essek thelyss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
graviturgy) wrote2031-12-26 12:05 am
graviturgy) wrote2031-12-26 12:05 am
INFO
  Essek Thelyss Time is one of my specialties. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Were I to have found this before I found you, perhaps I may have done some incredible, terrible things with it. BACKGROUNDEssek is a member of Den Thelyss, one of the three most powerful Dens of the Kryn Dynasty--its second youngest soul, the youngest being his brother, Verin. He is on his first life, partway into his second century, which is considered quite young in Kryn culture. Despite his age, he is a prodigy of dunamancy, an unprecedented arcane talent, and holds the title of Shadowhand, granted to spies, mages, or investigators who "focus on the dark mysteries of Exandria" and are specialists in "the dangerous unknown" in fields such as subterfuge or arcana. This places him in a very prominent position within the Bright Queen's court. Though Essek does not care for politics personally, he uses his position to further his own goals, including the study of the Luxon beacons. Before his treason came to light, Essek has claimed that he believes the worst thing he's ever done is anger his father to the point where he went unprepared into the depths of Bazzoxan and didn’t return. He believed that his father wasn’t a great man, in part because "he had few aspirations." His mother, however, is the Umavi of Den Thelyss, though their relationship was also rocky. The only person Essek likes and gets along with in his den, and in his immediate family, is his younger brother. PERSONALITYPrior to meeting the Mighty Nein, Essek did not get along well with anyone other than his brother and those who were helping him pursue his interests. Essek is charming and hardworking, but elusive and aloof. He isn't fond of interacting with strangers or giving away information unless he respects the individual or feels he has something to gain from them. He is arrogant and confident in his arcane abilities, and has a well-deserved reputation as a prodigy of dunamancy. Essek has expressed frustration with the Dynasty's dogmatic religious beliefs concerning the Luxon beacons and the Luxon itself. He feels they are based on myth, interpretation, and assumption, and distract from the effort to pursue the power contained in the beacons. His beliefs cut him off from others in his culture. He does not trust anyone and feels like he doesn't belong. Therefore, he spends much of his time alone. Although he eventually feels a close connection to the Mighty Nein, and to Caleb in particular, he is awkward in the way he shows it, unused to displaying affection or participating in something as simple as a casual conversation with friends. But it is his affection for the Nein that makes him put up with, and eventually enjoy, their antics. He expresses that he is deeply grateful for the change they have wrought in him, and he comes to consider their friendship more important than his personal goals. From his Duplicity app: Inquisitive "I want to unlock these mysteries. I want to dive as deep as I can into that ocean of the unknown and see what is possible." At a young age, Essek began asking questions about dunamis, the beacons, and the Luxon that the theocratic society of the Kryn Dynasty not only did not want answered, but deemed the asking dangerous. So he hid his interest, but never stopped questioning. In fact, the more he was denied, the more questions he had. The mysteries of dunamancy and the Luxon have become his life-long pursuit and obsession, but Essek is naturally curious about the world in general, always eager to learn, and willing to question things others might be afraid to, even when it might cost him everything. His pursuit of knowledge is not about seeking power; he just wants to understand. And though he makes some drastic and unwise choices in this pursuit, and is willing to take calculated risks, he is never reckless. Inquisitiveness is a combination of curiosity and caution. He has been secretly conducting heretical research in a theocratic society for much of his life, committed high treason several years ago, and still has not been found out, because it is his policy to plan carefully and take his time. As he puts it, "I've survived this long, weaving the intricacies of deceit like I have, by knowing how best to keep myself out of the complications." It's a very practical approach: in order to get the answers he so desperately seeks, he must remain alive and free to continue his research. On one occasion, he pulls fellow wizard Caleb aside to advise him that he must be careful to stay aware of danger and focused on their goal, and not be distracted by the temptation of Aeor's arcane mysteries. But soon after, he himself becomes enraptured by artifacts and research pertinent to his personal interests. He makes the effort to mitigate risk, but his inquisitive mind will not be satisfied until he has the answers he seeks. Arrogant "My intentions were never good. They were important." Essek always thinks that he is the smartest person in the room--and he usually is. Considered a dunamantic prodigy and given the prestigious appointment of Shadowhand to the Bright Queen herself at an exceptionally young age (young for his people, at least), Essek is wildly intelligent, powerful, and influential. He is proud of his many arcane achievements and confident in his abilities. He is outright scornful of Kryn culture as a whole, believing that only he is capable of understanding the true importance of his research, because everyone around him is too cowed or stupid or both to see it as he does. He thinks that his father (who he argued with and made so angry that he sees himself as the reason for his death) wasn’t a great man, in part because "he had little aspirations." Essek believes himself better than people who don't think for themselves and aspire to more. He calls religion a crutch, and states that the Dynasty's focus on worshipping the Luxon as a god is distracting them from discovering what it really is and what may be possible if it is understood, which is the focus of his research--or it would be if he were permitted to conduct his research as he sees fit. To him, he knows best, his goals are more important than anyone or anything else, and the ends to achieve them will surely justify the means. So since he is being prevented from pursuing his important work by his small-minded society, he bypasses it entirely. He steals two Luxon Beacons and delivers them to the Cerberus Assembly for research, because the knowledge he is seeking is worth any cost--even if entire nations must pay the price. Distant "My interests leave me not trusting anyone, not feeling like I, in some ways, belong. And as such, I spend a lot of my time in solitude." We know that Essek has been asking questions deemed "dangerous" since he was young. So under threat of ostracization or worse, including the immense pressure (and surveillance, and judgment, and weighted expectation) from his extremely devout and highly influential parents to be an unimpeachable representative of their den and rise to a position of prestige and authority, he learned to conceal his heretical interest in studying the beacons. Essek's younger brother Verin is the only person he felt close to or got along well with in his life until meeting the Mighty Nein, and Essek still barely speaks to him. This fundamental disconnect from his culture has resulted in Essek feeling like he cannot trust or become close to anyone, lest they discover his secrets, which becomes even more imperative after he commits treason. Despite actually longing for connection, Essek enforces his isolation on himself by being suspicious and dismissive of his own people by default, viewing them as ignorant, and since they cannot understand his work, not worth his time. As Shadowhand he intentionally cultivates an aloof and intimidating persona to keep people at arm's length, he lives alone in a large estate where until recently he never had guests, he wears layers of clothing that conceal his entire body, and he floats everywhere, rarely even making contact with the ground. He is terrified of intimacy and vulnerability, and his interpersonal skills have atrophied to the point that he is awkward and uncomfortable when actually attempting to be genuine, unused to displaying affection or participating in something as simple as a casual conversation with friends. This distance enabled him to forsake his own people for knowledge, and ultimately it was his longing for connection, for the academic peers and people that would finally understand him that he felt he could not find in the Dynasty, that led him to handing the beacons over to the enemy. Selfish "The pursuit of magic...at a certain point, it becomes about the self. It becomes about what I can do." For most of his life, Essek has been focused on his own ambitions to the exclusion of all else, and only very recently has that begun to change. As an arcane prodigy and the most gifted dunamancer in a generation, Essek could have done incredible things for his people. As Shadowhand, in a unique position to understand the dangerous hypocrisy at the heart of his nation's system of government, he could have worked to change the system he so resents. But he does not do these things, does not even consider them, because with exceptions so rare they prove the rule, the only thing that matters to Essek is his magical research. He does not seek to use this insight to better the world, but to satisfy his own need to understand and have that forbidden knowledge for himself--to prove that he was right all along. He uses his incredible mind and his powerful position solely to further his own ends. No cost is too great for the knowledge he seeks. Nothing exemplifies his refusal to consider anyone but himself more than conspiring with his nation's enemies to steal two of his culture's most sacred artifacts so that they can be studied. To say nothing of their spiritual and religious meaning, his people's cycle of rebirth cannot continue in the absence of the beacons. As Shadowhand, Essek was also uniquely aware that the years-long tension between the Kryn Dynasty and the neighboring Dwendalian Empire had reached a boiling point, and that the theft of the beacons would very likely ignite a war--which is precisely what happened. It took the intervention of his new friends the Mighty Nein to show Essek why he should feel remorse for having the deaths of thousands of innocents on his conscience. Though he has begun the difficult process of change thanks to them, selfishness of this magnitude is a difficult habit to break, and he very much still defaults to thinking of himself first. MAGICEssek is a powerful Dunamancy Wizard (as an NPC, he doesn't follow typical PC rules and has features of both Graviturgy and Chronurgy subclasses) using D&D 5e's ruleset. Level ranges from 16 to 20 depending on canon point. (In Duplicity, he is level 16.) Through extensive study over more than a century, Essek has learned to manipulate the magical weave of the world around him, and has acquired access to (or created himself) a wide variety of arcane spells (understood to him in the form of magical sigils, glyphs, and equations) which are transcribed and kept in his personal spellbook for reference. Most spells have three necessary components: verbal (speaking the correct words), somatic (making the correct gestures), and material (using the correct physical items). If Essek is not currently in possession of his arcane focus and/or the material components for certain spells, he will not be able to cast them. Essek's arcane specialty (of which he is considered a prodigy) is Dunamancy, the ancient and esoteric study of the fundamental force called dunamis: the magic of potentiality, probability, entropy, space, and time. The two major subspecialties within this field are Chronurgy, manipulation of time and possibility, and Graviturgy, manipulation of space and gravity. Essek, as a prodigy, is a master of both. Notably this means he is capable of creating localized gravitational anomalies, altering the gravitational fields of creatures and objects to make them lighter or heavier, drawing potential from discarded timelines, speeding up or slowing time around a specific target (in game terms this can last several "rounds," so typically no more than a minute), condensing spell energy into a bead that stores the spell for up to an hour and enables it to be activated by anyone, imparting a fragment of possibility to increase the chance of success in a specific instance (in game terms, granting a single reroll), and even bending reality to enforce a preferred outcome on an event occurring in close physical proximity (in game terms, deciding that a failed roll succeeds or a successful roll fails)--though this last ability incurs a penalty of physical and mental exhaustion for the caster that increases in severity each time it is used, so it's best to tread lightly. See his (level 16) spellbook HERE. OPT OUTEssek is a recently reformed villain who has been responsible for some truly awful things, including torture, murder, treason, and the theft of his culture's most significant religious artifacts, which ignited a war, killing thousands. He has framed others for his actions, including modifying memories and exchanging one individual as a prisoner of war. He has a lot of blood on his hands as a result of his actions, and has only just started to feel guilty and remorseful, though those feelings are intense and genuine. If villain redemption arcs aren't your thing, Essek might not be for you. If you would like to opt out of playing with Essek entirely for any reason, feel free to comment here. Everything is screened. KINKS & SHIPPINGKink list here. Essek is demisexual, so it is rare for him to feel sexual interest in people he doesn't feel close to, and he will almost always feel attracted to another person for their mind before he notices their body. Typically he is only interested in men (though I won't discount the possibility of rare exceptions with the right cr, probably in the context of a qpr and/or sharing another partner as metamours), and needs time and care to warm up to the idea of a relationship, romantic or sexual. As far as canon/castmate ships go: Yes: Caleb Maybe: Polynein, Fjord, Jester (in poly circumstances), cross-campaign guys, possibly other npcs, ask! No: Beau, Yasha, Veth, Caduceus, Mollymauk/Kingsley/Lucien Open to cross-canon or OCs as well, with some background/development of the relationship hammered out. In lieu of romantic relationships, I'm also really invested in close, supportive friends who care deeply about each other and also sometimes have sex. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
