Name
Roman Yedemsky
"Romeski"
Age
He looks and believes himself to be 21.
Gender
Male
Appearance
View attachment 8917
Power Grade
B
Power Category
Biology
Power
Undeath - Roman has only one power, inherent to his biology - he simply cannot die.
The long explanation is, Roman's body possesses an exceptionally powerful regenerative factor and exists in a general state of being that renders him incapable of ever truly 'dying.' When parts of Roman's body are injured or destroyed, they automatically begin regenerating from remaining cells, often going quicker if there are "pieces" of his destroyed body present nearby. However, larger chunks of flesh require Roman to manually will himself to regenerate them at a reasonable pace - this required some practice and was the basis of his power training. When he first started out, it took him hours to regenerate a single hand.
Nowadays, this regeneration can take anywhere from seconds to minutes to hours depending on the severity of his injury and whether or not he is able to salvage dismembered pieces of his body. His regeneration seems to prioritize repairing his brain and head before all other parts of his body. Roman can theoretically regenerate his entire body from a single cell within a few days or so, forming his head first and then the rest of his body (so that he can call for someone to retrieve his head, obviously).
On top of the regenerative factor, Roman's body exists in a baffling state between life and death, walking and talking and yawning like a fully-fleshed living person while every medical examination would determine him to be clinically dead. He lacks a pulse, none of his internal organs appear to function, his skin is frigid to the touch, all scanners report zero brain activity, and no blood pumps through his veins - and yet, he remains fully animate.
Roman's general sense of touch is extremely dull, and he has no sense of pain at all. He has no sense of smell nor taste. He feels no need no eat or drink, he unbothered by extreme temperatures on both ends of the scale, and he lacks any need to sleep. His body does not gain nor lose weight, eating and exercise do nothing for him. Though it may go without saying, Roman is physically incapable of aging or feeling the effects of age, nor does his body decompose or degrade naturally - he is, in his current state, functionally immortal.
Roman can remain fully conscious and aware of everything around himself so long as his brain is intact. Even if he is decapitated, he can still talk and control his body. Losing certain parts of his head will still be debilitating (i.e. if he loses his eyes or ears he can't see or hear if he loses parts of his mouth he can't talk) until they are regenerated. However, if Roman's brain sufficiently damaged or outright destroyed, it will result in his body and any dismembered limbs to enter a sort of 'autopilot' stance where they silently shamble about aimlessly until his brain regenerates, much like a headless chicken. Roman likens the experience of brainlessness to be like 'dreaming.'
Besides being able to exert himself without any care for injury and make moves that would be (quite literally) suicidal for other Coursers, Roman is otherwise completely unremarkable in his physical characteristics. Getting trapped under something heavy has been his main weakness thus far.
Of course, we know that his body cannot be destroyed. But his mind most certainly can.
Not the brain, but the
mind. In spite of his undying body, Roman's esoteric, mental 'self' - the entity which only Mind and Reality-type supers can really interact with - remains utterly defenseless.
Full Body Control - So long as his brain is intact, Roman is capable of controlling his limbs and torso independent of the rest of his body, describing it as having a "strong connection" to every cell that makes up his form. If his arm is hacked off, he can still wiggle and control the arm almost as effectively as if it was still attached. If he is decapitated, he can still move the rest of his headless body about (albeit in a very clumsy matter).
He has a very vague but present sense of touch in his dismembered limbs, allowing him to feel things without actually seeing them. Most of the time, Roman uses this ability to locate and retrieve his body parts to put himself back together quicker, though he has experimented with intentionally severing his hand and using it as an 'all-natural drone.'
Most people think that idea is really gross.
Disposition
Roman would describe himself as a "pretty chill dudeski." He is a very low-energy, very laid-back, 'go-with-the-flow' person that strives to maintain a generally calm, aloof attitude wherever he goes. His reputation among his classmates and fellow heroes is anywhere between "chill confidant and 'mediator' for all problems" to "lazy, smelly deadbeat that doesn't deserve his 'gift.'" Given his unique ability, to say that Roman isn't much afraid of just about anything would be a great understatement. Roman exists in a perpetual state of contentment and aloofness that has thus far been unbroken for everyone who has interacted with him. He doesn't take himself or his life particularly seriously and does his best to listen more often than he talks. He doesn't really care about any problems that come his way and any genuine negative emotions he may feel are deliberately masked behind a half-lidded, dumbly content grin.
Roman gets along with just about anyone, though he doesn't appreciate the vibe given off by people who take the whole 'hero business' too seriously, which he sees as more of a "good samaritan type deal" rather than something to build his entire life around. Though he does genuinely wish to help people when they are in need. A natural consequence of his ability is forgetting that other people can't live forever, and so he feels a natural obligation to do what most are never willing to do.
Roman enjoys doing anything other than excessively hard physical work. He has a serious procrastination problem and often needs someone else to force him to get to work, but he proves to be an unusually sophisticated soul when putting his thoughts onto paper. He has an interest in art, history, and anthropology, having an unnerving amount of knowledge about very specific details regarding certain historical events. When asked where he learned such info, he often shrugs and says "he just knows it," often getting him in trouble for failing to cite his sources.
He enjoys listening to audiobooks and podcasts (he recently started listening to a locally-produced one that he considers to be 'pretty chill' - gossip isn't his thing but the vibes are nice) and he sometimes enjoys engaging in long conversations about very arbitrary and pointless things, like whether a grizzly bear could beat a silverback gorilla in a fight.
History
Roman spent much of his early life amid the frigid, homely atmosphere of Anchorage - at least, that's how he remembered when he was a kid. His father is a first-generation immigrant, a Russian engineer that moved to Alaska in the early 90s seeking a better job market than what was available in the old country. At some point, he must have met a woman, otherwise Roman wouldn't exist, but Roman doesn't remember his mother in the slightest. All he ever had since he could first recall was his dad, living in their tiny little apartment, every day a question of if the food would end up on the table.
Growing up, Roman was a quiet and reserved kid that never asked for much. Though his dad was rugged and forced to raise a boy all on his lonesome, he treated Roman like the only good thing he had in his life. Some would call it over-protective and sheltering, but in their cold little home, Roman didn't mind being cherished, even if he didn't understand why his dad got so angry every time he stayed out for too long. The public school brought Roman plenty of friends (the only other kids his age, he was more or less forced to be their friends) and just enough motivation to scrape by with passing grades.
One night in a frigid December weekend, just before Christmas break, Roman got roped into a dingy highschool party being hosted way across town in East Anchorage by some of his buddies. Dad explicitly forbade him from getting involved with parties and 'stupid shit,' but by this point, Roman was eighteen years old. He wanted to try and do something 'wild' for once, and as much as he loved his dad for everything he did for him, his overprotectiveness became suffocating. Against his better judgment, he'd sneak out while his dad worked a night shift.
The party was pretty shit. The music was too loud, Roman didn't know anyone there, and his feet hurt. He didn't mind seeing his buddies have a good time, but this kind of stuff was never his style. Then, shit hit the fan. Someone started yelling over the music, and people's attention slowly turned towards the center of the room. More dudes started drunkenly shouting and throwing out insults and slurs - some kind of fight broke about.
One of the dudes happened to be his best friend, the only kid in highschool that Roman felt even a modicum of camaraderie with, and he was being shouted down by some big, skinhead-looking thug that looked way too old to be in a highschool party. Roman wanted to leave or hope that his buddy just walked it off. Then, the skinhead clocked him. Boom, right in the mouth. Friend goes down instantly, blood-soaked between his teeth. Eyes fluttering, his only buddy Then, something happened. Something in Roman told him to get up. Something unusual sparked Roman to put down his cup and slowly tread towards the source of the sound.
That was the last time Roman ever felt pain in his knuckles, with how hard he smashed that fuckstick across the face. He's stumbling back, reeling. Eyes flooded with frustrated rage. The smell of piss booze on his breath. The crowd of kids was like a roaring pack, cheering for the underdog. It felt really good. Like, damn, this is hype. Roman didn't really have any chance to see the skinhead pulling something black out of his jacket.
His ears started ringing and the room got really bright, like flashes of light, and Roman's chest suddenly felt really warm. Then, it got really dark. And then it got really cold.
As far as the news headlines are concerned, nineteen-year-old Roman Yedemsky was shot and killed in East Anchorage that Saturday night. An altercation occurred during a large party, and at some point, there were reports of multiple shots fired. Five people were found with gunshot wounds - two men and three women. One was found dead on the scene while the other four were transported to the hospital. The police identified Roman Yedemsky as the one who was killed, finding several gunshot wounds in his chest.
Dad couldn't really afford to host a funeral. There wouldn't be that many people that would come, anyway. They had a modest burial a week after. The news of Yedemsky's murder spread in the state but was otherwise unremarkable. After that, well, nothing really happened. A kid got killed in a party and life moved on. Dad didn't have any friends or anyone that would really console him beside Grandpa and Grandma.
About a month following Yedemsky's death, a mourner passing through the local graveyard in Anchorage couldn't help but be distracted by a sound. It was like pounding, a percussive thump-thump-thump, shaking her out of her quiet moment. When she looked around, there was no obvious source of the noise, but it kept going. Thump thump thump. She felt the ground beneath her feet morph slightly, bending upward like something was pushing the dirt up from beneath.
An ear-piercing shriek followed a woman sprinting out of the graveyard in broad daylight, as a fully-formed hand shot out from the ground in front of a cheap unmarked wooden grave. Bystanders looked on in confusion-turned-horror as they reported an individual "rising" out of the ground, hacking and spitting dirt. When the police arrived on the scene, there was no man. A large six-feet-deep as all that remained, leading into the shattered remains of a wooden coffin.
This incident was never reported outside of Anchorage and most witnesses have been "strongly recommended" to keep quiet by certain interesting elements seeking to quietly register and induct a new Courser to Arthur Gray's without inciting panic. Any and all articles referencing one
Roman Yedemsky
in the state of Alaska officially do not exist. Completely unrelated to this event, Roman Yedemsky was admitted to Arthur Gray's a few months later.
Roman's been at Gray's for at least three years, his dad having been moved out of Alaska after a long period of government-provided therapy and relocation efforts (that period was rough, cuz it wasn't fun to walk in on Dad with half a double-barrel in his mouth and a finger around the trigger). His course material has been pretty wack. He doesn't like to talk about his past that much.
All he knows is that he's been chosen. By who, why, who knows. But they joked that he's gonna have to be the one to bail everyone out.
Just like he always did.
Relationships
AJ Garcia - One of Roman's many bros and fellow classmates. AJ is the type of person to motivate Roman to get up do something meaningful with his eternal life, while Roman is the type to bring him back down to earth if he shoots up high. They get along fairly well. He seems to be aware of AJ's temper affecting his powers, so Roman may feel a need to be around and calm him down after a heated encounter - even if it means eating a lightning bolt to the face.
Roman called him "AJ the cable guy" once.
Maia Drake - One of Roman's friends, which he met as she hangs around AJ a lot. Maia seems to think that Roman only 'tolerates' her, but Roman enjoys her being around more than he does with other people. They have a unique power combination that Roman often thinks about - though he also thinks she's rad for basically being a vampire.
Kassandra "Kasey" Giadaq - A closer friend of ol' Romeski, despite them being almost complete opposites. Romeski feels an obligation to keep Kasey 'anchored' to reality by staying calm and level-headed while she's bouncing off the walls with her exuberant personality, though Kasey is also someone who tries to push Romeski to get up and get out there.
Other Details
He can totally speak Russian.
He intends for his hero name (as in he was asked once and came up with it on the spot) to be "Lich."