Name: Epiduin - Haesil
Race: Bosmer
Age: 33
Birthsign: "Don't know!" - The Lover
Origins: "Silvenar, friend! Big family. Twelfth of fourteen siblings, I am." - Haesil was born in
The Paramour's Trill, a brothel in Arenthia, Valenwood. He doesn't know which of the workers was his mother.
Appearance: Epiduin has the archetypal svelte frame you'd expect, almost too reedy for this line of work - knees and elbows sharper than blades, than his ears. Fragile-looking wrists. It's a wonder he can reel in his line. Dark brown, choppy hair. Creepy, all-black eyes. High-pitched, grating voice. Excessive antlers. You've met the sort before.Haesil changes his appearance to suit his needs. His hair is naturally honey-blond, but he frequently bleaches and colors it, and isn't opposed to shaving it off to wear a wig for a few weeks. His complexion is deep and his face is splashed with freckles, which he knows how to cover with makeup. His face is thin with upturned features, and he can tolerate the pain of the temporary surgeries he has from time to time to alter them. His teeth are white and straight with sharp bicuspids - he's painted them for roles before. His speaking voice is light and silvery with clear diction, but he's a very convincing mimic. He has a very mild, amiable smile he pairs with casual mannerisms when speaking as himself. His gaze feels hollow, even when he's smiling.
One trait that carries over into every character he plays is how tactile he is - Haesil speaks with his hands, and will touch everything and everyone he interacts with unless he's asked to stop.
Personality: Don't ask Epiduin anything. You're just gonna get some long, cyclical story with all the insignificant details left in that ends up not answering what you asked, which he'll have forgotten by the end of it. Don't ask Epiduin to do anything. It's all in one ear and out the other with the little fetcher.
Oh, he's pleasant enough - happy as a clam to sit and drink with us. Just...don't engage, yeah? These neurotic Wood Elves, I swear...-
Affable, vapid, mercurial - When talking shop with Haesil, one might walk away with the impression that he's not a very serious person, considering what they're hiring him to do. He flirts, gently, and if they're receptive to it he flirts outrageously. He lies, little ones, harmless, and if they believe him he lies outrageously. He pushes things too far. He'll reject jobs he deigns boring, even if they pay very well. He seems wholly disinterested in professionalism, though he's clearly practiced in his vocation.
Haesil
does think 'Haesil', the face he puts on when he's speaking with patrons, is meant to be charming, and it's true that he enjoys the thrill of a risky job - it's a rare pleasure in life, that constant dread that only prickles one's skin when they're close to being caught, that thrill, that high - any emotion is better than his baseline.
And sometimes it's just funny to toy with people. But he does take his job seriously;
Shrewd, diplomatic, confident - Being a convincing actor is a good trait for an agent to have, but it's not enough to make them a
good agent. That requires a level of awareness over oneself and one's surroundings that few possess. Haesil's made sure he's a good agent, worth every septim; he spends a good deal of time researching different aspects of the role he's stepping into before he approaches his targets. He writes his notes in cipher. He thinks laterally - he works on puzzles and trivia in his spare time to keep his mind sharp. Moreover he enjoys puzzling out mysteries and keeping up with gossip; it's good fun.
He's learned in the various forms of vernacular and etiquette among dozens of groups across Tamriel and knows when to follow or break them to steer a conversation in a profitable direction. He knows how to redirect attention.
And he's very aware of the fact that he's a valuable friend to have; Haesil believes, genuinely and wholeheartedly, that he is the best agent the world has ever seen. This deluded overconfidence makes it easy to insert himself into any situation without a sense of shame or self-preservation.
Patient, tolerant, passive - (patient explanation)
He's very forgiving of flaws in other people, and has precious few stipulations - he dislikes child abuse, slave trafficking, and violations of consent, but is happy to exchange pleasantries and business with all other sorts of social refuse, and has a high threshold for disrespect and annoyances. When he believes he's in true peril from these sorts (and when that ceases to excite him) he'll slip away at the first notice.
Haesil is an agent, not an assassin, and he will not kill another person. It's not out of the goodness of his heart - he will conspire to murder, he will act as an accessory to murder, he will shamelessly lay down his own money to have someone murdered given enough cause. He refuses to deal the killing blow. He follows the Green Pact very devoutly, and interprets it very literally; he does not have enough time nor family to do what he'd need to do with a body, so he's sworn off killing anything larger than a wolf. He's practical like that.
Dishonest, callous, myopic - Haesil is not a pathological liar. He lies very intentionally. (cont.)
Haesil isn't lacking in empathy. He's a competent detective, able to think from another person's point of view and understand why their emotions might cause them to act impractically - or rather, unpredictably and erratically. Most of his experiences have been filtered through the biases of another person - a false individual, but not Haesil. He's only ever wept for the sake of these roles.
What he's lacking in is identity, and he readily compartmentalizes his crueler actions. Setting aside one's empathy is a very simple thing when there's no 'one' to blame. Haesil has ruined many people's lives with what he learns and he doesn't feel badly about any of it.
(myopic explanation)
History:
Haesil was born in a brothel to an unknown father and a reluctant mother, and there he was raised communally by the courtesans among a dozen other children until he was around five years old. With resources stretched thin, he was chased from his home and loosed upon the unsuspecting inhabitants of Arenthia. He already had an edge on the other urchins, a lesson taught by the mad scramble for attention that dominated the lives of whoresons raised in high numbers and close quarters - resources, be it food, affection, or anything else, are not obtained through patience. Resources are obtained through
wheedling. Constantly.
Boldly.He was good at mirroring adults' expressions, offering a sympathetic ear. He was good at modeling himself to their expectations. He was good at making up a new sob-story every morning, and acting heartrendingly resigned to his circumstances. It got him money, which he could exchange for honey-braised salmon cutlets. It got him a job with a Camoran socialite who ran a high-end restaurant near the border with Anequina. She wasn't concerned about how poorly he bussed tables; he was being paid to eavesdrop, merely a cut of the profit she was making selling secrets under the nose of the Third Dominion and its heavy-handed surveillance.
And he was good at it.
Fourteen years and several private tutors later, and the while the doe-eyed softness of childhood had melted into a narrow, foxlike face that was handsome enough but not quite as trustworthy, his talent with manipulation matured into something truly formidable. He had everyone Adathel Camoran set him on eating out of his hand, whether they be drug smugglers or Justicars. It swiftly went to his head. With that sort of skill, why should he settle for a minute fraction of the profit when he could be quite wealthy as an independent contractor? He made up his mind to abandon her in the autumn of (I have to do math for this), and so it was.
Listed here are a number of catastrophes his meddling is indirectly or directly responsible for. It is not a comprehensive list.
An Aldmeri merchant schooner carrying expedited medical supplies during one of the worst bouts of flu since the Third era discovered its entire cargo had been replaced with juvenile Jonethroats, a species of designer parrot.
(several more elder scrollsy scenarios)
(the debacle with his fiance)
(he travels and takes up jobs with the aristocracy of eastern cyrodiil, morrowind, and high rock, who are messy bitches all of them)
(the job that lands him in anvil, and how he's faking being a fisherman)
Regret: "Last summer I went out a few hours before a storm hit the coast and capsized my boat. Not - not the boat, no. I had a massive halibut on the line. Was just about to pull her in. Dernnit."Haesil struggles with the concept of regret - he emotionally distanced himself from the world at a very young age, and has yet to close the gap - moreover, he believes that, since the moment Anu endeavored to know itself, time has been on a relentless and inevitable progression of cause and effect, and that free will is the only illusion the Earthbones cast. He doesn't acknowledge his actions as his own, merely the result of every factor preceding them - he's just the catalyst, you see. This makes it difficult (conveniently so) to feel remorse. What I'm saying is that he's full of shit.
But there are times - in between jobs, when there's no sleuthing or deceiving to distract him from himself - when he's left to contend with the void in his soul.
Haesil has been playing roles his entire life. He can reduce grown men and women to tears with the narratives he spins and the emotions he fakes, but his inner world is a very flat place beyond the thrill of the con. He's made more than one mer fall in love with him, telling them exactly what they want to hear, memorizing every minute detail so they feel
seen in a way they never have before, and it's ended in a marriage proposal at least once. He doesn't regret abandoning his bride - she thought she was marrying a man named Caliver, anyway. It just made him realize that he's never experienced real connection with another person. Perhaps regret is the right word.
He practices his expressions in the mirror above a dusty faux-Reman basin that's been crammed in the corner of his room in a dockside inn. Plucked brows that pinch upward, concerned about a fellow sailor's coughing fit. Neutral. A bright smile that crisps the corners of his deadened eyes. Neutral. He can tell you what Epiduin regrets. He's practiced that, too. He can tell you what his favorite story is (
"The Guile Hero and the Round-Ring-Path!"), which city makes the best mackerel bake (
"Honestly? Stros M'kai"), and which knot he prefers to use when returning to harbor (
"It's called a senche-hitch. Of course you don't recognize it, it's from Malabal Tor").
Haesil made the senche-hitch up. Haesil has never been to Stros M'Kai. Haesil doesn't have a favorite of anything. It seems, to Haesil, that if Epiduin does not exist, then
Haesil certainly doesn't.
Goal: To be as annoying and irrelevant as possible. Or at least to be annoying and irrelevant enough that any inconsistency in his story is overlooked - that a fool might gravely underestimate him, get a little drunk and loose-lipped in his presence.As with his regrets, Haesil's goals are very shallow. He's already doing what he
believes he loves most - inventing personas, solving puzzles, airing out others' dirty laundry - and he's certain that he will be able to charge a king's ransom for his services in due time. It's simply inevitable. That sort of price needs a hefty resume, however, and he's content with building it at the moment.
Narratively, Haesil needs to be unmasked to grow. He needs someone else to see and judge him as himself, not the role he's playing - it might be better if the judgement isn't in his favor and holds him accountable for once. He's been living in a world relatively free of consequence, where he's unseen and unacknowledged, and it's made him question whether he (or anything) is real.
Or maybe he just needs to establish boundaries between his work life and his personal life.
Skills - Speechcraft [ expert ] He's very method.
- Illusion [ adept ] Might be partially to blame for why he's doubting reality, but is an incredibly useful school for someone in his vocation.
- Stealth [ adept ] Naturally.
- Security [ novice ] The locks outside of Elsweyr confound him.
- Acrobatics [ novice ] He's a city boy. He doesn't
do cross-country.
- Blade [ novice ] - Haesil cannot shoot straight to save his life. He's very embarrassed about it, and may, perhaps, be near-sighted. He's swift with the short sword, but not terribly effective in a fair fight.
Spells- Glamour [ illusion ] :
(I do not think this was an available spell in any of the games? Maybe Daggerfall?? This concept art mentions the ability to glamour, which ultimately wasn't used, but the concept of glamour being an art localized to Valenwood (like greensinging, namespinning, and shapeshifting) has lived rent-free in my mind for ages, I'm just divorcing it from the gender stuff. If you'd rather I not use this, I'll remove it).- Chameleon [ illusion ]
- Blind [ illusion ]
- Silence [ illusion ]
- Night-Eye [ illusion ]
Equipment: (fishing waders, sword, prosthetic four-point antlers, microneedles)
Misc. Possessions: 
Rockette
AlteredTundra
Lemons
ButtsnBalls
Festive
Lord Wraith
Roman
Spoopy Scary
BlazingBark
Skai
