Lysander DeCroy

In order to understand Lysander’s personality and actions, the environment he grew up in must first be understood which greatly shaped his behavior and emotions. From a young age unreachable expectations were put onto him that the honor of his family could be preserved. Not only is the DeCroy family the most influential family in Audellis, but it has a long history of chivalry dating back to when Alessian DeCroy led the army that won a great historical war centuries before. So unsurprisingly, Lysander was expected to follow in these noble footsteps and demonstrate the same level of physical skill and strength as his siblings, father, and ancestors prior. But Lysander was unable to ever meet these expectations. Because of this, he was looked down on by his family from a young age. But it wasn’t until he was ten that everything fell apart.

In Audellis, there is a tradition among noble families. Every few years, a contest is held in which the children of these noble families are pitted against each other to test the children’s strength and swordsmanship. The tradition is meant to “re-enact the Great Audellian War that took place centuries before”, but it was really just a way for the nobility to show off their power to each other. For the five main nobles, this was especially true since they treated the contest as a form of intimidation (basically saying “I am above you, so don’t even think of stepping out of line”). For the weaker nobles however, this contest was even more important. Rather than a mock game for fun, it was a way for them to gauge other families and see who was a threat or not. And most importantly, there was a superstition surrounding the duel: if a family’s child was to lose in one of the tests, their family would be cursed with misfortune and suffer a tragic downfall. This was, of course, just a superstition, but it had begun after a series of coincidences surrounding families of children who had lost in the past and soon after fell from power for one reason or another. Much to Lysander’s luck, he was expected to participate in this test. Whether he would win or not wasn’t even a question because the DeCroy family simply did not lose. He was paired against the daughter of a rising noble family that Lord DeCroy had been keeping his eye on for quite a while in order to put them back in their place. The daughter was much smaller than Lysander (as frail as he was) and no one would have questioned who would win. But what no one was expecting was that not only did the girl completely demolish him, but she did it in record time: 1 minute, the fastest duel to ever take place in this contest.

That duel became the talk of every noble in Audellis for weeks. And overnight, Lysander was rejected by his family for embarrassing their bloodline and being unworthy of the title of “DeCroy”. Before the battle his father had told him “If you lose and bring shame upon this family, I will make sure that you regret it for the rest of your life.” And true to his word, Lysander became a ghost in his own household, never mentioned in public settings and hidden inside the DeCroy castle where he couldn’t cause any more harm than he’d already done.

As if the contest ordeal hadn’t been bad enough, a month later the DeCroys suffered a major loss after a merchant ship with extremely valuable goods they had traded sunk before reaching Orion City. With this shocking event, that superstition of the past was brought back up again. Why would something like this happen if not for Lysander losing the duel and embarrassing their family? This hardship had to be a result of the curse. So after that moment, he was proclaimed a curse on the family. Every major or minor inconvenience was suddenly Lysander’s fault. It couldn’t be the DeCroys because things just didn’t mess up for them. It had to be Lysander who had cursed their family since the day he was born.

In those tumultuous years, Lysander picked up the hobby of magic. Part of it was out of spite, but another part of it was out of genuine interest, specifically in the healing arts. For an entire year, Lysander spent his time studying healing and illusion magic in secret between his attendant’s feeble attempts at re-teaching him the art of the blade. And within that time he discovered he had a special knack for it. All his life he was sure he’d never be good at anything, but suddenly he wasn’t only doing well in a subject, but thriving in it with zero formal instruction.

Realizing this, he thought that if he showed his father this newfound talent he would finally be recognized and accepted. He requested a meeting with his father under the pretense that there was some kind of emergency he urgently needed to warn him about (when in reality he’d just concocted the whole thing to get his father’s attention). When Lord DeCroy agreed to listen, Lysander prepared the most magnificent spells he could find hoping that they would be enough to overshadow the lie he’d told to get an audience with him. When he showed his power to his father however, Lord DeCroy went completely ballistic. For one, he was enraged that Lysander had lied about what their meeting was about. Second, he was appalled that this entire time, instead of learning proper sword technique, he was using up his energy to learn magic (and healing and illusion magic of all things), something that was a complete disgrace for a family that was known for its strength and chivalry. And third, after seeing what Lysander could do, he decided that Lysander clearly DID have talent and that he must have lost in that contest all those years ago just to make a fool of their family. As a result, Lord DeCroy ended up putting Lysander through rigorous sword training with the idea that Lysander clearly had it in him somewhere if he could do all those other things. After Lysander still showed no progress, Lord DeCroy decided to take a different approach and came up with the idea that if he didn’t want to demonstrate his true abilities, he’d force it out of him, stretching him to his absolute limit (with the idea that once Lyander finally broke and was desperate enough, he would have no choice but to show his true power). To do this, Lord DeCroy put Lysander into a pitch black room with little to no food or water for several days and the only way he could get out was by fighting and winning against the man guarding the door (the only exit in the room). When Lysander stayed stubborn, Lord DeCroy took yet another approach, locking the door and putting a small, but fearsome beast into the room with him, saying that if Lysander was able to kill it, he could be let out. If the beast killed him, then that was what he deserved. With no other choice now that this was a matter of life or death, Lysander finally snapped, grabbing the sword he was given as a weapon and completely slaughtering the beast. Once the beast was slain, the door was opened to reveal Lysander in the middle of the room with blood all over his clothes and sword, a complete wreck. Realizing what he’d done, he was horrified by himself, unable to believe he’d done something so monstrous. His father on the other hand was content as can be, finally getting the answer he'd wanted. The only words he offered to Lysander in that moment were the he knew he'd had always had it in him. And then he walked away, leaving Lysander alone in the room, sitting in the puddle of blood he'd created. From that day onward, Lysander was immensely afraid of the dark.

As a result of this ordeal, Lysander vowed to never pick up a sword again. Fully dedicating himself to the healing arts, he completely discarded what his father wanted and instead did everything in his power to prove that he was nothing like the monster his father had made him out to be. Deep down, he also hoped that if he was somehow able to become skilled enough at magic, his father would change his mind and accept him. At age 16, Lysander developed his own signature healing spell, an exceptionally hard feat. The spell consisted of a small plant that could wrap its vines around a wounded area, healing whatever it was able to touch (he later refined this into Initium Novum which has more info below). A year after, he then developed his signature illusion spell, which allowed him to distort the reality of those around him for a limited time, forcing them to see whatever he wanted them to. Using this spell, he was able to sneak around the DeCroy castle and even out to town whenever he felt like it, which is what gave him the idea to finally run away from home at 19, which is where the main plot line of Five Letters begins.