<Snipped quote by Celaira>

The backstory unique to Lyr speaks of a character with basically no agency, and a story strung together by contrivances and frequent occurrences of literal Deus Ex Machina. It feels shallow and overwrought, meant to be understood by recognition of common plot devices, rather than any underlying themes or characterization.

@Celaira The deal with Lazarus is shared between three characters, but their origins before that aren't. Honestly, I have to agree with Dead Cruiser. The sequence of Dormeria's mythology preceding the triumvirate's confrontation with Lazarus is more concerted, and better executed (in my opinion) than Lyr's.

It actually took me awhile to figure out how to write Lyr's backstory bit, not because I have trouble writing histories or myths, but because Lyr's backstory is not really your typical one. He is meant to be largely unappreciated. It's almost fitting that his backstory is loosely strung together as it was written by a scholar who made an effort to find out what Lyr's life was like (and came up to many dead ends resulting in what is written).

As to Tuuj's execution being better than mine in regards to the backstory, yes I entirely agree. The problem is Dormeria is more or less fondly remembered.

Lyr was a social pariah, a freak and an outcast. Most people would remember him as having played merely a minor roll (when in fact he played a roll just as important as the other two). This is the result of his story being tinged by the people's view of him in the time period he lived in.

The other issue is because the people of his home island were slaughtered (which was not entirely my idea) people trying to find accounts of his life would've been even more inconvenienced.

So I couldn't write his backstory like it was the history of a normal character and I didn't want to make it overly "epic," or glorified so I couldn't write it like I would a normal myth/legend.

So I had to find an inbetween.

I just have one more question to ask. At the beginning of Lyr's backstory, he's about to be killed when he presumably manages to summon a bolt of lightning to strike the executioner's sword, simultaneously killing the man and sending his weapon into the heart of the town leader. How does this at all mesh into the description of his powers?

Actually, that wasn't Lyrsaeyn, that was Orthus. Lyrsaeyn would have likely killed himself had Orthus not given him purpose (after all the god literally had a hand in bringing about the powers of all three members of the Triumvirate).

_{<Snipped quote by yoshua171>}
You're literally telling me, "I see what's wrong, and I was even told to change it by the GM, but I'm still not going to do anything about it."

I'll take the point for the mind rending, though this doesn't explain why he was able to use it so frequently in the past. Still no weakness for the sword, nor explanation for his backstory.

No, it is me saying "I see what you're saying is wrong, I was initially told to change it, we came up with a compromise so I don't see any reasont to go any further."

Actually I explained that and he didn't use it frequently. It is stated that he abhorred the ability actually.

Mind Rend was useable by him because he had gathered so many spirits to himself and when he used mind rend he fed on the spiritual energies of the spirits bound to his person, thus sustaining his mind. He also used the sanity of those bound to him (spirits, not the living as he can't bind living people at all) in addition to his own to fuel the ability. It is implied that Arlayre allowed him to bind more spirits than he'd otherwise be capable of binding.

As to his use of mind rend, there were maybe four incidents total that he used it. Two were not intentional and happened because he bound too many spirits to himself at once and then after helping the village (by having done the aforementioned) he had stones thrown at him and people yell at him.

He was overwhelmed so completely that he lost all control and mind rend happened (exhausting many of the spirits he had bound to himself and forever destabilizing his mind). That's how he discovered the ability. It was traumatic and he never really recovered emotionally or mentally from it.

The other times three times he used it were as follow: Once to test the ability to see if he could control it (as he needed to). Twice in the Lazarus fight (once to weaken Lazarus and once to wholly destroy his mind).