Malik Damaris

Creator: winterwolf0100
Roleplay: The Grand Arena
Nickname: Malik

Name: Malik Damaris
Age: 32
Pronouns: he/him

Appearance: Malik is half tiefling, so his skin is bronze now that he's been in the sun for awhile. He has medium, black, unruly hair (think floof), and one of his eyes is green, while the other is blue. He's 5'6", so pretty short, but he's also extremely buff. He was born with horns and a tail, but they were cut off (racist cults, and all that). He has two swords strapped to his back, and a belt with an array of knives on it.
Personality: Malik grew up in a warrior-oriented cult, so his natural instinct a lot of the times is anger, sarcasm, and iciness. He also grew up being told it was weak to tend to injuries, so he tends to push aside concerns for his health and soldier through them. That being said, Malik finally decided to leave (yay!!) and start a family with his now-wife, Edana, and being a father and living in a small village has been a big adjustment, but really helped him to mellow out. He's learned to be a little less aggressive and more laid-back, though he's almost always still paranoid about being found and executed for being a traitor. In this, he'll be relentless in a fight because it's what he was brought up to do, but he'll also be more playful and less icy. That being said, if something triggers him or pushes his buttons, the younger Malik might begin to shine through.
Brief History: Malik grew up in a cult called the Conclave, with a faux-government and different factions inside that disliked each other. He was always a skilled warrior. Unfortunately, the faction Malik was born into is worse to its children than some of the other factions; he was used to receiving harsh physical punishments for the slightest mistakes, and has the scars to prove it. At nineteen, he ended up being sent on a mission as a dragon rider, and while there, he met someone he thought had died--his previous girlfriend, Edana, who had escaped the Conclave on her own several years prior. Through exposure to her and the outside world, he began to slowly rebuild his worldview and some of the prejudices he'd been taught. Once he got back home, he found he couldn't agree with everything his Elder said like he did before--and that was a problem. He made an escape, found Edana, had several relapses of wanting to return, and overall had a really hard adjusting period. They now have twins and live as their village's protectors. He's finally able to say that he's happy and at ease, more than he's ever been in his life. So why the fuck is he here? Good question. We'll answer that right after this commercial break.

Fighting Style: Malik is trained in close-up combat. He spent a lot of time growing up on his swords and hand-to-hand, and in his free-time, he taught himself how to throw knives just for fun (there isn't much else to do when you're in a cult). He's serious about what he's doing, but if he gets enough in the rhythm, he tends to have a habit of making remarks that get under his opponents' skin. He isn't good enough at throwing knives for him to say he can do long-distance combat, but he is pretty okay at a knife fight, if they're too close for him to use his sword. In short, slashy slashy, stabby stabby, but no swooshy swooshy.
Weapon: He usually has two sideswords strapped to his back and a belt with an array of four or five knives. This might initially seem unfair to an opponent, but Malik doesn't have any magical abilities, so it seems to even out.
Abilities: Malik has an unusually high pain tolerance, but that's more due to his brainwashed background than anything else. He's the type of person to get stabbed and try to walk it off. (It's not healthy and all of his family has begged him to stop; my boy really needs therapy). Because of this, a big injury isn't going to stop him; it may slow him down, but he's going to keep fighting until he's knocked out or he physically can't anymore, whether from loss of blood or lack of energy.
Malik doesn't actually have any other magical abilities. Because of this, he will be at a disadvantage in some fights. It hasn't stopped him before, though.

Strengths: Relentlessness, and a complete refusal to acknowledge or show when he's hurt. He's quick on his feet, and good at adapting to different fighting patterns, but it's more, "They're doing this, so that matches with this thing I know," rather than a complete improvisation.
Weaknesses: Long-distance combat, and breaking patterns. He grew up in a very much "do this move, then this move," environment, and even though he's gotten better at changing things up, it can be pretty easy to spot the patterns he's doing once you've been near him long enough. He also doesn't play dirty in a fight unless the other person does first, or he has no respect for them. If someone in a match like this plays dirty somehow, it will catch him off-guard at first.
An environment you struggle in: Really hilly areas, and sand would probably trip him up a bit to get used to. He might eventually figure out how to use trees to his advantage, but he's not used to them either.
An environment you excel in: Snowy terrain, even grounds, indoor spaces.

Other: Malik adores his wife and is missing her and the twins sooooo badly. That won't really affect the fighting in any way, but yeah.