Pretty boy ....
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES :
- Devious: Not necessarily an academic genius Crix is people smart, he can read them and he likes to think he can outthink them. He is sly and sneaky and as such is largely untrustworthy
- Well educated: Whilst nothing special in terms of academia Crix has still had the best education money can buy granting him exposure, if nothing more, to a variety of topics
- Charismatic: When outside the grip of his grief and addiction to alcohol Crix is quite the canny talker.
- Spoiled upbringing: Raised as the son of a man with a large slaveholding Crix has known a life of wealth and privilege leaving him with very limited survival skills and very high expectations for how he should be treated.
- Physically weak: Faced with a fair fight Crix would lose every time it is only by devious tricks or superior arms that he could hope to ever stand a chance in a fight.
- Stricken by grief: Crix has not dealt well with the death of his long-term lover Toby
- Childish fears: Terrified of monsters and monster-like beings, looking at you Vong things
Alcohol and anything else that might make him forget what his life has become
feather beds and luxury goods
Lemons
The sound of rain
The reflection he's faced with in the mirror
The source of his money
The idea of giving up his money
Bananas
BIOGRAPHY:
Crix was the second child of Teridius Meriet, at least according to all official accounts, though there were private whispers that in fact Crix was not in fact Teridius' son and had instead been sired by a wayward space pirate who his mother had been seen to grow close to. Still family life was at first unhindered by this potential scandal. When Crix was born his father had just enacted a rather bloody takeover of a slave ring and taken to calling himself a lord. It was no time for family strife and in any even the birth of a second healthy son was cause to celebrate.
Crix did not prove to be the equal of his father or older brother, however. While they excelled in shows of combat prowess Crix flinched at the sight of blood and could never seem to hold a blade right, though he did ... after many years ... learn to shoot reasonably straight. He was a soft child and this angered his father and made him a target for torment by his brother.
Thankfully as the backup child, he was not the source of much paternal attention and thus avoided too many outbursts of paternal rage, he was useful to his father as little more than a show of stability and there was little worry that he would ever actually come close to taking over as Meriet Patriarch. His brother was strong. As such Crix lived a relatively happy childhood, He had his mother's love and she spoiled him incessantly. Though he was prone to 'accidents' when something had frustrated his father and he was unfortunate enough to be lingering around.
As he grew up though he drew more and more of his father's attention for all the wrong reasons. Not only had he proved too soft to fight as it was felt a man in his family should but he was also much too soft with the family slaves as well. Going so far as to befriend some of them. As he reached his teenage years it was becoming clearer to his father and brother that Crix's attitude toward the place of slaves was warped. He had to be punished. Crix's closest friend Tomas, a house slave who had served with the Meriet's and Crix directly for many years, was stripped of his position of relative comfort and dragged away in chains to toil in a spice mine. Then Crix was given a severe beating more severe than any he had faced before. It was made clear to Crix that until he conformed, he and those close to him would suffer.
He became desperate to appease his father.
Too scared to really do much at all. Tormented by the rare glimpse of Tomas's tortured form trudging back to the slave pen at the end of a work day. Trying desperately to be the person his family wanted him to be. Crix's life became dark indeed in those teenage years. He felt powerless to do anything, it was only the chance glimpse of Tomas being carried from the mine a mess of bloodied slashes and bruises that spurred him to act. A slave who had seen Crix staring a lot at Tomas warned him that the other boy would be unlikely to see the next year if he was kept in the mine.
Crix could be passive no longer.
It had taken a great deal of begging over many weeks but eventually, not a day too early, Crix convinced his mother to help him get Tomas out. Not much could be given to the boy beyond a set of clothes and a bag of leftovers from the kitchen but Crix and his mother did all they could to see Tomas to safety onboard a ship leaving the outer rim and the grip of the slave trade.
The darkness in Crix's life only grew as Crix watched the light of the ship's thrusters fade away and his friend was gone from his life. He would mourn the loss of those shiny blue eyes for many years.
Light began to return to his life as he blossomed from a boy into a man, a new individual caught Crix's attention a stable boy named Toby. He like Tomas had dark hair and blue eyes and now grown Crix could finally identify the knotted feeling in his stomach that came from thinking of Tomas or Toby. Learning his lesson from Tomas Crix was careful to be subtler with Toby, interacting with him in Secret as their relationship bloomed from service to friendship and then into Romance.
It was only when Crix tried to arrange a night of passion with Toby through his former nursemaid and carer Nima that things turned south. Whether from malice or fear, Nima betrayed the two boys and before they could share the night Crix's father tracked them down. Once again Crix was forced to watch as another slave who made the error of growing close to him was dragged away, only Toby was intended for a far swifter and more painful death than Tomas.
Crix flew into a traumatised rage fighting to follow the slave as he was dragged away. Thrashing like a man possessed. Only sedatives could calm him and for what felt like years he drifted in and out of consciousness, drugs continuing to pump into his system. Four nights after Toby had been torn from him Crix fought through the haze of drugs and awoke. He was a changed man.
By morning it was his father who lay unconscious comatose and wounded, Nima was hung a week later for his attempted murder though she had not been the one to put Teridius Meriet in that state. By a miracle, Toby was still alive when Crix finally rescued him from the Meriet Torture chamber, Though he was badly wounded physically and psychologically. The two were quickly moved from the main estate to a smaller family holding a system away. Crix's bother allowed them to live out life unhindered provided they drew no attention and Crix managed the holding in a way which did not damage the Meriet name ... meaning he turned out trained slaves who knew their place, There could be no more friends of his among them. Leadership suited the elder brother and he was willing to give his brother something for handling it to him.
Toby and Crix spent the next decade together, It was many years before Toby could bring himself to speak, believing unknown to Crix that talking would damn Crix to death. An unexpected side effect of Crix's father trying to coerce Toby into forsaking his love for Crix. Only when Crix was twenty-five and his father finally scummed to death did Toby finally speak Crix became two people in that time the darker side he showed to the slaves he trained and the light, childlike side he still allowed to manifest in his relations with Toby when they were safe in the sanctuaries they made for themselves.
Crix was good at turning out obedient slaves, their blood paid for Toby's continued safety. This earned Crix the attention of people of prominence, he spent many years assisting galactic leaders in the art of control. Even at one time rising to be the regent of isis following a nasty spot of revolution there. It was a betrayal of his once strong principles but his soul was the price he paid to ensure no one ever hurt him or the man he loved. When Toby could finally speak though he made clear his view that it was not a price worth paying, begging Crix to stop, to cast aside the dark in himself and be the man he had been before they had been caught.
What he had become became shockingly clear to him in all its grotesque ugliness. How cowardly he'd been ... how evil. Consumed by the guilt he finally severed ties that same year. Leaving his family with his amassed fortune never to return.
For the next five years, Crix and Toby roamed the galaxy. Crix trying to find good works to atone for his actions and Toby following to support him as he had all the way through their relationship.
Alas, even a soul can not buy life unending and shortly after Crix's 30th birthday on the night of their wedding, Toby's life was cut dramatically short. They were dancing together one moment and then the next Toby's weight had fallen against him and his face was spattered in his soulmate's blood. Crix had known that he could not expect Toby to live to be an old man but the front-row seat to the assassination shook him to his core. He was shaken to his core and spent every moment beside Toby's coffin until the funeral.
Without Toby to remind him that he had good in him and consumed by guilt and grief he slowly stopped his efforts to do good and instead fell into a pattern of addiction, dying to numb the pain he was in with alcohol and drugs. Drifting for the last few years supported by his vast personal fortune.
Though he has recently begun to see the other side of that time and make efforts to find purpose and value again he is still frequently found masking his pain with intoxicants and the dark in him is starting to rise as he considers whether he should hunt down details of who took the light of his life away?
Toby would not want to be an excuse for revenge but Cris feels a hunger for it. When he finds the person whom it should be exacted on.
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