The Gunner

The Gunner was a prisoner of Ascended/Descended and ended up becoming an experiment after they found out [Redacted]. He managed to escape with the help of the school of the cursed and eventually joined Defiance the school of the cursed to attempt to end his curse.

Description
The Gunner was a dwarf who stood at around 4'1" he had brown hair and a medium length brown beard and had green eyes. His mask was a bandana worn up to his nose covering his mouth and beard. He has a node sticking out of the back of his neck allowing him to use his guns. He was dressed in more cowboy like attire wearing a brown cowboy hat along with a cowboy like brown coat over a dark blue button up shirt. He had black gloves and had two holsters on both sides of him holding his flintlock pistols. Most notably underneath his clothes he has a fatal wound where he was shot in the chest from a past Descended experiment. He had shrapnel of a black metal and the skin in that area on his chest was a deep purple which would form a purple like vein power along his arms when he entered a Berserk State

In Helmfyre he entered the [Redacted] State transforming him into huge inky black monsters with eight long black tendrils. His head had four to six mandibles that would spread open when it was attacking.

Personality
The Gunner was a bit standoffish and was closed off never really telling his party all that has happened to him from his time as a Descended lab rat. He was a good man that as he always wanted to do the right thing so that he could prevent others from suffering. He never told the party his conditions fully as he didn't want them to experience his pain as well as for them to be burdened by it.

Abilities
Like his code name suggests his weapon of choice was two flintlock pistols however these were not his own but a memento from his old friend and savior Adrar Mev who died during the escape of the Descended Laboratory. Notably due to his curse he could enter a berserk state that was seen at the tavern back in Everwinter where it empowered his guns and fighting capabilities allowing him to become more durable and able to recover some of his stamina allowing him to use certain abilities that he had already used for the day. Unfortunately he could never control when he entered this state. Another instance of this was during Helmfyre however this state was amplified transformed him into a horrific monster lashing out at anything and everything around him absorbing the souls of whoever it killed.

Childhood
Durik Bronze came from the dwarven city Fronaust in the broken vale however due to his families work he had to move around a lot never really having a permanent home. He never really had any friends from his childhood with the constant moving around that he had to do because of his parent's type of work as well as everyone was on edge due to the Cosmic Invasion in later years of his childhood. His mother and Father were researchers for the group known as Ascended/Descended and was researching topics about the Forsaken Gods. They travel and conducted experiments regarding this topic even conducting an experiment on their own son during an incident when they travelled to Helmfyre. When they were researching with a live fragment of a Forsaken God it managed to escape during the experimentation and Durik was caught up during the lockdown of Helmfyre and was killed by this creature fusing with his soul to where this fragment eventually became a part of him however it laid dormant for a time as it was in a slumber state. His parents conducted experiments on him however was labelled defective after the fragment would not react. His parents eventually staged their deaths making it look like that Ascended/Descended betrayed them but in reality this was a way for them to hand off Durik to their higher ups to conduct better experimentations. His memories were wiped of all previous experimentations that his family has done to him and eventually was "Captured" by Descended.

Descended
Durik was a prisoner of Descended out of what he believed was his parents found out critical information on what Descended was researching and was afraid to continue and they attempted to give this information off to Durik when they "invaded" their home and "killing" his parents. He was then captured and was brought back to their laboratory. Durik was subjected to countless experiments to get the fragment inside Durik to work but no experiment worked. Durik also met Adrar Mev as they were cell mates and he was known as The Gunner and was part of the slayers of Defiance from the school of the Cursed who was captured on mission. His mission was never revealed to Durik however the two worked together to escape. [Redacted] noticed this and punished Durik for this and the experiment was set up to set a fire arm with no dwarven surgery required. He was testing two magically infused bullets one he shot straight ahead in the dark room and shot Adrar Mev. The other backfired and the gun exploded with the shrapnel of the bullet in his chest which seemed to have a reaction to the fragment later revealed in the tavern in Everwinter. Adrar still alive helped Durik escape with the headmaster of the school of the cursed outside the lab Durik made it out however Adrar was decapitated killing him.

School of the Cursed
Durik became a silver rank slayer after being rescued and joined the school of the curse to get rid of his curse of what he believed was just the shrapnel but was the fragment that awoken. He adopted the codename The Gunner and took Adrar Mev's guns as a memento to his dead friend. He swore vengeance on Descended and trained in the school of the cursed after having the dwarven operation allowing him to use fire arms. It was a few months later he was assigned to a new group of slayers under Kannon. Him and the party started to work together going on one mission prior to helmfyre as an initiation mission where he and the party helped clear out the eldritch influence and dispatched Kai and his group that was causing the undead problems in the town. This is when he found out that the fragment awoke and took over his body forcing his spirt out of his own body attacking his comrades.

Helmfyre/[Redacted]
While at helmfyre for the short time Durik and the party was ambushed by the Scarlet Hunters however during the second wave a near death experience he transformed into a huge inky black monster that rampaged for a short bit until he was saved by The Void. During the end he met with [Redacted] and made a deal which recovered his lost identities and the identity of the one behind his misery and found out a few of [Redacted]'s plans nearly killing him from the stress until he made another deal with [Redacted] to survive starting another transforming becoming a [Redacted]. He ended up leaving the party to go back to Defiance in attempts of giving the information over the Head Master Kythos despite going against his deal.

Death
On Durik's way back to Defiance he felt a very heavy ominous presence surrounding him as if it was watching him. He was careful and was very stealthy on his was back for the most part. He ran into a stranger on his fifth day of travel who claimed to be a survivor of the Black Warrior project and was survivor of the Black Soldier Slayers guild. He also seemed to be a gunslinger just like Durik. He told him that he escaped Code Psycho and described him to The Gunner and The Gunner revealed that he should be on his guard as there is something inside of him (referring to the fragment) that can attack at any moment. On his way back on the 6th day he ran into Code Paradox which he revealed that The Gunner was with Code Psycho as of now. However Paradox was unable to save The Gunner as The Gunner became a hostage forced to lead Psycho back to Defiance headquarters for him to use as a bargaining chip. Upon leading him back the Defiance guild Psycho attempted to use his life for bargaining however all the Headmasters turned there back on The Gunner leaving him to die and was shot but Psycho before he could even get his information out to Defiance.