and vests, and is never seen without her hat, which can take the form of any headgear but usually appears as a black bowler. Her fingers are long and twitchy, and she carries herself with an easy confidence.
Alice’s right arm is missing, cut off at the shoulder. Replacing it is what appears to be an arm made entirely out of blood. This “arm” is actually the demon Kraujo, who is magically bound to her. Kraujo can shift and change shape from a normal proportioned arm, so a giant twisted claw, to a blade or tentacle, or even more detailed shapes. However, he is unable to leave physical contact with Alice’s shoulder.
Personality
Alice is extremely clever, one might even say a genius. She has a vast knowledge of engineering and math and a constant drive to innovate and learn. However, she never lets this go to her head, and is far from a snooty academic. Quite down to earth, she’s always quick with a joke or to lend a friendly ear. However, she can be a bit nosy, and she has very little patience for cruelty or injustice. She also tends to be forgetful, and is missing chunks of her memory, which is incredibly frustrating to her.
Kraujo, on the other hand, is loud-mouthed, crass, vicious, and a whole host of other not so great things. He’s self centered and mean spirited, and takes great pleasure in messing with other people. However, he also has an appreciation for strength, and if someone proves their worth then he’ll accept them as a fellow warrior. Despite his protestations to the contrary, he’s quite protective of Alice, and will go out of his way to keep her safe both physically and emotionally. Usually through violence.
Abilities
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Although Alice is just a human, she’s a very talented one, with vast academic and scientific knowledge. She’s also very physically fit, and trained in the art of fisticuffs. However, she often falls back on Kraujo, as the two are so used to being conjoined that they act as a single person in combat. And as a shape shifting demon, Kraujo is a very dangerous foe.
Fluid Body: As Kraujo is made from demonic blood, he can shift his form like liquid, growing, shrinking and changing size at will. This also lets him change from watery in texture to being harder and sharper than steel in an instant. He can form talons, change into a bladed whip, grow into a sword that Alice can wield, become a large shield for defense, or even launch spikes of hardened blood at range. He can even form into a bipedal humanoid form, connected to Alice by the arm, essentially looking like two people holding hands. Perhaps his most extreme use of this is to flow up and over Alice, encasing her in a suit of nearly indestructible blood. However, they both try to avoid doing that at all costs. It’s really messy.
Lightning Reflexes: Kraujo’s magical senses can detect incoming threats, and he can respond to attacks and change his shape in a fraction of a second. Essentially, he’s fast enough to bat a bullet out of the air before it hits Alice, and this speed is also reflected in his attacks.
Sanguivore: For all his power, Kraujo is still made of blood, and needs fluids to replenish his form as pieces of him are inevitably lost through combat or simply by dripping off. Alice’s blood circulates through him as well, and he can drain some extra from her in a pinch, but they both tend to avoid this as it puts them both at risk. A safer option is to absorb the blood of others, which Kraujo can do as long as it’s from a creature with a similar blood composition to that of humans. This absorption can be done by slurping up the blood from corpses, but is more usually accomplished by siphoning the blood from wounds as they’re inflicted, or by stabbing someone and draining their blood in a rapid fashion.
Together Forever: Due to being grafted together, Alice and Kraujo need each other to survive. If one of them were to die, the other would rapidly waste away; and if they’re somehow separated the result will be the same. This is of course a much better deal for Alice- as a squishy human with a finite lifespan, she’s far more at risk of death than Kraujo, which means that he has a very vested interest in keeping her alive.
Equipment
► SHOW SPOILER
Magic Hat: Alice’s hat is a magical item, able to change shape to any style or appearance the wearer desires if they close their eyes and form a mental image while wearing it. However, its more interesting power is the fact that it contains a small pocket dimension, which can be accessed by pulling the hat down over your head until you disappear inside it. This dimension takes the appearance of a small cozy studio apartment, with a couch, bed, and mini kitchen. It’s decorated in a 70s kitsch style, with clashing patterns of orange and brown. The hat is also largely indestructible, although no one’s really tried that hard.
History
► SHOW SPOILER
Even in the Chrome Coast, a region known for innovation and technological progress, Alice was a prodigy. From a young age she learned far faster than her peers, absorbing detailed physics and math textbooks long before her teenage years. As she grew older, she learned from the most prestigious artificer’s college, and it wasn’t long before she was one of the most well known and renowned scientific minds in the Coast.
Although her inventions were numerous, Alice was most well known for her research into portals and pocket dimensions. By creating shielded portals that led into the hearts of nearby stars, she was able to generate essentially limitless energy without any waste production. Within the decade, the entire Chrome Coast was powered by her bottled suns, and the entire world was watching with bated breath to see what she would create next.
And it was then that disaster struck. While on her morning walk Alice was attacked from behind, rendered unconscious and kidnapped. In a single day her life of discovery and riches was at an end. Her kidnapper was not alone, but was a member of a strange cult who kept their identities hidden behind ever-shifting skin masks. While in their clutches, Alice was interrogated for her knowledge and subjected to cruel rituals and experiments, causing her to lose much of her memory.
Using her own portal technology, the cultists opened up a doorway to a hellish dimension of blood and torment, summoning a terrible demonic entity. Their intention was for this being to use Alice as a vessel, possessing her for the cult’s dark ends.
However, the ritual went awry, and the demon was fused with Alice, replacing her right arm. Furthermore, it was quite angry at being taken from its dimension. The cult realized their mistake too late, as the demon tore them apart like cobwebs. Only one was able to escape.
Alice and the demon hated each other and their situation, but it quickly became clear that they had no choice but to stay together. The ritual had bound their life force, and they could not be separated without both dying. They resolved to mutually tolerate the other as they attempted to track down the remaining cult member, both for revenge and to discover what the motivation for the ritual was in the first place.
Since then, Alice used her extensive (though damaged) knowledge of portals to traverse the multiverse, until finally winding up in the Nexus. As a unique focal point of quantum narrative energy, she’s engaged in studying it, hoping to further develop her knowledge. And if she learns anything about her kidnapper while here, all the better.