Wryen Trisroth
Pronunciation: REE-en TRIS-roth
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| Age | 37 |
| Birth Year | NRC 493 |
| Gender | Male |
| Race | Human |
| Homeland | Alania |
Physical Description
Skinny, but very lean with little fat on his body. The most noticeable feature is a white streak in his hair on the left side. This is a physical representation of mana burn which all mages accumulate at some point, a rare anomaly but not completely unheard of. His face (or what one can see of it) has been hardened with age and experience, with hard angles and a sharp jawline. Under his robes are various battle scars he collected over the years, a large burn mark on his shoulder, an arrow wound on his left thigh, and slash mark on the side of his throat. On the inside of his left wrist is a runic tattoo matching the ones on his dagger.
| Height | 6’1” | Hair Color | Blue (Black) w/ White Streak |
| Weight | 160lbs | Eye Color | Blue |
| Build | Lean | Skin Color | Tanned |
Clothing and Armor
No armor, only tattered wizard’s robes, dark blue in color. The robe’s collar covers his nose and mouth and it has a sewn in sheath for his dagger. He wears oversized white gloves with a two inch cuff and a silk sash. He has simple cloth boots that match his robes in color but are oddly in better shape than the rest of his wardrobe, they have pointed toes and end just above his ankle.
Weapon DescriptionWryen carries a straight wizard’s staff made of brass and topped with a magically hardened bloodstone. The staff acts as a channel for mana and without it most spells are incredibly difficult. In a concealed sheath in his robes he has a ritual dagger with runes etched into the blade. The blade is enchanted for bloodletting rituals.
| Class | Mage |
| Occupation | Mercenary |
| Guild Membership | Mages’ Guild (4), Mercenaries’ Guild (5) |
| Weapons | Staff, Ritual Dagger |
| Armor | None |
| Equipment | Slayn’s Pocket Grimoire, journal, quill and ink, loose parchment, bedroll, rations, wine skin |
| Magic System | Sorcery |
| School of Sorcery | Arcane |
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Magic Items and Enchantments
- Tattoo - The tattoo on his wrist can be activated to enchant passing blood, allowing Wryen to use it as a power source in rituals. The runes on his arm and dagger interact with each other, meaning that if he cuts himself on the tattoo with the dagger it will automatically use some the blood power to heal the wound before he bleeds to death. The stone that tops his staff is made from dried, compressed blood, his own in fact. Like most wizards he needs the staff to help channel mana into the physical world.
As a level six mage Wryen’s powers are impressive but hardly the best. In combat he relies on indirect attacks rather than direct magical force, cunning over strength. He is proficient in bloodletting magic, but unlike unholy magic the blood is not meant as a sacrifice to any deity, it is meant to unlock the lifeforce stored in blood. This doesn’t mean that he must or even can go around slaughtering livestock for power. In fact only his own blood can be unlocked for ritualistic purposes, see below.
Slightly better strength than can be expected of a wizard, but still no match for any warrior. Since the bloodstone on his staff is quite fragile he refrains from any melee combat. If needed he’ll quickly jab his opponent with the opposite end in hopes of driving them back long enough for a spell.
PersonalityWryen has no interest in achieving immortality through his work, immortality achieved through not dying will do just fine. That is his most basic motivation throughout life. On his best days he is nasty, greedy, lecherous, pompous and arrogant; sometimes convinced that he’s the only competent being within a hundred miles. He’s hardly a saint but he isn’t a bad guy either, he is someone with large goals who doesn’t apologize for the way he is.
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Quotes: “Immortality is the one thing I’m willing to die for.”
HistoryWryen was born into privilege as the son of Soskin Trisroth, the owner of Alan’s most successful trading company. His mother died during birth and his father was far too busy to deal with such trivial things as his son. Young Wryen was raised mostly by servants and caretakers with all needs and desires met save for an insatiable curiosity. Living in Alan allowed him to spend entire days among more books than most people ever see in a lifetime and still it was never enough. It became clear very early in his life that he would pursue an education. He was too young for any of the Sage’s Academies, but it turned out that the School of Arcane Arts accepted younger students. When his caretaker took him to visit the headmaster it took only a few simple spells to completely memorize Wryen, for years the boy counted each day until he was old enough to enroll. His father’s wealth and contacts ensured Wryen’s place in the Academy, even though he showed more than enough aptitude to have been accepted on his own.
The rest of Wryen’s childhood was spent memorizing endless scriptures and texts. Reading and writing until he wasn’t certain which would be crippled first; his hand or his eyes. It was a long and difficult commitment, more than once he considered packing up and returning to comfortable aristocracy. He might have done just that if not for the events that occurred in his fourth year. His father’s partner, his right hand for decades, had robbed him blind and fled with a new identity. He made off nearly all of the trading company’s vast wealth and with it the bulk of Soskin’s assets. Before hanging himself, Soskin took what was left of his fortune to pay the rest of Wryen’s tuition for the remainder of the boy’s academic career. Leaving Wryen with only two options; success as a mage or poverty. Needless to say the young man kept with his studies.
Once he graduated Wryen was faced with the dilemma of not knowing what to do with himself. Alan was a city that turned out several educated men and women and could only offer meager jobs to Wryen, who had much larger plans. In order to become anything more than a mid level book keeper the young mage decided he had to venture out. Having no experience in the outside world he hired a young mercenary named Gabrial as a body guard.
Gabrial was Wryen’s polar opposite, born into poverty and raised to be humble and kind. When Gabrial was a young boy his family had made a pilgrimage to the temple of Marfa, along the way they were attacked by goblins that were driven to desperate gambits by starvation. His father stood before them with only a pitchfork ready to defend his family, but fortunately he didn’t have to. One of the temple’s protectors, a lone holy knight of Marfa appeared from nowhere. Like a wraith the knight descended on the goblins and cut them down one by one, none standing a chance against his whirling blade. Gabriel decided then and there he would walk the path of a hero no matter what it took, but without the connections to gain squireship he did the best he could as a mercenary.
As they traveled, Wryen got to know Gabrial better. The wide eyed mercenary was easily impressed by even the simplest of Wryen’s magical displays. Immediately seeing the benefit of a spell caster at his side, Gabrial offered a partnership to Wryen, arguing that a fighter and mage could get far better paying jobs than either could alone. Wryen eventually decided that only the real world could test the true limits of his magic and agreed to his new life a mercenary.
At first they were clumsy amateurs, surviving narrowly with luck alone. In time their skill and reputation grew, they liberated a small town in Moss from the stranglehold bandits. They rescued a group of children from sacrifice by a renegade sect of Falaris. They even joined Kashue’s forces in the battle at Kanon. Although most of Lodoss had never heard of them, they were heroes to those they encountered.
However, Wryen never planned to leave the physical world as a second rate mercenary. In fact one of his primary goals in life was to never leave it at all and every spare moment was spent looking for a way to reach that goal. Since his days at the academy he poured over text and every so often would come across the mention of a Kastuulian artifact known as Achosa’s Map. Though accounts varied wildly, the Map was said to reveal all the knowledge of the universe, the answer to every question that had and ever would be asked.
Several questions surrounded the Map; if it was as powerful as it was said to be then why were there no documented expeditions to look for the it? Why would something that could reveal all knowledge be mentioned only in footnotes and not be Alan’s top priority? The most obvious question was within it’s supposed Kastuulian origin, why could it not foresee and prevent the empire’s downfall?
Like anyone else, Wryen concluded that it was a myth along with so many artifacts, dreamed as the product of half baked grant proposals. He continued this mindset until he and Gabrial were hired to sweep Marmo in order to prepare it to become Flaim’s duchy. Of coarse there were professional sages in charge of excavation of any knowledge or artifacts, but they focused on Salbad city and the temple of Kardis. Wryen suspected that anything worth hiding would be in obscurity, not locked away in towers with a banner letting everyone know that there was something valuable there. He was looking for the library of Thule, a once royal sage and master architect who fled to Marmo when it was discovered that information gathered for his anatomy texts were done through very unethical methods; live dissections and other unsavory acts.
What he found was an observatory. A massive underground temple made by enslaved trolls for the sole purpose of viewing Achosa’s Map. Wryen was struck with awe as he deciphered Thule’s journals, it seemed that the map was real, or at least Thule believed so enough to dedicate his life to finding it, he created a method of tapping into the Map’s limitless knowledge but there was nothing to tap into. It turned out that Thule had been called into the war of the Demon King and killed in battle before finding the Map, but not before decades of research on where the it might be. For days Wryen raided the library without food or sleep, leaving Gabrial to watch his friend slip more and more into obsession.
After four days Wryen emerged from the library with a list of possible places to look. Gabrial however had deep reservations of following Wryen, if the Map was as powerful as he kept hearing then no being alive deserved so much power. He also saw a deep obsession in Wryen’s eyes, he could see that this was the one thing the mage was willing to die for. And when Gabriel tried to stand in Wryen’s way he was threatened with a fire spell, not in a joking manner and it certainly wasn’t an empty threat. Wryen was truly willing to kill for the Map. Or at least hurt his closest friend for it.
The day Gabrial long feared had arrived, his friend was no longer content to be a humble mercenary and the two could no longer walk the same path.
