[Arcanum]

Name: Ox
Gender: Male

Appearance: Ox, at age 43, stands six feet tall with defined muscles but not so much that he looks like his namesake. He has shaggy black hair, a short and wiry full beard, and dark brown eyes. His skin is lightly tanned and he usually wears blue jeans, a black shirt, and a green plaid jacket. Yes he's been called a lumberjack before and no, the other guy didn't walk away with all of his teeth.

Element: Metal
Diet: Rocks with high mineral content, scrap iron, graphite, charcoal

Bio: Ox's powers fully manifested when he was 14, reducing everything metal within a square kilometer to vapor, and freezing himself into a distorted, shapeless steel statue. Many who were exposed to the vapors were killed, and even more were poisoned. The local government, after doing their best to minimize the damage and provide aid, took Ox to a storage facility, not knowing what he really was. It took ten years before Ox gained some control over his power, but it was only enough to reduce himself to a cloud of metallic dust. He then spent the next six years wandering until he returned to his home and regained his human shape.

However, spending sixteen years in an elemental state, only partially aware of what was happening, caused some mental instability. Ox couldn't remember anything about the first 28 years of his life, and he only had a vague recollection of the past 2 years. Not knowing who or what he was Ox found a job at a car factory, where he earned his new name thanks to his unnatural strength. He worked at the factory for five years before a co-worker saw him eating the leftover metal from the molds, where fear and paranoia blew everything out of proportion. Ox was driven out of town by an angry mob, only they had guns instead of pitchforks.

Ox spent the next six years wandering from town to town, not wanting to stay too long, afraid someone might find out what he was. Then he got lucky, and met a White Shield agent named Reggie Bondy in a bar one night. Ox was too drunk to care what anyone thought of him, and when he couldn't pay his tab he nearly cut the bartenders hand off. Reggie froze Ox in place, literally, and hauled him out of the bar. Once Ox sobered up, Reggie offered him a chance to earn a job at White Shield, which Ox graciously accepted. He's been working for them ever since.

Esoteric Techniques:
Strength: Metal tools give us the strength to preform tasks we couldn't preform otherwise. Ox doesn't need tools.

Decline: In Wu Xing the Metal element represents the decline of matter. Ox can make this a reality by aging any non-living object he touches. Aging what is immediately touching him is trivial and almost instantaneous, reducing concrete to dust in seconds. However parts further away from the point of contact take either more time or more effort. Aging a section of wall 10 feet away from where he's touching would take either double the effort or double the time, or a mix of the two. Also, aging an entire section of wall at a uniform rate would take as much effort and time as aging the furthest part of the wall.

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I know my Decline E-Tech is similar to Mern's Aggressive Rot, but it was one of the main concepts of my character (the other being the Metal element itself) before he even posted his character :P