Adrian Validus
| Adrian Validus | |||||||
| Male Human | |||||||
| Player: 073090 / Numbers Guy | |||||||
[[Image: |300x600px|]]
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| General Information | ||||||||||
| Full Name: | Adrian Validus | |||||||||
| Nicknames: | Lord Validus | |||||||||
| Age: | Unknown | |||||||||
| Deity: | None | |||||||||
| Alignment: |
| |||||||||
| Occupation: | Shipping Merchant, Lord | |||||||||
| Faction/Rank: | Fated, Luminiferous Aether | |||||||||
| Place of Birth: | Terral - Province of Erodemius | |||||||||
| Physical Attributes | ||||||||||
| Height: | 6' / 183 cm | |||||||||
| Weight: | 148 lbs / 67 kg | |||||||||
| Eyes: | Silver | |||||||||
| Hair: | Golden Blond | |||||||||
| Complexion: | Pallid | |||||||||
| Physical Build: | Athletic | |||||||||
| Physical Features: | A pale an icy figure that maintains an athletic leanness. | |||||||||
| Skills | ||||||||||
| Mercantilism, great intellect, ninth-tier arcane magic, swordplay, vast knowledge. | ||||||||||
| Equipment and Items | ||||||||||
| Paperwork, nobleman suit, rapier, staff, elven armor. | ||||||||||
"I am simply what this life has made of me- not a monster, but one who perceives the depths of man's veracious nature and does not turn away."
Personality
Adrian customarily maintains a persona of nobility that shows in his every aspect. His movements are smooth, every word teeming with confidence and introspection. Ever courteous, he speaks amiably with others, a cordial veneer that seldom hints of any deeper complexion. He is an individual of high society that lacks the customary, self-important pomposity. Calm and confident, his ability lies within his bearing rather than speaking scornfully to those around him.
To the more observant viewer, Adrian may convey a feeling of unease. This may simply be due to the cold, calculating reflection in his eyes or the subtly contrived nature underlying his speech. Whatever expression on his face, his features are always fierce; a pale and icy visage that refuses to waver. It is below Adrian's indiscernible layers of mannerism and genial behavior that slumbers something veritably heinous. He can be cruel to those that oppose him, yet he does not act out of anger or desire; nor is his callousness driven by greed or malevolence. He is conflicted by neither torture nor murder, yet does not take any delight in them.
Instead, Adrian is one of ruthless efficiency. The suffering of others is simply a tool to achieve a greater means. He harbors the characteristics of an intrinsic sociopath rather than one of malice. He can be described as someone with obsessive tendencies and a creature that is engrossed with control and perfection. He lacks any conventional notions of a conscience and thus harbors no qualms that might hinder his agenda, yet he is far from careless.
Adrian keeps few close to his true self due to both his aberrant nature and unnatural lifespan. In Terral, he has been known to seclude himself for decades at a time or feign the existence of sons and grandsons in order to live generations without arising suspicion. In his world, competent allies are difficult to acquire, and trust is something he holds in particularly low regard. Yet, under his amiable guise, he has been known to forge alliances, false or otherwise.
History
Known as Varick when he was a boy, he lived on the outer fringes of a port city when humans were still a young race in Terral. Separated from the direct commotion of city life, he was raised from a young age by his widowed father, a commoner who worked the city lighthouse along Terral’s western sea cliffs. Life was simple, filled only with chores and the occasional trip to town to replenish supplies. In this time, Varick grew to love the sea and often spent his spare time walking along the beach or hopping a ride with the fishermen for the evening.
As the years passed, Varick's father grew older and unable to manage his post, leaving the burden to his son. Opportunities for love came rarely to Varick, living away from the city, although his true passion was always the sea. His evenings were filled with dreams of one day finding the courage to take leave of his home and to seek adventure on the open ocean. Nearing his nineteenth birthday, Varick decided to stray from his home and brave the crowds to attend a New Year's Festival. Stoically charming and handsome,
he quickly attracted a date.
In his fervent, youthful passion, Varick's night quickly became a blur, the thrill of romance and pleasure
consuming him. He foolishly lost himself to drink and lust, only to awaken chained to the stone floor of a
dank pit with a pounding head. Finding himself abducted and imprisoned in a dungeon beneath the city
catacombs, Varick was subjected to the experiments of cultist necromancers. The severity and duration
of the torture warped his mind over six years until he was deemed ready for the Ritual of Crucimigration
as a test subject.
The first part of the ritual requires the placement of the petitioner on a standing pole. Cursed nails are used
to affix the petitioner, and then the pole is lifted into place. The resultant excruciating pain that shoots like
molten metal through the petitioner's fingers and up the arms is not what finally ends the petitioner’s mortal
life. Death usually comes later from asphyxiation and heart failure. Upon hearing the petitioner’s last breath,
the ritual leader calls forth the names of evil powers and gods to forge a link with the Negative Energy Plane,
and then impales the petitioner. As death’s chill enter the body, the cursed nails and chanting of the ritual
ensures that the Ritual of Crucimigration is completed. Dying, the petitioner is reborn as a necropolitan, dead
but animate.
Varick's last mortal memory was the compound being breached by the local militia as the final ritualistic acts
were being completed. He woke to darkness, not knowing where he was or what had transpired. Confused,
he reached out, but his limbs did not respond. Fear would have gripped him, but the emotion simply did not
come. When he opened his mouth to call out, it only filled with dirt. It took him a moment to realize he had
been mistaken for dead and buried somewhere in the catacombs. How deep, he could not say, but several
hours of struggle deemed escape to be futile. Helpless, he lay there in his confinement, his tomb, with
nothing but his thoughts.
Varick was unsure of how much time had passed before finally being stirred from his imprisonment. The
mortal necessity to eat, breathe, and even sleep had been jilted from him the night he died. He was alone
without feeling or of sight and sound, restricted to the inner workings of his mind for an untold amount of
time. When he finally heard noise again after an eternity, his first deduction was that his deranged
consciousness was descending further into madness.
A shovel struck near his arm. Varick lay motionless, although mostly due to forgetting how to do anything
else. The source of the disturbance continued until he was partially unearthed. Standing above him were
two men, likely grave robbers, that stared at him blankly. Varick lay in a mass grave surrounded by the
remains of the necromancers responsible for his perpetual nightmare. In a craze, he lurched forward to
grab the closest man's leg before dragging him into the pit. He could see the primal fear in the man's eyes
and his own savage reflection as his hands constricted around the human's throat. The man viciously
clawed at Varick's arms and face in a desperate attempt for freedom, for air, but Varick was incapable of
pain. The other man had fled, torch in hand, leaving the monster in darkness once more.
Varick instinctively returned to his home but his father had died during his years away and the lighthouse
had fallen to the care of another. His sickly father was likely left to die in the streets when the lighthouse
was found without management. He didn't care. A homeless abomination, he wandered Terral as a shadow
of his former self. Varick grew to understand he was no longer tethered by the limitations of humanity.
Notions of morality and compassion were a distant memory. The deep-seeded fear of death, of growing old
and sick, all became abstractions. In time, his knowledge grew, his skills honed over generations. Manipulation
and deceit became the tools of his trade, as he preferred to rely on his intellect over force. For him, emotion
and civility was a human cloak brought to existence only when twisting the will of others for his gain.
Over the following decades, Varick discarded his peasant name and integrated into upper Auduiline society-
an innovative people with magical prowess. Varick was a dead child from a poor family with no one as a
father. He became Adrian Validus, a noble and owner of the shipping company Immortalis Mare. Over time,
his business underhandedly became the dominant source of trade on the island. He expanded into the
neighboring province by engineering a plague to quarantine and ultimately force an embargo on other
transportation lanes. By shipping in goods from over seas, it allowed Adrian to monopolize and triple his
wealth due to inflation, all while appearing as a savior. His was a business fueled by blood.
Yet, such acquired wealth and notoriety would inevitably risk the unveiling of Adrian's existence to
particularly emphatic individuals. Despite his cautiousness, this came to be the case when he was visited
one night by a dead man not unlike himself. He discovered that in the centuries following his encounter with
the necromancers, the Ritual of Crucimigration had become a closely guarded secret in the city of Nocturnus.
Indeed, incidents such as his may have contributed to this factor. Regardless, this lithe and pasty emissary
of Nocturnus gave the noble a simple, yet categorical mandate. Come to Nocturnus. The underlying threat
behind this message was not lost on Adrian.
Adrian was taken to meet with the officials of Nocturnus in order to represent himself with a personal
account of his history. He was ultimately presented with two choices on the matter. They would either force
him to remain in Nocturnus from that moment on, or he could willingly relocate to Sigil to covertly serve their
interests. Unwilling to simply abandon many lifetimes of work, he negotiated for the middle ground. Within
Sigil, they would have a way to monitor his actions to ensure the nature of his very undeath would not fall
from secrecy. Likewise, within the City of Doors, Adrian determined that he would able to continue managing
his affairs from afar and potentially create new connections.