torpour | History;

Note: Nehan's background has characters with names that differ between the JP and EN scripts, and my personal preference is to use the JP names because I find the EN names awkward to spell.

Content warnings: Child abuse, child endangerment & child slavery, drug abuse, mental health issues, suicidal ideation.

CHILDHOOD

He was born in Karm, a small Erune (the token kemonomimi race) hamlet hidden in the middle of remote mountains. Everyone there descended from assassins that participated in a war against Astrals, a species of near-immortal powerful beings, two thousand years prior and then became reclusive afterwards. They still practiced their ancestors' disciplines though, and were sometimes hired by outsiders to kill.
Nobody liked the Karm clanspeople because of their bloody history.
Has an entirely different birth name, "Nehan" came much later.
His family specialized in herbal medicines and poisons, which suited him fine because he was weaker than someone from even his family.
The Karm clan had a disturbing coming-of-age ceremony: they feed their young people a stimulant that removed physical limits with the unfortunate side effects of heightening aggression and affecting sanity, and demanded that the would-be adults control themselves until the drug ran its course. One day they fed the drug on someone too young and too powerful because the boy's father tried to make him more acceptable in their society by showing he had control over his power, but Xing, the boy, didn't actually have any control and massacred the entire clan. Only the would-be Nehan survived somehow, but he remembered every detail.
The only survivor managed to escape the mountains... only to be snatched up by slave traders. Then those traders sold him to high-ranking members of the Magasin mafia family, who had recognized his features and knew exactly where he came from, hence wanting him for themselves. They even had a Karm-style mask made for him, just to show him off.

THE MAFIA YEARS

As it turns out, the Karm clan and the Magasin are two branches of Jorha, an organization that specialized in capturing and studying Astrals to find ways of combating them. Though over time, the organizations various branches turned to committing crimes against humanity for the sake of scientific advancement-- or self-enrichment, like the Magasin.
Despite being a trophy, they treated him badly.
He tried to treat the other slaves with medicinal herbs he found. This put his abilities and knowledge on the mafia's radar, and they forced him into their drug operations as a "pharmacist", making commercial drugs for them to sell. He became head of those operations at an early age, titled Pharmaceutical Chief, because the drugs he created became the main source of income for the famiglia, but they still treated him like dirt. In fact, they became more physically violent with him despite him, and gave him his many scars.
Also gained the name "Nehan" during these years.
Nehan really hated having to do things that hurt so many people, he actually became suicidal. However, he wanted revenge on Xing, which is why he didn't follow through on any of his suicidal ideations (aside from being scared of the very notion of dying), and is one of the reasons he grew up so... fucked.
Another main reason why he grew up so fucked is his other coping mechanism-- he considered this his fate, or karma, like he was bearing the consequences of his clan's long and bloody history. This was his fate and everything was preordained, no point in crying or whining about it, so he just stopped. He closed himself from his emotions, and in doing so, completely tanked his mental health.
Yet another big reason why he's so fucked is because he was using the secrets and knowledge of his clan to develop these drugs and stay alive... to kill one of his own clansmen. He considered himself a traitor to Karm, and hated himself thoroughly.
To further his studies on medicines and poisons, he visited a place whose population had been mostly wiped out by the local poisonous plants and creatures. "Mostly" because only one person survived, a large Draph (bovine-type race) with the personality and mind of a feral woodland child due to everyone else dying shortly after he was born. Presumably, Nehan named him "Mugen", and taught him the basics of how to be a person while working with the poisons he came for. They eventually started seeing each other as father and son, even if the sight of a smol wolfman having a giant, rugged bull for a son is quite funny.
Eventually, Nehan discovered why Mugen was the only one to survive all the poison in his homeland-- something as mundane as natural toxins were nothing to him because he had power that could challenge gods and Astrals. The kind of power that the Magasin would have killed to get their hands on. Nehan immediately left him behind, promting Mugen to take a long trip around the Sky Realm to look for him.
Somehow Nehan managed to discover that Xing also survived, and was calling himself "Six", part of a skyfaring crew that claimed it was made of the strongest twelve people in the world. And then Nehan began to plot revenge.

THE REVENGE PLOT ("seeds of redemption" event)

Nehan handed an international crew of peacekeepers called the Enforcers a list of Six's crimes against the Karm to demand justice in the hopes that this put the Enforcers and the Eternals against each other. This drove the Eternals into one of their bases, a shantytown made of orphaned children called Stardust Town, to recuperate and plan for the immediate future.
However, despite Nehan's attempts at keeping Mugen safe from the Magasin, Mugen had managed to make his way to Stardust Town. Plus, the famiglia had taken notice of the conflict and was planning on taking advantage of the chaos to take Stardust, because it was prime real estate-- and the kids would have been their best customers in the drug industry.
The Eternals put up a good front of fighting the investigation launched against Six. Unknown to Nehan or the Magasin, the Eternals were looking for allies to help them deal with this inquiry and the Magasin. And also that the Enforcers were communicating with the Eternals, which meant they weren't actually going to fight. And also that there was another party on the side of the Eternals, a skyfaring crew that members of the Eternals and the Enforcers were friends with, and were assisting in protecting Stardust Town.
Nehan got Six to drink the same stimulant he had years ago, which Nehan managed to recreate specifically for this day, as a challenge-- if he could control himself this time, Nehan would officially retract the accusations he made against Six. Six failed, and needed a boss battle with the Eternals to calm down.
The Eternals managed to score an alliance with the Magasin's rival mafia family, the Suo, to "own" Stardust Town in order to keep any criminal organizations from trying to take it. This sparked the Magasin launching an all-out attack... that they failed in. And Nehan didn't bother helping them either. However, this was a big wrench in his plans.
Mugen managed to find Nehan in the middle of the chaos, but Nehan refused to rekindle their relationship.
The Enforcers took custody of Nehan, either to imprison him for his crimes, or to protect him from the remnants of the Magasin-- he took advantage of this anyway and told them how to treat the various drugs he created while with the Magasin. And then snuck away. He challenged Six to a final duel in the ruins of their hometown and ingested the stimulant himself to fight on an even level. However, even with all of his potential unlocked, he still lost, and he just... gave up. He just left to go into hiding.
Unfortunately, the Magasin caught up to him, and he was shot presumably in the back. Mugen and Six brought him to Stardust Town for healing, but Nehan slipped into a deep coma despite his wounds all being treated. In fact, the esper who examined him claimed that he resisted all magical means of waking up, and is too tired of life to wake up. Out of respect for Mugen, the town would host him.

STARDUST TOWN

A year and three months later, Six sent Nehan a talisman for good dreams. By coincidence, or perhaps because the talisman was indeed magical, Nehan experienced a dream wherein he realized that Mugen was waiting for him, finally making him wake up.
All was still not right when he came out of the coma. The vision in his left eye was so weak that he chose to cover it up rather than compromise his whole vision. His left arm and leg had no issues on the surface, but he could barely feel anything on that side and sometimes they wouldn't move the way he wanted them to, requiring a crutch to get around.
What he doesn't know (and still doesn't): Nehan's paralysis/disability is psychosomatic. The magical healer who treated him made sure to heal his body properly when he was brought to her after he was attacked, but his body insisted on staying in poor health because he unconsciously did not want to be well, and this has persisted even after waking up. According to the conversation between her and the leaders of Stardust, a healed body is a puzzle put back together, but "[Nehan's] soul's forgotten how the pieces are supposed to fit and doesn't even care to put them back together."
Nehan's first day was miserable because there were many victims of his drugs in Stardust, and the guilt made him want to remove himself from life. However, an encounter with one of them made him realize that he needed to make things right by Mugen and the children. He decided to stay in Stardust and offer his services as a doctor.
He was invited to be a part-time member of the other skyfaring crew that helped defeat the Magasin, and he accepted for some reason. Probably because Mugen also joined in their adventures on occasion.
Siete, the head of the Eternals, took Mugen out on a trip. They stayed out for a little longer than expected, and Siete got an earful from Nehan. At the very least, Mugen made friends during the trip-- a bunch of powerful and godlike dragons that protected the fabric of reality. And those dragons became regular visitors to Stardust because of Mugen, especially the water one, so Nehan became familiar with them as well.
The captain of the crew (the game's protagonist) came down with a mysterious sickness that kept them in a coma and got everyone worried. Nehan was one of the doctors that the crew relied on to take care of the captain until they recovered.
Nehan and Six had some alone time while doing a supply run for Stardust. Nehan taught Six that anything can be medicine or poison depending on the use, and they didn't try to kill each other. Progress?

History;

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