Every monster-loving character designer needs a dead guy in their retinue, right?

No?

Well, tough shit.

Roh is a native of Uo, a hybrid of two different species--one magical and one not. Long before he was a shambling undead horror, he was an academic, studying magic in a Crutsu enclave. Whether or not he was capable of magic himself back then is a mystery, but he had absolutely no Crutsu blood, making him something of an oddity--and something of a guest. Roh was a quiet person--modest would be a good word for him. His (work) partner, a Crutsu named Andruss, was much more outgoing, though, and he often made Roh leave the study and lab to engage in more social activities. Roh was less asocial than he was somewhat retiring, and he enjoyed this--in his own way.

For some reason, however, Andruss eventually betrayed him--his motives are unknown; the Crutsu set a trap in their laboratory, where Roh burned to death in the ensuing vortex of fire and magic.

This is where things began to become strange.

Normally, when someone dies on Uo, their soul is taken back into the overall fabric of such things--or, if interrupted, becomes a strange demon known as a Quar.

In light of this, Roh is an anomoly, an abomination--a hunched, desiccated corpse that moves among the living. Is he a soul somehow reattached to its decaying body? Or is he a soulless husk, an empty carcass somehow reanimated by the magic that killed him? Was this intentional? Or an accidental side effect of the inferno and the magic?

It's unclear.

What is clear is that whether he had magic or not before his death is unknown, Roh is certainly capable of magic now. His most common attribute is that of fire--an affinity forged, presumably, in the devouring agony of his fiery demise. Roh uses fire almost exclusively, but though most denizens of the planet are capable of one element of magic, perhaps two, Roh is limited by nothing--except perhaps by the amount of magic he can pull from the world itself. He is capable of nearly any form of magic, should he be provoked enough to use it.

And it takes a lot of provocation.

Roh is almost inanimately uninterested in everything.

When Roh first 'came back,' he was an unthinking monstrosity, maddened and senseless; possessed only of the desire to destroy any living thing he saw, he was further driven an intense oral fixation, resulting in an insatiable need to consume any living thing he encountered. As time went on, however, he gradually began to recover bits of sense--not sentience, not immediately, but bits and pieces of some primitive awareness. Slowly, as magic began to manifest in him, he began to piece together something of a mind--and as he became more of a person, he began to develop a form of control. His memories were almost nonexistent, but that too would begin to change. As of now, he appears to remember everything of relevance about what happened to him.

And he knows his limits. He controls himself now, but it is a conditional control, an act of sheer will and forcible maintenance of specificcircumstances. All the life and colour and motion of the living world drives him to derangement. As a result, his eyes are now covered by a crossing X of leather bindings (made out of a belt), to block out the world--if removed, he immediately loses control again, descending into madness. He is almost entirely mute. The collection of thought and effort required to speak even a single word compromises him immensely, as well--he is almost utterly mute, and if he produces any speech at all, it is at most one or two words, no more.

He is unfeeling and indifferent, both to the world and to its individuals. His control is his fundamental interest--after that he is silent. At one point, he crossed paths with a shapechanger named Toris, and gradually the two began to travel together. Eventually he developed a vague sort of attachment to Toris, but remains largely uninterested in his surroundings. Instead, he trails silently behind Toris, participating impassively in whatever adventures the other decides to embark upon. If he is interested in some greater cause, or Andruss' whereabouts, or in the whys and hows of his existence, he shows none of it.

But hey, now Toris has a buddy! And instant campfires!

Trivia:

• Roh was originally my main in WoW, an undead fire mage that I played from BC all the way up through Pandaria. Unsurprisingly, it took maybe a year before Joe and I ended up having characters based on our mains. Never did stop being dead. Oops.
• Things like object permanence are often sheer acts of will for Roh, and so without the ability to see shit, he can (and will, sometimes) 'drop' shit from his memory because the more he has to 'remember,' the more complicated shit can get for him.
• Roh normally wears long and colourful robes to hide his decomposing body. It's hard to go anywhere when you're accompanied by the walking dead, apparently.
• Sometimes he wraps part of his body up to help prevent peeling away of the flesh. His soft tissue is almost completely "wet" mummified and/or dried out, but it's not a bad idea to be prepared--this is especially true if he's going to be exposed to water.
• Under his 'blinders,' Roh has no eyes, just empty, burned sockets. Like his organs and the fat under his skin, the moist tissue of his eyes was destroyed first by fire and then by decay. Two lights glow from the back of those sockets, though--it's believed this is how he sees.
• His body contains trace shreds of rotted organs, but is otherwise pretty much dried out and empty. Gross.
• Roh does not feel pain. He has no sense of taste or smell. Combined with the blinders and the muteness, it's as though he hardly experiences the world around him at all.
• Despite his inability to see, his magical aim is impeccable. Impressive. Also inexplicable. But probably preferable to the alternative.
• The experience of being dead sucks. 0/10 would not recommend.

Art by Itsubun