Tom Yu

Name: Tomneles “Tom” Yu
Age: Created 16 years ago, mentally 19-20
Race: Water construct (an artificial life-form created by magic)
Sex: None
Gender: Male
Location: Yuukyo, Yardenah Ran

Traits:

Nearly Mute: Tom finds it difficult to manipulate water in all the ways necessary to generate speech. He can produce halting words, but it’s easier for him to pantomime and emote.

 Isolated: Because of Shun’s protectiveness and his difficulty with communication, Tom feels isolated from society. He yearns to connect to other people, but he fears he will never feel accepted. Seth’s creation and Shun’s apparent preference for Seth reinforce these fears. Though he knows how to conduct himself politely, he has little experience with meeting new people.

 Caretaker: Tom was created and trained to care for Shun. He is gentle, if clumsy, and fiercely protective of those he loves.

 Bookish: Once he learned how to keep things dry, he was given free rein in the library. His favorite subjects are botany, history, and psychology. 

 Timid: Shun has instilled a fear of confrontation in him that both protects him from harm and prevents him from actively seeking companionship outside the mansion.

 Introspective: He prefers to think rather than communicate, so worry and despair amplify themselves in his mind. On the other hand, he is good at puzzling through his problems.

 Gullible: He has little experience with detecting manipulation or lies, so he is easily persuaded, especially if the reward is friendship. Seth has made him more cautious than he was before, but not by much.

 Competitive: He compares himself to those around him and harbors jealousy toward anyone whose skills surpass his, especially if they are eloquent or dexterous. He enjoys demonstrating his unique abilities.

 Unfunny: He has a dry sense of humor, but he is bad at making his own jokes.

 Approaching the Last Straw: His whole life, Tom was forced to be patient with Shun’s outbursts. He was made to feel lowly and unworthy, but his pride threatens to overtake his patience. His old habits of submission are still strong, but he can’t hold back his anger forever.

 Strong Stomach: Because of his immunity to poison and disease, Tom does not feel nausea when viewing disgusting things or being in unclean places. He understands disgust, but he forgets that other people feel it.

History: Tom was created by Shun Yu, a wealthy merchant and powerful magic-user, when she was 67. She wished to replace her Larea Vanyan son and husband, who were both lost in the same shipwreck that resulted in the amputation of Shun’s legs. Tom does not know about the son and husband; Shun has mostly convinced herself that they were fakes or trial runs. She bases her ideal family off the memory of them, though, even going so far as to give her constructs Larea Vanyan names.

Shun’s emotional instability has shaped most of Tom’s life. While she can be caring, she has outbursts of rage and grief when Tom doesn’t act the way she thinks he should, often making conflicting demands. Most of her complaints come from his timidity, which in turn make him more fearful and nervous around her, and his habit of exploring outside at night. He tries to be the son she wants, but she is no longer in any state to be reasoned with.

When Tom was eight years old (mentally 13), Shun began work on another water construct, Sethesal, and finished making him after five years. Seth was essentially an upgrade of Tom’s model; he was born with a mental age of 16 as well as innate knowledge of language, social conduct, and arithmetic. More importantly, however, he could produce a human form and speak with ease. Tom envied Seth’s speech. Seth could communicate with Shun and calm her down. He could express his ideas clearly and succinctly. He could be social. The greatest insult, though, was that Seth could sing. His malleable form, instead of becoming an obstacle for speech, gave Seth an enormous vocal range and a talent for mimicry. Tom feared that Shun would use Seth to replace him, so he became hostile toward Seth. Seth, not quite as favored by Shun as Tom believed, returned the hostilities as an outlet for his own frustrations. Their relationship is still bitter and strained.  

Tom often sneaks away from the mansion at night. He finds damaged kelp beds and reefs and rehabilitates them, turning them into carefully-manicured underwater gardens. They’ve drawn attention from a few merpeople locals, but because of his timidity and near-invisibility underwater, he’s never been able to reveal himself as the one behind it.

 Tom refuses to leave the mansion altogether partly because of a thread of loyalty to Shun and partly because of her magic. Any damage to his core would require a lengthy and painful healing process, but Shun can repair him quickly and easily.

Likes:

Hard candy (or anything he can taste that he doesn’t have to spit back out), books, bright nights, anyone who is decent to him.

Dislikes:

Seth, cold temperatures, speaking, people who try to finish his sentences.

 Strength: 31 (30)
 Vitality: 7 (7)
 Agility: 50 (46)
 Dexterity: 12 (12)
 Ether: 30 (25)
 Transform: 0
 Total: 130 (120)
Reward Points/ Reporting

Explanations and Skills:

Strength: He can lift Shun (80 lbs or 36 kg) without effort on land and in the water. His low friction on the ground works against his strength, so he requires something to brace against when moving heavy objects. With more water in his form, he can have a wider grip and more weight behind his movements, but his inherent strength stays the same. 

Ether: He can manipulate any water his core touches within a radius of 10 meters and water he does not touch within a radius of one foot. Precision decreases with distance from his core. The maximum volume he can manipulate at a time is about 530 L (140 gal). His usual form contains 80 L (21 gal), plus his core, which is 1.3 L (5.5 cups). Although he can change the shape of his core, he cannot change its volume or density, so it remains at a constant size. Changing the core's shape in any dramatic way (e.g. to pass through a keyhole) takes about a minute of time and his full concentration. He can throw himself about three meters, but it takes too much energy to hover. He can reach up and across long distances, but he requires support about every 2.5 m to avoid strain.

Vitality: Because his only center of tactile sensation is also his brain, any attack that causes him pain also disorients him to the point of being unable to retaliate. A magic-user that can manipulate water can disable Tom by swirling his core around. He has some ability to keep the core still if he prepares, but a stronger magic-user can overpower him. His vitality would be lower if he were susceptible to disease, but he is immune to infection and toxins (as well as the effects of other chemicals, e.g. alcohol). Otherwise, he is easy to kill; all it takes is to scatter the core into pieces. Any piece of his core that splits off from the rest dies immediately; if a third of his core splits off, the whole core dies. 

Dexterity: He has difficulty performing precise movements, more so with non-core water. His writing looks like chicken scratch at best, and his slippery surface makes it difficult to hold small objects. Gloves help with his grip, but he doesn’t often wear them outside. His strongest dexterous ability is his entirely fluid form; excepting his core, he can slip through any crack that isn't watertight. He can only squeeze his core through holes that are at least two centimeters on all sides, and doing so takes a minute because he has to re-arrange all the solid bits floating around in the core. Similarly, he cannot dissipate his core into the earth; he finds touching sand or loose soil to be painful.

Agility: He moves more quickly through water, but he is by no means slow on land. He can more easily relocate his core within his body than he can move the area where his core lies, so most of his dodges involve such relocation.

Combat: He is not trained in any form of combat, so his preferred choice of action is flight. Because of his lack of skill, he is a distraction at best to anyone who knows their way around a fight. However, if he has no other options, he will attempt to incapacitate his opponent by making them choke on his own water while keeping his core as far out of reach as possible. The weakness in that approach is his reach; he will tend to use a long but narrow tendril or sheet of water for the attack. If the opponent breaks his connection to that water, he will try to use any object in reach as a weapon. His first choices are breakable objects like ceramic and glass. He can hold the shards in his fists and use them as brass knuckles. His second choice is something with a long reach. Because he can adjust the size of his hands, he can grip things like bar stools and rebar well enough to weaponize them. Anything else that isn't an actual weapon becomes a projectile. If he thinks it's safe and he has enough water, he will attempt to wrestle his opponent instead. He doesn't use his water manipulation like traditional magic-users do because his non-contact range is so short; if he loses his grip on any of the water in his form, it's as good as gone. 

Other skills: He has no blind spots. He does have an area of focus, but his peripheral vision can see in all directions. His core is a bit murky and constantly in motion, so it’s noticeable, but not prominent. He’s learned how to re-absorb almost all of the water that lingers on other people or things after he touches them, so a hug shouldn't leave anyone soaked, just a touch damp. He needs only three or four hours of sleep per night unless he overexerted himself the day before.