Mischa Nicolaivich

Appearance
Mischa is a Hyur Midlander male (regular human to those whose world might or might not have only one sentient species). He’s on the tall side for his species, roughly six feet and well muscled from both swinging a sword and the numerous crafts he enjoys. For his size, he’s still quick on his feet as a sword isn’t his only weapon. Black hair usually looks like it needs a cut (who has time?) and dark blue eyes finish off the picture. There are remarkably few scars on him, unusual as Mischa has been an adventurer for his entire adult life. He does have two marks of note, a pale splash mark over his heart and a stylized tattoo on the back of his neck.

Mischa is entirely at home in full armor, a blacksmith’s apron, or whatever he can quietly fish in. He’s become as fond of metal gauntlets that you might use to punch someone in the face as he is his sword and shield.

Powers
Mischa was once a Paladin of Altana, the Dawn Goddess of the world of Vana’diel. As such, he had powers that could annoy creatures into attacking him, the ability to shrug off horrific amounts of injury, a small ability to heal himself and others, and could even raise the recently dead. After his reembodiment on the world of Eorzia, he found his abilities sharply curtailed due to the metaphysical distance from his Goddess. In either time of his life, he had zero capacity to wield magic that was not a gift from his Goddess.

His abilities now take the form of an aura that surrounds him if he concentrates. The aura, called the Echo on Eorzea leaves him highly resistant to mental coercion, able to lure attacking creatures away from others to focus on himself, and causes a certain amount of damage to bounce off him. After a great deal of training and meditation, he was finally able to regain a small amount of the ability to heal himself and others but it is far more difficult and tires him more quickly.

Talents
Mischa is an expert with a sword and shield and is entirely at home in full armor. He is very good with unarmed combat also having trained with a school of martial monks. He’s a fairly good chocobo rider (a large, flightless bird). He’s practiced at blacksmithing and carpentry along with a handful of other skills (leatherworking, alchemy, etc) with varying levels of expertise.

Interests
If it exists, he’s interested in it. If he can make it instead of buying it, he’ll try. He’s a very good blacksmith and carpenter and has dabbled in every other craft he can get his hands on. As a hobby, he used to paint though there hasn’t been much time for that lately.

History
Once there was a boy who had a family. He had a grandfather who was a great Healer. He had a father who the grandfather despaired of, a father who turned his talents to mastery of the elements to blow shit up and a mother who used her magic to make people strike truer, heal faster, protect more fiercely. He had older and younger siblings, all blessed with magic whether they studied it or not. And the boy? He had only the strength of his hands. When the boy’s parents died, as often happened with adventurers, he was given into the care of his grandfather who was entirely disappointed with this magicless middle child.

The boy decided the Old Man could go to hell and he’d protect people his own way.

And he did. He became part of a group of brave (dysfunctional) true companions. They became great heroes (at first it was mostly by accident) and they saved the world more than a few times. He dedicated himself to the service of his Goddess, lived a long, fraught life and died peacefully in the home he and his companions had built.

After that peaceful passing he was pulled from his rest, his Goddess had another task for him. There were other worlds, other places where disasters happened, where evil beings wanted power and damn the consequences, and where greedy bastards ruined people’s lives.She asked if he would leave his peaceful rest to help those other people.

It took him less than half a minute to decide, being dead was boring.

Mischa Nicolaivich, former Grandmaster Paladin, former 80-something year old man, woke up in a desert outside a massive city in the body he’d had in his mid-20s, an appallingly tenuous connection to his Goddess, barely any power beyond interesting tricks with a shield and the ability to tell primal manifestations of nature to fuck off and stay out of his head.

It wasn’t long before he found new places to train, new weapons to learn, new companions to fight with, and more world-ending nonsense that needed a kite shield to the face. He and his new companions became Warriors of Light, heroes to the realm…. And people still wanted them to run all over the damn world doing their errands.

It was on a day much like that, someone wanted some strange sort of seaweed of all the ridiculous things. Mischa placed his hand on the Aetherite, ready to teleport halfway around the world and ended up really not where he was intending.