| Ardos Verich | |
|---|---|
| Text Color | #00868B |
| Theme(s) | Ludwig, The Accursed & Holy Blade (The Old Hunters) - Bloodborne OST |
| Item | Short wave radio (to contact Cipher when on the mainland), batteries, flash grenades, rations |
| Weapons | Small handgun, hunting knife |
| Biological Sex | Male |
| Gender Identity | He/Him/His |
| Birthdate | 12/30 |
| Age | 43 |
| Species | Human |
| Weight | 148lbs |
| Height | 6’6” |
| Region of origin | Orre |
| Occupation | Grand Master of Cipher, former Cipher Admin |
| Party | Many of his Pokemon during Gale of Darkness he managed to keep, minus his shadows, due to his lucky escape after Cipher’s fall. His three favorites were kept at his side but the others were distributed back to his Admins once Cipher was revived. He took on new Pokemon to prepare for next time Michael (or anyone) tried to take him down. |
| Pkm 1 |  Text colour- #FF5333 Species- #065/Alakazam/Psi Pokemon Level- 57 Ability- Inner Focus Attack list- -Psychic (Learned) -Calm Mind (Learned) -Hyper Beam (TM) -Psyshock (TM) **One of his original Pokemon during Cipher’s reign, is his most constant travelling companion if he ventures off of Citadark Isle. He carries a Twisted Spoon |
| Pkm 2 |  Text colour- #9C6B98 Species-#094/Gengar/Shadow Pokemon Level- 59 Ability- Levitate Attack list- -Shadow Ball (Learned) -Sludge Bomb (TM) -Dark Pulse (Learned) -Thunder (TM) ** One of his original Pokemon during Cipher’s reign. Greed is a vindictive and sneaky bastard that Ardos will use when he has to fight dirty, using Greed to sneak behind and opponent and attack from shadow |
| Pkm 3 |  Text colour- #E31230 Species-#006/Charizard/Flame Pokemon Level- 60 Ability- Blaze Attack list- -Dragon Claw (Learned) -Flamethrower (Learned) -Focus Blast (TM) -Bulldoze (TM) ** One of his original Pokemon during Cipher’s reign, Wrath is nearly uncontrollable in her ferocity. Ardos tries not to use her unless absolutely necessary because she will often keep going even when there is nothing left of her opponent. |
| Pkm 4 |  Text colour- #0FDDAF Species-#567/Archeops/First Bird Pokemon Level- 51 Ability- Defeatist Attack list- -Rock Slide (Learned) -Crunch (Learned) -Earthquake (TM) -Roost (TM) **Sloth was picked up during a recruitment in Unova, the newer species brought back to Citadark as a gift by one of Ardos’s Admins. |
| Pkm 5 |  Text colour- #5B59BA Species- #658/Greninja/Ninja Pokemon Level- 61 Ability- Protean Attack list- -Hydro Pump (Learned) -Extrasensory (Learned) -Ice Beam (TM) -Attract (TM) **Lust is pure grace and speed, her attacks usually making their mark before the target even knows they have lost. She relishes in the defeat of an opponent. She was a gift from an Admin stationed in Kalos |
| Pkm 6 |  Text colour- #215E21 Species- #571/Zoroark/Illusion Fox Pokemon Level- 46 Ability- Illusion Attack list- -Foul Play (Learned) -Night Slash (Learned) -Night Daze (Learned) -Hyper Beam (TM) **Envy once belonged to a breeder in Orre whose ranch was raided by Cipher. She and several others were pitted against stronger pokemon in an effort to see who was worth using as battle pokemon or test subjects. Jealous of how others were treated in her former home compared to herself she fought ruthlessly until she remained the only pokemon standing, catching Ardos’s eye. |
| Quote | "Silence! Cipher will live forever!" "It's your fault! I won't forgive… There is no forgiving you!" |
| History | It seemed as if from the very moment he entered this world Ardos was destined for a life filled with pain and sadness. On the day of his birth there were complications, his mother tragically hemorrhaging mid-labor and bleeding out before she could finish delivering him and his twin brother. An emergency cesarean section was performed and the two boys were fished from their mother’s lifeless form, the first victim of their very existence, and given over to their grieving father. He did not take the tragedy well. The boys were, at first, ignored and isolated from the rest of the world. Their father Greevil deciding he had much more important things to do than raise the two small infants who had murdered his wife. So for the first few years of his life Ardos’s entire world was his brother Eldes. He adored his twin and clung to him like a lifeline, craving the only source of affection he ever received from the one being in the world who cared if he existed, yet Eldes had infinitely more wanderlust than Ardos and often times the blue haired twin would find himself absolutely alone in the empty hollow of their house. Not long after their fifth birthday, however, Greevil started to change, coming around more and paying more attention to the boys for reasons they could not understand. Ardos didn’t care for his reasons as long as it meant he wasn’t alone. He started tutoring the boys, teaching them of the outside world they had never seen, and Ardos absorbed every bit of information like a sponge. As Greevil described the human race and how backwards it had become the young boy began to see why his father had been gone so long, how hard he had worked to keep humanity from tearing itself apart. He began to see how his father was a God. Eldes, however, didn’t seem to fully understand how dangerous the world their father described was. He snuck out repeatedly over the early years of their teachings, wanting to see the world for himself rather than trust in the truths their father provided, and as many times as Ardos pleaded with him to not put himself in danger Eldes would still go. As they got older Eldes got worse, and even after moving them regions away and isolating them even further his twin still wouldn’t listen, so when their father caught him for the umpteenth time Greevil finally decided that some lessons needed to be learned the hard way. In order to demonstrate how terroristic the outside world was Greevil showed Eldes what the humans outside of their home would to him and his pokemon, by slaughtering them in front of him. He hid behind the door as the first two were easily dispatched and Ardos could see how heartbroken his twin was, his stomach dropping at the sight. He couldn’t stand the tears running down the face of the first person to ever love him so, while his father was taking care of the third, Ardos snuck behind him and stole one Pokeball out of the small pile, tucking it into his robes and running back to hide behind the doorway once more before his father could see. After killing the last of Eldes’s pokemon the boy was locked in a small room for days with no contact allowed by anyone except for the one time a day Ardos was allowed to bring him food. Each time he went to offer his twin the daily ration his heart would break, Eldes becoming terrified of him on sight and scurrying away as if Ardos had burned him, crying in a corner as a punishing message on loop played over the loudspeakers in the room. He wasn’t allowed to linger and so by the fifth day he didn’t even try to reach out for Eldes anymore, he would just put down the tray and leave. When his twin was finally released the boys began their tutoring once more and his red-headed double took to it like a fish to water. Ardos couldn’t be happier with how quickly and how well Eldes improved and offered him the pokeball he had rescued from their father as a reward, feeling his chest flutter at how happy the small gesture had made him. Soon their training had them spending even more time together than when they were kids and the young man could barely understand his own joy at having Eldes so close to him all the time. As they began to mature he found himself becoming more and more possessive of Eldes’s time, only willing to let him be alone when their father called one of them away privately. They had always been together, their entire lives, and he damn sure wasn’t going to let anyone take him away. Cipher was on the rise. Even from their new home they partnered with a hodgepodge group of miscreants known as Team Snagem, using their network to further influence their own agenda. So when Snagem was brought down by one of their own who had gone rogue, despite the setbacks it caused Cipher, the boy had actually done most of the hard work for them. Working in tandem with his father Ardos pointed out that Wes had left Orre more vulnerable than when Snagem had actually been instigating the region, people there foolish enough to believe that with the brutes gone their lives would be happy and normal. So it was that Greevil moved them to Citadark Isle, Cipher hiding in the shadows of Snagem’s fall to rebuild its fallen plans and bring them into even greater production. Before Orre even realized it Cipher went from invisible to everywhere, their fortress on the outlying island impenetrable to the higher forces that opposed them. Soon they dominated the region, taking in many of the Snagem members that had escaped initial imprisonment and integrating them into Cipher. They perfected the shadow serum and made it capable of taking even the most powerful pokemon and turning them into perfect servants, capturing pokemon left and right and turning them for Cipher’s strength. They captured the legendary birds with ease, using them to lure their greatest prize to their layer and turning him into the perfect shadow. XD-001, incapable of being purified like the Snagem rejects of the past. Cipher was on the brink of glory, yet one small crack in their armor ended up bringing down everything they had worked so hard to build. A crack named Michael. The boy was a menace, Ardos had seen it from the first moment he had laid eyes on the child. Youth and a carefree childhood had spoiled the boy into believing the lies of the world, in falsehoods like justice and love. So young and full of self-righteous delusion Michael began dispatching Cipher agents all over Orre without a second thought. He didn’t understand that the world was full of chaos in need of order, order that Cipher could bring, but despite his insistence to Michael on their first meeting that he stay out of their way, the boy persisted. And his persistence destroyed the world. When Greevil and Cipher fell Ardos was crushed, seeing their god of a father brought down to a sniveling man-child before him and his brother making the blue-haired man sick to his stomach. But when Eldes agreed with Michael, said that Cipher should be torn apart and left to die, he felt like a knife had been plunged into his heart. Ardos stared at his twin in disbelief, watching in horror as he and their father surrendered to the authorities and were dragged away, but he refused to join them. His heart in shatters he instead escaped custody and hid out for several weeks, coming out only once to challenge Michael in a tournament to try and prove to the boy that what he had done was not only evil veiled by the lie of justice, but in fact destroyed the only chance the world had of survival. But Michael, in his blind belief, did not listen and Ardos threw their match in order to escape his stupidity. For the first couple of years the older male took to drink to chase away the pain that came from remembering his lost world and the brother that betrayed him. Years passed, and everyone fell into the easy lie of believing Cipher was gone for good. What they didn’t see was Citadark Isle slowly coming back to life, didn’t see the messengers and the Pokemon coming to and from the island in the dead of night. They didn’t see Ardos sitting in his father’s empty chair directing them all. In an effort to rebuild Cipher to its former Glory Ardos had sent out a plea to another similar organization in Kanto, one he knew would have the skills and knowledge to understand the truth that Cipher brought, and they were welcomed with open arms by the team’s leader. A leader by the name of Giovanni. Giovanni was all too happy to exchange resources and money for a deal that involved the two teams sharing their knowledge of the shadow serum that created obedient, more powerful pokemon. As reluctant as Ardos was in the beginning to divulge Cipher’s greatest weapon he eventually agreed on one condition, that his lead scientist Ein oversee the Kanto region production of the serum to ensure that Rocket didn’t simply betray them. Ein knew the formula in his head, there would be no written copies of it sent to Giovanni, so as long as Ein was there they had their serum and Ardos would get his compensation for lending his scientist. It was a perfect plan until Ein made reference in one of his weekly reports about certain changes they had been making to the serum on that end of the world. At first Ardos was upset that Ein might be betraying them for Rocket, but Ardos had known Ein most of his life and knew the man was really only interested in furthering his own research. His loyalties lie with whomever would let him work as he wished, and who provided the funding and essentials to do that. So Ardos let him work for Giovanni, using Ein’s reports to prepare for any eventualities that could arise from Ein’s corrections to the serum. But soon the reports started getting less and less frequent, usually a sign that Ein was in too deep of a research mode to bother sending any, but then a subject came to them on the second to last shipment courtesy of Rocket. A courtesy that nearly killed them. The test subject escaped the second the crate was unlatched, a deranged Charizard tearing through the facility with blood red eyes that couldn’t be put down even after it was shot repeatedly. It was only when Ardos’s own Zoroark ripped the creature’s head off that it dropped, leaving Cipher to immediately begin researching the body while Ardos investigated the shipment it came from. Inside was a report from Ein that described the strange results they had been having on their test subjects, and that enclosed was one of those results. Ardos grew angry that they would send the subject without warning, writing Ein to have him report back to Cipher immediately to discuss exactly what he had been doing over there without his knowledge. A response never came, and soon two Pokemon injured in the attempt to put down the Charizard began display similar symptoms, Ardos immediately ordering them put down and setting up contingency plans for the spread of such a strange virus. He had Cipher agents all over the world begin pulling back to Orre, filtering in over ten times the normal amount of resources they needed and stockpiling them high. He set up greenhouses across the island and ordered stock pokemon to be captured and brought to Citadark for resources as well. Many in Cipher thought his paranoia was reaching too far until word of the Epidemic hit, the storms surrounding Citadark Isle going up immediately to quarantine them and their new self-sustained food sources weathering them through the initial spread. They were nearly untouched by the Epidemic, save for the few subjects they would go out to capture and bring back in for experimentation. Ardos swore to find a way to control the shadow virus running rampant through their veins and to find out exactly what mutagen was causing the living-dead defect so that he could remove it. Since the Epidemic began this has been his mission, and even now Ardos is sure that Cipher is the only team that can save the world. And once the shadow virus was under control it would be he, and not Rocket, who ruled it. |
| Accent | American |
| Appearance | Ardos clings to the former Cipher with an intensity that is harshly reflected in his appearance. He still wears the same, if slightly updated, robes he wore back when Cipher was ruled by Greevil. Working himself constantly Ardos sleeps very little, dark circles hiding behind his ever present shades, and the last several years being spent indoors has left his sunken skin deathly pale. He has no care of his physical appearance, hair growing wilder over the years with little interest in grooming it beyond the occasional wash. It has become stringy and limp due to his malnutrition, rationing upon the island and an utter devotion to drink leaving him near anorexic. |
| Religion | Nihilistic |
| Personality | +Intelligent+ -Ardos is no one’s fool, and despite needing the aid of Cipher’s scientists to generate the full shadow serum he is still often in the labs with them working -An avid reader, his mind is a labyrinth of knowledge that often times even he finds himself lost within. This leads to many days spent locked in his office without food or human contact +Leaderly+ -After his father’s passing Ardos quickly took up the mantle as head of Cipher, giving himself the name he once used for his own father to show there was only one true head to the organization -He took a broken and battered Cipher and raised it up to be stronger than it was before. When the Epidemic hit he already had two contingency plans, the preparations for which left Citadark Isle a nearly perfect self-sustaining sanctuary +Loyal+ -Fiercely loyal to Cipher, and the goal that Greevil set forth for it -His loyalty to his family is unquestioning, but Eldes’s betrayal has caused a rift in his personality where his loyalty to Cipher and his loyalty to his brother are now two separate entities that constantly conflict +Authoritarian+ - Believes in enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. One cannot work well unless it for the whole, and not one’s self -He rules over Cipher with an iron fist, with no tolerance for rebellion, but to those who have been brought in since the Epidemic it is a fair hardship that they know is necessary for the current world +Possessive+ -He is extremely possessive of Eldes. Ardos believes that as twins they can only ever truly be happy if they are together and even as kids would stop at nothing to keep Eldes all to himself +Jealous+ -After finding Eldes happy in the outside world Ardos has become bitterly jealous and seeks to destroy everything his brother found outside of Cipher so that he will come back where he believes Eldes belongs +Drunk+ -Since the first fall of Cipher, at the hands of a child no less, Ardos took to drinking to help ease the pain of his brother’s betrayal -As the years passed he has become more dependent on alcohol to deal with his stress and emotional problems which has left him a fierce alcoholic +Obsessive+ -Raised by Greevil to have only one drive, one purpose in life, has left him with a single minded obsession to drive Cipher to glory -Tacked on with his brother being his only social interaction as child has left him extending his obsessive nature to Eldes +Hateful+ -Until Michael took down Cipher Ardos had never known hate, but now it is a burning emotion he cannot control, or can even understand +Aggressive+ -His inability to comprehend his own hatred has left Ardos very aggressive when dealing with any problem that arises in Cipher or in the outside world. He has many times sentenced insubordinates to death or infection as an example to the rest of his legion +Misguided+ -Greevil raised his children to be utterly devoted to him, often through terrifying manipulation intended to brainwash the pair into blind obedience. Fear kept Ardos in line early on and the manipulations took root so deep in his mind that even after Cipher was disbanded and his father died he could not shake the need to finish Greevil’s work. -Being raised by an uncaring father and only having his twin as solace left Ardos with confused feelings about love. He grew up not understanding the difference between romantic love and familial love, and after puberty hit the two became fused and he has been left with the belief that only he can love his twin and no one else can have him |
| Affiliations | Greevil – Father (deceased) Eldes – Twin brother and the only person Ardos feels any sort of affection for [url=Michael]Michael[/url] – The little shit who ruined Cipher and drove Eldes away from him. Utterly loathes him and wants him brutally killed. Would happily murder him himself [url=Ein]Ein[/url] – Known associate, though could never use the word ‘friend’. Offered him to Rocket in exchange for the resources to rebuild Cipher Cipher Admins – Keeps a firm rule over those still within Cipher and a careful watch on those who abandoned him after Cipher’s fall |
| User Notes | -Ardos is asexual, so even though he is obsessively in love with Eldes it is not sexual. However he will stop at nothing to have his twin back at his side |
