Birthday: Roalis 29, 2694
Age: 25 (He's actually unsure.)
FC: Lucho Jacob
Place of Origin: Muffey, Anaxas
Current Location: Old Rose Harbor
Occupation: Odd Jobs for Hire, Mercenary, Underdog, Moral Compass
Tristaan could unfortunately never hide his galdor heritage—then again, he's mostly convinced he doesn't really entirely want to. His features reveal his aristocratic lineage, with high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, and a sharp chin and nose. While he is only slightly above average height for an Anaxi galdor, he is much more wiry and well-muscled than his magical peers, a compact, quick and lithe creature shaped by hard labor, fierce combat, and lots of travel. His hair is rich, curly and black, with an almost auburn undertone in the light, revealing his galdori parents’ Bastian ancestry. He keeps his hair pulled back whenever possible, though he’s cut it shorter with his Arena career, a few stray strands usually find their way in front of his face or tucked behind an ear. His eyes are a calm, steely grey, almond-shaped and with long, graceful eyelashes.
Unlike his too-comfortable, mona-talking relatives, he is tanned from years of living outside of aristocratic life. He has more than his fair share of scars from various fights and a difficult childhood as a passive in the Soot District's factories and streets, but nothing that seriously mars his well-bred good looks. If one really takes the time to notice his features, a faint scar traces over his nose, which is almost imperceptibly bent just so as if it's been broken before. He's almost too gracefully featured to be a wick, but he's often mistaken for one and prefers at the moment to keep it that way whenever possible.
His ears are both pierced a few times each with simple silver rings, a welcome addition to encouraging the frequent assumption that the passive is a wick, though he has no other tattoos or markings other than scars. Tristaanian is left handed. Most of the marks on his flesh are from beatings, and the tattoo that identifies him as a galdor-born passive is unscathed on his right bicep. While there was a time he enjoyed the rebellion of a full beard, he's usually just several days shy of bothering to shave. Tristaan is very aware he cleans up nicely when needed, but he's much more comfortable keeping his actual heritage buried beneath Tek and road dust.
He prefers loose, comfortable shirts with a bright, handwoven red cravat tucked into his faded grey vest and well-worn dark leather breeches which disappear into knee high leather boots. Tristaanian travels light: a rucksack for some gear, a belt pouch for his spare coin, and reliable weapons he takes meticulous care of. Against the elements, he wears a weathered dark leather coat with a high collar that buttons up to just cover the lower half of his face—always useful for hiding one's identity or keeping out the cold.
As of 2718, Tristaan's passive tattoo is cleverly disguised by a very vivid visual representation of his Red Crow affiliation and commitment to his Yellow Eye witch, Sarinah Lissden. A beautiful stylized crow with lovely yellow eye flowers wraps his bicep in bright colors, nestled around his passive mark.
Quiet, thoughtful, but unusually cheerful, Tristaan's ready smile often belies his inner turmoil. Spirited and driven by something deep and unseen, he is focused, hard-working, and slow to anger.
While his earliest memories are of life as the child of galdori professors, those experiences lasted only just long enough to leave him aware of what he isn't as a passive. Abandoned in the Soot District by his own parents, mistreated as a servant, and generally dumped on by society, it's really, really hard to get on Tristaan's nerves. He's used to letting insults slide, and sometimes doesn't mind making a joke of things himself if he's confident he can take his opponent in a fight. He's not vain, but trusts in his hard-earned skills and knowledge. He exudes an eerie sense of self-confidence for a passive, one that's only accentuated by wick-encouraged bravado and a heady sense of rebellion.
He may not know his place in society as a whole, but he knows his own strength is usually enough for the day. He also enjoys the combat advantage his appearance tends to give him—he doesn't mind that most assume he's a small-framed weakling, it makes that first swing so much more fun. While Tristaan is also more than content to be mistaken for a wick in any given social situation, given his comfort level with their language and his general manner of dress and choice of lifestyle, he is achingly aware of what he isn't, and this awareness has weight in everything he does. The passive has his own moral guidelines, and often lives by them to his own detriment, if only because he longs to prove his worth to a society who sees him as worthless. Not able to shake the shadow of his galdor birthright, Tristaan longs to find the answers to questions he doesn't know how to ask and solutions to problems he is afraid he's only creating for himself.
Even though he grew up on the streets, he is literate, witty, and an observant learner. He has been known to spend all he earns on whatever reading material he can find, illegal or not, much to the pangs of his stomach. He's got an appreciation for a good laugh, a stiff drink, and good music, mostly from his time traveling with wicks.
He values his freedom and his decent living, for he knows there are plenty of passives who don't have either. He resents that his lack of apparent magical ability has excluded him from his own heritage, but really has no desire to be a part of a culture he now sees as corrupt and blinded by power. While he's not always sure of how to feel about humans, who share his lack of magic, he has worked beside enough to know that they desire the same things as himself: respect, freedom, and social family. He views wicks as better family than his own who abandoned him, and admires their free spirits. He longs to overcome his inner sense of unworthiness and experience real acceptance and freedom.
Chaotic Good
A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.
ENFJ | The Protagonist
ENFJs are genuine, caring people who talk the talk and walk the walk, and nothing makes them happier than leading the charge, uniting and motivating their team with infectious enthusiasm.
Born to a professor of Quantitative Magic and a Doctor in Muffey, Tristaan's parents were strangely suspicious of their son's magical abilities from birth. Just before his older sister's 10th birthday, his parents decided to test the magical validity of their son themselves only to confirm their fears that he was a passive. At the tender age of 8, Tristaan found himself homeless on the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back and a pocket watch in his nervous hands. His parents promptly found the best way to forget their son was to lavish themselves upon their daughter, Navinia.
Navinia and Tristaan were close as children before her Test day, the pair of them making promises of joining the Seventen together while they fought epic battles in the streets of Muffey and the woods outside of town. Unfortunately, the passive has nothing but pleasant memories of his childhood, even if his parents' faces are blurry, his nurse's visage isn't. Also a passive (and supposedly a relative of his father's), the children's caretaker was nothing but kind to them, and it was perhaps her kindness that allowed Tristaan to even cope with the conclusion that he, too, was a dangerous, non-magical scrap once his parents abandoned him on the streets of Vienda.
The other passives were the second family he knew, and he didn't want to abandon them ... at least until he finally saw what he was really capable of. When one of his closest friends experienced his first diablerie—a fatal affair that not only killed the warden beating him but took the young red-headed passive's life as well—fear consumed Tristaan and he scrambled to find a way to escape. He ran—taking what little he had scrimped together and fleeing in the night out of Vienda and into the wilderness, taking to the road at 16.
By his 19th year, he found himself thoroughly caught up in the Voiaj Kuatano and their wild ways—the strange appeal of hedonistic forgetfulness not lost on the passive who carried far too much baggage for a creature so young. The small group traveled and found trouble wherever they went, often relying on Tristaan to be the balach, the charming moral compass, to get them out of their ridiculous situations. When that didn't work, the passive certainly proved to be a wild card in a fight, so the tyat reaped their rewards either way. The pack of youths began to drift toward Old Rose Harbor, the allure of crime appealing to a few of the Voiaj's older tyat wick who found themselves craving the approving allure of ging instead of just their enjoyable group dynamics.
All it took was for one job to go poorly, for the inept, enthusiastic band of budding criminals to have their supposedly simple caravan hold up to go south, to be a trap by the very Bad Brothers they'd been stealing from in order to put a stop to their almost childish antics. In that moment, Tristaan lost his third family almost completely in the counter-massacre, but somehow found himself spared not necessarily because of his combat prowess but because of his kindness—the passive's true character as it shined in the heat of the moment caught the eye of the witch in charge of the Brothers who so mercilessly slaughtered his friends. In exchange for his life, Tristaan found himself in mysterious debt to the witch, the terms of his debt left purposefully vague to keep the young passive at her personal beck and call.
Bound to stay within the reach of Hawke but free to otherwise do as he wished, the passive is considered not property so much as an ace up the sleeve—some of the odd jobs he's summoned to perform strangely tailored to his skills and his unassuming frame with no promise of when his debt will be considered paid.
However, the rumbles of unrest that's been growing in Anaxas has really begun to resonate with his own feelings of lostness. He's beginning to wonder if some "criminals" aren't really in the wrong at all, especially those who talk of rebellion and social change, though he doubts he has a place in any of it, given his galdor heritage as a magic-less scrap.
Average
Physical
Master
Social
Good
First and foremost, Tristaan wants to be free (again), this time from under the rule of Silas Hawke. He wants to keep Sarinah and their daughter safe from harm.
Without a true place in society, Tristaanian finds it hard to sit down and really plan out his future. Like anyone else, he wouldn't mind settling down and starting a family, but considering that's currently illegal, he'd rather stay out of prison or, worse yet, passive servitude.
He'd really just like to find his place, and if that means using his blade to fight for freedom, so be it. While he's not sure what side to take, he knows that something has to be done to change some minds. Ideally, he'd rather the changes be peacefully made through an appeal to the heart and to critical thinking, but he's also experienced enough personal cruelty at the hands of his own galdori people to have a lingering bit of desire for bloodshed.
One day, he'd like to see his sister again. Secretly, he wonders if she misses him and if she'd even accept him. While he's given up on his parents, he seems to hang on to the idea that she'd be somehow different, even for a galdor.