History

Cinna was born Orsino Portillo to a family of Kalashtar soldiers in Isophe. He grew up inseprable from his older twin, Derrin Portillo. As the second twin, his Humanoid-Quori name was flipped- the Quori name, Ori, coming before the humanoid name, Cinna. Orsino planned to follow in the footsteps of his family, enrolling in the guard academy along with his brother. He didn't have quite the natural aptitude for it that his brother did, but he wanted to make his family proud.

While in school, he learned about a secret society called the Dreaming Dark that was trying to help the Plane of Dreams, the homeland of the Quori. Orsino had known about the history of the Kalashtar: how the Quori fled to the material plane to escape the fighting of the God War, how they found shelter by bonding with the bodies of humanoids on the material plane. But he had never heard the details: how the Plane of Dreams was being torn apart, the ruin that was befalling the home of the Quori. He was young, idealistic, foolish. He joined up with them, feeling like he could make more of a difference with the Dark than with the royal guard.

He was assigned to various missions: mostly spying on the Royal Guard, in the beginning, through his own connections or his brother's. He did research into the magic of Lutua, which bound the Gods to the plane of dreams, and became fascinated with divine magic and the Gods in general. He began to pray to Lutua for guidance. As he focused more and more on divine magic and less on his middling guard skills, he eventually flunked out of the guard academy. Stinging from the rejection, he threw himself even more into the Dreaming Dark. While on missions, he met Pyrite Callisto, an earth genasi and another member of the Dark. They complemented each other well, and were often assigned to missions together. They became very, very close, eventually giving each other the code names "Starling" and "Dove".

As he rose up in the ranks of the Dreaming Dark he began to question whether what they were doing was really... right. He was deeply torn between committing to this organization that he did truly believe in, and his own squishy morals. Even more so, his Kalashtar heritage meant that his own humanoid-quori bond began to fracture along this line: Ori the quori being resolutely commited to the cause of the Dreaming Dark, while Cinna the half-elf hesitated.

When he was 21, he was asked to prove himself, the final test before becoming a full-fledged member of the Dark. He was told to murder a hostage, a Drow politician whose name he didn't even know. In this moment, he had to finally weigh his choices: wanting to finally, finally prove himself to someone, and having to look someone in the eye and kill them as they begged for their life.

Finally, he did it. And as soon as he went through with it, that inner conflict became too much to bear and the humanoid-quori bond became fully split: no longer Orsino but now Ori and Cinna.

Convinced that Ori would tell the higherups and have them killed, Orsino-now-just-Cinna Portillo ran to Pyrite for help. She leveraged an old favor she had with a fey to get him into the feywild, and they said goodbye for what must be the last time.

For years, Cinna wandered the Feywild, trying to stay alive. Eventually, they came across what seemed to be the horn of Reithri, a long-missing god, touched it, and became encased with vines. Years later, Cinna was woken up to find an odd party of adventurers, trying to take the Dreaming Dark down.

If anyone asks, their name is Cinna Callisto.

Connections