His grace is curious, like the grace of a figure on film run backward; his motion fluid yet jerky. Feline in nature, not a single wisp of hair adorns the Sphinx's translucent-pale peach skin. Hypersaturated green eyes seem to waver between painful attentiveness and a dreamlike endorphin state, his cog-shaped pupils flaring and contracting almost as quickly as his heart visibly beats in his chest. Dark bands of ink spiral over his cheeks and forehead, marking his long hours spent under the tatau master's au. Broad stripes continue down his neck and over his shoulders, spreading out to cover his biceps. Circular rings, descending in size, encircle his arms; the thickest is just above his elbow, the thinnest just around his wrist. Both palms are inked with stylized vertical eyes, frozen half-open.
Downward-pointing chevrons of thick black ink raise the skin of his chest and back, leading down to a solid swath that looks almost like a loincloth, wrapping around his narrow hips and delineating a perfect square on the inside of each thigh. The outside of each thigh is marked with three circles, equal in size, and his calves are also solid-black, with negative-space circles of velvet-soft unmarked skin to mirror the black ones upon his thighs. His slender, black-clawed plantigrade feet have escaped the tatau master's clutches, for now. A narrow whiplike tail, almost more like a rat's tail than any feline appendage lashes behind him, banded with stripes similar to those on his arms. Thick imipolex plugs, at least two inches in diameter, are set into the stretched flesh of his earlobes, exaggerating the almost elfin characteristics of his head and face, and a thick tusk of the same material is run through the septum of his pinkish nose.
His wire-thin body supports an ornate 'cage', long skewers of steel locking him into an eternal kavadi trance. The cage's supports hover perhaps four inches over the tips of his tall ears, leading to the belief that they're somehow hung from the air itself. But in fact, the numerous skewers themselves provide support for the beams, as evidenced by the way the points push at his skin. He does not bleed, though, despite the long cuts pulled through the first delicate layer of peach, by gravity and the skewers' sharp points. Long streamers of shifting-colour imipolex flutter around him, suspended from uncountable points on the cage, and his soft, halting steps are heralded by the soft chime of synthbells sewn to his pearlescent skin.
There is only the hint of a feline form within this cocoon of quicksilver cobwebs. It hovers somehow, suspended in midair. Disjointed letters, symbols and glyphs swirl over its surface, occasionally pulling together to form words. Bold black spirals and chevrons mark the outer shell of the chrysalis, forming some external manifestation of what lies within.
His grace is curious, like a figure on film-run-backward, motion fluid yet jerky and crackling. Hairless, elfin, somewhat feline, except for the insectile mouth completing his narrow, blunt muzzle. His eyes are hypersaturated green, clouded over with quicksilver cataracts, a cog-shaped black spot marring each cataract, permanently dilated and all-seeing. Dark bands of ink spiral over his cheeks and forehead, marking long hours spent under the tatau master's au. Broad stripes continue down his neck and over his shoulders, spreading out to cover his biceps. Circular rings, descending in size, encircle his arms; the thickest is just above his elbow, the thinnest just around his wrist. His palms are split open with ocular stigmata, bright green eyes peering through ragged-edged tears in his skin.
Downward-pointing chevrons of thick black ink raise the skin of his chest and back, leading down to a solid swath that looks almost like a loincloth, wrapping around his narrow hips and delineating a perfect square on the inside of each thigh. The outside of each thigh is marked with three circles, equal in size, and his calves are also solid-black, with negative-space circles of quicksilver-swirling unmarked skin to mirror the black ones upon his thighs. His slender, black-clawed plantigrade feet have escaped the tatau master's clutches, for now. A narrow whiplike tail, almost more like a rat's tail than any feline appendage lashes behind him, banded with stripes similar to those on his arms. Thick imipolex plugs, at least two inches in diameter, are set into the stretched flesh of his earlobes, exaggerating the almost elfin characteristics of his head and face, and a thick tusk of the same material is run through the septum of his pinkish nose.
Where once he stood proud and straight beneath his chosen ordeals, now he is wisened and stooped. Great wings spring from his back, two pairs of mothlike scale-and-ephemera appendages. The upper pair is dark, mottled with red and black and brown, fresh blood layered upon dried; the lower pair is silvery and cobwebbed, banded with bloody red bars along the edges. Silvery strands flow beneath the wings, mimicking mothlike legs, and long tendrils curl over his forehead. Between his shoulderblades is a silvery deaths'-head, a species-badge, echoed in smaller silver droplets on his chest, surrounding a tiny glass sphere set between his collarbones, full of dark matter contained by golden rings.
Erleuchtung, now Satori, has managed to form a tender symbiosis with the Strangevirus. Having been infected during some failed experiment in body-modification, he tortured himself with self-imposed rituals of mutilation and pain-negating trances for some uncounted, but long, period of time, before eventually the silver virus' call became too strong to fight back. He allowed himself to be engulfed in a cocoon of silver silk, where he reckoned with the virus itself as it strove to infect him.
He emerged, changed, his body echoing those who lingered in his memory as he lay dormant within his chrysalis. No longer is he infectious or dangerous; his strength of will has subverted the Strange within him into a semi-quiescent, independant viral strain. But his body is not alone in its metamorphosis. Once a seeker of enlightenment who depended on pain to send him into deep trance, he has retained only the base desire for physical sensation. No longer does he search the tranceways for things lost or unknown.. now he seeks only more modification, more permanent change. And yet, nothing becomes permanent, given Strange's hold over his body. He expires each time, only to be reborn again as a fresh, unchanged canvas.
Lost among the tranceways for some time after his conversion to a Strangebeing, Satori has found an outlet back to the Mess. There he sits, waiting, peering into Puzzlebox as though through a pane of one-way glass. The Mess' siren call beckons him to return home, but he is frightened and unsteady, perhaps even afraid of what he might find changed in his long absence.