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lumilasi · 10 months

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Proper ref for Spider family grandpa. He's not really a full on goth like his son, IDK what to call his style tbh lmao. His weirdly colored hand relates to a curse he has btw

I'll do Yui sometime later, RN I have no ideas for her.

.......IDK if he looks much older than Jurou tbh. he does have more lines on his face, but I'm still bad at drawing older looking people OTL (TBF, as a Soul eater, he's not gonna age like humans anyway, but still)

bio below:

Name: Harrow Araknos

Nicknames: Grandpa Harrow/Grandpa/Gramps (his grandkids), Father No/Dad no/goddammit dad (Jurou) Love/my rebel (Yui) Dad/Captain (Late meredith) That Weird Old Guy/Enigma/Guardian Angel/Steel Gramps/Mirror Dude (Various people he's helped in human realm)

Age: around 230, he'd be the equal of someone in their 70ties as a human (though he'd be a very fit grandpa/his kind when translated to human ages would still regularly live past 100)

Height: 190 cm

Occupation: Former Overshadower Council member, now a fugitive of the law

Family: wife Yui (A spiderwoman spirit/popular jazz singer) son Jurou (A tattoo artist/protagonist of this story) late daughter Meredith, grandson Ichirou, adoptive grandson Caelan, granddaughter Hitomi.

Friends: His manor staff Thalia, Mihail, Scarlet, and Aiden.

Love interest: Wife Yui

Abilities:

Soul Devouring: As a soul eater, he can devour the souls of anything that has one. He's also naturally very resistant to possession as a Soul eater, and can devour any soul trying to do so.

Inhuman body: He is incredibly durable and can basically only be damaged by light magic based weapons and attacks. He's also physically strong, able to tear people to pieces with his bare hands if he wants to, even now despite his age.

Shadow Magic: Since he is specifically a "Sorcerer" type soul eater, instead of transforming into a more powerful form, he has a full grasp of shadow element magic and is able to manipulate it at will in any way he likes, from changing its shape and composition from solid, to liquid, to gas. He can also use it to traverse/phase through walls and hide from people.

Soul Link: Like most Soul eaters, he can create mental links with people he trusts, and sense if they are in trouble. Soul eaters do this automatically with family, unless the said family didn't grow up with them; he had to establish Soul Links retroactively with Hitomi and Caelan for example.

Summoning Stone: Like most soul eaters, he creates "summoning stones" naturally, that appear in random places in human realm. He has no control over this process, apart from occasionally willing for one to appear in a specific place.

Demon knowledge: He is very familiar with demonic magic of all sorts and knows how to utilize or counter it.

Curse of Shadow: Harrow had a curse placed on him during the conflict, which was meant to essentially take him over and turn him against his own kind via madness of sorts. He however was too mentally resilient for that, so instead he's able to control the curse's powers to an extent; he's basically able to transform into a shadow (solid/liquid-like/seemingly normal one) and change his size and shape however he wants, essentially granting him the transformation ability he normally doesn't have. This comes with a great risk however.

Weaknesses:

Since he is not Spirit type like his children, Harrow doesn't naturally have a demonic form and is generally seen as a "weaker" Soul eater type; this means he's even more vulnerable to light magic than his son, where it can completely cripple his powers and seal them away.

What shapeshifting he CAN do comes from his curse, which mainly manifests as his blackened right hand in passive state. While the power is helpful, if he uses it too much he risks losing control of it, being unable to return back to his more physical, normal form. He could end up literally evaporating himself into nothing but a shadow.

He's impulsive and doesn't always consider what others might think of his choices/what the full consequences may be, even if he always means well. This has resulted in strained relationship with his son, difficulty meeting his grand-kids, and missing his beloved daughter's death. Given he's already lost one family, he really hates being apart from them, but doesn't want to go back to prison, or put them at risk for secretly hiding him from the law.

Personality:

Harrow is quite eccentric character who prefers doing things his way, and isn't afraid to speak his mind. He's always been somebody who wants to have influence in a larger scale to be able to aid those weaker than him, given what he went through as a child.

While intelligent, his impulsive nature sometimes prevents him from fully thinking things through, and while Harrow has +20 charisma and charm, it doesn't always save him from getting into trouble. He does also have the "goofy eccentric grandpa" vibe to him, which also can help him deal with sticky situations, or just make his grand-kids laugh or in Hitomi's case, feel more confident and comfortable.

He's willing to do ANYTHING to protect his family, even things his family may not agree with/wouldn't necessarily want him doing, like murder. He's kind of a stubborn man and doesn't always listen to those he really should, although he is willing to admit if he fucks up, and apologize. He tends to not regret his actions though, only if the said actions hurt someone he cares for.

BG Story Summary

When Harrow was a child, there was a growing conflict between Soul Eaters and Demons on the isle his family lived in, eventually turning into a full blown conflict/civil war of sorts. Eventually the conflict was resolved by the Overshadowers council from Chrysalis city, but it was mostly too late for his family, as all of them had perished in the battle.

Harrow hadn't even reached his maturity age yet, where his aging would slow at the time, so he was put under the watch of the Council given S.E powers tended to be unpredictable at this stage. He did eventually get access to his late family's belongings once he became a proper adult, but did not want to move back to the isle where his trauma and horrors originated from.

Instead, he used his family's wealth to buy himself a humbler home within Chrysalis, though he spend little time there initially, preferring to travel around the human realm, wanting to understand why beings that were all essentially the same still fought each other needlessly, similarly to how demons and Soul Eaters were distant cousins.

He met Yui during his travels, and helped her save her villagers from a natural disaster. Her former home was destroyed by it though, so Harrow asked if she'd like to come stay in his realm until they could find her a new lake to reside in, which was admittedly difficult given the turbulent time the human world was in at the time (world wars). She ended up falling in love - both with him and a music type from human world that was becoming popular among the Mirror world citizens, Jazz - and decided to stay with him.

Due to the knowledge he'd gained from his travels, and his general power and family's past influence, Harrow was eventually asked to join the Overshadowers Council. He was hesitant at first, but accepted figuring he could perhaps have more influence through it.

During his time there, he didn't have much time for his kids, something he's rather mournful about even today, but did his best to spend time with both anytime he could, being especially close with his daughter Meredith.

Things would change soon however, as he realizes that his son was born with an ancient, forbidden power, and what's more, the Council knew it too, and some members were planning on kidnapping his child and trying to erase his power out of fear towards the ability. Overhearing this, Harrow ends up confronting the two, the resulting fight ending with the pair's death.

He was sent in prison because of this crime, with his family not knowing why he did something so drastic until after his escape years later, as the new Council member and the leader of the infamous Shadowless, Kenzo, revealed them the truth he'd learned from Harrow shortly before his escape. Harrow did keep in contact with his son during this time via the mental link, but has been unable to return to the Mirror World physically.

During his second time travelling in the human realm, he did eventually run across his son's human lover, but chose to stay away from her to respect his son's desire to not involve her in his world, which Jurou perceived as too dangerous for her. Unknowingly to Jurou she'd had his daughter, but Harrow chose not to tell his son about it, again, to respect his son's wishes.

It is one of those incidents where he wishes he'd actually gone with his usual style of talking to the two, rather than try to make amends to his son; ironically him doing what he was asked this one time, led to a sad outcome with his granddaughter losing her mother....

Fun Facts:

He's pansexual, and he and Yui often had discussions of which celebrity/public figure/widely known human they both found attractive. Or their confusion and disdain towards human world's homophobia, which to them sounds ludicrous thing to hate someone over (its not a thing in Mirror world, there's other things to discriminate people against.....)

Soul eaters generally fall under the 2 categories, with elemental types being "Sorcerers" and beast types being "Spirits" though this can vary. Harrows birth family had a Spider Soul eater father, and Shadow soul eater mother, resulting in his elemental power with Spider motifs

During his time in human realm after his escape, Harrow has ended up parenting quite a few people, and still keeps in touch with some of them. Some know he's Not Human, others don't.

Many of the people he met was because they either accidentally or purposefully used his summoning stone to bring him there. There are few cases where this meeting was more organic though

Since he can't visit his daughter's memorial in Mirror world, he tends to pay his respects to her by visiting whatever place dedicated to mourning exists within the region he's currently in. Temple, graveyard, church, etc.

He likes to pull the "old man" act around people who don't realize how strong and fit he actually is, to get away with things or catch people off-guard. He's used this to save the humans he's currently looking after, or just used it to not have to do chores. He jokingly does this with his family too, though they don't buy it, obviously.

Kenzo is actually secretly working to try and dig out the evidence needed/convince the Council to get his sentencing pardoned, which isn't the easiest task given the severity of the crime and the fear towards the God Eater ability that Jurou has, which led to those two members getting killed by Harrow for trying to take his son and render him powerless.

His main reason of trying to understand the nature of conflict through humans is due to a lot of the aspects that lead to fighting having come from them; plenty of beings in his world either originate from humans, or regularly interact with them (without the humans knowing necessarily) so he figured perhaps it was influence from them, that even his kind fall into this behavior.

His conclusion from these travels at the time was, that humans and his kin aren't that different, and it seems to be something inherent in all living beings to be complicated, messy and overall prone to both good and bad things to varying levels.

As a child he actually used to look down on humans/beings directly born from humans (like half-bloods such as his granddaughter) somewhat, just like the rest of his family, before his travels.

Needless to say, he absolutely adores all of his grand-kids, regardless of how they became part of his family.

His hat belonged to Harrow's father, which is why it still has their family insignia, despite it not being really used by rest of his current family.

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