Nero Sparda

Face-up artist(s):

Me

Body blushing artist(s):

Me

Date of acquisition:

July 2024

Provenance:

Secondhand, facebook sales group

Reason for choice:

I fell in love the instant I saw a picture of the Dohwee sculpt for the first time - everything about it is perfect to me, from the soft yet detailed little face, to the slightly droopy eyes, the open mouth with teeth, the slender yet mature looking body, I immediately knew I needed him and needed him to be my idealized version of the character Nero from devil may cry.

Best Points:

His sculpting is absolutely phenomenal, everything about how he looks is so harmonious and works so well together. there's little details in all parts of the sculpt, like the inside of the headcap as well as the neckhole being heartshaped.

Worst Points:

The body isn't the most poseable - the way his head rests looking slightly up at all times, it looks like he's meant to be permanently slouching, which isn't a downside to me but is a bit limiting in terms of the body language he projects. Also there is an issue with his left knee where the edge of the thigh piece and the calf piece don't sit flush together, so his stance is a bit uneven, it doesn't otherwise seem to affect functionality or poseability other than looking a bit odd. Unsure if that's a sculpt issue or a defect of this one specific doll, or even a result of damage from the previous owner. The S hooks in the wrists are very tiny, meaning if you pull too hard on the hands the whole arm stringing can tend to come apart, but if you take care with it it doesn't seem to be much of an issue.

Eyes:

Resin eyes, made by me

Wig:

Yarn wig made by me

Favourite colours:

Pastel blue, teal, turquoise, black, white, red, pastel pink

Fashion style(s):

Depending on which version of Nero I'm portraying at the moment - either punk, grunge, alternative, pastel goth, jjirai kei

Key fashion accessory:

hoodies

Name story:

He's an idealised/slightly reinterpreted version of the character Nero from the Devil May Cry franchise.

Character age:

late teens/early 20s (18 to 24-ish), depending on which moment/version of the character he's portraying at the moment

Character gender:

Male, intersex

Offsite roleplay:

This doll's character is not available for offsite roleplay.

• Canonical to the DMC franchise:

Nero is a demon hunter who's part demon himself.
He was raised in the tiny, religious island of Fortuna, a place that worships the Devil Knight Sparda as a god - the legends say that Sparda, despite being a demon himself, rose in defense of mankind, sealed the demon world from the human world, defeated the demon emperor Mundus, and spent centuries fighting off demons to defend humanity.
Additionally, according to Fortunan legends, Sparda himself founded their town and ruled over it as a feudal lord in ancient times, and according to their doctrine, demons are evil monsters meant to be banished, and the figure of Sparda has been rewritten almost in the shape of a guardian angel.

As such, Nero had a very rough upbringing - being an orphan who was dumped as a baby on the doorstep of the Fortuna Orphanage, his demonic blood always made him an outcast and an oddball among the other children, even as he himself wasn't aware of it.
He was eventually adopted by a kind family of devout Sparda worshippers - who thought his silver-white hair, just the way Sparda's was said to look like in the legends, must have been a good omen.
Unfortunately the couple passed pretty quickly after adopting Nero - unbeknownst to everyone, as a result of a nefarious experiment by the religious order that ruled the town, the Order of the Sword. The current vicar of the Order, Sanctus, had begun partnering with the mad scientist Agnus to attempt to turn humans into demons - under the pretense of turning them into "angels"; it is unknown whether Nero's adoptive parents were casualties after a subject of the experiments went rogue, or whether they, being high ranking members of the Order as well, were themselves experimented on and executed after losing control.

For the rest of his childhood and teen years, Nero was instead raised by the couple's eldest son, Credo, who followed in his parents' footsteps and became the Supreme General of the Holy Knights, the Order's squadron of defensive forces who act as law enforcement for the town as well as their active line of defense when fighting demons.
Once Nero was old enough, he, too, followed Credo into the Order Knights, though despite his adoptive brother taking him under his wing in hopes that getting a position of prestige within the knights might finally earn Nero some respect among the townfolk - his innate strength and fighting capabilities, a result of his demonic blood, making him stand out among the other recruits - Nero's despondent attitude, anger management issues, and lack of team-playing abilities meant that instead of being sent out with the rest of the knights he was enlisted to work in the shadows as, essentially, the Order's assassin, mainly tasked to take out people deemed as "possessed" by the Order - likely a cover up to refer to failed rogue experiments.
He was also particularly close to Credo's younger sister, Kyrie - despite being adoptive siblings, the two appeared to have been harbouring feelings for one another, something the other recruits gave Nero a lot of grief for, with Kyrie being particularly popular among many of the other boys their age.

Sometime when he was 18/19, he was injured by a demon while defending Kyrie and a group of orphans from an attack - the wound sparking a reaction in his demon blood, as it made his whole right arm turn demonic; something that brought him great shame and that he sought to hide in order not to be thought of as a demon by the people in the island, even though it proved to be a great asset for fighting.

His daily life until that day came to a point when the Order's machinations lead to a massive incident that nearly destroyed the island - the vicar, Sanctus, had planned to create a living statue of Sparda called "The Saviour" that would be powered by a descendant of Sparda himself, and at the same time use the legendary Devil Arm Yamato - another relic from Sparda's past - to open up a Hellgate that would summon hordes of demons into the human world, only to then use the Saviour as a weapon against them to appear as a hero and make people worship Sanctus himself as a god and a protector of mankind.

He'd planned to lure the Legendary Demon Hunter, Dante, the son of Sparda, to the island and then capture and use him as the battery for the Saviour - but what he hadn't anticipated was Credo assigning Nero, himself, out to be the one to hunt Dante down - once again hoping that fulfilling such a high ranking task would grant Nero respect among the leads of the Order, his reasoning being that with Nero being the strongest Knight in the force, he'd be the one who'd be the most likely to apprehend Dante - but tangling with Dante brought forth Nero's dormant demonic nature to the surface, as it turned out that Nero, himself, is none other than a descendant of Sparda as well.

This changed Sanctus' plans to using Nero as a battery instead, with him being strong enough in lineage to provide the power needed, but younger and less experienced than Dante and thus much easier to subjugate - kidnapping Kyrie and using her as leverage to bring Nero to his knees, and killing Credo once he, too, tried to put a stop to their nefarious plans.
Dante, immediately realizing and recognizing his familial bond with Nero - with the boy having been able to immediately wield and restore the broken pieces of the Yamato sword, the sword that had been initially Sparda's but had since been passed to Dante's late twin brother, Vergil, there was little doubt that he had to be related to them - set out to rescue Nero (and Kyrie, as per Credo's dying request), and the two of them joined forces to bring the Order down.

Once peace had been restored to the town, Dante passed the Yamato off to Nero, resolving to not tell him about their close relation, hoping to keep him out of the family's drama-filled and fraught history, but still sending him out a neon sign with "Devil May Cry" written on it - an unspoken invitation for Nero to join Dante's demon hunting business of the same name.
Nero took the job in stride, eventually fixing up a van with the help of his new friend and mechanic Nico, the daughter of Agnus who had heard of her father's demise (happily so, as he had abandoned her and her mother when she'd been little) and tracked Nero down hoping to get her hands on her father's research on demons - together they set out a mobile branch of the Devil May Cry agency.


Five years after these events, Nero was ambushed in his own garage by a hooded figure - who ripped off his demonic arm in one fell swoop, seeking to steal Yamato from him - one of Nero's powers being the ability to absorb demonic weapons into his demonized arm.

The figure turned out to be Vergil - Dante's long lost twin brother and Nero's father, who had been thought to be dead for the past twenty years, but in reality had been teetering on the edge of life and death while trying to make his way out of the demon world - and once he did so, he blindly reached for where he felt Yamato's pull coming from, eventually ending up in Nero's garage and attacking him to steal the weapon back from him, not even aware that the young man he'd just brutalized was his own son.
Nero spent a month in a coma following the attack - his demonic powers should have granted him instant healing abilities, but getting his arm torn off proving to be a huge shock to his system.

Meanwhile, Vergil had decided to use Yamato to cut the sickness out of him, to be strong enough to stand on his own legs and challenge his twin brother once again - but in doing so ended up separating his personality, his humanity, and his conscience into a frail, weak young man - V - and his pure, unbridled demonic power into a monster, Urizen, who, devoid of Vergil's conscience or desires, blindly sought out to rule over both the demon and the human worlds - to prove himself as the most powerful being alive, using Yamato to open up a rift and allow a Qliphoth tree to sprout into the human world, a demon tree that, feeding on the blood of countless people, would eventually produce a fruit that would bring a gigantic power boost to anyone who eats it.

V, immediately realizing the gravity of his actions and just how devastating it would be if Urizen was allowed free reign, sought out Dante to put a stop to his demonic half - knowing that if anyone at all had a chance at stopping him, it would be his brother.
But unfortunately Dante failed - and so V, as a last ditch resort, called out to Nero, who'd only just woken up from his coma.
Predictably that went poorly as well - as in the wake of Vergil's attack Nero's demonic powers were diminished nearly into nothing, as well as being freshly injured and still recovering.

Dante protected Nero once again from Urizen's attack before being ultimately defeated and going missing, and Nero and V made their escape from the Qliphoth, resolving to take a month to prepare before they launched the final attack against Urizen.

Once that month had passed, with the help of Nico, who made prosthetic arms for Nero using parts from felled demons to give them extra abilities, Nero and V eventually managed to recover Dante - who'd been in his own coma for that whole month - and face off against Urizen again, and though Nero didn't manage to defeat him this time either, he held his own against him enough to weaken him for Dante to take on, who had managed to unlock the full extent of his demonic powers.
Dante eventually defeated Urizen - but V was the one who dealt the final blow, as he knew that by doing that, he'd be able to finally reunite with his demon half - bringing his former self, Vergil, back as well, this time fully healthy and no longer a step away from death.

After having come face to face with Vergil himself, Dante finally revealed to Nero their blood relation - the fact that he'd been sure since the day he'd met him that Vergil had to be Nero's father, and that for that reason, he didn't want Nero here to fight his own father, before setting off to chase after Vergil, intending on defeating him for good.

Nero chased after them, too, once he'd gotten over the shock - realizing that the brothers were, essentially, fighting over nothing; Vergil purely wanting to get a leg over Dante for his own pride, and Dante assuming that Urizen's ambitions were Vergil's own and thus, that his brother was still a danger to humanity and needed to be put down.

He came in between his father an uncle - unlocking his full demonic powers as he did so, his lost arm growing back - to stop them from killing one another, not wanting to lose his blood family as soon as he learned he had one. It seemed to be just the wake up call Dante and Vergil needed - forgetting their childish rivalry to deal with the real issue at hand, namely, the Qliphoth Tree that still posed a danger to humanity and kept a rift open between the human and demon world.
They both jumped into the portal between the worlds to cut down the tree, leaving Nero with the task of protecting humanity from demons while they were gone, and vaguely hinting that they'd be back someday.

• My own headcanons for the character:

(WIP)

• My own AU versions:

(WIP)