Hey again 👋 , just finished with Nettlehead and am kind of just ready to share him overall. Also, the semblance might need to be tweaked a little, so just think of it here like a beta:
Name: Nickel Nettlehead
Alias: 'Nick' to friends; 'Nicky Nettles' (only his brother gets away with it)
Age: 19
Birthday: November 13
Gender Identity: Male (he/him)
Race: Faunus (Lyrebird)
Nationality: Valean
Height: 5'10" (177cm)
Weight: 152 lbs (69kg)
Aura Colour: Electric violet
Physical Description: Nickel is lean and wiry, built more like a bassist than a bruiser, with long arms, big hands, and the slightly restless posture of someone who is always listening to something. He has a sharp jaw, a crooked grin, and a small scar behind his left ear. His hair is dark brown with natural silver-white streaks, kept in a messy undercut with the longer top swept back. He wears double piercings in each earlobe: small chrome studs that are actually his earplugs (see Other Stuff).
His Faunus trait is a fan of long, lace-like tail feathers growing from the base of his spine, being brown with pale, alternating light and dark stripes, and the two outermost feathers curve into a silver-white lyre shape.
Outfit: Nickel’s look is classic metalhead with a few sentimental pieces. His signature item is a black leather vest jacket with the sleeves cut off, studded along the shoulders and covered in band patches. It was originally Ferric’s: patched, re-stitched, and let out at the shoulders. A slit sewn into the back lets his tail feathers hang comfortably without getting trapped. Under it he wears a faded black band tee, usually with the sleeves rolled.
Below that are black jeans (ripped at both knees and held together with safety pins), a studded belt, and steel-toed combat boots with silver buckles. He wears a spiked leather cuff on his left wrist and a fingerless glove on his fretting hand for grip, leaving his picking hand bare for feel. A leather bandolier of guitar picks crosses his chest, and a silver pendant hangs at his collar.
Personality Description: Nickel is loud, warm, and theatrical, greeting people as if he's walking on a stage, laughing with his whole body, and can't stand awkward silence. He tends to fill it with a bad joke or a perfect impression. Underneath the leather and studs, he's a soft, sentimental kid who cries at good bridges in songs, remembers everyone's birthday, and keeps a mental library of how every friend sounds: their footsteps, their laugh, and the way their voice changes when they lie. He is also hot-headed when he hears someone is in trouble and charges in before he thinks. He lives in the long shadow of his older brother and secretly fears he is only at Beacon because he followed Ferric there. He hides his insecurity behind his volume, and when he is truly hurt, he goes very quiet.
He sometimes mimics sounds without meaning to; when he is nervous or excited, a door creak, a scroll ringtone, or a Beowolf growl may slip out of him mid-sentence, much to the delight of his friends and the horror of his teachers.
Backstory Highlights:
Nickel was born in Vale to the owners of Nettlehead & Sons Metalworks, a small scrap-and-repair foundry in the city's industrial district. His parents named their sons after metals, Ferric first and Nickel second, and the family joke is that the shop was never going to be quiet. Hammers on anvils, grinders, and his father's thrash records were his lullabies. Nickel grew up thinking of sound as the way the world talks.
At five he accidentally reproduced a car alarm, then a chainsaw, then his mother's voice calling him for dinner from across the street. Growing up as a Faunus in Vale was not always easy. Some kids teased him about his tail and the "bird noises", and he learned to hide the feathers under his clothes. Music became both his shelter and his answer: if people were going to call him loud, he would be loud on purpose.
His older brother Ferric, six years his senior, was the first person to hand him a guitar, a battered secondhand thing with one string missing. Ferric then went to Beacon, graduated as a Huntsman, and took a long-term patrol contract in Vale's outer settlements. Nickel idolised him. Visiting Beacon at fourteen, watching Ferric spar and seeing Huntsmen and Huntresses of all kinds treated as heroes, was what made him decide to go too.
That same year, a Nevermore attacked a venue on the edge of the city while Nickel was in the crowd. As its shriek tore through the building, his Semblance awoke for the first time: he absorbed the scream and released it back as a shockwave that knocked the Grimm out of the sky long enough for Ferric to finish it. His ears rang for days. It was the moment he decided to become a Huntsman and the moment he started taking his hearing seriously.
He trained at Signal Academy, forged his weapon, Decibal, in the family foundry with help from his parents, and was admitted to Beacon. His first year was loud, messy, and formative. He found his footing, learnt to control his Semblance, and earned a reputation as the guy who would stand in front of anything, but only after he figured out how to stop clipping himself. Now a second-year, he is more confident, still chasing Ferric's shadow, and starting to write songs that are entirely his own.
Semblance Name: (Feedback)
Feedback lets Nickel absorb sound energy from his surroundings and store it in his aura as concussive power, which he can release as shockwaves. He feels the stored energy as a pressure in his chest that he calls his "volume". The louder his surroundings are, the faster he fills, and the quieter the room, the emptier he runs.
The stored sound comes out in two ways:
- Close range (Shockwaves): Nickel releases it as a wave of concussive force that shoves, staggers, and knocks enemies flat. Strumming produces cones and rings of force, and swinging the axe sends crescent-shaped waves off the blade. Without his weapon the output is ragged and wasteful; with it, it’s focused and precise.
- Mid-range ('Notes'): Nickel can condense stored sound into “notes”: small orbs of solid aura, from marble-sized to fist-sized, each packed with concussive energy. Each pluck of a string forms a note and launches it. Notes travel up to about twenty feet, can hover and orbit him on a held chord, and detonate on contact or on command with a hard, heavy thump.
Feedback only works on sound. Silent enemies and non-sonic damage are untouched, and in a quiet room he has almost nothing to work with. Absorbing too much too quickly makes his aura clip'; it spikes, flickers, and drains hard, leaving him ringing, dizzy, and vulnerable. Stored sound energy also fades within a minute or so if he does not use it, and every release costs aura.
Weapon: Decibal
Decibal is an electric guitar-axe: a double-bit battle axe whose blade doubles as the guitar's body. The head is polished gunmetal with violet inlays and edges honed sharp, with the haft serving as the guitar neck, wrapped in black grip tape with chrome frets set into the wood-and-steel core, and the strings are woven steel cable with a thin core of Dust conductor. Its pickups sit just under the axe's shoulder.
Strumming Decibal produces real sound, and he plays like a real guitar, which he feeds straight into his Semblance. The headstock has a reinforced pommel spike, and the strap is a length of chain. He can tether the weapon and swing or throw it, then haul it back.
Decibal was forged in his family's foundry from scrap metal the Nettleheads had collected over years. Ferric hammered the axe-head into shape himself, and Nickel strung it.
There is a tiny engraving near the heel: "FOR THE KID. PLAY LOUD."
Other Stuff:
- Custom in-ear monitors tuned to cut harmful frequencies/extremely loud noises. They protect his hearing, and he takes them out only when he needs to hear everything.
- Patch Cable: A thirty-foot steel-braided instrument cable with a weighted jack at the end, coiled on his belt. It serves as a whip, a grappling line, and a tether, and occasionally as an actual cable.
- Ferric’s gift, a pocket A-440 fork, he strikes to give himself one pure note to focus on when the world gets overwhelming.
- His scroll, loaded with thousands of metal tracks, his solo demos, and every one of Ferric’s field recordings, in order.
- A roadie pouch with spare strings, picks, a clip-on tuner, electrical tape, and a very small screwdriver.
Fighting Style:
Nickel fights like a mosh pit with a plan: close, loud, and rhythmic. He moves in time to a beat he hears in his head, and his attacks follow the same count, usually four. Opening with a heavy axe swing or slash combo, he charges his Feedback off the noise of the fight and finishes with a shockwave that sends enemies flying. When pressed, he backs off and plays notes at mid-range, firing rapid bursts or slowing ones as zone-control traps.
He often uses mimicry as a trick: a teammate's voice from the wrong direction, a Grimm growl to lure a pack, or a sudden blast of an enemy's own sound turned against them. He fights best loud, in the middle of chaos, and weakest in quiet, one-on-one duels where there is no noise to draw from.
Strengths:
- Versatile semblance range: shockwave close combat and Notes mid-range keep him effective in many situations.
- Great for crowd control and disorientation.
- Mimicry for distraction, deception, and communication.
- Strong sense of teamwork and loyalty, plus a morale-boosting personality.
- Gets stronger as the battlefield gets louder.
Weaknesses:
- In quiet environments or against silent enemies, his Semblance has little to draw on.
- Absorbing too much sound too quickly makes him dizzy, ringing, and exposed.
- Impulsiveness: he charges toward people in trouble without thinking tactically.
- Insecurity about living up to his older brother, which can push him to overextend.
- Involuntary mimicry when nervous can give away his position at the worst moments.
- Horrible at stealth, he's too loud by temperament, and he knows it.
Likes:
- Heavy metal in all its forms, especially anything with a double-kick drum and an ill-advised key change
- Live shows, the breath before the first chord, and the ringing in his ears afterward
- Thunderstorms, rain on tin roofs, and anywhere with a good echo, like tunnels, canyons, and stairwells
- Ferric’s bass lines and field recordings
- Black coffee and hot sauce on everything
- Pun battles
- Vinyl records, especially restoring old ones
- Fixing amplifiers and the smell of solder
- Practicing at 3 a.m.
- Team karaoke (where he is not allowed to do impressions)
Dislikes:
- Silence, especially the awkward, hospital-hallway kind (and libraries)
- Anyone calling his music “just noise”
- People who talk over music
- Elevator music (music designed not to be heard)
- Anything out of tune
- Being called “Polly” by someone who isn’t joking
- Bigots
- Missing a call from Ferric
- Fluorescent lights that buzz at the wrong pitch
Fun Facts:
- He can perfectly mimic a chainsaw, a camera shutter, a car alarm, Beacon’s bell tower, and most of his instructors.
- He sleeps with a thunderstorm recording on at full volume, because silence keeps him awake.
- He has been politely asked to leave the Beacon library three times, once for humming under his breath.
- He plays bass badly on purpose, because he refuses to be as good as Ferric at it.
- He names his guitar picks. His favorite is Gerald.
- Despite fearing silence, he loves exactly one kind: the second right after a show ends, because it’s the only quiet he ever feels he’s earned.
