Post by Zenios on Dec 15, 2013 0:38:48 GMT -5
Character Name: Azaren Velendas
Nickname(s): Az; Ren; Savos Relvani
Race: Dunmer – infected with Sanguinare Vampiris
Sex: Male
Age: Two hundred fifty-seven years
Birthplace: Sadrith Mora, Morrowind
More pictures of a TV screen?! No, Zen! You can't!
Height: Five feet, eight inches
Weight: One hundred twenty-eight pounds – a little over nine stone
Eye Color: His eyes, originally a bright red, have long sinced turned an angry yellow hue.
Hair Color: Azaren's hair is a light blond.
Hair Style: He wears his hair rather long, but well-kept. Azaren often pulls the hair on the top and sides of his head back and leaves the rest to hang free.
Facial Hair: Azaren is invariably clean-shaven.
Skin Color: He's pale, for a Dunmer – almost unnaturally so.
Build: Azaren is rather slim. He looks like he could run a mile or two before tiring, and further if he had to, but clearly doesn't train and isn't much of a fighter.
Distinguishing Features: His features seem rather drawn—gaunt, almost predatory—compared to most Dunmer, and he often speaks with a bit of a lisp thanks to the fangs in his mouth. There's also a tattoo over his left eye, just a few scarlet markings.
Profession: Azaren is a master vampire. He dedicates most of his time to ensuring the safety and comfort of those in his coven, as well as feeding himself. When short on gold, he often turns to the bardic arts and street entertainment, using the art of Illusion to enhance his performances.
Skills: While he tries to avoid drawing unwanted attention to himself through magic, music, or really anything in general, Azaren is quite a skilled mage and a half-decent flutist. He's a rather adept trader and negotiator who also possesses some middling skill with the sword and bow, perhaps to compensate for a lack of natural affinity in Destruction magic.
Magic: Azaren's a relatively skilled mage, if not especially good in combat. He's an adept of Mysticism, specializing in Reflection, Detection, and Curses; and an adept of Illusion, specializing in the creation of small-scale illusions – roses and similar objects – and Silence Mages. He's an adept-level Conjurer whose focus is in Binding weapons and armor; a capable enough Thaumaturge to cast Telekinesis if not much else; and an apprentice-level Alteration mage with proficiency in Lock Manipulation, Deflection, and Armoured Skin. He can also cast Necromantic Healing to heal himself, though to do so is quite tiring, and can cast two Novice-level Destruction spells – Sparks and Flames.
Training: A few years with the Mages' Guild and subsequent centuries of practice have left Azaren a fairly versatile mage; his father teaching him the tricks of trading has left him a fairly well-versed negotiator and speaker. Centuries of simply existing have taught him some of the basics of swordsmanship, brawling, and archery – primarily the varying philosophies of “stick 'em with the pointy end” and “don't let 'em stick you with the pointy end,” adapted as much as necessary depending on how pointy the weapons in question happen to be. He's also a halfway-decent flutist, having picked up the instrument to try and while away the decades he spent living in solitude.
Other Abilities: Azaren's gotten pretty good at knowing approximately what time it is over the years. Being a vampire and all, Azaren can also drain the vitality of others with a malignant touch or bite and see quite well in the dark. Normal healing spells do not benefit him nearly as much as they would a living person; and the sun has an uncomfortable tendency to leave him weakened and incapable of recovering his strength.
Apparel: Azaren has developed quite the wardrobe over the years, everything from slave's rags to ornate noble's attire to more functional things, like a suit of steel plate, He tends to prefer attire on the higher end of that spectrum – generally fancier, elaborate clothing as opposed to armor. His favorite outfit is a black-and-red affair, dark shirt and trousers beneath a red doublet and bracers. He also tends to wear a pair of gloves and matching boots, both of leather with steel plates to cover the backs of his hands and the fronts of his feet. To complete this outfit is a fine fur cloak, perhaps not the best of matches by fashion but certainly a pragmatic addition given the mountain climates he so often finds himself in.
There are two items of jewelry he wears: one, a ring, a small sapphire set into a silver band, always on the ring finger of his right hand. This ring is enchanted to increase his ability to recover his Magicka, to ensure he can recover it well enough to cast at least some magic when out in the hated sun. The other is also a ring, this just a gold band, most often on his left index finger.
Weaponry: The only weapon Azaren carries is a staff of firebolts, though he uses it more commonly as a walking stick. He tends to use it as a last resort sort of weapon, finding the effort of gathering soul gems filled with souls to recharge the staff rather tiring and not worth the time.
Other Equipment: Besides staff and attire, the only items of note Azaren carries regularly are his coin purse and a lute. He's been known to keep a small vial of blood, but does not do so consistently.
Companions: Azaren travels occasionally with members or thralls of his coven, but only rarely with more than two or three others.
Affiliation: Azaren is the master of a small coven of vampires and associated thralls.
Religious Belief: Azaren believes in both the Nine Divines—little things like the White-Gold Concordat aren't enough to make him change his ways--and the Daedric Princes. He specifically pays homage to Molag Bal.
Sexual Preference: Heterosexual
Relationship Status: Single
Personality: Azaren isn't all too dissimilar from your average Dunmer. He frequently comes off as a little xenophobic, a little arrogant in his own manner – supremely confident in his abilities, but with a tendency to overestimate those of others. There's a good dose of negotiator in Azaren, as well. He's always willing to talk, be reasonable, cut a deal; and there's just enough of a loner to him that he doesn't always mind the relative solitude of immortality. The politics that come with dealing with other immortals, however, Azaren could deal without.
As for his vampirism, Azaren has really grown to almost embrace the idea. He still doesn't appreciate the idea of sneaking into someone's home to feed and much prefers to feed on thralls, but he understands the necessity of keeping his condition in check. It's twisted him a bit, much as he might try to hide it; Azaren's grown to despise the sun, grown jealous of the ability of the living to take for granted its warm light. He once heard that you don't truly appreciate something until it's gone; and Azaren's experiences with avoiding the sun have more or less proven that to be true.
[Warning: I can write pretty long histories too c:]
Sadrith Mora was his birthplace, the first and – for a time – only home Azaren Velendas knew. He was a scion of House Hlaalu once, schooled from birth in the arts of trade and negotiation. He discovered a talent for magic early on as well, an innate ability to harness magicka. His father, Sareth, was responsible early on for hiring a Mages' Guild associate to come and tutor the boy, to master magic and keep it under control if nothing else.
That mage instead managed to kindle a thirst for knowledge in young Azaren, a desire to know more about magic and its intricacies. So instead of going into the family business when he came of age, as his father and mother would have expected, he ran away to join the Mages' Guild, seeking to learn rather than trade. And learn Azaren did, for awhile at least; he learned much of himself and the mage's arts. He learned he had almost no talent for destruction magic, perhaps unusually for a Dunmer, but that he was quite talented in most other areas with enough practice. He spent quite some time with the Mages' Guild, a studious Dunmer—initially young, though he aged out of that eventually—seeking to find knowledge and further his own abilities.
It was during his time with the Mages' Guild that Azaren developed something of a disdain for necromancy, once he came to comprehend the processes of casting such spells and their effects. He was rather passionate about his hatred of necromancy; so much so, in fact, that he eventually decided to join a small group of individuals dedeicated to hunting down the undead. Vampire hunters, they called themselves; though in truth they were enemies of the unliving and those who created such beings, no matter the form.
Of course, a Dunmer with next to no martial ability would not prove especially useful in a fight against anything from a vampire to something more like a zombie, presumably either too crafty or too stupid to be affected by the illusory spells he favored. So one of the hunters, an Imperial relatively high up the chain of command by the name of Lucius Martius, decided to take the young Dunmer under his wing. He learned something of combat, of using the sword and the bow; of how to defend himself, primarily, in order to maximize the effects of his magic by allowing him to cast more spells.
And, for a time, it worked – both his magic and the sense of purpose he found. The hunters rooted out undeath and necromancy where they could find it for a good thirty years before it all fell apart.
Azaren killed his first conscious being – a vampire – during his seventieth year, a few short months after joining the little brotherhood of hunters. Then numbering only seven, the group had stolen into what they'd suspected to be a vampires' nest just after noon, when the sun was at its peak. It was a Loredas, he remembered, when they'd gone in executing vampires and their thralls in rapid succession. He hadn't had time to think; there had only been time to kill, and then later to worry about whether or not their victims were the ones they sought.
He'd spent days, perhaps weeks, thinking about what he'd done. The guilt had consumed him, and he'd been about ready to hang up his blade and return to a simpler life when some of the undead returned the favor. Three died that night; and, perhaps worse for ones in their lines of work, two were turned before the vampires could be repulsed from what passed for the hunters' base of operations. They lived on the move after that, rarely taking shelter for more than a few days if they could help it, transitioning from an open war on necromancy to a much more subtle one.
It had been quite awhile, doing such dirty, passionate work, before Azaren took ill – by that point one of the ringleaders, mostly past doing violence in order to plan it. He began to have almost feverish dreams of guilt over the vampires he'd slain, even dreams of being tortured by some of those he'd done away with – phantoms of the guilt he still felt. It was a sickness, however, that only lasted a few days before he suddenly recovered – and awoke quite thirsty, only to find he couldn't quench his thirst with water or wine.
He'd been around this kind of thing more than frequently enough to know exactly what had happened to him in the night, even before he glanced into a mirror and noted first a pair of eyes he didn't recognize, and second a pair of fangs he certainly didn't recall having. Azaren could only assume he'd been happened upon in the night, and getting in touch with a few of the other hunters realized they'd taken ill in much the same fashion he had.
Azaren tried to kill himself quite a few times in the first few weeks, whether by standing in the sun—which only ever weakened him—or by trying to poison himself. He never succeeded; instead, he tried starving himself, which simply strengthened the thirst until he couldn't help but give into it. He spent what was easily a century alone, found himself a nice home in a cave in the Jeralls and spent his time in seclusion, intentionally starved himself to strengthen his resolve and keep from feeding as often as possible. He took up the flute, spending his time with an instrument instead of other beings.
The long years he spent alone and afraid taught him willpower, taught him the value of friends, eventually deluded him into thinking of vampirism as more blessing than curse.
So eventually he got more and more bold, starting to try and re-integrate to society. Azaren would visit cities along the borders of Cyrodiil and Skyrim and pose as a trader, especially on nights after he'd fed, took up trading simply to get up and out of his cave. Days spent in sunlight certainly did not lessen the effect the sun had on him, though they did perhaps instill a bit of hatred for it within him and reacquaint him with its warmth – even if now that warmth had a bite to it.
It wasn't until a chance encounter with another vampire that he'd realized he had been callous and careless in his feeding habits. The other vampire was one that Azaren himself had sired: a Nord, Eyja Windrime, a victim he'd left bitten not a week before meeting her.
That visit got Azaren to wondering just how many vampires he'd created over the course of the last century, and a bit of searching—and the occasional experimentation session—taught him that there was hardly a guarantee of leaving behind a vampire when he bit someone. There was a chance nonetheless, though it was far from as great as he had feared.
Comfort or no, Azaren set off to take his—children, he supposed he'd call them—under his wing, those that he could find. He spent years exploring, looking, and eventually he'd amassed something of a coven, if eleven vampires could indeed be called that.
But, like any coven, they required a goal – something to keep the more political, power-hungry of them in check. Simply feeding or surviving was not enough for some, and by way of appeasement Azaren proposed they begin expanding their numbers a bit. But to do that required a way, perhaps, to corrupt without full infection. A bit of research, asking what other vampires they could, and the process to create a thrall was discovered.
In the few years since they first began creating thralls, Azaren's coven hardly grew. They had to pick their targets, to avoid growing too large to avoid attracting attention from groups such as the Vigilants of Stendarr. And even so, eventually there grew to be nineteen members of the coven, from all walks of life, along with a small cohort of thralls - a small number, though certainly they had plans of increasing that. Their goals shifted only recently from the slow expansion of tendrils of influence to a more aggressive model.
As their numbers grew, however, so too did Azaren's restlessness – his desire to get out and do something. It had been a long time spent in the cave and managing others, after all, and his life before the coven had grown to be one that he had gotten used to. Where before he had been a wanderer, a trader, now he was what amounted to a mayor: managing others. While he appreciated having fellow immortals to converse and interact with, he rarely found opportunities to leave the cave other than when he made excuses. Azaren had never been much of a leader - he'd only ever been forced into it - and sometimes absences to clear his mind were just what he needed.
