Casdain Sarano

Character Name: Casdain Sarano

Nickname(s): Ash Pig, Half-Breed, and a variety of other slurs.

Race: Half-Breed; Dunmer-Orsimer

Sex: Male

Age: 22

Birthplace: Markarth, Skyrim



Height: 6'3

Weight: 215lb

Eye Color: Deep red, though shows slightly highlights of orange.

Hair Color: Reddish-brown

Hair Style: Long, natural and swept back; quite unkempt for a warrior of his creed.

Facial Hair: Clean shaven.

Skin Color: Somewhere in between murky ash green and orange-brown, but closer to murky green.

Build: Casdain is built very heavily, due to his rigorous training as a warrior and his Orsimer heritage.

Distinguishing Features: Casdain is not your ordinary Dunmer; he has slightly sharper teeth than your average dark elf and skin a shade too orange to be of pure Dunmer ancestry. His great stature is uncommon in his kind, and his aggressive nature, although in keeping with the general xenophobia of the dark elves, bears the signs of an Orc. People find him to be too close to an Orc to be a Dunmer, but too close to a Dunmer to be an Orc; his half-breed ancestry appalls some and fascinates others.



Profession: Dawnguard Soldier

Skills: While most Dunmer could follow any path, Casdain's Orcish blood tipped the balance in favour of a warrior; he's proficient in heavy armour, as much as any warrior worth his salt, and his skill with a sword is not one to turn your nose up at (lest you want your nostrils widened). Casdain isn't much of a smooth talker, but can definitely scare the pants off of some of the bravest men with his alien appearance and aggressive mannerisms.

Magic: The Dunmer blood coursing through Casdain's veins gives him a little proficiency in Destruction magic, of which he's an apprentice and specialises in fire spells. A trick he picked up from his mother as a boy is Telekinesis, a skill usually reserved for high-level Mysticism users, but he manages to use it quite well when situations call for it.

Training: Having originally spent time with the Fighters Guild in High Rock, his skills with heavy armour and a sword were greatly refined from what they were in his youth, and the brief time he has spent in the Dawnguard has given him an apt knowledge of how to deal with Vampires in combat.

Other Abilities: Casdain knows a little of living off of the land in Skyrim and has some basic knowledge of cookery, but other than that his abilities are rather limited.

Apparel: Casdain sports the tradition heavy armour worn the Dawnguard, minus the helmet for personal reasons. On his right hand he dons a silver ring; a family heirloom. On his head, he wears a glowing amber pendant which is tied around his head by thin rope; it boosts his luck, but has an unknown effect which could be damaging to him. Although he has a Rune Shield, he prefers not to use it in favour of a good fireball.

Weaponry: A tradition Dawnguard Rune Sword; a steel sword with silver inlay.

Other Equipment: Although he doesn't ever wear it, he owns a set of partially complete Royal Guard armour from the time King Helseth ruled Morrowind; an old heirloom he doesn't wish to taint further by wearing. Aside from this, his nomadic sensibilities have kept him from hoarding much aside from a bag of septims and a water flask.

Companions: His fellow Dawnguard members.



Affiliation: The Dawnguard.

Religious Belief: Has no need for religion.

Sexual Preference: Celibate.

Relationship Status: Single.

Personality: Casdain is one of a kind, and has grown up isolated and chastised for his differences. This only served to drive him further to his Orcish side, making him rather brutish and unkind to those who are not of his blood. Antisocial might be going too far, but he's certainly not friendly. All of his actions and his reasons for joining the Dawnguard are purely mercenary; he longs for personal growth, personal enjoyment and personal wealth; not in a self-obsessed sense, but in a pragmatic sense. He's known to have overzealous streaks and sometimes doesn't know when to stop, lacking empathy for most of his foes.. or victims. All in all, though, he's just the strong silent type; you don't bother him and he doesn't bother you.



Casdain was born of a tainted blood, some might say, in Markarth to an Dunmer mother and a father of Orcish blood that was never to be seen. Even as in his younger years, the local children knew he was... different; it was a difference they used to use as a excuse to exclude him or pick on him, though his higher muscle mass made it so that they usually didn't get away with this more than once. While his childhood was rougher than most, it wasn't too atypical. It was during puberty that his mixed traits became accentuated and his appearance shifted to that of a piggish brute; large fangs and a snout-like nose.

The people of his hometown found him too brutish to be a Dunmer and too sly to be an Orc; the Nords are known for their xenophobia and it felt as though each one of those pasty-faced bastards had icy blood running through their veins as they all saw him as some kind of monster. Casdain became hateful of the world, but couldn't bring himself to turn to evil as it were due to his idolisation of his mother and her virtues and sensibilities. At barely sixteen he left the old Dwarven city and made his way to the neighboring country of High Rock, seeking some kind of adventure or conquest. The province had remained fiercely strong while the rest of Tamriel weakened with the collapse of the Septim empire and the ever-woeful Oblivion crisis, and its various guilds were willing to pay their members large sums of gold; it was a treasure trove for adventure, conquest and, most importantly, brotherhood. Casdain longed for a belonging, and signed up for the Fighters Guild in the area almost at once.

The mercenary lifestyle was such a release from being imprisoned within the Dwemer city of Markath for so long, oppressed by it's Nordic population; the Fighters Guild didn't care for who you were, only how good you were with a sword, a bow or a spell. Casdain was a novice swordsman at the time, but he made for a decent recruit doing oddjobs such killing wild animals that were acting as pests or clearing out a cave of goblins, and although he took pleasure in the action he just enjoyed the glory it was to him that he had brothers; people who didn't care about his appearance or background. This time of happiness and contentment lasted several years, right up into his early twenties, by which time he'd advanced quite far for a man as young as he was, performing higher calibre jobs such as hunting down necromancers or slaying powerful beasts. But all good times must be countered with bad times; suffering and alienation.

Word from Markarth reached Casdain by way of messenger; his mother had been victim of a vampiric Forsworn cult dedicated to Molag Bal while traveling outside the city walls. All the gold he'd worked for, the friends he'd made, the bonds he formed... it didn't matter anymore. The person he was still living for was dead, and Casdain himself died inside this day. Immediately he abandoned his guild and fled to his hometown to seek out the beasts who had done this to his kin. It took some investigation, but Forsworn agents in the city broke under Casdain's terrifying coercion once he had rooted them out and they revealed a cave far south of the city that was home to the Forsworn clan. Alone, he descended upon the group as soon as possible albeit was ill-equipped and ill-experienced to deal with the entire group; he managed to slay four of ninteen vampires before barely escaping with his life and an infection that was treated, luckily, before it advanced into vampirism.

The scars of Casdain's wounds were nothing in comparison to the frustration he felt at not being able to fully avenge his mother... yet. After months of working as a mercenary in several questionable lines of work for petty sums of gold, he heard word of a vampire hunting group that was expanding from out east; The Dawnguard. Casdain was still tender and hateful, but he saw a way out of this guilt-trip if he signed up as one of these hunters; for one day he could hunt those who wronged him in the past, and still attain the brotherhood he'd always sought but never was able to keep.

They took him on, barely having a garrison of men at all when Casdain first signed up. Many of the members were Nords, some of whom had an unspoken disdain for Casdain, but he cared not; for the many months after his recruitment, he only focused on honing his skills and learning the ways of a vampire hunter. The gear he donned gave him an advantage and his sword was laced with silver, both harmful to creatures of the night. Teased by other members of the group, he became an outcast; a man consumed by hate and guilt, grief and sorrow. All he cared about was making sure he could take out as many vampires as possible in one sitting. The months went by fast, and it wasn't long before he was fairly well-trained in the art of destroying creatures of the night; not a master, or even an expert, but skilled enough that one day he might be able to avenge his kin.