Asher Enright

ASHER OISIN DIARMUID ENRIGHT

[He/him | High Elf | Wizard (Evocation)]

PERSONALITY:

As a young adventurer, Asher is headstrong and stubborn. He has strong principles he will defend unerringly, the core of which center around a deep-seated distrust of gods and god-like beings and a need to believe in the reliability of his fellow mortals. Unfortunately, this also means that he rarely knows how to pick his battles and has a habit of running his mouth even during the most inopportune (and sometimes even dangerous) times. You get the impression he would be the sort to shoot himself in the foot if he thought it would prove his point. He can be a little sassy and infuriatingly petty when lightly annoyed but will not hesitate to speak his mind (and on occasion cast an unpleasant but not physically harmful spell a la Hideous Laughter) when provoked. He also has a bad habit of acting without always thinking things through beforehand.

But, Asher is also earnest and unerringly loyal to those he relies on and who rely on him. He doesn't hesitate to speak out when he sees something wrong even at the risk of alienating others or facing reprisal and is determined to be the good he wants to see in the world. Ultimately, despite his tendency towards mild pettiness towards those who he dislikes, he has an optimistic view of people as a whole and strongly believes in mortalkind. He is intelligent and able to pick up on things rather quickly if he's paying attention and/or it catches his interest (but the opposite is true as well). 

As he ages, Ash still maintains a strong sense of right and wrong and a willingness to push back against injustice. But, he also develops a better sense of which battles can be picked now and which would be better off being picked at a more opportune time (though he still cannot hold his tongue in the face of certain affronts to his principles). His agnosticism in the face of truly extant gods ages grows to include a wariness around powerful mortals whose power separates them from their fellow kinfolk. But, ultimately, his faith in people remains steadfast and unwavering. Regardless of the cruelty and callousness he experiences and sees throughout his journeys, Asher continues to believe in mortalkind, their resilience, and their striving to always be better. 

HISTORY:

The Enrights are a wealthy and powerful noble house with a long and storied history that precedes even the founding of their current home, the illustrious city of Lairchford. However, it is an open secret that an otherworldly power has played a large role in that history. Much of the Enrights' modern influence can be owed to a pact the family progenitor made millennia ago with an Unseelie archfey known simply as "The Moth", an objectively dangerous dealing the family views with pride. Since the initial pact, members of the main branch of the Enright family continue to make individual pacts with this archfey, gaining personal boons and reaffirming the ties between the family and The Moth. 

Asher Oisin Diarmuid Enright is the sixth and youngest son of Devorah and Alastor Enright, the matriarch of the noble Enright House and her husband. Starting from a young age, something had always struck him as off about his family's dealings with the fey, a feeling that only grew and festered as he became older and approached the age at which he would be expected to make a pact as it was constantly dismissed by his family. It eventually boiled over when, as they were digging through the family archives, his sibling Warden discovered the existence of an uncle-- his mother's older brother-- who was taken by The Moth and never seen again after his true name had been given to her. Horrified by the danger his family not only risked but actively suffered the consequences for the sake of power, he ran away from home. Since then, Asher has carried a deep-seated distrust of gods and creatures with god-like powers, stubbornly choosing to believe and rely upon the good intentions of other mortals even if they don't always exist. 

"Nothing with that much power can ever claim to understand mortality and act in our best interests"

Asher did not leave home completely unprepared for the dangers and perils of the outside world. At Mager's Hill, he was entranced by magic and after his expulsion from the academy, he took his love of magic back home with him, motivating self-driven study (supplemented by tutors and expensive tomes funded by his family's wealth) into understanding the fundamentals of spellcasting. A quick learner when he puts his mind to it, Asher was soon able to cast a few basic utility spells with ease. Equipped with some basic spells, Asher was able to avoid most major problems during his foray out from his sheltered home before finally stumbling into Ali, a tiefling paladin, as a travel companion. With Ali, he helped make a name for himself as an adventurer and continued to do so even after the two parted ways. Never looking back towards his old home, Asher continued on a new path, determined to prove that one need not heed the will or influence of the gods (and perhaps actively spite it) to live in this world and to actively make it a better place. 

"If we cannot rely upon each other, then all we have are the whims of the gods..." the elf turned around, a wretched look painted across his face, "And I cannot live in a world where that is true."

After a century and a half of adventuring, meeting and working with countless other adventurers, Asher met Marin Silverkeep, a black-scaled dragonborn paladin. Despite their strong personalities grating off each other at first, after completing an exceptionally harrowing quest, the two quickly grew to respect one another. Over time, that respect grew to a tight friendship which then became a romance. After a decade of adventures, the two married, both of them taking the bonded name "Silverwright"-- a combination of both of their familial names as per the tradition of Marin's culture. Another few years of adventuring together followed until the Silverwrights found themselves in the ruins of a village decimated by a monstrous creature...

Asher and Marin brought the children to the nearest large city-- a couple day's journey-- in hopes of finding some records of surviving family members. However, when they reached it, they learned that the records kept of families from the surrounding villages within the city's jurisdiction was spotty at best and Astrid and Eden would be destined for the city orphanage. During their journey to the city, the Silverwrights had gotten to know the two children and the idea of leaving them to an orphanage in a city they had never been in before was too much and, after conferring with Astrid and Eden, adopted them on the spot. 

Knowing the life of the adventurer was ill-suited for raising children, Asher and Marin settled down in the small town of Crowesoap, buying a house near the town's borders. For nearly a decade, they lived in relative peace until Asher was called out to the funeral of a former adventuring companion, a human named Elias Opalturn. 

When Asher had last seen him, Elias had been a 30-year-old with shining brown hair and a quick smile. But, the Elias he stood vigil for was an old man, the father of two and grandfather to many more. His brown hair thin and white and the quick smiles of his youth carved out as jovial wrinkles around the corners of his mouth and eyes. Seeing the heavy toll time had taken upon a man Asher thought he had just parted ways with not so long ago. After traveling for most of his life, rarely staying anywhere with anyone for too long and since so few adventurers died of old age, Asher never had the time to pause and consider the disparity between his natural lifespan that of those he chose to spend his time with. With a jolt, he realized that as a dragonborn, Marin's natural lifespan was nearly a tenth of his and it would really not be long until he would one day stand vigil for them. Fear and anxiety of this inevitability gripped his chest. But, he knew magic. With it, he had slain dragons, defied the gods, and saved countless lives...why couldn't he use it to try and save one more? 

There, amongst the crowd of mourners and underneath the pouring rain, Asher Silverwright resolved to use every resource at his disposal to spite the whims of the gods of life and death and ensure that he and Marin would be able to live out their old age together.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

• Long story short, it goes badly.
• Has a bit of a bat/swallow animal motif
  • Long-eared bat, generic swallow
  • His family's patron (and by extension his family) has the motif of the white ermine moth
• Plays the kazoo
  • The wrong way
  • Can sometimes hold a tune, but not especially well
• Was taught Sylvan at a young age as a consequence of the Enright's ties with the fey
• Far-sighted
• Not of a particularly scholarly bend despite being a wizard
  • Views study as a means to an end (that end being "casting fireball")
  • Little interest in highly theoretical scholarship with no obvious practical applications
  • Very little patience for institutional academia as a whole, tends to get along like a house on fire with hardcore scholars
    • (in the Terry Pratchett sense: "screams, flames, people running for safety")
• Probably one of only a handful of people in his world who would willingly participate in a screaming match against a god and part of an even smaller percentage of those people who would have the opportunity to do so