Made an account just for this- but here goes, apologies for anything wrong, I just love this AU so frickin much-
Name - Hermes Clay, The (Mildly Unstable) Alchemist
Water conjurer, 150 magic.
Status - Alive, healthy, mildly miffed
Insanity - 0
Whereabouts - Dark Sea borders near Talos —> Dark Sea —> Back
Hermes was an alchemist of… reasonable competency before and during the invasion, having traded all common sense and spatial awareness for potion brewing abilities and some level of murder capabilities. Prior to the invasion, he was sailing in the Dark Sea - range 0-1 - with a speed-dedicated brig badly camouflaged to blend in with the murky atmosphere, collecting ingredients for his next pipe bomb- I mean potions. Due to his frequent and extensive trips into the Dark Sea, Hermes procured himself a set of warding clothing with agility enchants and an unreasonable amount of golden petals.
When the invasion first started, Hermes was on an island in Insanity 0 - cleared of Atlanteans, with reasonable amounts of potion ingredients to keep him occupied through the worst of the initial invasion, with Atlanteans being drawn to the War Seas and its masses of occupants and not the dumbass blowing himself up on a cliff. By the time food ran thin and his deckhands - huddling around a single Theurgist cape he found in a chest 2 months ago - shouts at him to go back, the initial week was over. By the time he returned to the Bronze Sea, the surviving game begins.
“WHEN AM I GOING TO GET OUT OF INSANITY 0???” Hermes, unaware of everything that had been happening, thought. Fortunately, immediately after that statement, he returned to the heavily polluted, swarming-with-Atlantean Bronze Sea! Unfortunately, immediately after that statement, he returned to the heavily polluted, swarming-with-Atlantean Bronze Sea. A single spear flew towards his head, embedded itself onto the hull mast right above the organ, and Hermes had the one fleeting thought that God fucked up before ducking the second spear flying towards his head, which creates another hole on his dying ship structure.
Long story short, speed brig. Hermes drifted between Limestone Key, Whispering Cavern and Palo Town’s orchards, Wind-row’s foundation caves (Those things on the rock beneath the actual island) and under water structures, getting seaweeds and jade pearls and narrowly avoiding Atlanteans, missing Tilly’s trap via the power of “Fuck Hades the wind is calling for help again.” Had a thought to swung by the fortress being built in Harvest, ignored the thoughts, did it anyway and traded some of his finer potions for pumpkin and apples. By the time the month was over, stocked up on invisible potions and water breathing, coated his alarmingly dying boat in invisibility, fucked right back to the Dark Seas.
(His crew may have died. One, two, five. He shouldn’t care, couldn’t care, the perpetual fatality urgent enough to penetrate the fog clouding his inept brain. But there are graves for them, scattered in the seas, and a single Theurgist cape still hung in his cabin, tattered, untouched. He doesn’t talk much, now, less than before, and had sanity arts long dead said otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to talk at all.
The Atlanteans - The ones that tried to kill him and failed but dared babble as they swiped sharp claws inches away from fragile flesh - they can’t talk, forms mutated, throat distended into horrifical tubes. He wondered, as he killed one and ran from the rest, if he had known them - the person - before this entire mess. Had he talked to them?
It shouldn’t matter. Why does it matter? If his crew (his friends, they were, friends and family strung up with foam in this dying world, appeared like a miracle and gone as quick as the notions of one) had mutated, had he allowed them to, into twisted frames and a mind no longer theirs, would he feel better, right now? Would they recognize him, still, and he can keep them chained in the fish tank, devoid of dignity? Or was, perhaps, killing them the better option?)
Hermes now spend his time between Dark Sea islands and the Harvest Coalition, avoiding Atlantean swarms purely because he is so densely covered in Dark Sea energy - exposure held back purely by Warding and a dream - a tattered ship stocked with golden petals sealed as to not alert the hoard with their energy and dark sea shards, something odd about their structure, the way something swirls in shattered black, thorn flowers to make into vials and gels, Saint Lily’s flower for healing. These trips between are growing less and less, however, and people says the mad alchemist are slowly succumbing to infections, at last, and should they put him down now, as an act of mercy, in self preservation? For his dignity, for their safety? What, after their leaders disappeared, gone without a trace in the dead of night?
The last trip made had Hermes stock piling food for a gigantean amount of potions, had him wide-eyed and manic with pale, clammy skin and paler eyes, wide in some form of recognition, of insanity. And with that, he sailed off, to hell, to salvation, to stop this plague, maybe, for fame or glory or vengeance, to satiate some inane curiosity. To certain death.
Right.
Who knows?
Tl;dr - Bro avoided the initial and worst invasion by the virtue of right place right time. Sailed around the Bronze Sea for 1-2 weeks, scavenging some food, before fucking right off to the Dark Sea again, because then his innate magic blends with the pollution to camouflage him, and exposure, along with not being bad at i0, is somewhat stopped by copious amounts of warding. His crew died during some invasion, and the lack of human interaction was driving him a lil unstable in the dark sea. He traded with the Harvest Coalition while stewing in his misery alone, and after a while of this decided, in mania and loneliness and just… mad-scientist esque curiosity, to dive deeper into the dark sea to find… something, anything, to further a research on black shards (Someone’s AU had the Sailor Lodge dude having a magic sucking black diamond, and black shards are in my opinion just mini versions of those). Will he find anything? Meet anyone? That is a good question we shall find out in the next episode of Dragon Ball Z-
Apologies for any and all OP-ness. A lot of this is my brain stringing together stuff and vomiting it out on paper, and apologies for any mistake as well.
