Torment

Backstory

The only son of Szuriel and Moloch's post-Exodus affair, Torment was raised by the battlefields of Numeria where technology fell from the sky, learned and lost in a day. A child without a name, fighting the battles of men whose names became lost. There, he spent the first fourteen years of his life until the day Szuriel decided that any son of hers had to prove he was worthy of his life and, in an agreement with Moloch, sent Torment into the arena of Maleboge with a single foe: A Balor. The young fiend, thrown to the demon to fight for his life, grabbed for the only weapon in his reach as he fell - a black iron mace Szuriel had stolen from Moloch, crafted by Belial as a gift for his father.

As the battle waged on for sixty days and sixty nights, Torment found himself torn between his mother's cruelty and the honor of his father, unable to fight as he tried to remember who he was. His body split with his mind, his whole form breaking into a thousand mirror images as the days passed, each one a different aspect of the embattled fiend. He saw himself in the great beast's sword at the end, drenched in ash and blood and fire as the Balor fell, its face tormented. He chose his name there, Torment, the only thing he was certain of.

The fiend remained in Maleboge even as Szuriel and Moloch each offered him a path out - to Golarion to wage eternal war as Prejudice as his mother wished; to Proelera to strike down the heavens as a general of his father. He denied them both, shattering each mirror-image of himself he decided had to go until only four remained: Loyalty, Truth, Strength, and Adaptability. Torment decided for himself what he would be, as he walked forth from the sixth circle a changed man, back to his homeland of Numeria where he met his wife, Avernia, whom he fell for the moment he laid eyes upon her. Fair and kind, honest and strong-willed, she was all he'd ever desired.

Torment loved her until the day the wars claimed her, the ever-changing power structure of Numeria and the anarchic magic there trapping their village forever frozen in time, all souls taken to the beyond before he knew to save her. He left for Brevoy, fraught with grief for his wife's passing. He sought less violent work, heading off to found a kingdom with others he found shared tribulations with him. Gralamin, whose prior crimes haunted him, Torment helped to learn the meaning of loyalty and duty given to a man, and in return, the fiend learned of the undying nature of love to see his grief as a reminder of the love he'd had. Maurice, that magical swindler, who had to be taught a harsh lesson about the need for the careful practice of magic, taught Torment to shrug off the fear of his violence, to use it for his loyal heart's aspirations.

Favian, the man he'd learned to call king, the man he'd watched become a dragon and shake himself from the bonds of humanity, was the man Torment decided had earned his eternal loyalty. Their first battle together nearly saw the others murder Favian when Torment lept over a chasm only to be struck down before he could make it across by the oracle's sword through his leg. The horror that rose from the chasm, proof of his divine foresight and good heart. Torment knew he'd been saved despite Favian's refusal to defend himself from persecution and defended him from their own allies. His loyalty repaid a thousand times, most of all in the near-purple raven that now follows him - his wife's soul brought back from the abyss by the dragon king. Their love had changed in nature but never faded, as she became his partner rather than his bedmate.

When rebellion came to Firstlight, it was Torment who crushed it under heel. When Socothbenoth tempted Favian, Torment taught Gralamin the ways of demons to thwart him and save the king. When Favian feared retaliation as he'd faced before, it was Torment who married him and Gralamin, his presence an invitation for opposers to come forth and die. As Hand to the King and Favian's royal enforcer, there was no problem Torment could not solve. Especially, seeing as he's picked up blacksmithing in recent years, having taken a short trip to Phlegathon to learn of his mace's craft when it finally broke millennia later.