In my custom Solphos block, I introduced a minor antagonist who I won't be doing anything with. I figured I might as well make him public domain. I'm not sure how this works, but apparently I just dump info in the thread?



Name: Auric Avarius
Race: Human
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Color:
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Home Plane: Solphos
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.


That's all, I guess. From now on Auric is loose in the Multiverse.

Comments and criticism appreciated!

Aaaah it's really awesome to see you down here, CKY! I've been a fan of Solphos for a while now. I think the work you're doing on that plane and with that story is brilliant.

And, unsurprisingly, this is a really solid, interesting character. He's dangerous without being overpowered, unpredictable without being motiveless, and it's easy to list off a whole bunch of characters that he could come into conflict with, be manipulated by, or interact with in other intriguing ways. He also is a fascinating link between Solphos and the wider Multiverse in that he carries a potentially catastrophic contagion with unpredictable properties with him through his Planeswalking.

All that said though, for as much as I love everything you're doing with Solphos and would love to see this character and by extension the other work you've done to the archives, I've always held off contacting you about bringing Solphos and Solphos-related materials into M:EM because of one reason:

Ral Zarek is a character in Solphos, and we don't do canon characters.

It always seemed presumptuous to me to reach out and say I was interested in your work but only if you'd change that fact about it, but since you're posting this character here, it seems worthwhile to at least have the discussion about Ral and how he fits into Solphos and whether he's essential to your vision. I think a character as intimately tied to Solphos could be entered into the archives without also adding the plane and set as a whole, and while I'd love to do that (even in a limited state--we could add it as a "private" plane and project which means it wouldn't be available for other people to write in and about, essentially) Ral would be a sticking point.

I'd really love to use this character, and I'd love for Solphos to be a part of the archives... is it possible we could work something out?

You flatter me with your praise!

I do intend to put Solphos on here eventually, but as you have probably noticed, it's in the middle of a major upheaval right now. I'll do a writeup for the plane and its other major characters once it settles down.

Do note that philosopher's gold specifically does not retain its catastrophic properties outside Solphos. Without giving too much away, something about that plane in particular is catalyzing it into a more destructive form. Outside Solphos, philosopher's gold is a relatively mundane metal that loses its animation when out of Auric's presence.

Ral Zarek doesn't really play a major role in Solphos: he essentially showed up to learn about the plane, solved a mystery, and then left. The main reasoning for including him in the set was because Wizards seems to like reusing its characters, and Ral was already a good fit for a science-centred planeswalker. I could simply not mention anything about his involvement in the writeup.

Hm, the creation of a sort of split continuity between your set and Solphos and its story as it sits in M:EM, but maybe that would be the best way of doing things...

Bumping this because I'd like to get other folks' take on this character and the issues with Solphos.

This quote from the Shop Talk Thread makes me feel better about my chances with Ral Zarek. His appearance on Solphos, while a significant event in my storyline, doesn't change the status quo of the wider Multiverse in any way and could fit in between any one of his canon appearances.

I'm still a very strong opponent of the idea of main canon crossing into ours, though the reverse is less an issue with me, though still something we need to keep an eye on.

Ultimately, I feel that a world makes a much larger impression on characters than most characters make on planes, or even other characters. Even then, I'd say that the only time we should let canon through without a fairly stringent look is when it's canon dealing with missing canon, such as the conlict of Sorin v Tibalt.

... And I feel kind of crummy because I'm essentially stacking things up with what I've done in the past.

I'd fight Ral Zarek about as much as the implication that Gideon went to Jakkard. I really just feel strongly about canon characters having canon invented for their activities off screen.

I like the walker. Lord knows we need a few more villains around here that are more liable to kill you and less liable to kill you AND explode entire planes.

*Stares soullessly at Raven*

That being said, I am personally not a fan of Ral Zarek as a character at all - but then, that's personal.

It is just... difficult to include characters whose actions we have no control over into any sort of plot thread. That is why, I think, it is difficult to write anything post-maze about Ravnica at all - Jace sort of mucks things up. At least, on a large scale.

Hm. If we voted Auric in, I wouldn't mind, but I'd probably go against Solphos as long as Ral Zarek is included. It just creates a lot of unnecessary complications, you know?

Ruwin, what if we did what was proposed earlier and vote in the plane while treating the card sets as extracanonical?

I ask in part because if you hadn't been keeping track Szat's been working on a Taramir set and he's included a Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools card. He's similarly suggested putting the set up for vote but treating it as of secondary canonical value.

I have been tracking the Taramir cards. They're very flavorful, but although I love critiquing cards, I have more trouble critiquing sets.

I saw the Tevesh Szat card.

...

...

Admittedly, I did not know he was an actual MTG character. Luckily, having read about him on the salvation wiki, I am now informed! Go me!

Anyway, the situation seems a little... different here. Tevesh Szat is dead. Very dead. So very, very dead - and I sincerely doubt that he'll ever come back - or even be relevant. It's not hard to believe that he had a hand in the fall of Taramir. That was... sort of his whole thing, from what I understand.

Ral Zarek, however, is part of this new generation of Wizards' hyper-spunky 'walkers with COOL abilities and SNAPPY catch phrases. He's very much in the "here and now" spotlight, and it's sort of hard to play off any involvement he has in the M:EM as plausible, since his movements will be tracked far, far more carefully than any oldwalker's movements ever were.

And more importantly, he's not dead - yet. I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

I guess it really depends on the character. Using any of the new 'walkers is probably, like, a Bad Idea, since every three months we risk getting usurped by canon if they appear in a new set.

Yeah, I'd generally agree with that.

I just wonder if there isn't a way of doing as CKY suggests and bringing Solphos in without necessarily bringing the set itself into the archives.

When I finish the Fool's Gold storyline, I'll write a Planeswalker's Guide to Solphos adhering to M:EM guidelines and use that as the official canon document for the plane. Everything else I've previously written can be considered of secondary canonical importance – and most importantly, not an official part of the Expanded Universe. Would that be alright?

That sounds good to me, personally. I'd rather have Solphos in the archives than not, and if that means treating the sets themselves as a separate continuity, I'm ok with that.

Anyone else have thoughts on that?

Hey, if CKY is willing get to make us a PW guide, I'm all for it!

Yes! Put the slave to work!

I mean... go right ahead.

Random thoughts:

It'd be really cool to see this character opposite Fisco.

Also, now that multiple people have played with the idea of Vasilias being associated with gold, there might be some interesting ways of sticking these characters together. Maybe Vasilias needs another thrall?

Go wild.

...took me a second to realize this was on the ME:M forum. Since deletting a post sucks I decided to rewrite it instead!
Hi Keeper! You're welcome back in AFS anytime. The person with whom you disagreed previously has left the thread in order to accomodate your possible return/ because of lesser conflicts with other posters.
Cool character CKY! I remember when you first posted it back on the mothership. I was so sad when you started making Fool's Gold posts because I thought it was just an ICD thread and you stopped developing your set. Good times, good times.
...
[awkward departure]

Eh, not sure what the point would be. My storyline interests and the storyline interests of others don't really coincide anymore so far as I can see, and there's only so many times you can have the same conversation about white being evil before your brain starts to run out your nose.

Anyway, that guy was just the head of the boil. The bigger problem I have is that for some reason everyone defers to me when I talk Magic canon but I don't get any deference for the actual field that I spend all my time working in, and ain't nobody got time for that screwy situation.

Also, on topic, if you haven't read CKY's WIP writeup of Solphos in this board, you really should! It's some rad gnarly stuff.

After having read through Solphos now, I have finally read this character. I like him! His mental state, as you noted, will make him a bit of a challenge to write for, but I suppose there is really no need to be in his head, especially if we're using him as a villain. Without knowing what your secret is with Solphos's effect on the Philosopher's Gold, I would say it would be more interesting to say the Gold was mutated within Auric as his spark ignited and sent him through the aether, but if you've got a plan for that, it's fine with me.

I mostly see him coming into conflict with Maral, which I think could be pretty interesting.