Suitov is what's called a war lord, a minor noble on whom the crowns can call to contribute troops in times of international impoliteness.
It's practically a family tradition that Suitov lords attract nicknames not of their own choosing. Iceheart is the most 'official' and widely used of this Suitov's nicknames. It can be used when differentiating him from others in the Suitov genealogy.
The hair is not blue-black, just darker-than-very-dark-brown black. It's kept long and tied well out of his face, which is narrow with high cheekbones. He never grows a beard. His eyes are grey. His clothing is usually smart and appropriate to the occasion; he favours blacks or other dark colours, with grey or ice blue details. When on official army business he often wears his 'team colours' of black and gold.
Among strangers and casual acquaintances Suitov is friendly, courteous, reserved and quietly enthusiastic about any interesting topic - and he finds just about everything interesting. He displays the etiquette and chivalry that are drummed into a typical noble's child: noblemen are expected to be gentlemanly, never arrogant. Suitov will be especially polite and even-tempered towards those who are (or look) female.
Suitov's acting ability is frequently put to mischievous use. His sense of humour is characteristically wry, ironic and intellectual, which has led some to describe it as "dry ice". He is prone to puns and technical humour. He dislikes jokes that belittle others but is always prepared to be good-humouredly self-deprecating.
Iceheart has a certain charisma about him. He's hard to ignore. If he's watching you, you feel watched. If he smiles at you, you feel smiled at. If he is, atypically, showing anger, you'll know about it. He's able to put a lot of command or persuasion in his voice. On Shade this is called glamour, but it's highly debatable whether 'glamours' really exist as discrete things.
Evil, seriously? Kind of complicated question. If he is, it's evil as in "cold bastard", not as in "cackling maniac"; Iceheart is not indiscriminately cruel, manipulative and vindictive to everyone he meets and he won't even necessarily lie to you, even if it might benefit him. He is entirely pleasant socially. He likes most of his enemies. He won't break the terms of a surrender or try to kill someone who's just spared his life, because he doesn't want people doing the same to him. He considers the Evil Overlord List to be simple common sense. [1]
Suitov follows a personal code of honour, except when he doesn't. He's a great admirer of the principles of dragannerie. He has a chivalric, arguably dated attitude to those of the female persuasion ("of course she's able to defend herself. But she shouldn't have to while I'm around") and will go to significant lengths to avoid hurting or threatening a woman, preferring any reasonable alternative. This includes shapeshifters in female shape.
He has varying proficiencies and weak spots. One large area of ineptitude is healing magic. He does have basic knowledge of anatomy and field first aid.
Suitov started out working and casting by hand motion, but has studied and attempted to master just about any alternative technique he comes across (except for singing and other things he can't do). [2] He is known to try to simulate material-mindedness as a mental exercise, but he isn't material-minded himself.
His magical sense is primarily visual and secondarily 'gravity'/acceleration. He can sense a magic effect and its location, unless it's successfully concealed (something Shaded magic just doesn't do), but doesn't necessarily know what it is. That depends on whether the effect is obviously perceptible and on his familiarity with the other magician and des techniques.
The usual rules apply to his magic sense and general magic use.
His familiar Basaltine provides him with a small extra reserve of energy but no other magical ability.
He can ride and do a few useless nobleman-type things such as dancing, and a few rural things such as handling chickens, taking care of horses and camping outdoors. His knowledge of plants is very good but specific to his area of origin - so if he's bivouacking on XYZ Moonlet, or even a tropical region of his homeworld, he won't be able to identify edible fungus by sight.
Despite rumours, he is not impervious to physical weapons and does bleed when cut.
In his spare time Iceheart reads a lot, experiments, investigates interesting things and comes up with a lot of ideas, not all followed up and not all attributed. He contributes irregularly to various scholastic debates and journals, resulting in his name being known to the sequestered scholarly community, which doesn't care much for politics and mostly manages to ignore the War as an inconvenience.
He has areas of ignorance corresponding to his disinterests - for example, wine, music (except as it pertains to science and magic technique), women's fashion, fictional literature. He doesn't exactly pooh-pooh such things or consider them a waste of time, just a waste of his time. In general, though, he can muster at least some interest in almost anything.
Suitov is mostly or completely tone deaf[3] and has to cheat magically to tell the pitch of a musical note. However, as with many tone deaf people, his understanding of prosody and intonation in speech is unimpaired, and he has a normal sense of rhythm.
Unusually for a male, Suitov is a moderately skilled mind-reader (somewhere between city and country class). Don't expect him to use this ability all the time; he has a fairly complicated personal protocol regarding its use, and very good reasons for keeping it secret (so he's unlikely to try it on aliens if they might detect it).
However, this also means he has an intermediate (by Shade's standards) defence against telepaths. Shielding in Shaded telepathy is passive and consequently difficult to distinguish from someone who merely has a naturally high resistance to mindreading. A powerful telepath could break through, though there's not much chance of doing so undetected. The exception to this is Suitov's communication with his familiar, which is completely unreadable for different reasons - see below.
As should be obvious, anything telepathic will only be written by mutual agreement of the writers. See 'Roleplaying'.
Suitov is strongly bonded to Basaltine, his hellhound. Their relationship is somewhere between 'master and familiar' and 'owner and pet', and Basaltine would say there's a bit of 'college roomies' in there too. They can communicate mentally and securely and Suitov has access (with split-second time lag) to some of Basaltine's abilities when Basaltine is awake and nearby. He can see through Basaltine's eyes when he wishes and even 'possess' him remotely. More detail on the benefits and drawbacks can be found under Mindbond (demon).
Suitov tells anyone who asks that he stole Basaltine from a demon, which is not true. You can read [another telling], not guaranteed to be any more reliable.
In non-strict-canon boards, Suitov has encountered Serpentine, Pasht, Ishtar, briefly Lunzie Istari, Erin's Lucifer, Lance, Katai, Sylvie and Anke's Nico. He has, at least briefly, met Sebastian. He has shown significant approval or dislike of none of these.
Iceheart is most likely to be interested in a non-aristocratic (trust us, this one runs in the family...) faleigh or human woman who is very intelligent and has interests beyond men and clothing. He prefers women of his age or a little older. He is rumoured not to let little things like marriage get in his way.
A woman who looks outwardly young, even if this is caused by species or other differences, will make him cautious. (Looking under twenty is a deal-breaker, even if you're really 1000, and his 'too creepy' threshold will increase similarly as he ages.)
Iceheart is not planning to marry soon. His hand may become useful as political capital... and besides, the only woman he wants to marry is unavailable.
Iceheart has a strong bond to Basaltine, his familiar. (See above for properties and shared abilities.) Basaltine obeys Suitov, not the other way round.
Iceheart is romantically associated with Jaina Jade during the early War period. How that will develop remains to be seen.
Laffent Ferrl is a roccoa woman in Suitov's honour guard. There's been no suggestion that the two of them are like that.
Iceheart obviously does more than grudgingly tolerate the psychotic monk who's assigned to spy on him. He generally refuses to be drawn on the nature of his dynamic with Weft, especially so when the monk is within earshot.
[Weft's version of things] is different again.
Weft likes to mock Suitov's acquired nickname, coming up with such variants as "Snowlungs", "Chillbrain" (Suitov's favourite) and "Flurryfoot".
Wilmer, Lotsi?, Hannes? (trolls) and Nico (goblin) know Iceheart of old. The details of their association have not yet been explained.
Rige was a late developer in several respects. Language development was early, motor skills normal, but other skills took a long time to surface: in particular, his magical ability was not evident until he was around twelve. He showed no interest in the subject before then. Young Rige was perceived as shy or distant until about the age of eight. It was clear early on that he was horribly bright. His mother encouraged him to develop at his own pace and he had free run of the library, never injuring any of its occupants.
Rige's immediate family died (two in an accident, one in suspicious circumstances) when he was twelve, three years before legal adulthood. Their deaths were not a defining event in psychological terms. Life went on and the world at large did not hear of the newest Suitov lord until the Great War started shaking everything up. At around sixteen years of age Suitov was summoned to the crowns along with the other war aristocracy, and managed to make himself both useful and a perceived threat. As a consequence, he has an unusual position in his home country's war effort and isn't allowed to bring an armed guard into the crown city.
The Worlds War plot is still ongoing. Suitov's author is fairly sure he survives to the end and has vague ideas of what happens afterwards, depending on what other powers are in play by that time.
Iceheart is a powerful character who was designed as an antagonist/faction leader in the Worlds War and not for general roleplaying. Although in fact he's pretty well-behaved to write, I generally don't write him in non-mainline-continuity storyboards if I think there's a chance he'll imbalance things.
Charisma: well, charisma isn't always positive. The way I generally deal with it is to exaggerate slightly however the other character would normally react to someone who looks and acts like Suitov (intimidation, annoyance, attraction, curiosity, obedience, whatever) - unless that reaction would be a non-reaction like indifference or ignorance.
Being a mage character who notices magic, he (or his writer) needs a little information if your characters or items are causing active magic effects (casting spells, etc). See the [Muttiverse magic article].
For psionics, see the roleplaying section under Shaded telepathy. Suitov uses his talent sparingly because he has significant reasons to keep it secret. Don't ever assume he's reading your character unless I say so explicitly.
I will try to make it clear in posts when this applies, but some of Suitov's thoughts are unreadable, namely those shared with his familiar. These and these only are non-negotiable - no keylogging, no packet sniffing, there's no way even to tell there's communication taking place. Any other thoughts are potentially up for grabs, subject to the usual writer discussion.
If your character can see or detect souls, please talk to me one-on-one about how this might apply to Suitov's familiar.
Roleplaying a socially graceful character when you're autistic is hard, and if you think I've made any massive mistakes or misunderstandings that a perceptive human or faleigh would not have, feel free to say so.
Photo by Bart Klemensowski
Suitov Iceheart is a reprehensible and highly annoying individual. He has nothing whatsoever to recommend him. He is also not at all good-looking.
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