Zernovog, villainous sorcerer

[Devilpants]

Player Nickname: Devilpants

Name: Milorad Damir Zoric
Codename: Zernovog
Date of Birth: January 9th, 1813

Height: 6'6"
Weight: 250 lbs
Hair Color: Pale blue
Eye Color: Yellow
Place of Origin: Serbia
Nationality/Race: Serbian, with Italian and Polish ancestry
Classification/Origin of Powers: Magic

Status: Supervillain
Occupation: Sorcerer

Personality Profile:
- Unpredictable, just as prone to emotional outbursts as to sullen, stoic silences
- Enjoys dark and morbid humour, back-and-forth banter, and trading insults
- Deep appreciation and love for theatrics and showmanship
- Has dozens of long-term plans in action simultaneously; everything he says and does has a purpose
- Seldom outright lies, preferring to lie by omission, or disturbing with the truth
- Is known for respecting his employees; there are jokes that he offers an excellent dental plan
- Blatant disregards for property and collateral damage, and sanctity of the dead
- When he wants something, he just takes it, consequences be damned

Physical Description: Zernovog is a towering, hulking example of muscular manhood. His body is covered in scars of all types, and his face is narrow and feral, with inhumanly prominent cheekbones, glowing yellow cat-like eyes, pointed ears, and long, sharp, prominent canines. His skin is a stark porcelain white and his long hair is a bizarre pale blue.

He rarely wears shirts or shoes, favouring sashes, mantles, and capes on his upper body, elaborate bracers and armlets on his arms, and tassets, waist-capes, loincloths, or kilts on his lower body. He heavily accessorizes with amulets, ofuda, beads, necklaces, earrings, rings, and other baubles (all magical, of course), giving him the look of some kind of villainous sorcerer from a fantasy movie.

When Zernovog is forced to dress like a normal person, he tends to wear black business suits with red and gold accents and accessories.

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General Power Information: Zernovog is a powerful and experience wielder of magic, and has extensively enhanced his body with alchemy.

Ability One:
Sorcery: Zernovog has over a century and a half of experience in sorcery and knows a bewildering variety of spells in dozens of disciplines. With time to prepare and memorize spells from his extensive library, Zernovog can change his suite of spells to suit almost any threat. However, some spells that he keeps at the ready no matter the situation include:
- Flight
- Telekinesis; the more spread out his focus (like if he's lifting multiple objects), the weaker it is
- Teleportation, both personal and on willing or unwilling targets and objects
- Fire, Ice, and Lightning spells of long range, short range, offensive, defensive, and utility varieties
- Telepathy
- Shields & Barriers of various shapes, sizes, and effects,

Ability Two:
Summoning: While Zernovog is skilled in many fields of magic, summoning is his strongest field. He is capable of contacting, binding, and mentally commanding dozens or even hundreds of summoned entities, including lesser demons, various spirits and ghosts, and many types of undead. However, the more powerful a summoned entity is, the more difficult it is to control, which is why Zernovog tends to make pacts and deals with stronger entities (greater fiends, mighty spirits, or powerful undead, for example) rather than simply binding them to his will.

Ability Three:
Alchemical Enhancements: Zernovog covered all his bases by undergoing long, painful, and dangerous alchemical procedures that are responsible for his strange appearance. These procedures permanently imbued him with incredible physical power, granting him strength, stamina, durability, agility, and healing capability far beyond humans. He's capable of going toe-to-toe with physically-focused metas (he once broke Tungsten's nose), has the reflexes to keep up with speedsters, can walk unharmed through a hail of small arms fire, and can shrug off most conventional explosives. On top of this, he heals from nearly any injury no matter how severe in a matter of days. These, plus the enhanced senses, make him a ridiculously deadly foe even without his minions or magic.

Additionally, these alchemical enhancements have significantly slowed Zernovog's aging. Nobody's quite sure what the actual rate of his aging is, but the prevailing theory is that the older he gets, the slower he ages.

Ability Four:
Resources: Zernovog has been in the villainy business a long time and has been defeated at least a half-dozen times, but always finds a way to escape imprisonment or return from death. He has extensive caches of wealth and magical resources scattered across Europe and North America, as well as black market contacts in all corners of the world. He has backups for his contingencies and always has a Plan C for his Plan B.

Drawbacks & Weaknesses: When Zernovog's magic is neutralized, he's forced to rely on his physical might and improvised thrown weaponry, making him a much more manageable -- but still deadly -- foe. Sometimes, even if he's capable of breaking free of whatever magic-neutralizing effect he's under, Zernovog instead opts to fight without his magic for fun. This has resulted in his defeat on more than one occasion.

However, Zernovog's true weakness is theatrics. He rarely kills on purpose, and if his foes put up a good fight, he's likely to let them escape with their injured allies. He loves drama and in some battles it feels more like he's putting on a show rather than truly fighting. He has a deep and abiding respect for foes who refuse to be intimidated. The key to surviving a fight with Zernovog is to put on a good performance.

Skills:
- Actual Genius: Zernovog has an excellent memory and learns new skills incredibly quickly. This is why he's able to have so many spells memorized at once.
- Polymath: Zernovog is skilled in many arts and sciences, having spent his artificially-extended life learning all sorts of skills when he's not being a supervillain. These include advanced math, biology, physics, painting (primarily in the impressionist style), both composing and performing music (on a dozen different instruments), singing (basso voice), sculpting (mainly with clay), acting, and motorcycle repair.
- Magical Knowledge: Zernovog is familiar with nearly all disciplines of magic from all over the world, even ones he doesn't use. He can quickly identify spells mid-fight and even pick out which style they're from, and if he has a counterspell prepared, can shut it down quickly and easily. This knowledge also extends to magical and mythological creatures from various cultures around the world.
- Melee Combat: Zernovog has studied both armed and unarmed fighting styles from around the world, usually from the summoned spirits of great warriors from history. His personal fighting style is brutal, direct, and straightforward, regardless of what weapon he's using.

Background:
Zernovog was born Milorad Damir Zoric in 1813 near the end of the First Serbian Uprising. He was the child of a local witch named Agata and a hunter and woodcutter named Radmilo, and showed a gift for sorcery from an early age, surpassing his mother in power by the tender age of twelve. His mother, recognizing the danger he posed to them and his surroundings, made a pact with a coven of hags to properly instruct him in the ways of the mystical arts.

As part of the pact, Zernovog would agree to aid the hags in achieving their goals for a decade, and he accomplished many great but secret deeds during this time. He was responsible for many famines, blights, and natural disasters, as well as fomenting conflicts both great and small in the region.

When he reached the age of 22 and his pact ended, Zernovog slew the three hags and stole their personal libraries, granting his mother and father each a ridiculous sum of stolen gold before setting off on his own to pursue fame, power, and riches. It was then that he ran afoul of Baba Yaga herself, slaying one of her thralls. To repay her for his transgression, he entered her service for a century.

It was during Zernovog's service to Baba Yaga that he came to learn alchemy and realize his true talent: summoning. This was when he truly began to make a name for himself, sowing discord across northern Asia and Europe according to her whims.

When his service to Baba Yaga ended in 1935, he waged a sorcerous battle against her that resulted in the transformation of a miles-wide stretch of southern Siberia into an uninhabitable wasteland, curse with wandering spirits of the damned and flesh-hungry undead. While Zernovog ultimately lost the battle, he escaped with enough of her eldritch knowledge to become and remain one of the most powerful and dangerous magic-users in the world.

Zernovog has been a villain to many superhero teams around the world, and while on paper he appears to have lost more fights than he has won, the careful laying of long-term plans has resulted in more of his goals being achieved than failed. Further analysis indicates that overtly he is mostly harmless, but has obscure and deep long-term plans that he is carrying out.

Criminal Record: Zernovog is a career supervillain and is wanted in most of Europe and the US for nearly every crime for which there are laws. His most notable achievements include stealing the soul of a major head of state in Italy, stealing an entire church in Poland, banishing an entire town -- buildings and all -- to Hell for a week, using necromancy to reanimate a dead political leader and making him say profane things, and stealing / destroying church relics. He has a public feud with the Catholic Church and has challenged every pope for the past 150 years to a fistfight. None have accepted his challenge.

Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
Drama Queen: As described above, Zernovog is a sucker for theatrics. He enjoys friendly rivalries with superheroes who are willing to play along and put on a good show.
Pansexual: Zernovog is pansexual and makes zero distinctions or discriminations when it comes to sexual attraction. He has a reputation for being a deeply romantic man and an attentive lover.
Art Collector: Zernovog is an avid collector of art and has many originals from many artists from across centuries, many of which are reported as missing or stolen. He also has many true originals, with copies sitting in museums that are claimed to be originals. His favourite painter is the now-deceased Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski.