Uexkull, the Deathstalker

[TheDeathstalker]

Uexkull
Deathstalker
Intelligence; Order.

Premise: "Death begets Death", kid grows up on the battlefield, as his father dies, he warns him of the dangers of war, how "death only leads to more death". He sees men around him who are on the brink of death fighting with strength beyond normal limits, and decides that through death he can become a weapon to destroy the bane. He trains mercilessly, coming close to death countless times until he weilds death as skillfully as any warrior uses a sword.

Backstory:

The winds swept mercilessly across the campsite, the cold strangling the usual clamor into not but a few huddled whispers. Through the shells of what once were men walked one who never had the chance to become one. He felt neither the bite of the cold nor the embrace of the fire, his nerves long ago dead to such trivial sensations. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t remember them.

“Boy, fetch me my water,” he bellowed to me from across the field. The heat and noise from the battle crashing against me like waves, but I was doing my part to save our world, and would let nothing stop me. I don’t remember the run across that tattered and scarred field, past the legions of dead and wounded, through the stench of freshly spilled blood, no, I don’t remember that at all. What I do remember, is pausing for a moment to admire him. Commander Xerif Uexkull, the Valiant Hero of the Plains and Leader of the Golden Militia. A man who had singlehandedly trained and led the most effective Militia seen yet in the war. A man with no fault, no weakness, no fear, who fought against the very Bane of Eternity and dared to stand when all others fled. The greatest man to ever come out of the plains and, of course my father.
He smiled warmly and took the canteen with a salute, which I hastily returned. With a quick motion of his powerful hands, he opened the canteen and lifted it to his lips, but pausing just shy as his countenance broke. His sure smile slowly gave way to confusion, which spiraled into fear. I, I, I froze, powerless to do anything but watch as the canteen fell from his grasp, as the color drained from his face, and as he slumped forward, no longer able to stand in his heavy armor. Maybe I should have run. Maybe I should have helped him. Maybe I should have… done something, but I didn’t. I just stood there.

“Hungry?”
Uexkull snapped from his memories, and stared confused at Lieutenant Aethum.
“Right, forgot the whole dead thing,” sighed the Lieutenant before pulling his cloak tighter around himself.
“I’m not dead, just damn close. And while I feel no hunger, I still have need to eat, so thank you,” he spoke, his words like grating charcoal.
“Heh, don’t mention it. I wouldn’t be much of a leader if I let my men starve, now would I?” After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, the Lieutenant abandoned his attempts to lighten the mood, instead embracing the cold atmosphere to try reaching the man before him. “I don’t normally allow transfers into my squad you know. In fact, if the order hadn’t come from the top, I’d have sooner fed you to the dogs. There’s no room in my unit for suicidal maniacs, and you rank amongst the top of them. We’ve got drills at dawn, I expect you to be flawless. Give me a reason to throw you out of this squad and I’ll take it. Is that clear?”
Uexkull took the time to finish off the tough piece of meat before turning to face the young Lieutenant with eyes that cried with both rage and sorrow, with a face cut deep by countless blades, and with words to chill the strongest of hearts. “Have you seen death? I speak not of slain bodies or funerals, but of the man himself. His name is the sound of your last breath, his voice is an immortal dirge calling all men to their end. ‘Hollow be his name,’ and he is what made me the… thing I am today.”
With that, he turned from Aethum and made his way to his tent to be by himself, leaving the young Lieutenant speechless.

Dawn broke reluctantly over the camp, but Aethum’s troop greeted it with blade and sweat, without murmur or complaint. The young Lieutenant scanned the ranks for the dead man, but found no sign of him.
Later, as Aethum sheathed his blade, signaling an end to the drills, he felt a chill. He turned to see none other than Uexkull approaching. Aethum waved him off, disappointed.
But, the dead man wouldn't be cast off so easily, and spoke to the young Lieutenant's pride. “You know, it’s true what they say. You are a valiant man, and a great leader of men, the likes of which I haven’t seen since my father passed.”
As he could see Aethum's youthful optimism overcoming his better reason, he was faced with a mixture of sorrow and optimism. It really is a shame, he thought, but when he falls in the battle to come, I can again meet that spectre, and finally deliver him the justice he deserves.

Level 1 Skill:
Death Magnetic

• Passive
  If Uexkull kills a unit and so long as the corpse is still there, nearby enemy units will be pulled towards it. Pull strength/radius based on skill level and % of health remaining (lower it is, stronger the pull).

Level 1 Skill:
Culling

• Active
  Deals X damage to target unit. For every nearby unit at less than Y% health, Z damage is dealt in an area to enemy units.

Level 1 Skill:
Todestrieb

• Active
  Sacrifices X% of current health. For the next Y seconds, for every % of health lost from the original current health, Uexkull gains Z damage and A% damage return.

Elite:
Beyond the Pale

• Activated Passive
  Whenever Uexkull attacks a unit with X% more health than him, he becomes breakably invisible for Y seconds. Drains Health while active

Ultimate:
Death After Life

• Activated on death.
  When Uexkull would be reduced to 0 health, he instead stops at 1 health, and activates a obnoxiously strong mana shield. He can no longer regain health until killed and revived.

Comments:
1) Death Magnetic is really what kickstarted this hero, although in it's original theory form, any unit at the center of the pull would be dealt some % of Inout's attack damage every time he attacks, but this seemed convoluted and a bit too much for the skill.
2) Culling is meant to be both a finisher and a kickstarter, allowing you to deal large damage to a whole group of units if you've beaten the shit out of one, or annihilate one if you've mauled a group. Also works well with Death Magnetic, as that will help bunch people.
3) Todestrieb is meant to give this hero some umph in battle, both offensively and defensively, so long as he's being damaged. They key will be to kill him fast or kill him when he's not using this skill, because the damage return would likely be significant at high levels, and would hopefully work on all sources of damage on him. At the same time, I'm tempted to say this skill should work in reverse as well, so that one could effectively cripple this hero in battle by simply healing him when he activates this skill, so he'd lose Z damage for every % and (not sure what the inverse of damage return is). Maybe not, but at the very least something like this would make for an interesting mechanic.
4) Beyond the Pale should just be fun, keeping him alive and able to pop in and out of combat with relative ease, and so long as the health drain isn't used foolishly, he should be able to fare very well with proper use of this skill. Not to mention, this skill will become essential for him to lessen the gap between his hopefully low health and the enemy's. I will be the first to admit that this is at least somewhat inspired by the new Black Hole Sun, but it's too badass of an idea to let pass.
5) Death After Life is rather simple for an Ultimate, but tack a few things on like any Todestrieb buff that's on him is permanent until he dies and consider the fact that at 1 health, he's pretty much in perfect standing to abuse the hell out of Beyond the Pale. My thinking for the "obnoxious mana shield" is somewhere on the order of 10-20 hitpoints per mana, but that depends wholely on what hero healths look like, and what the size of the mana pool is.
6) A few notes on names, for those interested... First, yes, Deathstalker, whoo. I was gonna go with something like deathseeker, or something like that, but I really couldn't resist, so I just caved and went with it. Also Todestrieb is the Freudian concept of a Death Drive, and since I didn't want every skill to be just called "Death X", I mixed it up. For those familiar with Freud who haven't heard of Todestrieb, it's also called Thanatos, if that helps. Last, but not least, the name, Inout is a simply reversed form of the Finnish Death God's name, Touni.
7) By no means a perfect hero, but should be fun to see what comes of it. I sadly will be away for the next week, so I'll be able to track this thread for the next couple days, but then I just have to hope it doesn't die before I get back... I look forward to everyone's insight.

[Scarlet]

Hey, this hero's neat. A few things, though:

Death Magnetic is listed as a passive, but the description reads "While Active...", so I'm kinda confused. Do you mean to say it activates whenever the hero's gotten a kill or is it meant to be an active skill? I think it'd work better as a passive, myself, but it might be too strong (not sure how the pull would work), so I dunno.

Nitpicking here, I know, but I'm also a little mixed up on the third skill. When you say that a percent of current health is sacrificed for "the next Y seconds", do you mean he takes a percentage loss instantly and regains it after the duration or is it damage over time? Either way, it fits nicely and, for a hero who has two self-damaging spells, still seems like it'd be more useful (or at the very least fun >.>) than a heal.

Um... I'm not *entirely* sure about this, but if I'm right you could have a problem with your ultimate working the way it does now. As far as I know about the new AotZ (which, admittedly isn't much.. I'm likely flat out wrong here), mana is there to allow usage of ultimate abilities once you've reached the maximum amount, but not much else, since most (all?) normal abilities will have no mana costs.

Really, this might not be that big of a problem since you could keep it, albeit with significantly raised numbers on the mana shield ratio (last I heard, mana pools are a static 100 throughout) and, of course, only being able to activate once you're at max mana.

Either way, very neat hero. Everything about him flows together with the rest and I especially liked Death Magnetic. Good luck with him. oO

Oh, P.S.: You totally refer to the hero as "Tuonni" in the spell descriptions - was that intentional?

[TheDeathstalker]

Hey, thanks for the support and suggestions, and I agree with what you said about the ultimate, it should only be triggerable when he's at max mana, with a significant mana shield ratio, to the point where he essentially becomes this beefy, nigh unkillable monstrosity, with his fun skills to boot (at 0% health and max leveled Beyond the Pale, they'll be mostly dead by the time they can see you to fight back), which should fall right into the "if used right, can turn the tide of a game" niche of the ultimates.

Also, with the third skill, I kinda goofed the syntax, it should be fixed now somewhat, but for clarity's sake, I'll explain what the idea is.

When the skill is triggered, X% of his current health is lost as a sacrifice-y thing. The game would remember his original current health before he triggered the skill, and at any given time during the next Y seconds, the increased damage and damage return would be based on a the percent of that original current health that he has at any time. So say he used it with 500 health, it sacrifices say... 20%, so 100 health is lost through that, giving 20Z and 20A% damage and damage return, then say he loses another 100, so he's at 300, which is 40% down from 500, so he now has 40Z and 40A% damage and damage return. Now say he is healed 200 by someone, bringing him to 500 health. At this point, he has 0Z and 0A% damage and damage return, so healing this hero would actually work to nullify his offence. Plausibly, the skill could almost be used to pacify him, say if one were to heal him to 700 health, he would then have -20Z and -20A% damage and damage return, although I'm sketchy on how exactly that would work, it seems a sound, fun way to deal with the hero.

Death Magnetic is listed as a passive, but the description reads "While Active..." ... ...You totally refer to the hero as "Tuonni" in the spell descriptions - was that intentional?

Heh, thanks, That's what I get for editing things mid thought. Originally Death Magnetic was an activated passive, and the hero was named Tuonni, but I didn't want to rip off the deity nobody knows of too badly, but both are fixed now. And I just saw that I named this hero In Out... is there any way to rename a thread, or am I stuck with this as the name forever?

Anyways, thanks again. Anyone else have anything they'd like to say?

[SetaSoujirou]

A mod should be able to change the name for you, it'd probably be wise to PM Dusk or just wait for him to see the thread.

[TheDeathstalker]

Ahh, ok, now I've just gotta come up with a better name. Any suggestions?

[Rising_Dusk]

...or just wait for him to see the thread.

I see all threads, I just don't post in all of them.

[Akruta]

Yeah I have to say after looking at the skills they all seem A bit basic however it all seems to work togehter greatly. Reminds me of a hero I designed called Anemor that running away was the best stategy for surviving his ult. He also had a passive that acted simmalar to Todestrieb. Hopefully Rizock finishes that map and Anemor... but enough of that I would like to play as this hero but does his elite activate during his ultimate?

[TheDeathstalker]

Hey, sorry for not getting back to you sooner, it's Exam week, well, that, and I've been trying to work on this guy's story but am making little progress.

Anyways, yeah, I agree with the "a bit basic" bit on the skills, but I'm of the "simple genius >> overcomplicated genius" school of thought, so I am for the simple interactions as best possible. The only skill of his that I still don't like is Culling, although it is his big walloper, and I'd feel bad taking that away. The skill I was thinking of replacing it with is... well, I'll just write it out

Level 1 Skill:
Uncomfortably Numb

• Active
  Target unit (friend or foe) is "numbed". For the next X seconds, they take no damage. At the end of this time, all the damage they received is applied at once. If this amount exceeds Y, they are stunned for Z seconds.

Not perfect, but I think it's got enough play in it to make for a fun skill, I just can't justify removing the teeth from this hero to give it another toy.

Oh, as to whether or not the Elite would work while under the Ultimate, I see no reason why it wouldn't. You'd still deal damage to yourself over time, it's just that would be applied to your mana instead of your health. Also, it would activate just about all the time seeing as you're effectively at 0% health, so it'd trigger so long as they have more than that X% health.

Thanks for the support, and I'll see if I can finish up that backstory any time soon...

[TheDeathstalker]

Backstory's up... I'm not too happy with it, especially not the end, but it tells the story, even if it doesn't do so as well as I'd hoped. At least I managed to pull off a tragic hero without him being quite "emo", I think he landed more in the range of determined and disparate... but that may just be my skewed view of it...

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I fully care about, or even like this hero anymore. Yeah, I like the skills, and the theory, but the actual character himself just doesn't hit as closely with me as he did when I first thought him up. To be fair, I could probably say that to any hero I came up with before last week, but yeah... while I do still hope this hero at least makes something out of itself, I... just don't agree with it much... Not sure really what to do with it, to be honest.

Oh, also, I'd like to actually change the name to Uexkull now... although I'm at a bit of a loss for the title still

[LightburneR]

I keep feeling this hero needs a kind of "Taunt"ish spell......

It would go awesomely with his Todestrieb spell.

Maybe something like......

Level 1 Skill:
Death Well (Passive) - I do suck with names.

• Whenever Inout/Uexkull kills a unit, he creates a Death Well for Y seconds. As long as Inout/Uexkull is within range of a Death Well, nearby enemies are forced to attack him and he drains X health per second from all enemies. (Yea it stacks)

I know my wording isn't perfect and the skill is bad in many ways, and it may not be suitable, but eh, it's just my opinion.

[Rising_Dusk]

Oh, also, I'd like to actually change the name to Uexkull now... although I'm at a bit of a loss for the title still

Done.

[TheDeathstalker]

Thanks Dusk.

Oh, wow, sorry LightburneR, totally forgot to reply to your comment, just read it and forgot for a week (or so). Either way, I don't quite see the point of making him into a kite based hero, as that's what that skill would quickly devolve into. I think that Death Magnetic does that job well enough, seeing as being able to at least hinder an opponent's movement could essentially force them to attack you, but it would have more variability and options to it than that.

The main thing with Death Magnetic that I can't quite figure out is how to make it scale. I mean, it could increase in strength or range or something, but I'm not sure if it's quite possible or meaningful to do so, especially since you'll essentially "level it up" more yourself over time as you'll be getting more and more kills, so creating more and more Death Magnetics(?). The only other idea I've got is to have it somehow further effect the units in the pull, but again, no idea how. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Oh, yeah, also was thinking for the ultimate, an interesting twist to it might be to rework it a tad so that upon "death", he instead is at 1 hp (as normal) then throws up a mana shield with mana equal to X*(number of corpses on the field), again with some mildly overpowered mana/health ratio. Then add to this the ability to regain mana (just maybe 1 mana or something) for every unit killed nearby (or just killed by him). Other random and/or off the wall ideas relating to the ult are as follows:

1)Turn Todestrieb into a toggleable aura while the ult is in effect, buffing nearby allies based upon the percent of their max health lost, potentially also with a slight damage over time to the buffed units (like Unholy Frenzy, or whatever the spell is).
2)Give him the ability to teleport from any corpse to any other corpse (globally?)
3)Cause him to make any nearby corpses into Death Magnetics so long as he is within X range
4)Make Culling count the number of units in the whole map with less than Y% health, but still have the same area.
5)If 3), possibly give Death Magnetic some activated effect, something along the lines of a corpse explosion/high damage over time repulsion?

Mostly just brainstorming there, but who knows.

Also, as I am still kinda meh on the whole of the backstory I wrote, but lacking in time/writing ability to fix it (damn dialogue), I might as well just let you get a picture for the hero. Read the backstory if you want, and if not, just remember the bullet points: 1) Hollow is a bastard 2) Uexkull wants him dead because of this, and listen to this Death Magnetic. Hopefully that'll do the job.

[Soul_Reaver]

What if the Ultimate left out the whole Mana Shield stuff?

Ultimate:
Death After Life

• Activated on death.
  When Uexkull would be reduced to 0 health, he instead stops at 1 health, and for the next [X] seconds, he will not take damage from any source.
  He cannot regenerate health while in this state, once the effect is over Uexkull dies.

That would increase its effectivness, and also leave you some mana to cast your spells and possibly wreak havoc in your X seconds of invulnerability. This, in my opinion, would add more feel to the hero.
Note: He still could be targeted by attacks from heroes, creeps and spells, but he will not take any damage from them.

Of course, there might be that change that normal abilities will not require mana, so... I don't know.

[TheDeathstalker]

That was more or less the reasoning behind the mana shield, actually, the mana free spells. Invulnerability just doesn't have the same kick as the mana shield, as you could just run til he is out of invulnerability, or alternatively he could just hammer away at a barracks as soon as he hits full mana and do so without consequence. The mana shield just feels a bit more elegant a solution, as he can still die, but his key weakness (being most effective at low health, and thus easily killed with focused fire) is negated, and instead turned into a significant strength.

I'm also hoping to come up with a new name for the Ult, as "Death after Life" just isn't quite as badass as I'd hoped... "I am Become Death" or "Walk the Line" (with the implication of the line between life and death) may be neat, but just lack the umph I was looking for.