Life should have been pretty easy for the son of Open Lord Silverhand, even if he was a bastard child. Unfortunately, his mother's deeds and power put a celestial shaped target on his head from birth and lured out darker forces. When young Cyrus fell from a balcony of his mother's tower, it was a tragedy, but no one sensed the darkness at play.

And when a little boy woke in his tomb, alone and cold, it was the darkness that answererd his cries.

With no memories of who he was, just a name on a tomb he couldn't read, the little boy became known as Zirus, just another orphan of Waterdeep. He grew up lonely, with just a voice in his ear telling him he was bound for greatness. Only he could save them one day. He would always be alone, but that's okay. He would be okay.

As a teen, Zirus found the Society of Vigiliance, or they found him. With an unsual sense about him, they kept the boy close, raising him in Graven Hallow and teaching him of the world and the dangers lurking there. They were defenders, he would be one too. The voice still whispered it a was a job for him alone.

When Zirus and two other Society members found a strange walking stick in the depths of the Underdark, it called to Zirus. He picked it up. What followed is hazy, there was blinding light, void, and a scream. It may have been his. It may have been the deep gnome who died at his side, by his hand? He doesn't know, but blaming himself, he ran and left Jimjar to mourn his partner alone.

The voice still whispered. Just a price to be paid for the power to save more. But a new voice spoke to him now. "You can call me Kaine if that's what you like." The walking stick had power and sentience and it almost overpowered the whispering, but not quite. Those talons had been sinking deeper and deeper into his soul since he was three. A part of him the stick couldn't simply erase.

He became a master of masks, a trader of names. He was Zirus. He was Zymun. He was whoever he needed to be to get himself through any door. He acquired power both for the whisperes and the stick and he told himself it was all for a greater purpose. There was a demon god, old and nearly forgotten, trying to break free. But there werre things in the world that could stop it. Like a sword, lost in the mountains. If Zirus could acquire these things, he could stop the god from ever being released. It was a simple plan.

He learned too late that it was a lie.

Taking a powerful but questionable associate into the mountains with him, he tried to retrieve an ancient sword from a stone. But something was wrong. She seemed to know stories that he'd spent years uncovering. She watched as he pulled the sword and knew before he did that he'd broken a seal, not locked it. Aren was untrustworthy at best, lying as often as she spoke plain, but something was wrong. In the final moments, he watched how her own knife pulled energy from the beast the seal had released, and suddenly pieces began to tumble into place.

He wasn't the only one that voice whispered too. And he certainly wasn't being used to stop Tharizdun from breaking free. The voice — Tharizdun — was tricking him into opening the gates.

Scrambling to fix his mess, Zirus has had to break down some of the barriers he's built around himself over the years. Alone, that's what Tharizdun had always wanted of him. Well, now he needed friends. A tough thing when he'd pushed dozens of them away. But with a powerful crown stolen straight from his mother, he started to build a plan. He could find allies. He could find artifacts they could use. He could even find the seals themself. If they couldn't stop Tharizdun and his associates, they could damn well put up a fight.

But with the cost of the crown's power killing him and a piece of Tharizdun's lingering shadows still clinging to his soul, Zirus was running out of time. So he did the one thing one of his new found allies told him exactly not to do — he got himself killed. Challenging Aren face to face, he tried to draw her back from the brink. But her desire for power and Tharizdun's influence turned his words to ash. The fight was dirty and furious and he tried, desperately, to make her see the faults of her plans, the Aren he fought was not quite the Aren he met.

Slitting his throat and wrenching the crown from his head, Aren killed him. But did she? Can he say she did when he's not dead? When Kaine's power and his own stubbornness kept him from really crossing beyond the veil?

Well. He's dead-ish. But working on coming back. The whole new body thing might be an issue, but he can figure it out. For the time being, he's going to let people think he's dead and do what he can from the other side to get his friends into place. And also maybe get one of them to get him a new body.