Some character info

Key

Strength: Physical strength, both in terms of lifting and striking. D is an average human. C+ is an athlete. B is a preternaturally strong human. B+ or higher denotes superhuman strength.
Speed: Physical speed. D is average. C is athletic. B is preternatural speed. B+ or higher denotes superhuman speed.
Stamina: Self-explanatory. D is average.
Durability: Ability to shrug off damage. D is average for a human. C is well above average. B is preternatural. B+ or higher denotes toughness far exceeding human limits.
Intelligence: Self-explanatory. D is average. Anything above B is high.


Michael Salem: The protagonist. A higher-level magician with numerous vices and a pessimistic streak. He specializes in symbolic magic and sorcery, and spends an overwhelming amount of time experimenting with combinations of symbols while on drugs. He appears to be in his early thirties, but is actually just over sixty years old.


Dennis Rothchild: A mid-level magician who sees the city as a cesspit in need of complete cleansing, and seeks to destroy the city in its entirety in order to fulfill this goal.

Marcus Craig: An enigmatic ashwalker* with superhuman strength and limited magical ability, who aids Dennis in his many exploits.

*Ashwalker: A person who uses ashes for soulwalking** purposes.

**Soulwalking: The art of using one's soul to inhabit a body crafted from nonliving materials. Those who practice this art are called "soulwalkers", most of whom view it as a means of imperfect immortality. As the act can leave one's soul more vulnerable than it would be within a normal body, these individuals often have major protections surrounding their minds and souls.

"The other one might look like a shit-for-brains, but he's even more dangerous. He's a soulwalker, a human soul inside a body made of nonliving material. Soulwalkers don't have the kind of limitations that humans do. They don't bleed, they don't tire, and as long as the soul stays inside, the body can do whatever the owner's skills allow. They can call on strength your favorite athlete can't match and shapeshift in ways that could kill that same athlete ten times over. And that's just the tip of the iceberg."

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Adrian South: One of Michael's enemies turned allies who possesses extensive shapeshifting abilities. Though he is even more of a loner than Michael is, he is willing to aid in fights and other conflicts if he believes the cause is important enough.

"Adrian South. A shapeshifter with fucking problems."

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Stan Sweeney: A drug-addicted immortal who favors especially dangerous substances, having developed an addiction to the "unique and special high" that comes with overdosing. He is an acquaintance of Harvey's, though the latter is wary of him.

"Stan Sweeney is what you get when you give immortality to a major junkie. He's one of the highest degrees of immortal you can find, about as unkillable as they come, and he puts that immortality to the test every single day. Fentanyl, ether, black tar, mescalin. You name a dangerous drug, and chances are he's consumed it like fucking candy. And the intense highs are only the first part of the thrill, because he's not just addicted to the effects; he's addicted to the unique and special high that comes with overdosing.
He never talks about how he became immortal, not even when he's sober. And after seeing what it's done to him, I don't want to know about it."

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Rum Smith: Rummond Smith, nickname Rum. A small-time gang leader who discovered the Downstairs as a teenager. He specializes almost exclusively in destructive attacks, with Michael describing him as "too straightforward" in regards to the ways in which he uses his abilities. Often seen wearing a ski mask.

"Mask or no mask, I recognize this asshole. I've seen his eyes before.
A gangbanger in a ski mask is a bad sight on its own. But this one? He's worse. Because he's been Downstairs, and he got his hands on some nasty shit while he was there. I once saw him burn a guy into chalkdust in a second.
The last time I ran into this masked-up fuckhead, he nearly killed me. I've been waiting for my chance at payback ever since.
Time to dispense..."

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Enbalmed: A resurrective immortal whose corpse has been preserved via magical means. Various methods of Enbalming exist, some of which can grant the recipient new capabilities they never possessed in life.

"I have pretty steady list of shit that makes me wish I'd never stepped into the supernatural world, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the Enbalmed are pretty fucking high up on that list. Normies know "enbalming" as the way you preserve a corpse, but like most things in the world of magic and sorcery, the word takes a different meaning. In our world, "Enbalmed" is a catch-all for a man or woman whose corpse has been preserved and empowered by supernatural means. The body is taken upon death-- usually after the owner decides to spend their last moments on Earth playing sacrificial lamb in a bid for immortality and godlike power-- and then worked over with any and every number of specialized rituals, enchantments, spells and plenty of other shit that would kill the owner if they were still alive to begin with. Once the corpse has been properly tampered with, it gets buried and left alone for the world to forget. It lies in wait for years, decades, centuries, sometimes even millennia, and then, once the time comes, it claws itself out of the dirt and makes its way back into the world that left it behind.
There's all kinds of ways to enbalm. A good history buff might even have some superficial knowledge of a few of them; the Egyptians always were ahead of their time, and their practices of "mummification" were no different. But the cloth and dirt bodies you see butchered in movies and comic books aren't the only kind that exist. Nearly every ancient, spiritually connected civilization you can think of had their own distinct variation on the process, reserved only for those convicted and insane enough to try them.
But what makes the Enbalmed the stuff of nightmares isn't the methods used or any the legends you hear about what it takes to become one; it's what happens when one of them wakes up from its years of sleep. A newly resurrected Enbalmed is an apocalypse on legs. Whatever it is about all those rituals that pulls them back into the world with us, it endows them with real firepower and makes them practically unkillable even by our standards. Some Embalmed have ravaged countries, brought down kingdoms and stomped out some of the greatest mages and wizards to ever chase down Merlin's legacy, all because they didn't like how certain parts of the world evolved while they were asleep.
There's only one weakness that the Enbalmed share, and that's their slumber. If you find one before it wakes up on its own, there's nothing stopping you from cutting the thing's head off and ending the Second Coming before it begins."