The dark lord is gone, the old government has faded away, replaced by a governing body of religions that constantly quarrel over borders. Man has evolved and old magics once lost to myth have been reborn. Stories once fables now roam the world freely and create new chapters for themselves in the most terrifying way imaginable. Some fight to bring balance into the world, others believe that the chaos is due to our sins. Most believe this world has come to ruin because of the mad god Silas who unleashed the hell we now live in. Once proud cities now crumble, proud people now rot in the streets as corpses or zombies. I don't know what I am or how I do what I've come to call my gift. Some have called me an alchemist, others a magician. I can create fire from the heat of the air or friction of my hands. I can manipulate the elements around me and bend them to my will, it is this gift that has me now hunted by nearly every group seeking power. Though my affinity is for water, I have been hunted as the blood walker. This is primarily due to the fact that I use the natural water in the human body to either control it or number of other nasty things. Most don't know what I can do, but those who find our are rarely ever happy they did. I refuse to leave or hide simply because in a world like this you have to keep your reputation up because sooner or later someone bigger and badder than you will come along and a reputation is sometimes the only thing that keeps you alive.

I am not a private investigator, though I have assisted in that fashion before. I am not a gun for hire, though I've done my share of dirty things for a buck. I don't go by the title of philanthropist or do gooder either, in fact I do just whatever suits me best at any given time. I take whatever work comes my way and sometimes I find myself in a pickle like I find myself in now. Stuck between a wall and a very nasty priest surrounded by his undead servants. “Ok buddy lets talk this out before you do something you will regret” The priest simply looks at me with a sadness in his eyes “my son, you are an abomination and should be destroyed.” I can't help myself from laughing at the irony of a priest with undead minions running around calling me “abomination”. “Listen, if we do this you won't walk away the man you are right now. So unless you want very unpleasant things to happen to you I would suggest running away. Last warning.” The priest moved forward firm in his unwavering faith. He lifts a hand and his thralls rush towards me. I wait patiently for them to get closer, I focus my gift on the motor strip in the priest brain and force the blood and moister to suddenly freeze and I watch him drop to the ground as the stroke takes over in him. The thralls suddenly now without focus begin to loose their way and surge onto the crowd that had started to gather around me. I realize that many of the dead didn't have much for me to work with, but that didn't matter since we were in Centralhell the humidity was rather high and it took little effort to focus in on the moisture surrounding the walking zombies and freeze them in place. I felt the wave of exhaustion wash over me but I did my damnedest not to let anyone see it. I moved with slow steady purpose towards the fallen priest who was starting to move part of his right arm and face. Upon seeing this I stand over him knowing full well he can still hear and think just fine. “I told you that something nasty would happen. Now the question is do I leave you face down in the dirt or do I roll you over so you don't choke on your own spit?” I look down at him as he tries to focus on me then I step over him and walk away leaving him to the mercy of the people still poking the frozen zombies. The other priest will come for him sooner or later, or the volunteer police. Either way I will be long gone before they arrive. I make sure that a few stragglers see my sullen expression before I leave the area. The evening edition of the local paper had an article about the incident on page two. They gave one of my many names as to who did the nastiness at the corner of Brahm and 6th. The headline read “Alchemist preforms magic and freezes zombies while local priest suffers stroke while watching.” They never get the story right. The truth is rarely as entertaining as what is printed anyway. I don't mind them painting me in a Ronin kind of light, they tend to vilify just about everyone these days and I know it does the people good to know that someone out there will not put up with the bullshit that the Assembly allows to go on. After the government fell with the appearance of the mad god the world spiraled into darkness, life as we all knew it stopped and something else took it's place. We were left with a world where over half the people vanished and some of us woke up with strange illnesses that sooner or later either changed us or killed us. Some developed god like powers, others suddenly found that they could hear peoples thoughts. Me, I found I could push water around. I felt like I got cheated, that is until I did some research and practiced a lot. I learned to master the hydrogen and oxygen in the water, once I learned that I found all sorts of things I could do. Most of it started out with the best of intentions to make my life easier, like I learned to focus and cause the water molecules to rapidly move causing the water to heat up. Coffee got made a lot faster after I learned that trick. I also learned there was no need for a dryer anymore since I figured out how to simply pull the water out of the fabrics and store elsewhere. Everything changed though when someone broke into my home, I don't have much but what I do have I feel is worth fighting for. A guy broke in who simply ripped my door off like it was made of paper, in a panic I could only think that the body is made up of about seventy percent water and I focused on that and all the sudden the guy exploded all over my living room. That's when I realized what kind of curse I had, it wasn't long before men from the Assembly were at my home asking a bunch of questions and before I knew it I was being hauled off to a jail. That didn't last long, it was a clear case of home invasion, they never could prove I had a grenade or anything that was illegal to cause the intruder to explode. So they were forced to let me go, but that wasn't before they learned about my little gift. Letters started coming in from agencies asking me to sit down for a possible job they might have. I made the mistake of going to one of these meetings thinking it might be honest work. To my surprise I was lead into a room and asked to demonstrate what I did to the man that broke into my house, but on a dog. I like dogs, and this dog never did anything to me. In fact it looked pretty nice, seemed happy. I wasn't about to try that out on a dog, and I told them to go fuck themselves. One of the men turned to me and said that if I didn't show them they would shoot the dog then me. Lets just say it got messy and Smoky has been with me ever since.