Nelor Didenya

Nelor is a Westerner man who stands about 171cm or 5'7 tall and who has a weight of 68kg or 150lbs. He has mid back length white hair that's half of the time loose, half of the time braided, as well as deep red eyes, a combination considered outlandish and absurd where he comes from. He has a medium sized nose and a pointy chin. Despite his age, he still has a youthful look, aside from the bags that are usually present under his eyes. He has light brown horns on top of his skull.

In his time of the war, he wore military clothing. Nowadays he wears simpler clothes that allow for him to travel more easily. His most common attire is a khaki tank top with some rips in the fabric, a dark blue pair of trousers, brown knee high boots with a darker border, black bracers on both wrists, and a shoulder piece on the right shoulder. This shoulder piece consists of a grey metal plate attached to a black cloth draped over his shoulder. The cloth is fastened to a belt that runs all the way over his chest.

Colour palette

In a few words, Nelor is a calm and collective person. He's mild tempered and intelligent, often choosing reasoning over immediate action. He was always a contrast with Lux, who was more direct in his thinking. Nelor was always interested in strategical games and his moral compass is slightly off when it comes to his own amusement and health.

After years of being tormented by his brother's soul, he slowly became less tolerant of his suffering and became more aggressive in his ways. He still tends to use his brains over using his muscle, but with the insight that no one was going to help him out if he assertively stood in the background and waited for his turn to speak, he took matters into his own hands and he now tries to do whatever he can to regain his sanity.

Nelor was born in a village in what is now know as Marua, a country on the Demonic side of a mountain range dividing the Draconic countries of the continent from the Demonic ones. His twin brother Lux and him were, as most babies, born with white hair, but their red eyes unsettled a couple of people. As the two grew up their hair stayed white and their eyes didn't change colours. They were seen as strange children and avoided by the town's locals, but they didn't mind and found enough companionship with each other. Most villagers were just scared that they were a bad omen and opted to stay away from the family.

Due to Marua's strategical location it was a hotspot for conflict and war. Nelor's village was low priority but it still had a dangerous threat of dragon invasions breathing in its neck. There was an abundance of warriors and soldiers within the village and as Westerner children, Nelor and Lux were destined to become soldiers too. They were lucky to have parents who could buy their children's way out of the military, ensuring that they could stay at home and get a proper education. Nelor was a bright but timid boy as a child, so he was relieved to hear he wouldn't have to start an intensive training to join his village's military.

Thanks to his parents, Nelor could have an easy and laid back youth with his brother. In the long run he managed to become friends with a couple of other kids who got their education from home, and although their parents weren't so happy that their children were around the 'strange children', the kids themselves were happy enough to have a few extra friends to play with and didn't drop them.

Nelor grew up to be an intelligent and strategic young man. He kept good contact with his brother and together the two made for one of the most strategic duos the town had ever seen. Or at least that's what they proclaimed to be. Oftentimes they made up war games to play out against each other or other people from their clique to better their strategical insight, or they would look at the conflict their own village faced and try to find a resolution for it to render the demons victorious, but they weren't employed in the intellectual part of the military because of how the village saw them. They were still shunned and seen as weirdos, sometimes having to bear through being assaulted for their hair and eye colour. The two still picked up a minor skill in fighting from the kids they knew, but running away always was the safest option.

One night the two were out late again after they spent too much time playing one of their board games and drinking in a tavern. They returned to the middle parts of the village to return home when they were overpowered by dragon soldiers and sedated. Both of them were taken outside the village to a Draconic outpost with a handful of other villagers. It soon became known that the kidnapped people were there to be tortured for intelligence.

Their strange hair and eyes caught the attention of the dragons, who thought the two were special and therefor must have known a lot about the conflict. Unlike the reckless torture their friends had to go through, they had to be handled with enough care to keep them alive and functioning in case they really were important. Lux managed to convince them that they could help the dragons out as in a panicked rant he explained what Nelor and his strategy would be to defeat the dragons. Their enemies were impressed and gave them the chance to live in exchange for their strategical knowledge.

Both men were all aboard for this plan, first hesitant but quickly after convinced it'd be for the best. Nelor had heard the screams of the other villagers and he had seen their mutilated bodies, and in no way he was prepared to go through the same thing for a village that hated him and his brother when there existed a group that could look past their appearance and see them for their talent. The men were allowed to join the meetings of the lower officials and were closely monitored at all times to make sure they couldn't speak with any of their fellow villagers or run off.

Nelor and Lux, so caught up in this new and exciting war game, were having the time of their lives finally being respected as strategists and having their plans listened to instead of just being referred to as silly stories they're wasting their time on. With talk of them potentially becoming famous tacticians, the thought of betraying their people became less and less of an issue. They gave the dragons a couple of new insights and eventually managed to get higher up and actually help out with making the strategies. Nelor did his best to avoid too many civilian casualties, but as is usual in a war this was an almost impossible task. He didn't want to see his friends harmed, and he was sure that the dragons would understand no civilian casualties were needed to win.

One day, about three months since he first started out helping the dragon side, Nelor learned that in an attempt to wipe out the strategic forces of his village the dragons would sneak into the homes of the intellectual elite during the night and silently take out as many of its inhabitants. It quickly became apparent that this would also mean many people of his former clique would have to die in order to advance. By the time he had to make the decision whether or not he would give the dragons the location of where the intellectual elite lived he had learned a lot about Draconic culture and even started to feel sympathy towards them. He was only slightly opposed to the idea, but he was sure he could sneak in a way to keep his friends alive.

Lux wasn't ready to make this sacrifice yet, as he wanted to make sure that after the village was captured the inhabitants would stay under control of the dragons, but alive and free. The brothers got into a discussion about whether or not they would reveal the locations the dragons had to know for this mission. Eventually Lux managed to convince Nelor that it was a bad idea to expose their location and the mission was cancelled.

The dragons concluded that they could only keep Nelor, so they separated the duo, but it became clear that without Lux, Nelor didn't have anyone to discuss his strategy with and his skills were a wasted potential. The dragons weren't happy with this news and decided Lux had to disappear without getting rid of his strategic skills. In the end, the brothers functioned best when they were together, balancing out each other to come to a good idea.

The dragons were known for their experiments on body and soul, and they made an attempt to merge the good qualities of the twins into one soul inside Nelor's body, in a way that Lux' soul would be 'sown' to Nelor's and hopefully merge with it. They successfully went through with the experiment and Nelor's memory of Lux was completely destroyed. As they had hoped, he functioned as well as the two did before, but he was easier to bend to their will as Lux' consideration was weaker than Nelor's dedication to win. The man became a lot more silent when strategising, but he came up with excellent plans and strategies on his own.

It didn't take long until Nelor started noticing moving shadows and things he had never seen, heard, or felt before. A crushing loneliness overcame him but he didn't know the source. He occasionally got headaches and started having troubles sleeping. His restlessness had an effect on his judgement and the dragons were well aware of what was happening to him but kept pushing him to keep on working and finding ways to grasp the village. Two months after the procedure was executed, he was so helpless with his new mental problems that whenever he was alone in the dark he would start seeing moving figures, hear the wails of the dead, and feels as if hundreds of claws were peeling off his skin.

He didn't dare visit the camp's doctors because he was sure that if they found out that he was going insane they'd throw him out with the rest of the demon bodies outside the camp. He still followed the high officials' meetings, but his actions and plans became more and more aggressive until at one point he broke and used a plan he previously avoided due to its violent nature that would purge the city's entire guard and leave the citizens vulnerable thanks to a loophole in the shift system as he knew it.

Reinforcements were called to the camp and a few days after the plan was shaped, the military stormed the village, slaughtered the entire guard when they least expected it, and looted and pillaged the village they had now claimed. Upon hearing this last bit, Nelor shot into a panic and travelled to the city under a Draconic banner. He couldn't find any signs of demonic life, not even the villagers that were supposed to be spared. He realised that he had won the war but in an entirely different way than he had originally anticipated.

He'd made a huge miscalculation. He hadn't taken into consideration the unpredictable nature of people, something he would've had if only he had been more experienced and had ever witnessed a real war. People aren't logical, people feel and act accordingly instead of following orders exactly as they're written down. Nelor realised his mistake and broke down, couldn't move or say a word anymore, and he gave in to the feeling of dread he had been fighting for the past month. A handful of dragon soldiers brought him back to the base camp, where he was brought to a doctor who declared him insane. He was fired from the dragon military, stripped of his Draconic clothes and possessions, and brought to the ruins of his village to be left behind by his former allies. Luckily for him he was found by survivors within a few days and helped back to physical health by them. It appeared that they had no idea Nelor was responsible for their downfall, and he intended to keep it that way.

He was integrated into the group and they moved to another nearby Maruan village to find safety. He went about his day silently and unfocused, unresponsive to most people. The survivors assumed he broke under the stress he must have experienced during the raid and they let him be. His isolation and his madness kept getting worse, and the dragon raid that wiped out the remaining survivors a year after his village was taken came like a blessing.

Even after he went to Hell, he was still tormented by the remains of his brother, but to a much lesser extent. He could finally focus again without having to fear constant torment and horror. It wasn't too hard for Nelor to escape his own torture and to flee to the Mid Ring, the ring where people weren't tortured and where life wasn't actually that bad after all. The damage of the past years was still there, however, and he had a hard time dealing with the paranoia and the unreality that came with it.

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