Larithion Nhadireth

appearance
From a distance Larithion appears the typical sea elf; he is 6'2" and of lean, muscular build, with dim blue skin. His hair is a blue-black and straight, reaching to mid-back, with his bangs pulled away from his face by a braid. Like all sea elves he bears gills on his throat and long pointed ears. However because his father was a malenti, he was born with mutations, as sahuagin often are. He has white ram horns on his head that resemble dead coral, red slit eyes like a reptile, and shark-like teeth, as well as a resistance to magic. His peculiarities among a homogenous society made him an outcast, though surface dwellers have rarely realized he deviates so strongly from a typical sea elf's appearance. On land, he wears red leather studded armor with boots, and he carries a small shield, a rapier, a crossbow, and a longbow.

personality
istj / 5w4 spsx / hufflepuff / melancholy-choleric / judgment
+ protective, selfless, brave, determined, inquisitive, decisive, caring
- aggressive, broody, sensitive, gullible, stubborn, reactive, insecure, impressionable
Larithion radiates unpleasantness, though in actuality he's far more awkward and shy than he is cruel. At first impression he's standoffish and cold and prefers to keep others at a distance. He's short with others and has learned to use intimidation in order to get what he wants, and is quite literally at a loss when he needs to do anything other than bear his teeth and draw his bow. His boldness and aggression is what he knows he's good at, and he relishes in fighting because it's where he knows he belongs in the world. Raised with sahuagin culture while being considered a sea elf gave him a thick identity complex and an early feeling of rejection. Very few friends in his youth made him impressionable with a tendency to idolize the people in his life and be incapable of seeing their flaws. He's most sensitive to betrayal and to avoid the hurt will allow himself to be led by the nose as long as possible. Larithion has a deep love for those he considers his people or his family, willing to put himself in reckless danger in order to protect them. He tends to adopt a "us versus the world" mentality, justifying the killing of others by refusing to see them as people, or by seeing them as a threat to those he loves. Despite initial impressions, his pride and his seeming independence is more of an act, as he hates being alone and misses others terribly. Emotions don't come easily to him and he never learned how to express them, and as such withdraws into himself when others prompt him to speak about feelings. He prefers expressing his feelings through actions over words, though to disappoint someone he loves sickens him. In short he's learned to disguise his insecurity, lostness, and youth beneath an aggressive, dismissive, and uncaring mask, particularly after feeling that the two people he loved in life betrayed him. However any effort to hold others at a distance is thwarted by his want for companionship and a family, and he easily finds himself swept up in defending those he cares about and wanting their approval.

drives
to hunt down his former lover who left him for dead
to grow stronger
to find a community or family
to protect those he loves

fears
aging and his death, as he does not know how long his lifespan is
being abandoned or betrayed
not being able to breathe
never seeing the sea again

pre-birth

Larithion’s parents met during his mother’s tradition of migration. Renathiel was the middle child in a tight knit clan near the Old Spirit Isles, on the outskirts of Evermeet’s reign. Her older sister, Silwen, was seventy-four years her senior and had already taken her adult name whereas Renathiel was just claiming hers. Her brother, Eruathon, was seventy years her junior, still a child in everyone’s eyes. Renathiel was known for her voice and was a haunting bard with a love for the music of sea life. As a young adult at the age of 115, she chose to migrate with the whales down to the Infinite Gulf in the winter.

Larithion’s father was a malenti named Veriack'e, born to a warrior caste of sahuagin in the Heartless Sea. His parents and extended were merciless barbarians who defended their spit of territory aggressively, and his older brother B’delit was no different, resembling a customary sahuagin all fins and teeth and muscles. Veriack’e’s mutation at birth, however, was celebrated as a sign of fortune: though he was a sahuagin, he resembled an aquatic elf in every single way. Veriack’e was raised as a thief and a murderer, intended to befriend elves and take their information and goods before killing them. Veriack'e was taught basic elven and fundamentals of aquatic elf culture, and would typically go by the moniker Castien Nhadireth when associating with other elves.

Renathiel came across Veriack'e during the migration and was wooed by Veriack'e’s façade. He spoke primarily Common and claimed to be an adventurer and nomad trader, traveling across the Heartless Sea and being enchanted with the different ways of life he saw. Renathiel invited him to join the migration and against his better judgment Veriack'e agreed. As they traveled, Veriack'e discovered that the person he wanted to be was in fact the person he was pretending to be, and faltered more and more in his lies. Renathiel saw the many red flags — the holes in his tales, the way he spoke such poor elven, how he never spoke of his clan — but chose to ignore them. Castien was boastful but curious, an attentive listener, and playful with a charming smile.

During the migration Renathiel became pregnant, and suddenly their tryst was no longer just a daydream but an actual reality. She became more anxious as Castien’s tales still didn’t hold water, and she began accusing him, picking him apart. Veriack'e grew anxious as well, certain she would leave if she knew his true identity and his past, though was too cowardly to confess. Their relationship crumbled during Renathiel’s gestation and they constantly fought. They abandoned the migration as it traveled back north to stay put until Renathiel gave birth.

The whales leaving were Renathiel’s last connection to her clan and her loves. She gave birth early and had twins, as sahuagin often do. Veriack'e’s lies surfaced inevitably. One of the children was born healthy and normal, though the other was mutated, bearing typical sahuagin shark teeth and slit pupils, and strange horn-like buds sprouting from his head.

Renathiel was hysteric and Veriack'e confessed he was a malenti, though it did nothing to detract from his genuine feelings. Renathiel brushed off his pleas and saw through to who he had been — an opportunistic murderer, who had initially seen her as nothing but a target. She would not abandon her healthy child with a sahuagin, but she refused to accept the other. She could not take a baby bearing sahuagin-like mutations back to her clan, and thus she told Veriack'e that either he could take the child, kill it himself, or she would leave it to die.

Veriack'e was heartbroken, not about to prove himself the monster he claimed not to be by letting his baby die, and also more interested in the stronger child over the feeble ordinary one. He thus said he would take the baby boy. After unfortunate circumstances in which Renathiel realized the razor-toothed child didn’t need to nurse, she abandoned Veriack'e and the baby boy in the Infinite Gulf, taking the baby girl with her back north to her clan.

 The baby girl was named Mirda and took Renathiel’s clan name of Aeralithe. Renathiel claimed that she had met an aquatic elf on her voyage that resulted in a child, though he had left before he realized she was pregnant. Mirda was raised thinking she was a full-blooded elf, and never showed any signs of mutations othyer than a resistance to magic, which Renathiel played off, keeping her secret hidden even in the future when she took another lover.

y0-10

Veriack'e named the baby boy Larithion, and gave him his false surname of Nhadireth, which in elven means “of the North.” Veriack'e never returned back to his home and ironically avoided the north, taking up a nomadic lifestyle in the southern Heartless Sea and leading the sort of life he had feigned before. He went by Veriack'e the malenti or Castien the elf, whichever was more convenient. He attempted work first as a scout or a bodyguard for those who traveled, and would strap Larithion to his back and hide his face with a cowl of sea reeds. As Larithion grew, however, he would move and wail and it became ineffective. The baby’s teeth and eyes and horns frightened potential customers, particularly other aquatic elves, who saw Larithion as unnerving at best and possessed at worst.

Veriack’e took to impressing the surface-dwellers instead, as they knew little of aquatic customs and saw Larithion as nothing more than a peculiar fish child rather than a demonic omen. Veriack’e volunteered his services as a guide across the sea, protecting travelers from undersea threats and acting as their map through safer waters. Larithion would be strapped to his back or stomach, and despite others’ reservations about his appearance, his father was a never-ending fountain of pride. Veriack’e would proudly introduce his peculiar child to surface dwellers and goad him into showing his sharp teeth.

Larithion thus grew up with minimal influence from elven and sahuagin cultures, and a lot of familiarity with surface dwellers. His father taught him Common fluently and then Aquan which he spoke well, as he used it to have conversations with his father in front of those who didn’t speak it. Veriack’e additionally added Elven to his lessons, though Larithion’s proficiency ended where Veriack’e’s did. As a child he was too shy to speak it around other elves even if they addressed him in it, and he never practiced otherwise.

Larithion’s earliest memories were thus traveling through the Heartless Sea, sleeping tied to his father with no one else around. He was quiet and inquisitive, and meek around strangers, preferring to bundle into his father’s shoulder rather than talk. Despite his natural curiosity, he was of mediocre intelligence, though had a strong sense of self-preservation and survival. He wouldn’t hesitate to bite any who bothered him and had a keen sense of observation. To Veriack’e, those traits were far more important than history and literature.

y10-20

By virtue of his father, Larithion learned to use weapons early and to have an unhealthy amount of distrust in others. Elf clans they passed rejected his teeth and eyes and odd horns (which were growing, sprouting like bleached coral and curling like a ram’s). As he grew older, his shyness mutated into dislike, and he detested those who rejected him. He channeled his confusions and frustrations into fighting and a sense of spirituality. His father habitually prayed to both Sekolah, the Shark God, and Deep Sashelas, the Dolphin Prince. It was not until he was older that Larithion realized that the two deities were not even in the same pantheon, let alone the representations of law/war and chaos/knowledge respectively that his father treated them as. Despite being the lord of the aquatic elves, Larithion always felt a tighter attachment to Deep Sashelas, and formed his own way of worship outside of the traditions of elven temples. He invoked Deep Sashelas frequently to guide him towards sense and the truth, and to give him the will to oppose those who would stand in his way.

As Larithion entered his teenage years, he began to inquire more about his identity and his family, specifically his mother. Veriack'e could never lose his inclination to lie and gave him vague answers — that he was special, that his mother died in childbirth, that he wasn’t exactly an elf but wasn’t not one either. Veriack’e never recognized the important of identity when it came to raising Larithion, and for much of Larithion’s childhood he felt disconnected and lost. He had no friends outside of his father, and even his father didn’t entirely resemble him in appearance. He was silent and withdrawn and extremely sensitive, with stunted social skills that were often mistaken for coldness and independence. The way his father viewed life impressed upon Larithion that there was no one he could trust but himself.

When he was an adolescent, Larithion was old enough to join his father’s business. He found that the mutations that had made him shunned as a child impressed surface-dwellers looking for aquatics to grant them safe passage, and for the first time he was instilled with a sense of cold pride about his appearance. He was an excellent fighter and wielded primarily a trident and a small dagger, and would push himself into fights without mercy. His sense of not belonging and his magic immunity made him headstrong and aggressive, perhaps more reminiscent of a sahuagin than an elf. Additionally his way of business was shrewd and Larithion never questioned putting himself first. When he was thirteen he and his father were guiding a boat between isles, and they were confronted with a horde of scrags. They turned on the crew, grabbed what they could, and fled, leaving the men to be devoured.

y20-35

At twenty Larithion was still young by elf terms, though he would have been considered an adult far into his prime by sahuagin. His father was growing older as well, now forty-five and an elder. Recognizing that he was aging faster than any elf should, Veriack’e was finally frank that Larithion’s mysterious blood was in fact sahuagin: monstrous creatures that Larithion had never looked upon with kindness. Larithion was horrified, though his father emphasized that he was free to choose who he wanted to be. Larithion only saw this as evidence that he belonged in neither place and was an unwanted representation of the constant war that plagued the species. The sahuagin were bloodthirsty and terrifying, though the elves were pious and close-knit, and he felt like a peculiar mixture of both of them. And yet sometimes he seemed like neither — he was also unaffected by all forms of magic and was plagued by the horns unusual to either race.

With this knowledge came a sense of betrayal. For his entire youth his father had been his closest friend and his idol, though now he had been revealed to be a monster and not an elf at all. His father was the reason he had not grown up with elves as an elf, and had been denied a community for all of his childhood. Their relationship turned frosty and Larithion developed an independent, rebellious streak. He was mouthy and aggressive, determined to become a better fighter and not rely on his father for anything. They slept separate and hunted alone, coming together only for business.

Veriack’e passed when Larithion was twenty-eight, merely a juvenile for elves. Though his relationship with his father had turned quarrelsome, Larithion was suddenly left alone in the world with no companionship or family to speak of. Larithion’s exterior grew ever harder and he rejected returning to the surface dwellers while his father’s death was so fresh, not wanting to merely follow in his footsteps. Instead he began to seek more of who he was, turning to investigate ruins and places of old magic that could not spurn him. The treasures the old ruins held inspired him, and he quickly learned to pilfer what wasn’t already picked over, most typically vandalizing or dismantling structures to find things and bring it to the surface to sell.

His loyalty was only to himself, though he was still naïve. He couldn’t tell when he was being ripped off or taken advantage of, and was always suspicious of others judging him. Despite that, for the first time he started making connections outside of those his father had made. He was quickly recognized among port merchants; aquatic elves were a rare enough sight, though his horns made him particularly memorable to surface dwellers who had difficulty telling sea elves apart.

Larithion was bullheaded and could never turn down a challenge, and his naivety about surface culture was a source of amusement for those who hung around the docks. He drank to excess, was goaded into fights, and participated in sexual activities. The attention seemed strangely like finally having a sense of belonging, and during that time Larithion wished he’d been born a human and not in the water at all.

y35-50

He had garnered a positive reputation on the shore, and Larithion found that adventurers wanted to hire him — not for transport, but to assist them in exploring the depths. Many of them had lofty ideas and maps and legends about what could lay beneath the water’s surface, but they were plagued with only lungs and couldn’t actually go down and get it. Larithion happily found himself pulled into service, with the added bonus of learning more about the lost magic in the sea. Arcane magic and history was never of any interest to his father and thus hadn’t even been taught to him, and Larithion lapped up the legends his employers told him.

And they were even better when they were true. His first dive was a sunken ship that contained treasure and a blessed weapon. The humans he was escorting salivated over the magical spear and loaded him with gold pieces far greater than anything he’d been paid in the past.

He was hooked from there on out, and the more he worked, the vaster his ego grew. It would have been a lonely but charmed life had he not met Jollan, a half-elf archer with a thirst unquenched. Larithion was 43 when Jollan came to him to hire him. Larithion was immediately drawn in by his story: he was the product of an elf and a human, raised among men and always instilled with a curiosity about elven legends. He was a charming adventurer with greedy ambition. He was the first half-elf Larithion had met, and he found himself drawn by Jollan’s wit and bravado, and his talent with a bow.

Their first expedition was to find the wreckage of the Sahegrir’s ship, felled during a storm during the Retreat. The legacy of Sahegrir, an eladrin sorcerer, had enchanted Jollan for a decade, and he claimed to know just where around Evermeet the sorcerer’s ship had sunk. During the voyage they talked of old elven stories and legends, and the tales lapsed into flirtations. When they had come to the site in Jollan’s notes, they searched the waters for hours, until they found the remains of a broken ship nearly dissolved into coral. No sooner had they disturbed the hull than were they met with chuul scuttling forth from the ship’s pieces. Jollan with his bow and his crew fought the beasts while Larithion swum within and retrieved an amulet and jewelry from the scattered skeleton. When he emerged, the crew was rallying around Jollan whose leg had been paralyzed by the mouth tentacles of one of the chuul. Larithion struck the creature in the tender stomach and helped to drag Jollan back onto the boat. He spilled their spoils out onto the deck and the crew celebrated and drank the ship’s entire contents of ale that night.

When Jollan’s leg regained feeling, he and Larithion, high on victory, made love.

From there on out they established a business partnership coupled with an intimacy that Larithion poured himself into completely. It was his first emotional relationship and he was swept up in the need of it, finding himself both oddly insecure and possessive and uncertain how to express his wants. This was certainly the passion he’d heard others speak of, and he imagined a future like this, trekking with Jollan wherever things took them and growing wealthy on the spoils.

For a while, it seemed like a possibility. They slept together and talked of the future. He taught Jollan to throw a trident and Jollan taught him how to shoot a bow. They’d tease each other in what elven they both knew. Their explorations became riskier and riskier and Larithion was filled with greed and lust, addicted to the rush of adrenaline that came with putting himself on the line. He was too blinded by adoration to refuse when Jollan suggested plundering the gravesite of aquatic elf nobles, who had been buried with their achievements. It was the first time he’d ever put his trident through a sentient creature, one whose language he could understand. His guilt was washed away by Jollan’s happiness, and Larithion told himself he didn’t care; they weren’t his people, and they didn’t want him either.

The targeting continued, particularly around Evermeet, which they’d determined to be a prime location of sunken ships and elven relics. Over the years, Larithion realized that the aquatic elves had begun to refer to him by a peculiar name. Lyir'calaan they called him, though he only recognized lyir: to possess horns. A slur, he assumed, and was bitter that he didn’t know enough elven to even understand how he was being insulted.

They reached their peak when Larithion was fifty. Jollan proposed they raid an old temple of Deep Sashelas near Evermeet, protected by a magical veil and said to contain one of Deep Sashelas’ original gifts to the elves within. For the first time Larithion balked; Deep Sashelas was not merely an elven god, but his god, and if Deep Sashelas was watching over him he was doing it well. Jollan convinced him, stating that if no one else was immune to magic like he, then this temple had not been penetrated in centuries. Whatever within would otherwise be lost to time — and would that be what Deep Sashelas desired?

They anchored by the temple at night. Larithion and Jollan slipped silently into the sea, Larithion holding Jollan’s wrist to guide him through the dark waters. They came to a point where only Larithion could proceed; he passed through the barrier effortlessly, and Jollan’s laughter came out as bubbles as he stared in amazement. Larithion brushed his fingertips before Jollan ascended to the surface for air, and he turned towards the temple, staring at the architecture in the darkness. It was the first proper time he had been to one of Deep Sashelas’ temples, and he had thought he’d feel more. His connection to Deep Sashelas felt waned, and Larithion idly wondered if he had inadvertently pledged himself to Sekolah.

The temple was old and grown over with flora, though in the center there was a statue depiction of Deep Sashelas. One of his hands was outstretched and the other was cradling against his chest, holding an orb within his marble fingers. Its surface was pink but there was something flickering deep within, a darkness that moved about like a tadpole, frantically flashing as Larithion drew closer. And then he looked to the outstretched hand, which cupped a bottle, its surface murky with algae.

Larithion tried to move the orb first though it wouldn’t budge, and the inky creature thrashed at his fingers. He then plucked the bottle from the hand and wiped the grime from its sides. There was something within: an old scroll of paper wrapped around a necklace. His heart pumping with excitement, he retreated from the temple, back out into the waters were Jollan was waiting. Larithion waved the bottle and Jollan smiled — and that was the last memory he had before a spear cut through the darkness, missing Jollan by inches. Larithion turned in a panic and saw their attackers: two priests and three warriors. Jollan shouted for him to hand him the bottle and he did so, straining to pass it to Jollan’s waiting fingers before a spear thumped into the side of the boat. Larithion dove down deep into the water, orienting himself, though when he flashed back up the ladder that had hung was gone.

His fingernails scratched the side of the boat as the anchor was stirring against the seafloor as the chain was heaved upwards. Larithion shouted Jollan’s name until the elves came too close, and he pushed off of the boat, spinning back into the water. Their words, only some he could recognize, pulsed in his ears. Larithion swam towards the temple, though one of them caught him in a net, and he thrashed as he sank down towards the sand. A scream escaped him as the prong of a trident penetrated the back of his calf and his blood crept into the water. He pried the net off and pulled himself into the temple before the barrier and curled up beside Deep Sashelas’s statue.

Between him and the priests, Larithion was assuming he was not the one the god was looking after now.

The elves had drawn close to the barrier and he could hear their words clearly. Lyir’calaan, one of them said again.

Larithion shouted for Jollan, for the crew, a final time, but the anchor had been pulled from the water, and not even one of the warriors driving his spear into its exterior could penetrate the hull. He sunk down and inspected his bleeding leg; it stung to the touch. For a while he waited, watching the eyes of the aquatic elves in the darkness. Then he’d noticed that more had begun to gather, up against the boundary of the barrier. He could not remain in there forever. He would starve, and they would watch him die.

Larithion’s gaze flicked up to the pearl-shaped orb in Deep Sashelas’s hand. The darkness still thrashed in it incessantly. Dark arcane magic, he wondered. In one hand there was something from which Deep Sashelas was protecting his people, and in his other there had been something he was giving them.

There was little other choice, and if this failed him it would hardly make a difference. Larithion straightened, brandishing his trident, and in one deft movement he shattered the orb. There was the sound of glass breaking, and then an explosion. It was like a cold, shadowed wind was blowing past him though he was not blown back. Larithion squeezed his eyes shut, clinging to the statue. When the wind calmed and he opened them, he was surrounded by death. The elves lay on the ground with their skin worn in places to the bone and their eyes were white as pearls. Still on the ocean floor was Jollan’s bow, dropped and left behind just as he was. Larithion picked it up, anger and fear mingling in him.

His body shaking, Larithion surfaced, taking a gasp of air and looking around the darkness. The sky was clouded, masking the stars. He could barely make out, far away, the dim glow of lanterns on a ship. They had left. Larithion clutched Jollan’s bow tighter, gritting his teeth through the pain of his leg. Once again, he was alone.

y50+

The surface was larger than he could have ever imagined. On maps it was merely ink and parchment, though in reality it was filled with buildings both brilliant and poor, with people both beautiful and homely, and a range of beasts he had never before seen. All of it was so loud compared to being under the water and the hubbub of town hurt his ears. He wasn’t even entirely sure what town this was; he had been gradually moving further and further from the sea, leaving that legacy behind him.

The tavern was one of the poorer buildings, filled with the homelier people. Larithion had secluded himself at a table by himself, drowning his feelings in a familiar watered-down ale. His body tensed as a traveling pair sat down with mugs at the table beside him, though his slit eyes narrowed as the taller man slapped a book down on the table. Elven dictionary, the fat manual read. A thought ran through Larithion’s mind and he stood, stepping over to their table as if in a trance.

One of the men shook him from his daze and spoke as he approached. “Elen sila lumenn o-omentilmo,” the stranger managed. His accent was horrendous, even Larithion could tell.

“Mae govannen, rhuva,” Larithion drawled in return; the insult was aquatic, and not in the human’s book. Larithion held out his hand, ignoring the wrinkle of the man’s brow. “Let me see that book.”

The travelers shared a look, but placed the dictionary in his hand.

Larithion cracked it open and flipped through the glossary, eyes skimming down the page of words beginning with C until he finally found it. 

Calaan. His finger drew across the paper to the definition. Heretic. Unbeliever, heathen.

A lump formed in his throat and he slammed the book shut. Larithion managed a grim smile and handed the guidebook back to the taller human. “Diola lle. It’s a decent book,” he said, forcing the words as he stepped back.

Lyir’calaan. The heretic with horns.

The phrase bounced around his head as he retreated back to his table. Perhaps they were right. When he found Jollan he would take back what had been stolen, but it wouldn’t be for Deep Sashelas or the elves.

 It would be for him.