Basil Salix

[AS ABOVE • SO BELOW]   
He had been falling for so long that the concept of down had rotted away, leaving only the endless velvet of the void pressing against his skin. In the dark, something kept pace with him, not touching, not breathing, just close enough that he could feel its patience. When he finally stopped drifting, he understood the truth: he had not been falling at all, but being reeled in.
     By blood owed and breath stolen, I endure beyond the grave.   

• RULES
• HISTORY
• HOOKS
• CONNECTIONS
• GALLERY

Lord of the Severed Current

ベールと虚空を通して — 私が君臨する

  001.   I tend to run mature or dark themes. A lot of my characters and lore have trauma that may not be suitable for anyone under the age of 21. On top of that due to my own age being in my 30s, I am uninterested in forming stories with anyone under the age of 21.  002.   As above, I work with a lot of dark and mature themes, I am also open to nsfw roleplay. I do not mind just a one night sort of thing or something natural that happens over something longer. Just talk to me and we can get something planned :>

  003.   I will not tolerate any sense of bigotry, transphone, anti-LGBTQ, sexist or just over the top jackassery. I will blacklist immediately. Let's all just be chill adults, please?  004.   Communication. I am a very patient person and willing to wait or work around things, just talk to me. I will always try to be open to my partners and just ask the same back to me. It makes things go much smoother and I understand that life happens and will always come first.

NAME  Basil SalixAGE  34DATE OF BIRTH  9th Sun of the 4th Astral MoonHOMETOWN  Old SharlayanCURRENT HOME  KuganeGENDER  MalePRONOUNDS  He/HimORIENTATION  Bi-sexual, femme leaningRACE/ETHNICITY  hyur/elezen

HEIGHT  6'6"HAIR  Naturally black, white tipsEYES  Right eye green, left eye whitePIERCINGS  Gauged ears, several ear piercings as wellSCARS / TATTOOS / MARKINGS  Most of upper body and all of arms are heavily tattooed, thighs are also tattooed as well as his neck and part of his face. His body has what looks like soft clan markings under the tattoo. He has a scar going over his left eye.VOICE CLAIM  Mamoru Miyano as DoumaDISTINGUISHING FEATURES  His tattoos, his eye scar, the contrasting hair and his height.PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION / FIRST IMPRESSION  Basil is a tall man, built like he has done manual labor most of his life, while his eyes and mannerisms speak to his life with the scholars in Old Sharlayan. He dresses in leather armor if on duty, but outside he dresses modernly and casual. He smells faintly like cigarettes and forest cologne. He is outwardly friendly and relaxed but can switch to the opposite very quickly.POSITIVE TRAITS  curious, clever, steadfast and resourceful.NEGATIVE TRAITS  manipulative, cruel, reckless and compulsive.ASTROLOGY  Cancer Sun, Gemini Moon, Cancer RisingMBTI  INTJENNEAGRAM  Type 8 Wing 7NEURODIVERGENCES & DISORDERS 
- Psychosis
- Addiction - Nicotine, Alcohol

PARENTS 
- Coline Salix (Mother, Alive)
- Adair Salix (Father, Alive)SIBLINGS 
- Caraway Salix (Sister, Deceased)SIGNIFICANT OTHER 
- NoneCHILDREN 
- NoneOTHERS 
- Kamiko (Patron)PETS 
-Messenger Raven named BergamotOCCUPATION  BartenderNATIONALITY  SharlayanLANGUAGES  Common, Hingan, Yanxian Dialect, Thavnairian, and TuraliPHYSICAL DISABILITIES / CHRONIC ILLNESSES 
- MigrainesPOWERS / ABILITIES / SKILLS - Aether Manipulation — When Basil is actively using his gift, he can tangibly move and manipulate aether of himself, and people and things around him.
- Void Immunity — Basil can traverse the void with little to no infection from the tainted world.
- Enhanced Vitality — Basil is unnaturally healthy. He will live longer than most of his race and will rarely get sick outside of migraines.
- Technologically Skilled — While not an engineer, Basil enjoys and fluently uses the most modern things available to him with deft skill.
- Vulpine Agility — Despite his size he is quite quick on his feet and flexible.

Basil did not arrive quietly. He tore into the world like a comet splitting the star asunder, his cry sharp enough to rattle the windows and wake whatever gods happened to be listening. Caraway followed close behind, as if unwilling to let her brother claim the sky alone. The midwives swore the twins shared a single breath between them, and the family agreed in hushed superstition that they would leave this world the same way they had entered it: together.Their childhood was a shifting constellation of white lab coats and warm hands. Their parents, brilliant and absent in equal measure, orbited laboratories more often than the home, leaving a gentle rotation of nannies to tend the twins. Yet the house was never empty. It thrummed with care, with watchful eyes and steady laughter. Love gathered around Basil and Caraway like a second atmosphere.Basil burned bright and reckless. Curiosity possessed him the way storms possess the sea. If a door was locked, he picked it. If a relic hummed, he touched it. He collected experience the way other children collected bruises, which he also collected in abundance. Caraway shared his hunger for knowing, but hers was a scalpel where his was a hammer. She measured risk the way an alchemist measures venom. Where Basil lunged, Caraway calculated.Age only sharpened their differences. Basil drifted easily between circles, laughing too loud, loving too freely. He kissed boys and girls beneath lanternlight, pierced his own ears in defiance of propriety, and found himself confined for minor infractions more times than he could remember.Caraway gathered fewer companions but held them like rare tomes. She did not chase affection. She chased excellence. While Basil lingered comfortably among the top scholars, Caraway gripped first place with unyielding fingers. Awards clung to her. Scholars spoke her name with reverence edged in caution.When they graduated the Studium and took up the mantle of gleaners, they worked side by side beneath foreign suns, cataloging wonders and dangers alike. Yet a fissure, invisible and inevitable, began to widen.

Basil’s life was a tapestry of fleeting lovers, ink pressed into skin, scars earned and worn without regret. Caraway amassed scholarships, grants, accolades… and something darker. A heat coiled behind her eyes. A fury at the architecture of existence itself. She turned her mind toward aetheric manipulation, toward the secret musculature of the world. The very star itself called to her like a riddle she could not bear unsolved. Weeks vanished. Months followed. Basil tried to tether her to the mundane: gatherings, friends, music, the bright noise of living. But Caraway’s gaze was always elsewhere, tracing unseen currents in the air.The night he found her, the apartment was too quiet. The bathroom light hummed. Caraway lay pale upon the tiles, her lifeblood spreading in a crimson sigil around her. For a moment, Basil thought she had finally slipped into the current she loved so dearly.He left everything after that. Lover. Title. City. He traded the disciplined leathers of a gleaner for a bartender’s apron, pouring amber spirits instead of chasing ancient secrets. He kept to himself, answering his parents’ calls just enough to quiet their worry. He became a man carved hollow, filled only with memory.Then fate returned, smelling faintly of liquor and regret. Two gleaners he had once trained stumbled into his bar, older and sharper than he remembered. With them was a woman named Ahma, half au’ra, half elezen, her presence balanced between grace and something feral. Between rounds of drink, she spoke of forbidden folklore. Of bargains struck beneath winter moons. Of souls traded for power vast enough to bruise the heavens.
Basil listened. He did not heed.Through Ahma’s guidance, he found himself in the forests of Yanxia, snow falling in reverent silence. A dilapidated shrine crouched among the trees, and before it lay a fox with eyes older than empires. The kitsune regarded him not as prey, but as potential.She offered him what Caraway had sought. What he now craved.

Magic. The ability to seize aether in his hands and twist it into obedience. To walk the light without burning. To cross into the Void and return untouched.The price was simple.An eye.Basil did not hesitate.He surrendered it to her shrine, and in return he was unmade and remade. Not cast into the Void, but flung wide into the marrow of the star itself. Life aether flooded him without mercy. He saw roots threading beneath continents, felt tides turn inside sleeping leviathans, heard the slow thunder of forests breathing in the dark. Cities flickered behind his remaining eye, every heartbeat a flare of light, every death a guttering spark. There was no silence to hide in, no edge to cling to. Only the endless chorus of becoming.Years blurred as he learned to endure it. To cup that radiance without shattering. To sift vision from noise. When he finally stood steady beneath an ordinary sky, he was no longer the reckless twin who laughed too loud. He was honed thin by revelation. Bitter at the weight of it. Anger smoldered in him, not cold and distant, but bright as a forge.The kitsune welcomed him back with a smile that cut deeper than any blade. She gathered his trembling power beneath her many tails, her voice a low murmur that shaped the roaring aether into something almost bearable. He found comfort there. In structure. In purpose. In standing at someone’s side again, as he once had beside Caraway.Now Basil moves at the kitsune’s command, a blade sheathed in mortal flesh. Her latest whisper has sent him to Shirogane, where something stirs beneath lacquered rooftops and tranquil tides. A threat, she calls it. And Basil, who once chased knowledge for the thrill of it, now hunts with purpose.After all, the twins were meant to leave this world together.

kitsune-touched.

The kitsune yokai, Kamiko, keeps her shrine like a spider keeps her web, silken and patient. All who stumble through snow and superstition to kneel before her find that she is listening. She deals in hungers. In half-spoken wishes. In the fragile architecture of souls. Her bargains are never written, yet they bind tighter than iron.Basil, marked and hollow-eyed, lingers at her side like a favored omen. He has become a lantern for the aether-touched, drawn to the peculiar gravity of those altered by forces too vast to name. He seeks them out in crowded streets and quiet corners alike, curious to see how the star has branded them. Each new meeting is a spark against tinder, and Basil is always eager to watch what kind of fire might rise.

aether-bound.

Basil’s fascination coils around aether and the secret geometry of the soul. He studies the way it flickers, fractures, flares. He listens for the subtle discord in a heartbeat that does not quite match the rhythm of the star. To him, every living being is a constellation waiting to be charted.Voidsent? Touched by some other plane? Aetherically askew in ways you cannot name? His gaze will find you. Not cruel, not kind, but intent. He watches as a scholar watches a rare comet, as a hunter watches a ripple in tall grass. If your soul sings in an unfamiliar key, Basil is already listening.

liquor savant.

By moonrise and lanternglow, Basil trades spellwork for glasswork, tending bar in the gilded arteries of Kugane. From teahouses tucked behind silk screens to raucous waterfront taverns where sailors wager their last coin, he moves where the night is thickest. Bottles gleam like captured sunsets along his shelves, and his hands, steady as any duelist’s, conduct the quiet alchemy of spirits and flame.He does not merely pour drinks. He conjures them. Tell him your mood, your sin, your secret, and he will build you something to match. A bitterness that blooms into honey. A sweetness cut with smoke. A concoction that warms the bones or sharpens the mind like drawn steel. Try him, and you may find the glass in your hand knows you better than you know yourself.

  Ahma Hori    —  CARRD
Basil taught Ahma everything she knows about gleaning, and in return she taught him everything she knows about dealing with kitsune of old. They have spent many years apart until recently reunited with common ground.

  Callon Cartier    —  CARRD
Ahma's husband, an intelligent man of means that Basil plans to utilize. Outside of their business connections, the two share a love of liquor.

  Caraway Salix    —  NPC
Basil's twin sister. Currently deceased. She was a girl filled with sorrow and a mind unlike any other. Basil wishes nothing more than for her to still be amongst the living.

  Kamiko    —  NPC
An ancient kitsune yokai who has granted Basil his abilities. She is cruel and uncaring to most, and her being bored is a death wish for anyone around her.