ButtsnBallsName: Aster Tenesilia
Element: Darkness
Age: 17
Race: Why, a filthy, filthy human, of course!
Gender: Male
Appearance: Aster is a fledgling of a man, on the cusp of maturity but not quite there yet. He has features that might one day cut a heroic figure, like a head of flowing red hair, and eyes that are like demantoids set in the terracotta of his lightly tanned skin. But for now, they are mismatched, clumsy. His hair is a mess of knotted red waves and curls, an unkempt mane which curtains his face unevenly. His features, though dark, are littered with even darker freckles, and his eyes seem wide and naive, disarmingly bright and innocent. He stands at 5'9", with narrow shoulders, and a build so willowy he looks almost as though the size of his hair could cost him his balance.
He smiles crookedly, not maliciously but always with a bewildered awe about the world at large.
When it comes to dressing himself, Aster has simple tastes. A light green jerkin, worn partly open over a white ruffled shirt, and a pair of loose-fitting, baggy black pants, tucked into his tall leather boots. The outfit is tailored to be very light, and very easy to replace, as fleet feet make for quick defeats or hasty retreats. Over his shoulder, he carries a small messenger back, which he tries to keep packed light.
Still, what is a teenager without his bizarre aesthetics? He also wears a long, forest-green scarf, tied so as to hang with twin-tails in his wake. He carries no obvious weapons on his person, and casts a conspicuously long shadow for somebody of an average height.
Theme Song:
Nature: Aster is almost relentlessly outgoing, gregarious and insatiably curious. There isn't a tree he doesn't want to climb, a subject he doesn't want to study, or a battle he won't charge into with the utmost fervor. He has a zest for life, and an unending desire to experience the new and the bizarre. For a boy entrusted with the power of darkness, he is of a perpetually sunny disposition.
Backstory: What is there to tell, in times as dire as this? Aster comes from simple beginnings, a modest lineage. He grew up in a small agricultural village not far North-West of Vevian, an overgrown hamlet called Thalassavra, as the son of a suffering dairy farmer father. He was one of five siblings, the youngest of four brothers and their leader, a sister.
In most ways, his upbringing was unspectacular. It was a dreary existence of rising early to repair, unquestioningly, the damage marauding goblins had done the night before. Tending to the crops, tending to the cows. The sun would rise, the sun would set. Life was dull and routine.
Except, when Aster was designated the 'chore' of attending to his grandfather for the day.
The Tenesilia children were on a regularly shifting rotor of jobs, and twice a fortnight it fell on Aster to assist his aging grandfather in day-to-day tasks. To his older siblings, this was a task: for Aster, it was escapism.
Because Aster's grandfather had been alive before the evil duo who plagued their land had staked their claim, and he remembered- just barely- what it was to live in freedom.
And it was on those sparse days that Aster was assigned to him that his grandfather told him of these forgotten wonders, and ignited his imagination.
"Imagine," he would say, gesturing with a quivering finger towards Vevian, "The old church spire, so tall and well maintained you could admire it from here."
"Imagine," he would insist, "A time when our soil was rich, and people had nothing to fear, walking after sunset."
"Imagine."
And in Aster, the spark of exploration was born.
He began to travel, if his father felt lenient enough to spare him his chores, to the town of Vevian. There, goblins and orcs ran even more rampant than they did at his humble, countryside village: but he kept his head down long enough to buy books written in and about the old world. They were all about chivalrous knights whose daring overcame villains, and the great merriment they left in their wake.
He got to eat food that wasn't certified farmland gruel, and meet people of different shapes, sizes, crafts.
But everything Aster learned just made him hungry for more.
He should have been warier than he was. He'd read so much on life in the old world, he'd never studied how to thrive in the new one.
It was sometime in the early Winter, when he received is vision beckoning him to the North, away from the heartlands of evil. The early morn of his seventeenth birthday.
If only he'd had the common sense to keep it to himself, to disappear into the night. Instead, he went on another excursion to Vevian, looking to spend his meager birthday money on the materials for a new winter scarf, and he foolishly let his hunger for knowledge lead him astray. It had been a small crime, at first: asking a local bookshop owner he'd developed a small rapport with about Jeorva, casually. As though he were just genuinely curious, when in actuality he was scouting out his destination.
But the questions just got bigger, and word spread fast. Vevian had once been a city of holy men, but now it was at the mercy of beasts: and they did as they liked.
It was that evening, as he made his way unsuspectingly home that Aster had his first, face-to-face run-in with a troupe of goblins. True, he'd known them to attack Thalassavra some nights. Spook the cows, break the fences, steal a chicken or two, then move onto their neighbours.
But he'd never dreamed he'd have to fight them up close. He was unarmed, and too weedy to come out swinging.
In the country, there might be nobody to hear you screaming for miles around. And in Coake, even if somebody did hear you, they might know better than to interfere.
Dragged off-road, Aster clutched for anything and everything. He tore clumps of grass from the ground, trying to gain some leverage against his foursome of attackers. He snatched at rocks, and failed to reach for passing tree branches. Soon, he could think of nothing but to reach hopelessly out to the night and pray somebody, anybody would heed his calls for help.
But when he reached out... he felt something.
That was the first time Aster tapped into his inherent power, the one no doubt linked deeply to his visions. The eve of his seventeenth birthday, Aster seized for the night, and the night delivered: a saber, ethereal and yet, in his grip, solid. Unyielding.
This same saber would be his favoured arm, from that night on.
Dispatching the goblins took very little in the way of herosim: waving his sword around and cutting one of their shoulders deeply was enough to make them scarper, given the smaller monsters of Vevian were undisciplined, unused to resistance.
Aster didn't wait around to see if they came back, with the frequenting army in tow.
He ran home faster than he'd ever run before, but it wasn't fear brewing in his bosom, it was excitement.
A small dose of his power, and he already felt like one of the old heroes in his grandfather's stories. His parents, however, were less enthused.
At first, they resented the idea that he should leave the farm. But they were also wary of his new-found ability, and the risks it carried for the rest of the Tenesilia clan. Very soon, they resented the idea that he should stay.
And so, Aster became a consenting outcast. His last act as part of the Tenesilia clan was to make himself a scarf, forest green to remind him of his rural homeland, and say farewell to his grandfather.
"I'm headed to Jeorva, grandpa. I'm going to see the world!", he'd said.
To which his grandfather had only replied, "Imagine..."
He set off, that night. On a journey his family said was perilous, hopeless... with his newfound weapon at hand.
Goal(s): To become a worldly hero! To see and experience all of life's sights and sounds, and temper his powers for old-world justice.
Inventory:
Element: Darkness
Age: 17
Race: Why, a filthy, filthy human, of course!
Gender: Male
Appearance: Aster is a fledgling of a man, on the cusp of maturity but not quite there yet. He has features that might one day cut a heroic figure, like a head of flowing red hair, and eyes that are like demantoids set in the terracotta of his lightly tanned skin. But for now, they are mismatched, clumsy. His hair is a mess of knotted red waves and curls, an unkempt mane which curtains his face unevenly. His features, though dark, are littered with even darker freckles, and his eyes seem wide and naive, disarmingly bright and innocent. He stands at 5'9", with narrow shoulders, and a build so willowy he looks almost as though the size of his hair could cost him his balance.
He smiles crookedly, not maliciously but always with a bewildered awe about the world at large.
When it comes to dressing himself, Aster has simple tastes. A light green jerkin, worn partly open over a white ruffled shirt, and a pair of loose-fitting, baggy black pants, tucked into his tall leather boots. The outfit is tailored to be very light, and very easy to replace, as fleet feet make for quick defeats or hasty retreats. Over his shoulder, he carries a small messenger back, which he tries to keep packed light.
Still, what is a teenager without his bizarre aesthetics? He also wears a long, forest-green scarf, tied so as to hang with twin-tails in his wake. He carries no obvious weapons on his person, and casts a conspicuously long shadow for somebody of an average height.
Theme Song:
Nature: Aster is almost relentlessly outgoing, gregarious and insatiably curious. There isn't a tree he doesn't want to climb, a subject he doesn't want to study, or a battle he won't charge into with the utmost fervor. He has a zest for life, and an unending desire to experience the new and the bizarre. For a boy entrusted with the power of darkness, he is of a perpetually sunny disposition.
Backstory: What is there to tell, in times as dire as this? Aster comes from simple beginnings, a modest lineage. He grew up in a small agricultural village not far North-West of Vevian, an overgrown hamlet called Thalassavra, as the son of a suffering dairy farmer father. He was one of five siblings, the youngest of four brothers and their leader, a sister.
In most ways, his upbringing was unspectacular. It was a dreary existence of rising early to repair, unquestioningly, the damage marauding goblins had done the night before. Tending to the crops, tending to the cows. The sun would rise, the sun would set. Life was dull and routine.
Except, when Aster was designated the 'chore' of attending to his grandfather for the day.
The Tenesilia children were on a regularly shifting rotor of jobs, and twice a fortnight it fell on Aster to assist his aging grandfather in day-to-day tasks. To his older siblings, this was a task: for Aster, it was escapism.
Because Aster's grandfather had been alive before the evil duo who plagued their land had staked their claim, and he remembered- just barely- what it was to live in freedom.
And it was on those sparse days that Aster was assigned to him that his grandfather told him of these forgotten wonders, and ignited his imagination.
"Imagine," he would say, gesturing with a quivering finger towards Vevian, "The old church spire, so tall and well maintained you could admire it from here."
"Imagine," he would insist, "A time when our soil was rich, and people had nothing to fear, walking after sunset."
"Imagine."
And in Aster, the spark of exploration was born.
He began to travel, if his father felt lenient enough to spare him his chores, to the town of Vevian. There, goblins and orcs ran even more rampant than they did at his humble, countryside village: but he kept his head down long enough to buy books written in and about the old world. They were all about chivalrous knights whose daring overcame villains, and the great merriment they left in their wake.
He got to eat food that wasn't certified farmland gruel, and meet people of different shapes, sizes, crafts.
But everything Aster learned just made him hungry for more.
He should have been warier than he was. He'd read so much on life in the old world, he'd never studied how to thrive in the new one.
It was sometime in the early Winter, when he received is vision beckoning him to the North, away from the heartlands of evil. The early morn of his seventeenth birthday.
If only he'd had the common sense to keep it to himself, to disappear into the night. Instead, he went on another excursion to Vevian, looking to spend his meager birthday money on the materials for a new winter scarf, and he foolishly let his hunger for knowledge lead him astray. It had been a small crime, at first: asking a local bookshop owner he'd developed a small rapport with about Jeorva, casually. As though he were just genuinely curious, when in actuality he was scouting out his destination.
But the questions just got bigger, and word spread fast. Vevian had once been a city of holy men, but now it was at the mercy of beasts: and they did as they liked.
It was that evening, as he made his way unsuspectingly home that Aster had his first, face-to-face run-in with a troupe of goblins. True, he'd known them to attack Thalassavra some nights. Spook the cows, break the fences, steal a chicken or two, then move onto their neighbours.
But he'd never dreamed he'd have to fight them up close. He was unarmed, and too weedy to come out swinging.
In the country, there might be nobody to hear you screaming for miles around. And in Coake, even if somebody did hear you, they might know better than to interfere.
Dragged off-road, Aster clutched for anything and everything. He tore clumps of grass from the ground, trying to gain some leverage against his foursome of attackers. He snatched at rocks, and failed to reach for passing tree branches. Soon, he could think of nothing but to reach hopelessly out to the night and pray somebody, anybody would heed his calls for help.
But when he reached out... he felt something.
That was the first time Aster tapped into his inherent power, the one no doubt linked deeply to his visions. The eve of his seventeenth birthday, Aster seized for the night, and the night delivered: a saber, ethereal and yet, in his grip, solid. Unyielding.
This same saber would be his favoured arm, from that night on.
Dispatching the goblins took very little in the way of herosim: waving his sword around and cutting one of their shoulders deeply was enough to make them scarper, given the smaller monsters of Vevian were undisciplined, unused to resistance.
Aster didn't wait around to see if they came back, with the frequenting army in tow.
He ran home faster than he'd ever run before, but it wasn't fear brewing in his bosom, it was excitement.
A small dose of his power, and he already felt like one of the old heroes in his grandfather's stories. His parents, however, were less enthused.
At first, they resented the idea that he should leave the farm. But they were also wary of his new-found ability, and the risks it carried for the rest of the Tenesilia clan. Very soon, they resented the idea that he should stay.
And so, Aster became a consenting outcast. His last act as part of the Tenesilia clan was to make himself a scarf, forest green to remind him of his rural homeland, and say farewell to his grandfather.
"I'm headed to Jeorva, grandpa. I'm going to see the world!", he'd said.
To which his grandfather had only replied, "Imagine..."
He set off, that night. On a journey his family said was perilous, hopeless... with his newfound weapon at hand.
Goal(s): To become a worldly hero! To see and experience all of life's sights and sounds, and temper his powers for old-world justice.
Inventory:
- One forest green scarf
- An armoury, stored in his shadow
- A waterskin slung from his belt
- A small journal and a small collection of pens
- A messenger bag, in which his journal and bare necessities are stored.