Dr. Strife von Stauer
The advancement of mortal kind will be by my hand. That is simply a fact.
~ Strife von Stauer ~
Pushing the Limits
Long ago, an elf was born in the heart of the Tenelean Empire. Under the new imperial rule of Zara Civilius III, only the gods knew what the boy would grow up to be. The boy named Camus Petfir.
He was raised in a time of nationwide change, the same thing his cropped elven mother, Fayeth Petfir lived in. The masses worshiped it like a golden age, but in reality, his mother foresaw the war such nationalism would bring. And it frightened her.
Gripped by this fear, she pursued every avenue she could find that would simply keep her son and her husband alive. It didn't matter what. Anything as long as Camus' young and innocent smile could stay. If only she could have known the damage her deep study into the weaving arts would cause.
Camus was always there to watch his mother. Her job at a cemetery by day, but her dark practices in secret by night. Camus was to be heir to their small fortune, but in her descent into madness, she squandered it in her experiments. In her attempts to reanimate the dead and expand their limits if they perished.
Camus always watched it, and despite her mother's efforts, it wiped the smile off his face. Not out of fear, but of something else. Disdain. His mother was going about it the completely wrong way. Undeath walked and moved, but it was nothing more than another form of death.
With his mother delving deeper into frantic madness, Camus thought it best to leave her behind. He took with him his knowledge and motivation to improve the body by any means necessary, except through undeath.
As a growing Tenelean, Camus studied medicine, alchemy, and the arcane , joining the efforts in the Tenelean Empire in pushing new technologies to the proving ground. He helped some, harmed others, but above all else he grew his fascination with biology.
During the War of Turmoil, his work was at its peak. Its concepts were also so revolutionary that a High Inquisitor from the Tenelean Inquisitors even visited him, proposing a war partnership. His name was Tal Authorus. In this agreement, Camus was given minimal but usable research funds to develop a new, better kind of soldier for the war effort.
At least, so was the case until the war came to a close.
Some citizens felt the war could have continued until the empire achieved full conquest, others were relieved to return to peace. But Camus thought differently, because with the war over, so were his funds and his justification for his work.
Materials gone and services shelved, Camus wished to return to that state of war. In order to do so, he would have to conspire against the empire's new armistice, undermining it so as to provoke war once again.
It was a... short lived conspiracy. An associate he worked with during the war, Aldrich Asmiov had caught wind of his intent, exposing him before the Tenelean courts. Labeled a treasonous criminal, Camus was forced to flee the empire, stowing away on a ship that sailed south into the Silver Piece Collective.
A criminal to Tenelea and an enemy of war to everywhere else, Camus could think of nothing else but to start over. He looked for work aboard any crew he could, settling in as a ship's doctor after meeting the pirate captain named Hartwell "Blind Eye" Alistair and his crew, the Silver Grins. Camus kept careful not to speak of his past or who he was.
He earned a reputation on the ships he served on as rough, uncaring, but ultimately effective. When he had settled into his new life, Camus found that work as a ship’s doctor left him enough time and space to continue his research into improving the mortal condition, albeit at a much slower pace. Pirates, mostly uneducated, took his strange experiments and potions as “doctor stuff.”
Of course, this return to normalcy didn't last forever, either. His experiments always went awry in some way. Though it was only by luck that no one noticed. But when Hartwell demanded Camus fix his blind eye, that was when everything changed. In the procedure, Camus did fix it, but it was at the cost of the other eye in a fit of agonizing pain.
As if he had tried to kill the captain, he fled once again as the crew organized to kill him.
On the run from both a country and a ship, Camus found himself truly alone. He hunkered down in Darkwater for safety. But he still didn't want safety to stay alive, he wanted safety to continue working. And he did so on the one person left who was willing: himself.
This led to disfiguration, chemical scarring crossing his face and hands. His left arm from the elbow down was blown off in an alchemic explosion. One eye rendered blind and clouded. It was here that Camus lost himself. In his place, Dr. Strife von Stauer was born.
He was no longer a high elf of the Tenelean Empire or a pirate doctor of the SPC, but a scarred and disfigured mutant. A mutant that still wishes to scar and mutate even further.
I'll give Camus all the thanks in the world for what he's done. For it's monopolized my Metallon research.
~ Tal Authorus ~
Current Location
Year of Birth
1339 AC
Children
Ruled Locations
Appearance
Dr. Strife von Stauer often wears a long ragged cloak over his shoulders with the hood pulled up over his head. His missing arm, lost in his experiments is replaced with a dark iron prosthetic, three functioning fingers alongside the thumb at the hand. A belt at his waist always holds empty and full vials and bottles, and a bag beside it carries a large assortment of tools as well.
But nothing so signature does he wear like the bird mask on his face, to cover the burns and the scars that now adorns his face. It is rarely removed. And when it is, there is a point being proved.
Ain't no mask you wear that'll hide you from me, wretch!~ Captain Jade Eye
Ein
A minor invention of his, Ein is a small homunculus sidekick that performs very menial tasks for Dr. Strife. It's main body is that of an empty potion bottle. Metal legs sprout from it like a spider's and a coiled tail rests behind it like a scorpion. A tail fully capable of firing oddly precise blasts of force at foes.
That thing's strangely accurate, isn't it?~ Shael Elaxador
Midnight Gambit
Strife is one of five captains on his current ship, the Midnight Gambit. In a recent scuffle with the Silver Grins, him and his party had rescued some other allies before fleeing the harbor on a vacant ship. That ship, days later would be renamed to the Midnight Gambit, reflecting the gamble they took with the ship that late night.
Whatever you do, don't touch that man's lab.~ Captain Black Eye
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