Cynasse Hallandren
Race: Human
Titles: Magister of the Tevinter Imperium, Marquise of Neromene, Mistress of House Hallandren, Honoured Chair of the Committee for Imperial Splendour
Appearance: The mistress of House Hallandren is not a tall woman, but most definitely a striking one. Historically hailing from the eastern Imperium, the House yet retains Rivaini influence; her exotic looks are as much a weapon as her magic. Bleached-white – by magic or mundane chemicals, who can say? – hair contrasts against chocolate skin, and soulful dark eyes belie the ruthless calculus of survival and success running beneath them. She is lithe and possessed of a certain lethal grace, the end result of decades of magical endeavour and years of existence and even prosperity in the ever-shifting battlefield that is the Magisterium of Minrathous.
Cynasse dresses well, as befits a magister of the greatest nation on Thedas. Her robes, slips, smallclothes, gowns and skirts all come from the finest tailors Minrathous has to offer – and having been the imperial capital for a thousand years, they are fine indeed. Silks, brocade, gold and silver thread, lyrium filigree…she wears them all as visible symbols of power and success, like every other Tevene of wealth and means.
Cynasse is also fond of black opals, and their secretive fire can be found ornamenting almost everything her hands have touched, from herself to her properties to favoured slaves. Fortunate for her, then, that she’s recently come into possession of many mines amid the Hundred Pillars in the south of the empire, feeding her love for the rare precious stones. Her fingers glitter with rings that sparkle with more than reflected light, filled with wards and enchantments against attacks both sorcerous and mundane – as well as holding enough poison to murder a small town, should it take her fancy.
Personality: Cynasse strives to be irenic, and in striving has become quite adept at hiding her true feelings behind the armour of serenity. That serene, languidly unruffled mask, however, hides an insatiable engine of ambition and industry that drives her ever forward, an engine tuned and primed by the ruthless calculus of survival necessary to exist at the top of Tevinter’s magocracy. A mage of no mean power and not inconsiderable skill, she exudes confidence hard-won through years of struggle, tempered by the poisonous, serpentine grace of the Altus – but those few who know her well say she’s only ever truly alive, truly happy, when bending the world to her will, or at least, working out how to do so.
History: House Hallandren has been a player in Tevinter politics since the empire’s heyday – but for many ages now only a relatively minor one. The First Blight and then the Battle of Temerin broke the back of the House, with the loss of substantial eastern and southern territories as the empire was wracked by the consequences of the magisters’ hubris. Deprived of their primary lands and sources of income, the House slipped from the first tier of the Magisterium, clinging grimly to its remaining properties and position in the imperium, fighting tooth and nail to keep what influence and power it had left.
Such was still the lot of the House when Cynasse took the mantle of magistership from her father, and looked set to continue for the foreseeable future, scrimping and scraping to keep up appearances and marshalling what scraps of power she could.
From her position at the bottom of the top, as it were, she had a better view than many of the other Altus families of the rot and decay which had crept into Minrathous over the decades and centuries of decline. Oh, the towers of the great magisters still soared up to pierce the sky, impenetrable and imperishable and garlanded with all the ornament of empire, and the nobility still held their balls and parties in the clouds, but to those a little closer to the ground, the rot was beginning to show. The walls still had cracks, unrepaired since the last siege. The streets overflowed with garbage. The statues lining the grand thoroughfares were worn to featurelessness, the ancient systems that filled the city’s fountains and disposed of its sewage breaking down and unrepaired. Minrathous was choking on itself, and no-one seemed to care; when she raised the issue in the Magisterium it earned her scornful laughs, derision, and an appointment – an insult – as Chair of the Committee for Imperial Splendour, placing her in charge of the city’s decaying infrastructure. Naturally, without any form of budget or influence to enforce the Committee’s mandate.
Cynasse may once have been marked for recruitment by the Venatori; her few speeches in the Magisterium marking her as likely sympathetic to the cause, but her later track record suggests that such recruitment, if it ever happened, failed spectacularly.
When events came to a head with Corypheus and the Inquisition both, then, Cynasse was well-placed to take advantage of the chaos. Powerful families were falling like ninepins, and with a true magister’s keen eye for the main chance, more often than not it was she who stepped into the gap, manoeuvring deftly to the best effect even as old alliances convulsed and crumbled in the confusion.
Her star is rising. Many others fall from the heavens.