HELKE VYRÏNNOSTA
Gender: Male
Race: Elf
Class: Sorcerer
Position on Magic: Pro-Magic (but strongly opposed to dark arts)
Time with the Wardens: One year and a half
Equipment:
- A flask of water. Hydratation is important.
- A pocket containing multiple watercolor sketches: of his husband, their pets, and a teen-age girl.
- Soothing cream for his aching joints.
- Small stationary kit for writing letters.
- Enchanted stones (gloves and belt) to ensure his messenger pigeon finds him almost no matter where he is.
Mana Pool: High
ILLUSIONAL (Major)
Winter Chimera — Makes the subject feel incredibly cold. Pains, distracts, confuses, weakens the mind. Also good for torture.
Blizzard Mirage — The subjects is under the illusion of a snow storm. Hinders vision, slows movements.
Way back home —That spell needs two subjects, one of which must be alive (and may well be Helke himself). It is enabled in two actions: first, when it is cast — the mage must be in physical contact with both subjects, and it requires very little mana, for the spell is then dormant. Later comes the activation phase. Distance then only matters in the fact that the further the subjects are from each other, the more costly in mana. Once the spell is activated, the live subject(s) will sense where the other is and feel drawn to it instinctively. That instinct is most powerful for animals and inguz. It is sensed by elves and humans well enough, but is not felt by dwarves. Helke doesn't know about orcs. The spell fades in time, but may be kept up to 2/3 months.
OFFENSIVE
Cryokinetic Canon — Throws an ice shape (usually a shard) at high kinetic energy. Can pierce through skin, cloth, leather, but not metal. 20 meters range. The aim can only be precise if Helke is deeply focused, so either in a quiet place, or after having the time and peace to meditate (from 2 to 10 minutes depending on his level of stress).
Ice Golem — A very powerful spell, that costs Helke most of his mana. After its use he is left extremely vulnerable to spirits and enemies alike, and hence will avoid it unless it is his very last resort. The spell requires a preparation of five minutes in which Helke gathers his strength — though he does not need to be in a state of deep concentration. That spell is one of rage and pain, and under very intense emotions, the preparation time will take less (though it'll always take one minute at the very least). On the other hand Helke may not be able to cast it when in a non-emotional state (nor would he wish to, for that matter). It creates a 16 foot-tall ice golem, made alive by his mana. Helke controls its targets and the people it protects, but other than that its fighting is instinctive. During the combat, Helke is in a sort of trance. The only ways to stop the spell are: to kill Helke (wounding him would not suffice — in fact it would have the opposite effect), to wait around 30 min for the spell to crumble naturally, or until all the targeted enemies have been slain.
DEFENSIVE
Frost Shield — Its resistance vastly depends on its thickness (the thicker/broader the barrier, the costlier in mana).
Strong against: Water, physical attacks, punctual weapons such as arrows/spears
Average against: Pure mana, swords
Weak against: any form of heat, heavy weapons such as a hammer or an axe
ALTERATIVE
Cold breath — Reduces the temperature of an object. When used on water, Helke can also shape a small ice object out of it (worthless to make any useful weapon, though).
Strengths: High mana pool, skilled sorcerer, good memory, perceptive, experienced, cautious.
Weaknesses: Physically weak, incapable of yielding a weapon, incapable of hand to hand combat, runs slowly, weak immune system, unwilling to try new/eccentric methods.
Language: He speaks with a thick elvish accent, and though he has a wide vocabulary in the Common Tongue, his speech mannerism are rather colloquial and grammar mistakes aren't uncommon. He is illiterate in the Common Tongue, but reads, writes, and speaks Elvish well.
Personality: Helke is generally quite joyful, of a good humor and compassionate heart. He enjoys telling stupid jokes only he finds funny, and could tell the same story a thousands times without tiring. In general, he is rather talkative, and can be an absolute chatterbox when in the right mood, though he also loves listening and observing young people from afar. He's a master in the art of gossiping, especially when it comes to youthful love affairs. It is hard to anger or offend him, but those who do... rarely live to tell the tale. He then becomes icy and ruthless, and his sadistic streak truly comes through when facing someone he hates. Fortunately, he rarely hates anyone. He has a great sadness in him, demons from the past he hasn't quite chased, but that side of him is scarcely ever seen, and only to people he has an immense trust in — and he is, generally, quite distrustful.
He is indifferent to humans and dwarves, but heavily racist against Inguz. He sees them as dirty, smelly, uncivilized savages.
Biography: (this got so long but he's 73 so)
The Vyrïnnosta family finds its roots in Vardendale, where it was once a powerful house. Helke's great grandfather, Nærcys, used to boast that their bloodlines could be traced back to some ancient elven royalties, though that seems to be no more than a colorful tale. Their ancestors were, most likely, fishmongers who rose to wealth. Yet their fortune (nothing extravagant, but more than most common folks could vouch for) and magical powers filled them with immense pride, to the extent of insolent arrogance, and that eventually led to sore troubles with the royal family. Though no one is certain what the conflict was about, as Nærcys would refuse to ever speak of it, it led the family to its downfall — exile.
Helke's father was but a teen-ager at the time, yet his betrothed, who would later become the mother of his child, chose to leave the country with them, lovesick and hungry for adventure as she was. For three years they travelled, across Kalico, and Morcrest, living as nomads and never finding a place to settle in. The money they had brought served them for a while, but three years of journey were soon to drain their funds. When they reached Artana, three of their children had been lost to sickness, a woman in childbirth, and youths and elders alike were sickly and malnourished — it was clear that they needed to become sedentary, or die.
They built a house on the edge of a forest, an hour's walk from a north-western Archduchy's capital — and in this house, Helke was born. As his family started their business as wood workers for the strongest, midwives for the weakest, and less tedious tasks for the magically potent, he grew to be a fairly normal child in most aspects, learning the Elvish tongue and its writing from his parents. He was cherished, healthy, and happy.
That was, until the nightmares started.
The region of Artana where they lived was by no means of a cold climate, but Helke's nights were made of snow storms and blizzards, of corpses frozen in the ice and icy chills running down his spine. Every morning he woke up trembling and covered in cold sweat, and most nights, he refused to even sleep at all, terrified of the frost that took over each time he closed his eyes.
The problem grew even worse when Helke's powers began to manifest. At night he would englobe the entire household in his excruciating nightmares, and he was soon isolated from the rest of the family, sleeping in the woods. Those years of his life were lonely, guilt-filled, and wretchedly cold. His parents were desperate. They tried herbal medicine, soothing magic, travelled across the province to find a cure, anything that would soothe their only child's sleep — in vain.
Finally, the phenomenon reached the ears of a middle-aged human warlock who worked as a researcher at the city's Arcanium. He was specialized in Illusional magic, and knew that vivid nightmares, along with the accidental capacity of forcing them upon others, could become fearsome weapons if mastered. He prayed Helke's parents to leave him under his protection and teaching, but at first, the Vyrïnnostas refused adamantly. For their child, a pure born elf, to be taught by a human? That would be an outrage.
But, hidden in a corner of the room, Helke had listened very attentively to the mage's words. To his promises of peaceful nights if he learned to control the storm inside, to tales of immense power and unprecedented fame, of wealth, of grandeur. And soon his days too were starting to be filled with dreams, ones of a much sweeter taste. Perhaps to compensate the self loathing that had filled him for all these years, a new belief rose in him, a pride, a certainty that he was destined for greatness, that this curse was the premise of some incredible power he only had to seize. In short, the warlock's words, already exaggerated to convince Helke's parents, had been amplified by his childish hopes and imagination. Soon he began to beg his parents to let him go, and combined with the fact that they were just as helpless with his problem as they had always been, they ended up agreeing.
Helke therefore spent his entire teenagehood at the Arcanium, learning regular magic during the day, and taking private lessons with the Warlock (who was named Joshua) in the evenings. While he was scarcely more than average in most areas of magic, he truly had a gift for Illusions, and he learnt the art of it rather quickly. Still, it took more than ten years to keep his nightmares at bay, and even for a long time after that they were still nights when he woke up in cold sweats.
His talent allowed him to become a sorcerer, and at the age of 40, he began to teach himself at the Arcanium. He still had an arrogance about him, though reality had caught up on his childish dreams. By that time, he had met and fallen in love with a magicless elf called Maska. He was seven years younger than him, and worked at a modest bakery, which Helke had gone to because it sold pastries from his parent's homeland. Though Maska could bake as they did in Vardendale, that was the only connection he had with the elvish kingdom, and he did not speak its ancient tongue. Helke, knowing the speaking of the common tongue from Joshua, offered to teach Maska Elvish, first in speech, then in reading and writing. That was how they started to spend time together regularly. One thing led to another, and a few years later, they were married under old Elvish traditions by Helke's grandfather.
Both of them had been born in large families, and the fact that they could not have children left a painful gap in their lives. Perhaps that was why Helke got so attached to a young human girl from a class he taught; Celia. She was of extraordinary powers, and an orphan. Helke wholeheartedly embraced the role of a surrogate father, and taught her all that he knew. She often spent nights at his household, and sweet as she was, Maska got to loving her, too. Helke would have done anything for her, and when she started asking about dark magic — which he had never practiced — he gave her all the resources she wished for, and let her study it extensively. He knew the dangers, had seen coworkers and students become banes across the years; but how could that happen to Celia? She was so brilliant, so talented. She had the potential Helke had been promised, yet realized he never truly had. She seemed untouchable.
She was not. One night, Celia reported having nightmares of her own. Helke was not too worried — he had after all himself been prone to nightmares as a child, and he first dealt with them as he had dealt with his own, using all the techniques Joshua had taught him. But it wasn't enough — the nightmares came back, more intense every time, howling voices Celia did not recognize, and she began to be paranoiac, feeling presences everywhere, hearing whispers of quiet atrocities in her ears. At that point, all of Helke's denial was not enough; Celia was haunted. He did all he could, all that he had been taught and more, asked for his collegue's help, but the work of five sorcerers and all of Celia's willpower were not enough. By the end of it it was obvious that Celia had failed, and become a bane.
He requested the right to execute her himself, and his friends left him alone with her, sorry and sympathetic. Truth was that, even though he knew perfectly well that all hope was lost at this point, he just could not abandon. Not when she was right there, still so much of herself in that body. He hid her away, and tried it all, went to the most remote areas of arcane magic to save her. None of it worked, of course, and in mere weeks, Celia was nothing of the sweet girl she had once been, transfigure instead in an atrocious monster.
That was the first and only time Helke used the most powerful spell in his possession, that of the Ice Golem. It was reckless, and looking back, he found that he had wanted to die, back then. But somehow it worked, Celia died, and Helke survived. That was, in his eyes, the greatest injustice of his life.
The years passed, Maska and him slowly getting over their grief. They opened their houses to many pets, who weren't what Celia had been, but brought some warmth in their hollow household, and it helped. Helke continued teaching at the Arcanium, his pain and age making him more humble, wise, and firmly opposed to any form of dark magic whatsoever. The older he grew, the more he perfected his art, becoming a reference in the fields of Illusional and Ice magic in Artana.
On one winter night he received a messenger from Morcrest, asking him to join the King's Warden. He hesitated for a long time, worried and uncomfortable with leaving Maska alone. After much deliberation, he realized that he wanted to go, and Maska knew it too. Thus, they both left for Morcrest.
Maska now has a bakery in the Capital, and when Helke is not in town, they write each other letters in Elvish, transported by their messenger pigeon, Gerald.
Name: Ansley Norcott
