extended profile
Name: Adrasteius Anor’Thalion (goes by Bloodspeaker since the renaming of the quel’dorei to the sin’dorei, but Anor’Thalion is his original family name)
Adrasteius; from Adrastos, which means ‘not inclined to run away’ in Greek. Anor’Thalion is a combination of the Quenya words for ‘sun’ and ‘strength.’
Gender: Male (despite some opinions)
Class: Arcane/Fire Mage
Age: ~600; born in winter (he, like his brother, is the zodiacal equivalent of an Aquarius)
Appearance: Upon meeting Adrasteius for the first time, you are likely to think two things: first, this man is very short, and second, are those tattoos poking out from every corner of his robes? While not exactly a midget, Adra is on the smaller end of the height spectrum; around 5’7 on a good day, and that’s been the case since he reached maturity. His skin is pallid, prone to full-body blushing when angry, and completely and absolutely covered in arcane sigil tattoos. Only his hands and face are free of the markings: from the neck down and the wrists beyond, his skin is carved with loopy arcane symbols. The tattoos appear intrinsically linked with his body, as though they run deeper than just marks on skin (and they do), and they often react according to his temperament, glowing like a mood ring that’s etched into your entire body. Adra is duly embarrassed by their tendency to do this, and it is one of the reasons why he struggles to keep his naturally volatile moods in check. Unfortunately, with certain people and situations, he is not very good at this.
Like all blood elves, Adra has intense, fel-fire green eyes that glow constantly from the magic flowing through his veins. He marks these eyes as a point of shame: prior to the ‘fall’ of his race (as he sees it), his eyes were pale blue, but they changed as he fed upon (and researched) darker magic. His hair is light blond, cornsilk in color, with long bangs that reach down to his chest. His hair is swept into spikes around his ears, but the rest falls straight down his back, a little past his neck. He cares for it, and his skin, meticulously, through the use of various oils and lotions. Breathing his scent would give you a heady mixture of lavender, fresh rain and embers, and of course the crisp, lingering smell of the arcane magic that runs through his veins.
As a mage, Adra usually wears robes; like many sin’dorei he favors red and black threads, but he will wear whatever is most effective. He keeps reagents (and lotion for his hands) hidden in his sleeves, for easy access, and he carries a plain, gnarled staff on his back, with a giant ruby set into its oaken head. A wand, along with his various bags and pouches, hangs from his belt. The robes hang on a body that is perhaps 120 lbs when soaking wet, and what muscle mass he has is lean, and focused primarily in small, hard muscles along his legs and arms.
Adra’s face is serious, mature, and focused: whenever he looks at you, it feels as though he is glaring right into the unmentionables drawer of your soul, and judging it accordingly. He cannot help this, because he is a self-righteous jerk.
Personality:
Adrasteius has a heart of spun sugar, encircled with barbed wire.
First, did I mention that he was a self-righteous jerk yet? Because he kind of is, a lot. Adrasteius thinks he knows what’s best for everybody, to the point where it hardly matters that just maybe he does, because he finds it nearly impossible to express himself in ways that are not totally infuriating. Never a fully functioning member of society, Adra’s problems with social niceties only worsened after the fall of Quel’Thalas, when his bitterness and sorrow over the changes to the high elves flourished in him like flowers in a greenhouse. Always something of a self-imposed exile, though with (to his mind) firm roots in Quel’Thalas and the elven community as a whole, Adra has spent many years not learning how to talk decently to other people. As such, he has no tact filter on much of what he says; tact is something that he must do deliberately, with thought-even his apologies ultimately give little ground, unless he truly recognizes the weight of his words (which can happen, sometimes).
Because of this, many people find his company anywhere from mildly unpleasant to utterly unbearable. Furthering the problem, he is more prone to biting remarks to those he actually cares for, because if Adra sees something worth recommending in you, he will goad you until it is brought out (or you fucking kill him, the far more likely scenario). He expects the world and the heavens from the people he cares about, even while secretly knowing that people are just people, and therefore inherently fallible. This will not stop him from harassing you constantly if you hold an opinion that he dislikes, however, or even from making petty remarks designed to provoke you to agitation. He is so set in this pattern of interaction that he even irritates without meaning to or thinking about it-but please believe that, much of the time, he delights in watching someone squirm (and loved ones most of all).
That being said, Adrasteius is not cold-hearted, nor cruel, nor does he take joy in deliberately hurting anyone. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite: though his exterior is prickly, his inside is soft, gooey, and fashioned largely of marshmallows. Though gifted with extraordinary magical prowess, Adra is considered weak by his fellow Magisters and other blood elves he meets, because he rarely, if ever, unleashes the full brunt of abilities-and even when he does, he will still NEVER reach his full potential, because of his tattoos (see History for more on that’un). To Adra, murder is murder, no matter who commits it, no matter why, and its only effect is to stain and corrupt the soul. Adra is very concerned with spirits, souls, and their relative purity or corruption. He considers himself a dab hand in detecting the relative purity of a particular soul, and he wishes both to preserve what is pure and bring salvation to what is soiled. Though he is saddened by and contemptuous of the current state of Silvermoon City and its people, he is still a humanist (elfist?) at heart: he is upset with them because he loves them, and he wants them to be better.
Adrasteius lives life fiercely and passionately, feeling everything all the time, and struggling constantly to maintain his will and discipline (which he must do, given his usual pastimes). Though he is without a doubt a pedantic lecturer, he is far from stuffy-once he’s got going on something he feels strongly about (which is to say, almost everyfuckingthing), he displays enough intensity and conviction to burn the ends of your hair (and his, literally). He doesn’t doubt that life is a delicate gift, but he believes that its precarious nature is the precise reason why it must be so zealously addressed, and why a solid future must be restored to his people. He despises apathy, believing that the apathetic are, in some way, already dead: they reject the gift of life by failing to care for it, and so can hardly be counted among the living at all. He loves deeply, but not wisely or well, and will do absolutely anything to protect what he cares about and achieve the goals he’s set out to help the sin’dorei people. He will die for you-though he doesn’t relish the prospect of death-he will kill for you-though he hates fighting and finds the best war is the one not fought-he will lie, steal, and cheat, if he loves you and thinks it will make you happy. In otherwise, if you are close to him, he will be a total hypocrite for your sake (and then berate you if you try to do the same for him, OF COURSE).
In sum:
Good traits: Loving, passionate, dedicated, self-sacrificing, honest, intelligent
Neutral: Emotional, dorky, high-strung
Bad traits: Judgmental, blunt, tactless, often self-absorbed, stubborn, given to flailing, short-sighted, single-minded, intolerant, hypocritical, just plain fucking mean
History:
To be honest, Adra’s life was pretty good until a decade or so ago. He had kind parents, a relatively normal relationship with his twin brother, Aurelius (the latter would beat him up, he would cry, they would eat figs in reconciliation), and he grew up on a secluded estate in the beautiful forests that surrounded Quel’Thalas. His latent talent for magic was obvious from birth: after only a week in the crib, he melted it. Healers remarked that he must have a ‘burning soul,’ as a result of the high concentration of magical forces in his veins. The phenomenon, which he quickly and easily learned to control, allows him to raise his body temperature exponentially without harm to himself-good for starting cooking fires (or accidentally causing third degree burns to a girl you like when you’re trying to kiss her, just sayin’). Additionally, his average body temp is consistently higher than normal-it usually sits at around 100-103 degrees.
But despite that strange gift, Adra took an average path: he began training as a disciple of the Light shortly after reaching maturity, and spent much of his time on pilgrimages to various places. As dark times swept across Azeroth-war upon deadlier war-he only studied and trained harder, lending his considerable skill with healing wherever he could, trying to fulfill his sacred duty to the Light.
Adrasteius was on pilgrimage to the Stormwind Cathedral when he received word that the Scourge were encroaching upon Quel’Thalas, and the Farstriders had been ordered to burn the surrounding forests-the very forests where his parents still lived. Their family had truly lived in seclusion, as his parents were private people who cared mainly for two things: themselves and their children (in that order, really), and Adra initially feared that his parents would not receive an evacuation order in time. He immediately sent a letter to his brother, Aurelius (who was still in Silvermoon), warning him to get their parents out safely before the scorched earth policy took effect. Though he tried to assure himself that Aurelius could handle the task, he set out for Quel’Thalas immediately, despite the ridiculous risk and danger of traveling at that time (given the fast proliferation of the Scourge and its agents).
Arriving in the now ruined forests safely, Adrasteius headed for Silvermoon, where he found his brother, stone drunk in the inn, off of booze, magic, and who knows what else. Chills took his heart as he asked his brother of their parents, and received nothing but broken sobs in reply.
Adra remained in Silvermoon, calling upon the Light to help him heal the survivors, but feeling weakened and empty, owing not just to his sorrow and rage but also to the loss of the Sunwell, to which even he had returned to and relied upon for strength. He did not reject Kael’thas when he and the other survivors, now renamed blood elves, were offered new sources to sate their agony, though as he watched the fel energy sully him and further deteriorate his brother, he quickly decided that they were following a shameful path. This was only confirmed when the Light receded from the sin’dorei, leaving Adrasteius without the one solace left in his life.
In the years since that day, Adrasteius has walked an increasingly dangerous and volatile path, becoming a mage and deciding to use the power granted him at birth and the will sharpened over centuries in order to find a cure for his people’s suffering. His first step was to have the tattoos inscribed on his flesh, which were designed by him and actually put on by a mad gnome interested in such things. They serve as magical dampeners, limiting both the energy he creates and the energy he takes in, and as such protect him during his research. They have other uses and properties (i.e., the unfortunate mood ring tendency), but dampening magic is the primary reason why he has them.
He subjects himself willingly to arduous magical trials, seeking out the most vile energies of the world in order to draw them into his body (and the vials he sews into his robes) in order to study and understand their component parts. He has vowed to save not only the sin’dorei as a whole, but most particularly his brother, who he dearly loves despite Aurelius’s numerous and worsening failings. Adra blames himself for what happened to his parents, feeling that he should have seen Aurelius’s already prodigious magical dependency and done something before it was too late, before he was in such a stupor that he could not even move to protect his own family. Adrasteius considers himself his brother’s keeper, considers Aurelius’s state as Adra’s burden to bear, and tells himself that all he endures, he does so for the hope that Aurelius might one day return to something approaching normal.
Currently, Adra believes he is nearing a breakthrough in his research, and that just a few more trips will enable him to brew a concoction to help ease his brother’s addiction (and by extension, his people’s). Unfortunately, he has recently re-entered society (finding that Silvermoon now holds resources too useful to disdain, in terms of labs and reagents), and as such has come into contact with a number of people who do not like him very much.
Reaction to Sudden Hugs: Stiffen, blush, wonder what the hell is going on and why someone actually wants to touch him.
Darkest Secret: In his quiet time, he builds houses for frogs, out of twigs and twine. He also keeps a number of critter pets, which he gives long and tiresome names (like his silver tabby, Prince Argentumium, IV). He loves them all very much, and fuck you for judging him (YOUR habits are, naturally, open for condemnation). Finally, though this is not a secret and not that dark, he is an adept tailor and likes to make pretty scarves.
Special Skills/Abilities: Adrasteius is an insanely powerful mage, and can easily set you and your surroundings on fire just by thinking about it. But, despite his volatile emotions, he actually does have a strong will, and he abhors violence, so that is not likely to happen. He has been known to melt inanimate objects when stressed, though. Other things he is good at include: provoking people to violent rages, inventing ridiculous names for tiny creatures, kissing (surprisingly), flying into self-righteous tirades about any given topic, and fixing really good salmon.
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TL;DR: IN SUM
Adra is GOOD. He is not NICE.