Thomas Marshall

Thomas Marshall is a major Celestial character in Yivara.

Appearances

 * Yivara: Major Character, Duo Six Celestial

Personality
Tommy didn’t earn the name, “Ol’ Scratch,” by being a particularly nice individual. Most people in the Badlands know stories of him, but among the Cloudfang’s tales, he’s most always referred to as an angry, vengeful demon of the Badlands. That is, when he isn’t drinking his nights away, wondering what his purpose is. That nickname tends to follow him wherever he goes, even outside the Badlands, bringing the same whirling dervish of chaos no matter where he ends up. This, in particular, is one of his more reprehensible qualities, as stated by his “partner”.

Most of the time, he does little to change this chaos and instead just relies on his combat knowhow to get himself out safely. In any sort of combat situation, he becomes almost deathly focused. There’s none of the inappropriate jokes, or general cockiness that’s around most of the time. He knows full well that if you’re not concentrating and keeping up with your senses, you’ll die all too easily.

Generally though, Tommy Marshall is a lighthearted, if not a bit hotheaded, individual. A lot of what he says can be interpreted as a joke, and his relatively cocky nature reveals itself pretty quickly whenever one spends too much time around him. He has a tendency to badmouth both Axione and Geanis Academy whenever he can, which is why he stays away from Khairu. He’d prefer not to add outlaw to his list of titles if he could help it.

Backstory
In the very, very beginning, he was born to a Celestial and Angel duo who left Khairu to find some kind of solace for themselves somewhere where they’d be sure they could raise their child safely and without interference from the Orisias. However, a storm swept the two lovers into the very edge of the Western Badlands, trapping them in a small town of Cloudfang to weather it out. Even afterwards, they were advised to stay indoors until they could safely depart due to the sandstorms. Unfortunately for the pair, another group of Cloudfang began an attack on that sleepy border town, and they were caught up in the crossfire.

Being a small baby left alone in such a hostile environment among a people as shrouded in mystery as the Cloudfang was not a particularly easy experience, especially when they searched for a family to raise him, knowing that they could not raise him properly. So, they found him a small town full of more normal humans than they, ones capable of leaving the sand-swept prison they were confined to. It was in this small settlement that Thomas Marshall was raised. At about age ten, his adoptive parents saw fit to explain to him just what he was, with what little knowledge they had of the Celestials, and set him to work with menial jobs and the usual set of chores a boy his age would be doing. In addition to these chores, he was expected to at least try and manifest his powers as a Celestial for use in defending the settlement if the need came down to it.

As a Weapon Creation Celestial, his first weapons were a pair of good old revolvers, capable of piercing even the steam armor of the Cloudfang with a single shot. Once he had learned to create his first set of weapons, his practice began. In a few months’ time his aiming skills surprised everyone else in his settlement. Even on normal moving targets, his aim was spectacular, hitting exactly where he wanted almost every time. Any kind of hostile beast of the sands that managed to show its face in the town was taken down quickly and without much of a fuss. This deadly aim would only improve with time, contributing quite a bit to his nickname.

Two years after his Celestial training had begun, he managed to encounter the person with whom he would eventually perform the Euphoric Divinity. Their initial time together was brief, but relatively fulfilling, as they didn’t stay in town particularly long. It would take another three years for them to run across each other once again, and by then, things had certainly changed.

During that time, Thomas wanted to leave the Badlands. Explore the world, see just what else was out there, ready to take the bull by the horns. He saddled up his first of what would become many horses, and set out from his hometown in search of what the world had to offer. The first stop in his journey would be the Xalex Wilds, a place he would eventually refer to as, “that mess of soggy weeds.” While the initial sensation of rain was a relief from the sandstorms he was quite used to living in, he found the Wilds to be a very dull place, especially without any people to see. From there, the journey continued for quite some time; some would say that journey has yet to be finished at all.

It was during this journey that he gained an inherent dislike for Geanis Academy, its graduates, and the organization known as Axione. Living in such a secluded location for most of his life, he hadn’t heard of the Rulers, or even much talk of Khairu or Empyrean beyond casual mention or a story told by one of the older members of his hometown community. But when he found out just what that world was like, he found the Academy’s training to be pointless, its graduates to be pitiably underprepared, and Axione to be a particularly annoying organization.

Not much has changed in him since that time, the fire of his youth burning out into a booze-addled adult constantly trying to find his purpose somewhere between the bottle and the Badlands.