Rowan 'Turambar' Gaunt
Jan 18, 2017 1:32:50 GMT -6
Post by Rowan 'Turambar' Gaunt on Jan 18, 2017 1:32:50 GMT -6
Name:Rowan Gaunt
Class:Seer
Age:31
Born in:Bern
Appearance:If you were to meet Rowan Gaunt in the street, you might think him some sort of apparition. Born with ivory hair, there are some who refer to Rowan as a ghost. Bearing a pale complexion, the seer appears white as a sheet, and there are those who think him a zombie. Imbued with different colored iris', one a deep green, the other a light blue, there are those who believe Rowan carries the eyes of demons. However, such appearances are entirely deceiving. While the seer does not radiate or bulge with vitality, he exercises regularly and the definition of muscle is clearly visible when his body is laid bare. No matter how abnormal Rowan may appear, his body is in better condition than most and, while the circumstances of Rowan's birth and fate are consistently associated with ill omen, he is by no means a ghost, a zombie, or a demon.
Rowan sports drab, dark gray robes which run the length of his body. While conducting experiments on the undead, the seer wears a long, black smock and a beaked mask, complete with glass goggles. He covers his hands with black leather gloves and his feet with boots of the same color and material. Decorating his arms and hands are old burns from his youth. Tattooed on the seer's back is an upside-down wheel of fortune. It is the only body modification Rowan has undergone, and serves as a mockery to the curses placed upon him as a child.
Personality:Blessed with a vast mind and an insatiable curiosity, Rowan has learned much. Whether it be machinations of the living, dead, and undead human body, knowledge of current events, or a deep understanding of the nether, Rowan's appetite for knowledge is similar a hunger for food, a thirst for drink, or a lust for sex. Going too long without learning something tends to have strange effects on the seer. He becomes irritated and lethargic, losing interest in performing even the most basic of duties. Some might diagnose the seer's interactions with others as high-functioning sociopathy. This is not true. What may come off as emotionless or unsympathetic is merely a reserved sense of empathy. The seer had a hard life growing up. He finds it hard to sympathize with those who have been dealt better hands. When speaking with others, Rowan is primarily analytical and secondarily cordial. He may ask questions regarding a person's identity, past, appearance, anything which might provide a context for who he is speaking to. Though not impolite, his blunt manner of asking questions may come off as tactless.
History:As a boy Rowan knew little about his father or mother. The extent of his knowledge of them came entirely from the fortune teller who raised him. Rowan's father was a highwayman with knowledge of the dark arts. An emotionless and highly intelligent brigand, he only met Rowan's mother once. It happened one night as his mother, a tavern wench, was traveling south, back to Lucerne. Traveling along the Rhine river, she was attacked and her escort Ilian mercenary impaled upon the tendrils of Ruin. The rest the fortune teller refused to tell. Only that afterwards Rowan's mother returned to town, her complexion pale and unhealthy, and that within a few months she began to bulge with child.
A boy born of force and elder magic, Rowan's birth was surrounded with ill omen and predictions of doom. The fortune teller who raised him often found the Tower, Death, and the Moon to be recurring tarot cards in her predictions for his future. His birth-date coincides with the prediction of the Opening of the Abyssal Door, a popular Armageddon date based off of a myth regarding a fiery gate in the Dread Isles. Indeed, not even Rowan's mother could bear bringing him into this world and her tragic life ended with the start of his. Many loathed and mistrusted Rowan for the life his birth took and the fortunes of his future. The fortune-teller who fostered him risked much in raising him. It seemed the only person to hold no stock in the predictions was Rowan himself. An intellectual, even as a boy, Rowan only trusted that which was backed by hard evidence.
Growing up was difficult for Rowan. Studious, but ostracized, he had an insatiable curiosity and no teacher willing to quench his thirst. His peculiar interests only made him more of an anathema to his community. Rowan would scour the woods and streets for whatever vermin he could get his hands on. After euthanizing them, he'd delicately make incisions to their bodies, cutting into them so he could understand how they worked. He desired to understand how the human body worked as well, but knew better than to try and learn about it by any means other than text.
Rowan learned to be self-sufficient early in life. He taught himself to read by visiting the local Church. Even though the priests there distrusted him, they were loyal to their duty of spreading Elimine's word. He made money by doing odd jobs in town. Even though many of his initial employers cheated him of his wages, he continued to work for those who did not. And even though few merchants in town would accept his money, he purchased wares from traveling entrepreneurs who would.
He spent most of his meager earnings on paperbacks, as they were his best means of learning. His guardian allowed the boy to make use of a spare room as his personal library. Over the course of two years, Rowan assembled a small collection of scrolls, books, medical notes, cooking recipes, and even a collection of alleged miracle cures. The youth collected anything he could read, regardless of its' value.
One day, a traveling merchant came to town, claiming to possess items with magical properties. His selling technique did nothing to fool Rowan. But there was one object which caught the boy's eye, A flux tome, the beginner's manual to elder magic. It was the only item Rowan purchased. He had long known of dark magic, had heard stories about it. He knew his father had practiced it and knew the power the man had wielded. He quickly became fascinated with the elder arts. A new morbid curiosity for him to research and devour, elder magic only sullied his already scorned reputation. It would not be long before Rowan lost his home.
Long had the people of Inswood wanted Rowan gone. He was a cursed child, born of wickedness and prophesied to bring wickedness. Bearing torches and bladed tools of farming, they came to the house of his guardian. They broke into his home, capturing him and his guardian, intent on ending Rowan's life. But first they planned to cleanse the house of his presence. They came into his library and put it to the torch. Every piece of parchment Rowan had spent the last few years collecting went up in flame. His notes on human physiology were destroyed, old texts he'd borrowed from the local Church became ash, and even his most favored possession, the flux tome, was consumed by fire. Over the course of a handful of minutes, the progress of years was burned right before Rowan's eyes.
Rowan was not the kind to know much range of emotion. Where the townspeople regarded him with disgust, he was largely indifferent. When people cheated him of his wages, Rowan was disappointed but never sad or angry. Obstacles meant nothing of discouragement to him, merely intellectual challenges. But the destruction of his library? That was the first time Rowan knew anger.
As the rampant flames consumed Rowan's treasure of knowledge, the boy sunk his teeth into the hand of the man restraining him. His captor let go, and the boy stormed through the raging flames, claiming the remnants of the flux tome. The fire licked at him, darkening his fingers and spotting the length of his arms. Much of the book was aflame or black ash, but some of it remained intact. With those remaining burnt pages, he cast a vortex of elder magic on the crowd. The spell startled them, dividing the crowd despite causing only superficial damage. Half of the crowd was terrified by the magic. The rest were startled, but undeterred. The scared members of the mob ran for their lives while the zealous attempted to shove them aside. Amidts the chaos, Rowan began channeling another spell, intent on striking down the mob. He was stopped as his guardian, the fortune-teller, ran into the flames. She begged him to run, to flee as far as he could, and live.
It was not an easy decision for Rowan to make. He had never felt the power of anger before, never learned how to control that aspect of his being. All he wanted was to destroy the townspeople, as they had destroyed his library. But Rowan was also a pragmatist. He knew his novice grasp of elder magic could do only so much harm and he also knew he wanted to continue to learn. Dying would have made that impossible. But there was more. Rowan was moved by his guardian's display. She was the only person to ever show concern or care for him. As she knelt there with him, the length of her arms blackened like his, the boy felt a compulsion to obey her. She moved him, and he ran. He took advantage of the chaos and fled deep into the woods, far from the reach of the townspeople. He never went back.
For the next week he wandered east, seeking civilization. His vast knowledge kept him alive. He knew how to hunt small game, skin animals, and build a fire. Finding and preparing food was a small concern for Rowan. The real problem was tending to his wounds. He knew how to treat them, but lacked the necessary supplies. Rowan's only respite came from nursing his arms in water. However, after waking up one night with the urge to void his bowels and vomit to the point of dry-heaving, he realized that not all bodies of water were as clean as the Rhine River. Wounded and afflicted, there was little hope for Rowan. The youth lost consciousness somewhere at the mouth Bernese mountain range.
He woke up several days later in a warm bed. His arms had been bandaged, then tended to with a staff. A traveling merchant had come across him and brought him to a nearby village in Pherae.
There, for the first time in his life, Rowan was accepted by a community. He made friends in Pherae, where no one knew of the ill fortune surrounding his birth. He got along well with most in the village due to his wealth of knowledge. On more than one occasion, Rowan's medical expertise saved the lives of his fellow villagers. His hard-working nature found him work on the farmlands, where he discovered the pleasures of the opposite sex. The farm girls there admired him for his dedication, but more so for his unique appearance. The same appearance which had once garnered Rowan scorn was now considered 'sexy'. Rowan lived well for these two years, experiencing all of the trials and pleasures a young man should. He continued his study of the elder magic in secret however, distrusting of the world's view on it.
Rowan spent two years in Pherae before enlisting as a field medic in the military. He spent a year in training before fighting in Hargus' Bandit War. The next four years were rife with combat. Rowan spent his first three tours of duty in Pherae, Lycia before the Lycian League made headway against Hargus, and spent his last tour in Bern. By the end of the conflict, Rowan had attained the rank of Sergeant and established himself as a reliable surgeon. He had also met others with similar interests in elder magic.
Lieutenant Aerin Neithan lead Rowan through the war. An educated noblewoman, she knew well to fear elder magic but feared ignorance of the nether more. Ilian mage, Leland Twardowski, too joined their company. A researcher of anima, Leland had been forced into service as a combat mage. After witnessing the horrors of Hargus' power first hand, he believed the world needed greater knowledge of combating dark magic. Last among their group was reformed highwayman Beleg “Ballistae-Bow” Dimm. A veteran thug, Beleg shared Leland's sentiment and went turncoat during the finals days of Hargus' war. In the years to follow, he would become Rowan's closest friend.
The four left military service to pursue their research of elder magic. Securing funding for their ventures wasn't easy and always required a measure of cloak and dagger. Most of their benefactors were either fanatical bandits Beleg had once worked with or opportunistic nobles Aerin had connections with. Regardless of their social standing, those who employed Rowan and his friends always sought to gain some measure of power over the nether. None of them did. Until their expedition to the Dread Isles, the research Rowan's company performed was primarily observational.
Their travels took them to Bern first, consorting with and investigating fledgling cults which had risen in the wake of Hargus' black magic. There they learned more about the deceased Bandit King and how he became a vessel for the nether in exchange for its power. Indeed, Hargus' connection to the nether was alleged to be so strong that extended exposure to his presence drove lesser minds to gibbering madness. The exact extent to how powerful a conduit he had become would not be known until his revival and subsequent siege on the City of Heroes.
Next, the company braved the Dread Isles, where Rowan found his personal Worm tome, Umarth: The Confounding. It was upon the isles, that the group performed extensive research on the advanced elder magic tomes. Fearing the loss of their brilliant minds, Leland, who was now a practicing druid, and Rowan each limited themselves to two of the advanced elder tomes. Rowan performed magics with Ruin and his Worm tome Umarth, where Leland practiced Luna and Eclipse. This was the first time Rowan and Leland began to lose parts of themselves to the nether. Rowan was never a particularly expressive person, but control over the two advanced magics turned him from taciturn to mute. Leland on the other hand had always been very sociable, but his practices made him short-tempered and serious. Eventually, at Leland's request, the group left before their research was complete. The druid feared that the nether's connection to Elibe was strongest on Valor and that staying there could spell disaster for the company.
By the time the company came back to Elibe, they had hit hard times. Rowan and Leland would not fully recover from the effects of their exposure to the nether for a full year, and Aerin's political connections had turned sour. Rumors swirled associating Aerin's name with dark magic and the Neithan family subsequently disowned her in an effort to maintain a respectable social standing. Prolonged exposure to the powers of the nether had left Leland drained and he wished to return to the practice of anima. After playing with fire for close to three years, the company abandoned their research and tried to leave their work behind.
Aerin rejoined the Pheraen military, but was bumped down to a corporal and subsequently stonewalled whenever she tried to ascend in rank. She quickly left and joined the Lausian military forces, who were less concerned with social standing and more interested in her capabilities as a leader. Leland returned to Ilia, and threw himself into the study and practice of anima magic. Although his taste of the elder arts left him longing and largely unsatisfied with manipulating nature.
Rowan and Beleg stuck together. The Seer was still fascinated by the nether and, so long as he didn't practice the other advanced tomes, found that he could keep his mind intact. The two traveled Elibe, with Rowan and Beleg performing odd jobs to keep themselves fed and clothed.
Half a year passed and Rowan found himself entirely unfulfilled. He was never the type to feel things strongly, but pursuing research in elder magic now felt pointless. The only magical peer Rowan had ever had, Leland, had abandoned his research. The wayward group he'd formed with Aerin, and his other military buddies, had been dissolved and he doubted he would live to see the time when Elibian society would accept his research. So Rowan returned to the only home he ever knew, Pherae, and enrolled in med school. With his bright mind and vast experience as a surgeon, he excelled in his studies and was projected to become a certified physician by the age of thirty. He still pursued research of elder magic as a hobby, however, and often employed Beleg to conduct expeditions he himself could not go on.
Rowan had completed half of his schooling by the time Ostia had fallen and Laus started to gain power. Late one night, while studying his texts he heard a knock on the door. Upon answering it, Rowan was greeted by someone he had never expected to see again, Leland. The destruction of Ostia had a strange effect on Elibe. It was as if the world had been wounded and the nether was now bleeding out of that wound. The living dead, aberrations thought to exist only in horror stories, walked the earth. The ever ambitious Marquess Laus had few plans to secure control over the whole of Lycia without knowledge of the beasts which now roamed the continent. In secret, he began employing Druids and Seers, anyone with a mind intact and knowledge of the nether. One of the Marquess' middle-men reached out to Aerin, who had become a captain in the Lausian forces, and she in turn provided the names of her former colleagues. Leland was the first to be recruited, and he in turn was dispatched to recruit Rowan and Beleg. The Seer needed no convincing. He enjoyed his medical studies, but desired to research the nether more. Leland assured him that Beleg could accompany the Seer as his bodyguard and Rowan left Pherae behind.
For the past three years Rowan has committed himself to studying the undead and deepening his knowledge of the nether, making an unspoken name for himself among Marquess Laus' researchers. While his findings have proved valuable for Ostia's spiritual successor, the effects of the nether once more prey upon his mind. In the coming years, the seer will have to decide just how important the pursuit of knowledge is to him and whether he is willing to give validation to the curses of his childhood.
NPC fight:Alt of Ravvus/Luba.
PC fight:Alt of Ravvus/Luba.
Class:Seer
Age:31
Born in:Bern
Appearance:If you were to meet Rowan Gaunt in the street, you might think him some sort of apparition. Born with ivory hair, there are some who refer to Rowan as a ghost. Bearing a pale complexion, the seer appears white as a sheet, and there are those who think him a zombie. Imbued with different colored iris', one a deep green, the other a light blue, there are those who believe Rowan carries the eyes of demons. However, such appearances are entirely deceiving. While the seer does not radiate or bulge with vitality, he exercises regularly and the definition of muscle is clearly visible when his body is laid bare. No matter how abnormal Rowan may appear, his body is in better condition than most and, while the circumstances of Rowan's birth and fate are consistently associated with ill omen, he is by no means a ghost, a zombie, or a demon.
Rowan sports drab, dark gray robes which run the length of his body. While conducting experiments on the undead, the seer wears a long, black smock and a beaked mask, complete with glass goggles. He covers his hands with black leather gloves and his feet with boots of the same color and material. Decorating his arms and hands are old burns from his youth. Tattooed on the seer's back is an upside-down wheel of fortune. It is the only body modification Rowan has undergone, and serves as a mockery to the curses placed upon him as a child.
Personality:Blessed with a vast mind and an insatiable curiosity, Rowan has learned much. Whether it be machinations of the living, dead, and undead human body, knowledge of current events, or a deep understanding of the nether, Rowan's appetite for knowledge is similar a hunger for food, a thirst for drink, or a lust for sex. Going too long without learning something tends to have strange effects on the seer. He becomes irritated and lethargic, losing interest in performing even the most basic of duties. Some might diagnose the seer's interactions with others as high-functioning sociopathy. This is not true. What may come off as emotionless or unsympathetic is merely a reserved sense of empathy. The seer had a hard life growing up. He finds it hard to sympathize with those who have been dealt better hands. When speaking with others, Rowan is primarily analytical and secondarily cordial. He may ask questions regarding a person's identity, past, appearance, anything which might provide a context for who he is speaking to. Though not impolite, his blunt manner of asking questions may come off as tactless.
History:As a boy Rowan knew little about his father or mother. The extent of his knowledge of them came entirely from the fortune teller who raised him. Rowan's father was a highwayman with knowledge of the dark arts. An emotionless and highly intelligent brigand, he only met Rowan's mother once. It happened one night as his mother, a tavern wench, was traveling south, back to Lucerne. Traveling along the Rhine river, she was attacked and her escort Ilian mercenary impaled upon the tendrils of Ruin. The rest the fortune teller refused to tell. Only that afterwards Rowan's mother returned to town, her complexion pale and unhealthy, and that within a few months she began to bulge with child.
A boy born of force and elder magic, Rowan's birth was surrounded with ill omen and predictions of doom. The fortune teller who raised him often found the Tower, Death, and the Moon to be recurring tarot cards in her predictions for his future. His birth-date coincides with the prediction of the Opening of the Abyssal Door, a popular Armageddon date based off of a myth regarding a fiery gate in the Dread Isles. Indeed, not even Rowan's mother could bear bringing him into this world and her tragic life ended with the start of his. Many loathed and mistrusted Rowan for the life his birth took and the fortunes of his future. The fortune-teller who fostered him risked much in raising him. It seemed the only person to hold no stock in the predictions was Rowan himself. An intellectual, even as a boy, Rowan only trusted that which was backed by hard evidence.
Growing up was difficult for Rowan. Studious, but ostracized, he had an insatiable curiosity and no teacher willing to quench his thirst. His peculiar interests only made him more of an anathema to his community. Rowan would scour the woods and streets for whatever vermin he could get his hands on. After euthanizing them, he'd delicately make incisions to their bodies, cutting into them so he could understand how they worked. He desired to understand how the human body worked as well, but knew better than to try and learn about it by any means other than text.
Rowan learned to be self-sufficient early in life. He taught himself to read by visiting the local Church. Even though the priests there distrusted him, they were loyal to their duty of spreading Elimine's word. He made money by doing odd jobs in town. Even though many of his initial employers cheated him of his wages, he continued to work for those who did not. And even though few merchants in town would accept his money, he purchased wares from traveling entrepreneurs who would.
He spent most of his meager earnings on paperbacks, as they were his best means of learning. His guardian allowed the boy to make use of a spare room as his personal library. Over the course of two years, Rowan assembled a small collection of scrolls, books, medical notes, cooking recipes, and even a collection of alleged miracle cures. The youth collected anything he could read, regardless of its' value.
One day, a traveling merchant came to town, claiming to possess items with magical properties. His selling technique did nothing to fool Rowan. But there was one object which caught the boy's eye, A flux tome, the beginner's manual to elder magic. It was the only item Rowan purchased. He had long known of dark magic, had heard stories about it. He knew his father had practiced it and knew the power the man had wielded. He quickly became fascinated with the elder arts. A new morbid curiosity for him to research and devour, elder magic only sullied his already scorned reputation. It would not be long before Rowan lost his home.
Long had the people of Inswood wanted Rowan gone. He was a cursed child, born of wickedness and prophesied to bring wickedness. Bearing torches and bladed tools of farming, they came to the house of his guardian. They broke into his home, capturing him and his guardian, intent on ending Rowan's life. But first they planned to cleanse the house of his presence. They came into his library and put it to the torch. Every piece of parchment Rowan had spent the last few years collecting went up in flame. His notes on human physiology were destroyed, old texts he'd borrowed from the local Church became ash, and even his most favored possession, the flux tome, was consumed by fire. Over the course of a handful of minutes, the progress of years was burned right before Rowan's eyes.
Rowan was not the kind to know much range of emotion. Where the townspeople regarded him with disgust, he was largely indifferent. When people cheated him of his wages, Rowan was disappointed but never sad or angry. Obstacles meant nothing of discouragement to him, merely intellectual challenges. But the destruction of his library? That was the first time Rowan knew anger.
As the rampant flames consumed Rowan's treasure of knowledge, the boy sunk his teeth into the hand of the man restraining him. His captor let go, and the boy stormed through the raging flames, claiming the remnants of the flux tome. The fire licked at him, darkening his fingers and spotting the length of his arms. Much of the book was aflame or black ash, but some of it remained intact. With those remaining burnt pages, he cast a vortex of elder magic on the crowd. The spell startled them, dividing the crowd despite causing only superficial damage. Half of the crowd was terrified by the magic. The rest were startled, but undeterred. The scared members of the mob ran for their lives while the zealous attempted to shove them aside. Amidts the chaos, Rowan began channeling another spell, intent on striking down the mob. He was stopped as his guardian, the fortune-teller, ran into the flames. She begged him to run, to flee as far as he could, and live.
It was not an easy decision for Rowan to make. He had never felt the power of anger before, never learned how to control that aspect of his being. All he wanted was to destroy the townspeople, as they had destroyed his library. But Rowan was also a pragmatist. He knew his novice grasp of elder magic could do only so much harm and he also knew he wanted to continue to learn. Dying would have made that impossible. But there was more. Rowan was moved by his guardian's display. She was the only person to ever show concern or care for him. As she knelt there with him, the length of her arms blackened like his, the boy felt a compulsion to obey her. She moved him, and he ran. He took advantage of the chaos and fled deep into the woods, far from the reach of the townspeople. He never went back.
For the next week he wandered east, seeking civilization. His vast knowledge kept him alive. He knew how to hunt small game, skin animals, and build a fire. Finding and preparing food was a small concern for Rowan. The real problem was tending to his wounds. He knew how to treat them, but lacked the necessary supplies. Rowan's only respite came from nursing his arms in water. However, after waking up one night with the urge to void his bowels and vomit to the point of dry-heaving, he realized that not all bodies of water were as clean as the Rhine River. Wounded and afflicted, there was little hope for Rowan. The youth lost consciousness somewhere at the mouth Bernese mountain range.
He woke up several days later in a warm bed. His arms had been bandaged, then tended to with a staff. A traveling merchant had come across him and brought him to a nearby village in Pherae.
There, for the first time in his life, Rowan was accepted by a community. He made friends in Pherae, where no one knew of the ill fortune surrounding his birth. He got along well with most in the village due to his wealth of knowledge. On more than one occasion, Rowan's medical expertise saved the lives of his fellow villagers. His hard-working nature found him work on the farmlands, where he discovered the pleasures of the opposite sex. The farm girls there admired him for his dedication, but more so for his unique appearance. The same appearance which had once garnered Rowan scorn was now considered 'sexy'. Rowan lived well for these two years, experiencing all of the trials and pleasures a young man should. He continued his study of the elder magic in secret however, distrusting of the world's view on it.
Rowan spent two years in Pherae before enlisting as a field medic in the military. He spent a year in training before fighting in Hargus' Bandit War. The next four years were rife with combat. Rowan spent his first three tours of duty in Pherae, Lycia before the Lycian League made headway against Hargus, and spent his last tour in Bern. By the end of the conflict, Rowan had attained the rank of Sergeant and established himself as a reliable surgeon. He had also met others with similar interests in elder magic.
Lieutenant Aerin Neithan lead Rowan through the war. An educated noblewoman, she knew well to fear elder magic but feared ignorance of the nether more. Ilian mage, Leland Twardowski, too joined their company. A researcher of anima, Leland had been forced into service as a combat mage. After witnessing the horrors of Hargus' power first hand, he believed the world needed greater knowledge of combating dark magic. Last among their group was reformed highwayman Beleg “Ballistae-Bow” Dimm. A veteran thug, Beleg shared Leland's sentiment and went turncoat during the finals days of Hargus' war. In the years to follow, he would become Rowan's closest friend.
The four left military service to pursue their research of elder magic. Securing funding for their ventures wasn't easy and always required a measure of cloak and dagger. Most of their benefactors were either fanatical bandits Beleg had once worked with or opportunistic nobles Aerin had connections with. Regardless of their social standing, those who employed Rowan and his friends always sought to gain some measure of power over the nether. None of them did. Until their expedition to the Dread Isles, the research Rowan's company performed was primarily observational.
Their travels took them to Bern first, consorting with and investigating fledgling cults which had risen in the wake of Hargus' black magic. There they learned more about the deceased Bandit King and how he became a vessel for the nether in exchange for its power. Indeed, Hargus' connection to the nether was alleged to be so strong that extended exposure to his presence drove lesser minds to gibbering madness. The exact extent to how powerful a conduit he had become would not be known until his revival and subsequent siege on the City of Heroes.
Next, the company braved the Dread Isles, where Rowan found his personal Worm tome, Umarth: The Confounding. It was upon the isles, that the group performed extensive research on the advanced elder magic tomes. Fearing the loss of their brilliant minds, Leland, who was now a practicing druid, and Rowan each limited themselves to two of the advanced elder tomes. Rowan performed magics with Ruin and his Worm tome Umarth, where Leland practiced Luna and Eclipse. This was the first time Rowan and Leland began to lose parts of themselves to the nether. Rowan was never a particularly expressive person, but control over the two advanced magics turned him from taciturn to mute. Leland on the other hand had always been very sociable, but his practices made him short-tempered and serious. Eventually, at Leland's request, the group left before their research was complete. The druid feared that the nether's connection to Elibe was strongest on Valor and that staying there could spell disaster for the company.
By the time the company came back to Elibe, they had hit hard times. Rowan and Leland would not fully recover from the effects of their exposure to the nether for a full year, and Aerin's political connections had turned sour. Rumors swirled associating Aerin's name with dark magic and the Neithan family subsequently disowned her in an effort to maintain a respectable social standing. Prolonged exposure to the powers of the nether had left Leland drained and he wished to return to the practice of anima. After playing with fire for close to three years, the company abandoned their research and tried to leave their work behind.
Aerin rejoined the Pheraen military, but was bumped down to a corporal and subsequently stonewalled whenever she tried to ascend in rank. She quickly left and joined the Lausian military forces, who were less concerned with social standing and more interested in her capabilities as a leader. Leland returned to Ilia, and threw himself into the study and practice of anima magic. Although his taste of the elder arts left him longing and largely unsatisfied with manipulating nature.
Rowan and Beleg stuck together. The Seer was still fascinated by the nether and, so long as he didn't practice the other advanced tomes, found that he could keep his mind intact. The two traveled Elibe, with Rowan and Beleg performing odd jobs to keep themselves fed and clothed.
Half a year passed and Rowan found himself entirely unfulfilled. He was never the type to feel things strongly, but pursuing research in elder magic now felt pointless. The only magical peer Rowan had ever had, Leland, had abandoned his research. The wayward group he'd formed with Aerin, and his other military buddies, had been dissolved and he doubted he would live to see the time when Elibian society would accept his research. So Rowan returned to the only home he ever knew, Pherae, and enrolled in med school. With his bright mind and vast experience as a surgeon, he excelled in his studies and was projected to become a certified physician by the age of thirty. He still pursued research of elder magic as a hobby, however, and often employed Beleg to conduct expeditions he himself could not go on.
Rowan had completed half of his schooling by the time Ostia had fallen and Laus started to gain power. Late one night, while studying his texts he heard a knock on the door. Upon answering it, Rowan was greeted by someone he had never expected to see again, Leland. The destruction of Ostia had a strange effect on Elibe. It was as if the world had been wounded and the nether was now bleeding out of that wound. The living dead, aberrations thought to exist only in horror stories, walked the earth. The ever ambitious Marquess Laus had few plans to secure control over the whole of Lycia without knowledge of the beasts which now roamed the continent. In secret, he began employing Druids and Seers, anyone with a mind intact and knowledge of the nether. One of the Marquess' middle-men reached out to Aerin, who had become a captain in the Lausian forces, and she in turn provided the names of her former colleagues. Leland was the first to be recruited, and he in turn was dispatched to recruit Rowan and Beleg. The Seer needed no convincing. He enjoyed his medical studies, but desired to research the nether more. Leland assured him that Beleg could accompany the Seer as his bodyguard and Rowan left Pherae behind.
For the past three years Rowan has committed himself to studying the undead and deepening his knowledge of the nether, making an unspoken name for himself among Marquess Laus' researchers. While his findings have proved valuable for Ostia's spiritual successor, the effects of the nether once more prey upon his mind. In the coming years, the seer will have to decide just how important the pursuit of knowledge is to him and whether he is willing to give validation to the curses of his childhood.
NPC fight:Alt of Ravvus/Luba.
PC fight:Alt of Ravvus/Luba.
