AATAMI TARATHIEL

AATAMI TARATHIEL Jun 25, 2016 10:49:29 GMT -5

Post by Aatami Tarathiel on Jun 25, 2016 10:49:29 GMT -5

AATAMI “CROW” TARATHIEL

PLAYED BY FACECLAIM

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[attr="class","cafh2"]strengths

Adaptable: Aatami comes from a rough and mixed background. During his early childhood, his clan had to provide everything for themselves, despite their small numbers, as they refused to trade even with other Dalish. As a slave, he had to make do with the cast offs from his masters or other slaves, and when living on his own, Aatami used those skills to provide for himself in any manner. He can adapt to any situation, no matter how few resources he has.

Unafraid to get down and dirty: Aatami’s upbringing did not include comforts of any sort. He can afford certain comforts now, like a bed, boots that fit him, and clothes that haven’t been worn by anyone else, but he is almost more comfortable with a bit of dirt on him, and does not shirk away from manual labor. His hands are calloused and scarred, and he feels calm after a day of hard work where he had to sweat.

Hard worker: As stated above, Aatami’s past has made him very comfortable with hard work, and he will undertake such work without complaint, a fact that surprises people who have seen him complain good naturedly about practically everything else, such as the weather, whether someone finished his favorite food, that someone’s clothes make them look like they’re smuggling a nug in their pants. When work is needed, Aatami will be there to do it.

Doesn’t take things for granted: Aatami has had nothing to call his own, not even his body or magic. While he does not thank any god specifically for bringing him out of poverty, he is thankful and appreciative for what he has, and cares for his possessions well. He wears clothes until they are worn through, finishes his food even if burnt or stale, and always has a thank you ready to the cook or tailor who provides, and a tip for the stableboy who cares for his horse. Aatami never overlooks the servants or other workers who support places he is staying.

Equal opportunity suspicion: Though he saves a special sort of suspicious squint for the Tevinter, Aatami doesn’t really trust anyone he meets, be they Quanari, dwarf, or Fereldan. As an elf apostate, he is the target of racism and bias himself, so no one gets special attention from him for being a particular race.

Strangely chivalrous: Who knows where he picked it up, but Aatami is the type who will hold a chair for a lady and assist the elderly with their packages. He hasn’t the slightest idea what to do with children, but ladies and old people? He treats them well.

Magical strength: Aatami is a good fighter, mostly utilizing his magic, but he is able to defend himself hand to hand or with his staff to keep from getting hurt and long enough to regain mana and dispose of the enemy that way. He has more stamina than most mages and regains it quickly; his magical strength is supplemented by an intuitive grasp of his strengths, and a great aptitude for necromancy.

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[attr="class","cafh2"]flaws

Pessimistic: Aatami is very much doom and gloom. He is always the one to assume the worst about people, or events, generally ruling that they won’t come out in his favor. Life hasn’t exactly treated him fairly, so why would it start now? The pessimistic beliefs about a person’s motives leads him to not trust people as far as he can throw them and generally not be surprised if he is let down.

Judgmental: For someone who is the target of racism and biased beliefs, Aatami doesn’t give people a lot of slack. He makes first impressions (usually negative) and believes the worst of someone.

Phobia: Aatami does not like bleeding. He started having panic attacks at the sight of his own blood a few years after escaping slavery, and it got so bad he would dissociate occasionally. Careful desensitization has gotten him over most of the phobia, but he is still caught off guard occasionally and gets anxious at the sight of his blood, insists it must be burned immediately, among other ‘quirks,’ as his teammates call it. Aatami does not want to talk about it. Ever.

Cruel: Aatami can be cruel. Sympathy would have gotten him killed as a slave, and little in life has rewarded a weak heart in his experience. He will cut someone down with words, magic, or a weapon without hesitation, even dispatching wounded enemies without feeling remorse. Death isn’t a bad thing, in his opinion.

Low political knowledge: Aatami doesn’t care about politics, and learning about the countries of Thedas hasn’t been high on his to do list. He knows the capital cities and that’s about it.

Doer, not a thinker: While fairly intelligent, Aatami is not one for intellectual pursuits. When asked about a complicated spell, he just shrugs and says he just does it. He is not a fan of history, can do arithmetic and multiplication and not much else, tends towards tactics instead of strategy, and maybe reads a book every year. Aatami prefers knowing useful things, like herblore, fighting, and magic.

Skewed strengths: Aatami’s magical abilities are very focused, and his intuitive grasp of magic is a double edged sword. He has always been very good at necromancy, but he was barely taught the basics enough to avoid killing himself or get possessed, and his slave masters were not concerned with teaching Aatami how to do magic properly. As long as Aatami could do what was commanded, they did not care. As a result, Aatami has little conscious grasp of magical fundamentals, and has mastered few spells outside of necromancy. He learns by doing, and trying to learn larger spells usually involves something exploding.

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[attr="class","cafbox"] MALE

[attr="class","cafbox"] ELF

[attr="class","cafbox"] NECROMANCER

[attr="class","cafbox"] SOUTH THEDAS

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Aatami, Ruairidh, Crow. Dalish, slave, apprentice, mercenary, necromancer. He feels he has been many people throughout his life, few of which he chooses to remember fondly.

Once upon a time, a redheaded infant was born to a small Dalish clan. The clan was among the most isolated by choice, their numbers decimated by wild beasts and skirmishes with humans, they refused any contact with even other clans. They moved constantly, sticking to the deepest of wilderness and starkest of environments despite the struggle to feed even their small numbers. They were a hard, close knit group, more prone to violence than the other clans, struggling to keep their identity as more of their number were killed or taken. They could not refuse the addition of a child, even one born to an outsider father. The redheaded child was named Ruairidh, and he was welcomed into the world with the ceremonies the clan still remembered.

Their life was a hard one, everyone knew how to hunt, how to fight. As soon as Ruairidh could walk, he learned to build snares, tended the halla, and helped gather herbs and plants to supplement what the hunters brought in.

Ruairidh came into his magic when he was six. The clan was losing ground against a band of raiders when his mother was struck down. She got up again, as did the other mortally wounded elves, mere shades of themselves, weak with a six year old’s untrained magic, but it was enough to turn the tide of battle and allow the elves to escape. But when Ruairidh awoke after the battle, he was told that he was to be left behind. The clan, small as it was, had a Keeper and a First, and did not need the attention Ruairidh’s magic had brought to them. They buried their losses and left the boy among the graves.

Less than a week later, the slavers found him. They took his name, bound his magic, and sold him to the Tevinters.

The boy passed through several masters before coming to Murcia Arida, a Tevinter mage of more ambition and money than power. What Arida did have was a talent for blood magic, and used ritual to bind the boy, now called Aatami, to her will and use his blood to power spells she was otherwise incapable of. She was harsh, though her attention was usually only on Aatami when she needed to renew the spells or wanted to show off her status to other Tevinter by having a pretty elf slave attend to her. He could only use his magic on her orders. Though he was still very young, and his magic undeveloped from lack of use, Aatami had an intuitive knack for picking up spells, a talent that doubtlessly kept him from many punishments. When Arida didn’t want to posture and preen over her talents binding the young elf, Aatami was left to the other slaves, for better or for worse.

After several years, the tides of favor shifted within the Tevinter Imperium, as they usually did. Arida was forced to sell her slaves to pay for her other unsavory habits, and Aatami was sent to the service of a powerful merchant lord. The merchant was much less concerned with Aatami as an elf slave, and more interested in his growing magical abilities. The magic that kept Aatami bound became more cruel and painful, but Aatami was also taught to much more with his magic and was called upon with such frequency he and his magic were nearly constantly exhausted. Aatami began to consider his fantasies of escape with much more urgency than before.

The merchant had ties with a cult rising in power within the Imperium and with interests outside the borders. Aatami saw his opportunity. He was on his best behavior, obeyed every order, presented his blood when commanded, and was assigned to accompany the merchant outside of the Imperium. He was kept close at hand, both for use of his magic and because of the status associated with having a young, attractive, elf slave attending to the merchant. There was little opportunity to escape, and barely any to learn more about the state of things outside of the Imperium. But Aatami listened, and learned of strife, cults, and troubles, of the Inquisition, an organization outside of any government.

Aatami’s chance came when the keep was attacked and destroyed by the very same Inquisition. His master killed, the magical bonds placed on him were destroyed, and for the first time in nearly eight years, Aatami could act freely and use his magic without permission. It was not difficult to act injured and steal away with the Inquisition’s forces. They took in the teenager with few questions, once they saw his state.

The Inquisition wasn’t the free paradise Aatami envisioned. He found he had to hide from the Chantry because he was an apostate, he hid from other elves because they made him uncomfortable, and considered him as a city elf, or worse. Many others found him less than trustworthy for the Tevinter accent he had trouble hiding, and he hid from most everyone else because of the looks aimed at his ears. The looks aimed towards elves were little better than those aimed at slaves in the Imperium. Maybe the leadership of the Inquisition was different, but Aatami never summoned the courage to speak to them outside of duties. He found somewhat of a place with the ex-Circle mages, specifically those who now eschewed the restrictive ideals of the Chantry Circle Mages. They, at least, understood the importance of training a young mage, even a foreign elf. Aatami learned to fit in, how to speak like the southerners, to keep a hat over his bright hair and pointed ears, and most importantly, keep the marks of blood magic hidden. The magic faded, hidden behind his own growing power, but the scars always remained.

Aatami worked as a courier and scout for the Inquisition, and it was almost a good life, until events occurred that caused the Inquisitor to disband the Inquisition. As a low level messenger boy, Aatami was barely privy to rumors of the events to cause this, but he drew his own conclusions and disbanding the Inquisition has since left a poor taste in his mouth whenever he thinks of his first home as a free man.

Without a place to go and little able to support himself, not as a half trained mage and elf, Aatami was forced to return to the only way he knew to be useful. He traded his services for training to anyone he could, sticking to villages and hedgewitches barely able to light a candle or create a charm of good health. The weak mages were safer than venturing to the ex-Circle mages. Without the Inquisition to oversee, the more powerful mages might bind him blood magic once again.

Eventually, Aatami found himself a bit of good luck, and was able to apprentice under an old, mostly blind Nevarran. The Nevarran could barely remember Aatami’s name, much less tell that he was an elf, and in his lucid moments, the mage taught Aatami about necromancy, where Aatami’s talents had always lied. After years of fumbling through the few spells he’d pieced together from his time with the Tevinters, listening to spirits, making corpses move without meaning to, Aatami finally had the proper channels for his magic and quickly learned everything the Nevarran could teach him. The old man, finally senile, was taken away by his family to live out the rest of his days, while his mysterious red haired assistant disappeared.

Aatami was homeless again, but this time he had the skills to provide for himself. He found a mercenary group, the Lucky Blighters, and joined. The group was just crazy enough and made up of outcasts even weirder than his own backstory. The Blighters also had a Dalish elf, an aging warrior named Varros. Varros was from Antiva, and was part of a clan much more violent than the other Dalish Aatami had met before, closer to the vague memories he still had of his home. Despite his misgivings towards other elves, Aatami found a mentor in Varros, and learned of his heritage, what it meant to be elf, and to be proud of oneself and one’s identity. Varros had little faith in myths and legends, but he had strong opinions about leaving an elf clanless, even an outcast like Aatami. His own clan either dead or dissolved to join other clans, Varros adopted Aatami, and gave him his vallaslin, and his nickname, Crow, like the ravens who patrolled the path of the elven dead, or the deadly Antivan Crows from Varros’ homeland.

Varros recently left the Blighters to seek out the Dread Wolf. He refused to let Aatami join him, stating that Aatami still needed to work on his own identity before he started fighting for the identity of all elvhen. Aatami remains with the Blighters, coming to consider them an adopted family of sorts, working on his magic, and searching for answers.

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Most of the mercenaries only whisper the nickname Bloodcrow, thinking Aatami would get angry and send a corpse to lay in their bedroll (it only happened five or ten times) or do blood magic to them, but Aatami secretly started the Bloodcrow nickname himself.

Aatami would rather people think he was a blood mage (hence Bloodcrow) than discover he was a blood slave.

He fights more like a rogue than a mage, getting into the thick of things instead of sticking to the outskirts, leaving chaos and weakness among the ranks.

Aatami solves murders in his spare time, believing the dead deserve respect and to have a wrongful death avenged.

He is very much not a scholar. He didn’t learn to read until he was thirteen and is still fairly ignorant and uncaring of scholarly works that many mages tend to favor. He has learned his magic through instinct and experimentation, not the safest methods, but they work for him.

Aatami used to feel very disconnected from his body, like he didn’t own it and was just inhabiting it. The scars left from the numerous blood magic rituals and blood magic litter his body, including his arms and face. Once, he got drunk with Varros, and was convinced to get a tattoo over one of the dozens of scars that cover his body. Covering the scars with ink helped him feel reconnected, and over the years he’s covered most of his body in ink, mostly dark, bold lines of vaguely avian shapes or swirls reminiscent of the wind and freedom. Even the vallaslin work with the faded scars on his face. The tattoos don’t cover his neck or the thickest scars on his inner arms, his neck was too sensitive, and his arms wouldn’t take the ink well.

When he gets uncomfortable or lost in thought, he tends to touch, rub, scratch, or dig his fingers into the marks of slavery that litter his skin. He will rub the small, well faded scars along the side of his neck, or, when angry and stressed, dig his fingers into the thick scars on his arms. If he catches himself, he’ll stop immediately, not wanting to draw attention to the action.

Aatami is still uncomfortable calling himself Dalish. They did abandon him to slavery, and turned their back on him until he got vallaslin. He has claimed the identity as his own (he would not undergo the tattoos lightly), goes by his mentor’s clan name, and follows some of the traditions and rituals, but at times, he feels like he’s wearing a particularly scratchy wool shirt, or boots that don’t fit. He’s more violent and uncivilized than the Dalish he’s met, with their traditions and prayers and sailed wagons. He is in denial that the reason he hasn’t reclaimed the name Ruairidh is because of any sort of feelings of inadequacy.

Aatam isn’t very religious, though he wears the vallaslin, and does follow what rituals relating to death that he can. The Maker hasn’t expended energy towards his goodwill, so Aatami will keep his prayers to the gods of his blood.

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Post by Aatami Tarathiel on Jun 25, 2016 10:49:29 GMT -5

Post by Adelle on Jun 28, 2016 21:43:57 GMT -5