< RAZE >
General
Birth Name: Dezrith Alabaster Reinhart
Titles: None
Nickname: "Four" (Tevinter), "The Flicker" (Free Marches), "Dez"
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Age: 24
Class: Mage
Subclasses (if any): Spirit Healer
Specializations: Death, Mana, Fire
Features
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 132 lbs
Figure: Gaunt
Skin: Olive
Hair: Black
Eyes: Black
Scars & Tattoos: Lyrium tattoos and grafts
Description: Gaunt, skinny, and generally rather sick-looking, Dezrith is the funny-man of any party, always smiling and cracking jokes. Being a mage, and a murderer, means his only way of seeming normal is by covering himself in a veil of humor. Secretly, he’s wracked with guilt, but to everyone else he is playful and upbeat, and at first glance, or even second glance, it is almost impossible to tell what secrets are hidden behind that smiling face. He is charismatic and crafty, finding it far more effective to humiliate than intimidate, and seems to only let his smile fade when he sends his lyrium grafts into overdrive, since the gut-wrenching pain the process causes make it impossible to hide.
History
Background:
There are those who believe that the Tevinter, while being heartless slavers, would never enslave one of their own. That their society is utterly opposed to ours and that no mage is suppressed. I can tell you they are wrong. The Tevinter are experimentalists, willing to try anything, no matter how morally depraved, in the pursuit for power. It is not uncommon for members of the Imperium to mutilate themselves in order to graft lyrium into their bodies. What is uncommon is for such individuals to survive the brutal procedures. Naturally, the magisters require test subjects before they can comfortably perform such operations on themselves, to see just how much lyrium one can bear before dying. I was such a test subject, born a mage with incredible power. Even my captors were unaware of my full extent. But, of course, to them it did not matter. I was denied my magic, and thus denied my connection to the veil, for as far back as I remember, locked in a featureless room except for the soft, dull glow of the glyphs of neutralization covering the floor and walls. Every now and then they would drag me to the operating theater to tear me apart and graft me with more and more lyrium. They replaced my corpus callosum, cerebellum, amygdala, thyroid, and half my bone marrow with the blighted stone. By the end of it I felt more lyrium than human. I could barely think anymore. My mind throbbed wildly at every waking moment. All I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep to numb the unbearable pain. So I did. I collapsed and, in my weakness, fell unconscious. And for the first time in my life, I dreamed. That was when all hell broke loose.
Once I crossed the veil, they came for me. I was fresh, naive, and teeming with untapped power. Demons, hordes of them, each vied for control over me; urging me towards forging a pact with them, seducing me into running with open arms into their wicked agendas, each draining me of the very essence that kept me alive, for losing my mana meant losing my only anchor out of the fade, imprisoning me there forever as a puppet to the demons. My only savior was a spirit of freedom. He came to me against impossible odds, driven by his desire to see his virtue upheld. He opened my eyes. Told me it was all a trick. And I will never forgive myself for how I repaid him.
Once I knew the truth I had control of myself again, control of my powers, but the demons were unwilling to let go so easily. They attacked me, forced themselves into my mind with everything they had, and I responded in kind, burning demon after demon as I screamed in agony, burning through the very reserves of mana that were keeping me alive. By the end of it I was safe, but the price of that safety brought me to the brink of death. It was then that my instincts kicked in. Through killing so many demons… I had become just like them. Reason blurred by bloodlust. Morality trumped by instinct. A predator. And so I devoured my only friend in this foreign land. I took the spirit against his will and forced him to merge with me, granting me the power to return to my own world.
The resulting influx of power allowed me to leave the veil, but I had a new problem. The facility had been destroyed, no doubt the backlash of my internal conflict. As I pulled myself from the rubble the only thing more painful than my broken bones was the throbbing inside my head as the spirit thrashed inside of me. I had enslaved freedom, corrupted innocence. I was little different from an abomination, except our roles had been reversed. He was the mage, and I the demon. But I couldn’t let go of him yet, for it was his power that healed me of all my wounds, his power that had me running and jumping not even a day after I had broken half the bones in my body. I could not release him. He was simply too useful, and I had become intoxicated by his gifts, be they willing or otherwise.
For six years I was nothing more than a madman, wandering the land without purpose, intoxicated by my power. There was something… addictive about being able to master life and death, to just as easily fuel the fire of life as stomp it out. I was like a child, eternally amused by the reactions people had towards the wandering mage just as likely to end your life as prolong it. It was their confusion that entertained me most: whether to praise me for healing half their village or fear me for burning down the other half. I was like a child. But like all children, I grew up.
Eventually the madness began to dull. Perhaps the spirit was no longer resisting, or perhaps he had merged so completely with me that he no longer could. A part of me regrets that I ever regained my sanity, only to look upon the havoc I wreaked. The pain, the suffering, the poor, forgotten souls brought back to the living only to be cut down like flies once again… I wanted to forget it all. To run from the sins of my past. To forget and try desperately to live for the future. By the time I had regained enough control that I trusted myself around others, I made my way to the nearest city from where I was: Starkhaven. It was there that I bought passage to the furthest place from my birthplace I could. It was there that I set sail for Denerim.
Perhaps I will find somewhere to settle down, and finally put down my staff. Or perhaps, just perhaps, I will find a way to atone for my guilt. Not for some pointless deity, but for myself.
Starting Equipment: Tevinter Hellstaff*, Civilian Clothing, Forty silvers.
*:While mages outside the Imperium have taken quite fondly to the idea of equipping their staves with blades to fight off melee assaults, the Tevinters remain the only ones skilled in the art of the Zweithar, staves bearing blades on both ends. The whirling motions of one proficient with such a weapon allows even weaker magi to pack enough momentum into a single blow to keep enemies at bay, where their devastating spells are strongest. Most commonly known outside the Imperium, by the few who recognize them, as “Hellstaves” since the staff’s astonishing ability to deal deep blows in the hands of even the leanest of magi was originally attributed to the assistance of demons and blood magic.
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