Current

Has been back in Ivras for a few months now. Lives in Faline with his con-woman landlord. Attempting to be granted the Order's pardon by fighting monsters and hunting down renegade mages. Earns his keep by being big and scary and helping taking care of a flock of obstinate birds that won't listen to him.

Personality

A man who has lifelong mistaken authority for ability, desperation for focus, and suffering for obedient discipline. He does not remember how to distinguish the parts of himself that his lords, masters, teachers, wanted him to be and which parts aren’t. Has forgotten whether they were ever different things. Is scared to know the answer to this question he’s never had to consider before. 

Believes there is nothing good to him that wasn't put there with intent. That wasn't put there by someone else in service of someone else. Views himself as just that- a service that he owes by nature of his birth. He has lost everything he was supposed to be. Needs to be needed. Wants to be wanted. Would rather pry his teeth out with his own sword than to admit it. 

Has an infamous temper that’s chased his heels his entire life. Knows better but rarely does better. Broody and moody. Cursed with a recklessness that couldn’t be trained out of him and a deeply covetous heart that he kept to himself. Respects the direct authority of a superior more so than he does the authority of law and rule. 

Intense, impatient, impulsive, so brutally competent and thorough it teeters on self destruction. Dependable and passionate, forgiving of people’s faults and empathic with their flaws. A little obtuse and tends to miss the finer details, foregoing them for whatever is in his face. Prideful, physical, a bit of a brute who lacks any and all decorum but not for lack of trying. It’s the trying that’s the sad part. 

A man that’s not as shameless as he would like to be and one who knows he truly has no one to blame but himself. Childishly desperate for things to go back the way they were. Not humorless and laughs easily, though his sense of humor and joy are simple and droll. 

Capable with nothing but the clothes on his back and a sword in his hand.

(330)

History

Halrich was born in Northern Ivras, to a family of craftsmen in the town of Highweave. He was a winged little baby with easy cries, his claws and scales still soft and colorless. His birth was signaled to the Order almost immediately, whose envoys whisked the boy away when he was only just weaned. Namarast was to become his home for almost his entire adult life. His family gave him nothing to remember them by except for his name. 

It takes a few examinations and physical exams to figure out his magic. During a particularly invasive procedure in the boy’s mouth Halrich throws a frustrated tantrum and burns the professor’s hands with coils of fire pouring from his throat. They draw a quick conclusion from that. Besides his regular education at Namarast Halrich is handed over to an iron fisted Nymean master out of necessity. 

His magic is a vicious, temperamental thing - as is he. The Nymean master assures him of this. He teaches Halrich that his destructive magic is a burden that can only be justified and made right by doing the right thing with it. To risk your own skin for the sake of those who can’t defend themselves against you. Sacrificing body and mind as a penance. Halrich mistakes this for purpose, and takes it to heart. 

He grows tall first, broad second, strong beyond his years. His master teaches him a Nymean sword fighting style and he takes to it. Teaches him hand to hand, and Halrich takes to this too. He teaches him his dogma, and Halrich swears by it. His master sees the potential to make him a mage protector. He takes Halrich, then a teenager, to his first Monster as his squire to witness the destruction firsthand from the sidelines. It solidifies his temperance to take to the skies and risk his life against these horrific forces that are not unlike himself, as he’s been taught. 

Eventually Halrich becomes a Mage protector, a pin of pride tucked away in the ventricles of his heart. Killing monsters becomes his lifeblood. Truth is that most of the time Halrich’s routine exists out of subduing fellow mages when they’re dragged to Namarast, protecting what’s in his master’s interests, and becoming a terrible patrol, a threat and a promise. Eyes to the sky. His Nymean master keeps a relatively short leash on Halrich, but he looks out for him in his own way.

With his master's connections a thirty year old Halrich is stationed in Nymene, an incredible honor. Virtually immediately he is snapped up by a Lord who takes a particular curious interest in him. It was not the Order’s or his master’s intention, but the lord is an influential man with his claws deep in either side of the Mirror Bay, and so it is allowed. 

His new Lord parades Halrich around with humorous pride as though he is the thing of legends, this great winged man with fire from his mouth subdued to being an attack dog. He is clad in a too expensive set of custom armor, fireproofed and finished with dragon detailing, and his basic zweihander is replaced with a damascus steel flamberge. He has to look the part. It is embarrassing. It is demeaning. It is nothing new. 

Halrich is made to guard the Lord’s substantial fiefdom, to subdue budding monsters for whom it was too late and to go out and hunt mages that escaped the eye. He has to throw his weight around and terrorize what doesn’t bow, and so he does, and he doesn’t want to stop to think about what part of this was using his magic for good. 

What the Lady sees in him, he didn’t know and still doesn’t, but they take to each other and Halrich and her have an affair after two years in his Lord’s service. They kiss in the staircase when they pass each other. A hand is held with fleeting warmth. A rendezvous in the garden. He knows he shouldn’t have done it, but to be loved and to be wanted for reasons he couldn’t comprehend blinded him to the point it made him sick when he thought about it. To be touched in a way that wasn’t penance. 

The truth was that he loved her. 

She did not love him. 

Once, she was scared of him. Loathed him for his magic. For every outward sign he was a mage. What changed, she would never tell. Eventually, she disappeared entirely and the Lord came to know everything. The truth gets out, as it always does.

Halrich finds out in time, by pure chance and stupid luck. He knows the price for this infidelity would be a lifetime of imprisonment, and knows that for what he’d done he’d never see daylight again if they’d let him keep his head at all. Knowing he cannot return to his Lord’s manor he makes his way to Ivras by boat and the last stretch by his wings with nothing but his armor and the clothes on his back at the age of thirty-six. 

The Order, who’d long caught wind of the incident, make it very clear to him he is not welcome back and that if he does they’ll personally extradite him to Nymene. He will not be granted a pardon and is considered a complete diplomatic failure. 

He has lost everything he ever accomplished. Disgraced and a witness, never a participant, to his own life. Always an object of either fear and power or a symbol of someone else. Without money or a place to live Halrich ends up living with a woman who’s unscrupulous enough to hide him but not so as to offend his own morals. Even now, he believes in repenting for the destructive nature of his birth. Despite everything, he tries to get back in the Order’s good graces and to be granted a pardon - and fights monsters and renegade mages even now.

(995)

FIRESPITTER