Name: Auric Avarius
Author: chinkeeyong
Status: Public

Classification: Male Human Planeswalker
Color:
Home Plane: Solphos

Age: 39
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Likes: Gold, bullion, precious metals, spondulicks. Also cold dark places
Dislikes: Things that stand between gold and his grubby fingers
Quote: "I close my eyes... and paradise beckons... with golden arms..."



Introduction

The plane of Solphos is a place of advanced learning and occult alchemy. It's a plane where nature has been conquered and humankind lives in fortified megacities called periochs, ruled by the shadowy and technocratic Philosopher's Cabal. In the perioch of Kardiapolis, Auric Avarius was once the greatest thief who ever lived.

There were many stories of the legendary Auric. They say he could bypass any mechanism and crack any sigil-ward. No prize, not even the vault of the Turris Abyssi itself, was out of reach. But the most famous story was that of his mechanical arm: the story goes that when he lost his right arm in a close shave, Auric had a mechanist install an even better clockwork limb in its stead. The limb was ten times as dextrous as an ordinary human hand and concealed all manner of burglar's tools and gadgets. Nothing could stop him.

Then the philosopher's gold happened.

Philosopher's gold is an insidious substance that was created in an alchemical experiment gone wrong. It transmutes anything it comes into contact with into more of itself, spreading across Solphos's surface like a glittering deathtrap. Midway through a heist in the garden city of Hydropolis, Auric Avarius was unlucky enough to be caught near the epicenter of the Golden Tree. The gold speared through him like soulless ice – and his spark ignited.

No one is quite sure what happened to Auric after that, not even me. Perhaps one of you enterprising storytellers can fill in the gaps. The gist is that Auric survived the experience somehow, his mind and body warped for the worse: the clockwork of his mechanical arm has all been fused together with gold, and his mortal body is shot through, riddled completely with golden veins. And his fixation with material wealth has only grown, and now threatens to consume him utterly.

Hide your valuables.

Description

Auric is a hunchbacked, scurrying, despicable specimen of a man. He wears gaudy flashy jewellery over the vaguely academic longcoat fashionable on Solphos, all tattered and grimy from lack of maintenance. He smells like ozone and rot. If you dare to look closer, he has balding ashen hair, wild black eyes, and sickly jaundiced skin with blood vessels visible underneath.

Auric's body has fused somehow with philosopher's gold; he has a painfully large golden mechanical arm as well as golden tendrils all over his torso and neck. Thankfully, philosopher's gold doesn't seem to retain its transmutative properties outside of Solphos. It's slowly killing him. Either that or it's changing him into something too horrible to contemplate.

As you may have gleaned from Auric's personality snippets above, he doesn't have much of a mind left. Auric's demented stream of consciousness leads him to seek out ever more gaudy and shiny treasures to add to his collection, regardless of their actual market value. He is homicidally protective of his hoard. Sometimes he has flashes of clarity where his old self resurfaces, but he forgets as soon as he sees a new prize waiting to be taken.

Abilities

Auric is first and foremost about avarice (surprise!). He is all about accumulating and jealously hoarding things at the detriment of everything else. This separates him from someone like Dack Fayden, who steals things because he can: Auric doesn't care about how he obtains something, as long as he gets to add it to his collection forever.

Auric uses various other tools to get what he wants. While he's not exactly the sharpest sword in the armory these days, he's still a former master thief with all sorts of tricks to break down defenses. The corrupting influence in his body lets him wield philosopher's gold as a weapon, transmuting things to gold or creating golems and elementals from the precious metal. And his insanity allows him to disorient his enemies with the chaotic nightmare that is Auric's thoughts made manifest.

If I were building a Duel Deck for Auric, it would be all about paying life for cards with Greed, Dark Confidant and similar effects, then using the cards to fuel an endless stream of hateful aggression. It would disrupt its opponents by turning their cards to worthless metal. Sinister artifacts like Necrogen Censer would augment its offense. The finishing blow would be giant gold golems, Essence Drain or something equally menacing.

Auric in Stories

Write Auric like a very large, very demented sewer rat. He speaks... in labored... rasping... sentences...

Auric works pretty well as a random villain. His incoherent wanderings and single-minded obsession make it easy to think of reasons why he would show up in a story: he was in the neighborhood, and wanted to steal this or that artifact. Or maybe the main character is carrying some sort of relic that has caught Auric's interest. Auric works best in an urban setting with lots of nooks and crannies to skulk in.

I don't know anything about Expanded Universe factions, but Auric seems like he would get along nicely with the Phyrexians. He's already halfway compleat, what with the gold stuck inside him. Some shiny trinkets flashed by Sheoldred, Whispering One is motivation enough to become a recurring Phyrexian-flavored antagonist. Auric is far too chaotic to get any large-scale villainy done on his own, though.

If you were feeling really ambitious, you could give Auric some character development. There's definitely a tragedy lurking in that tormented mind of his, waiting to be written – but his Ulysses-level disjointed inner monologue is not something I would wish on any writer. Auric hates the philosopher's gold in his lucid moments and would do anything to be rid of it, but lacks the willpower to free himself of his curse.