[OOC] History
(Note: Long history is long. Also, processed in a facility where pseudocanon is also processed.)
Ivan was born in the remote town of Contigo, on the far southwestern continent of Atteka. When he was still less than a year old, though, his parents entrusted him and his then ten-year-old sister, both already recognized as having the powers of the ancient Anemos people, to the care of a struggling merchant, in line with an oddly specific prophecy. The merchant, Hammet, was at first reluctant to bring two children along on the extremely long journey back to his hometown of Tolbi, but when convinced it was for the good of the world (and given some money and prophetic business advice), he acquiesced. His wife, Layana, in part because she hadn't been able to have children of her own, welcomed both of them, but his sister Hama chose to move on anyway, and moved to the Lama Temple. Ivan grew up with no memory of her or of his origins.
Meanwhile, acting on the advice he'd been given, Hammet's business grew exponentially over just a few years. To escape the overtaxation he was running into in Tolbi, he relocated his business across the Karagol Sea to another critical trading crossroads, founding the town of Kalay. (This move was when Ivan was four, and is one of his earliest memories.)
Trade, trust, and low taxes caused the city to boom, and soon Hammet was safely able to call himself among the wealthiest men alive. It's in this environment that Ivan grew up, but he was far from spoiled; Hammet did everything he could to teach his adopted son the value of hard work, honesty, and perseverence, and - importantly - using what you're given to its fullest advantage.
Ivan's Psynergy manifested very early in his life, although he didn't know that was what it was. His parents did a fairly good job of keeping his strange powers under wraps, although Hammet did occasionally enlist his help when he needed it; nonetheless, they soon became the topic of several mostly-untrue rumors circulating around Kalay, and still are, on occasion.
His real adventure began during a fairly routine caravan north to Vault. Soon after they'd arrived, the nearby volcano of Mt. Aleph erupted, and in the chaos that followed, the caravan was burglarized. For the most part, Hammet was too spooked from the eruption to care, and intended to cut his losses and return to Kalay before it got worse, except for one thing - an artifact called the Shaman's Rod was once of the items stolen, and although Ivan didn't know it, it figured prominently in the prophecy about him. Figuring his powers would help him in the search, Hammet left Ivan in Vault to find the rod, and left town with the rest of the caravan.
Willing but unable to corner the thieves on his own, Ivan enlisted the help of two teenagers who'd just come from Vale - Isaac and Garet, who he was surprised to find possessed similar powers to his own. Together they caught the thieves and recovered the rod, after which Ivan meant to follow the caravan to Kalay, except that the heavy rains after the eruption had washed away the only bridge. Instead, he decided to stick with Isaac and Garet, figuring that if he couldn't get home yet, he'd rather do what he could to help them save the world than sit around in Vault and feel guilty for not helping.
So he followed them on their journey around most of the continent of Angara, also joined later by the Mercury Adept Mia. Together, they had their first fight with Isaac and Garet's enemy Saturos, saved a town whose people had been turned into trees, fought their way through two evil forests, learned fake kung fu, and saved a town from flooding. They passed through Lama Temple at one point, where Hama passed on the skill Reveal to him, but didn't tell him who she really was.
When they reached Kalay, they learned that Hammet hadn't come back at all, but was being held for ransom in the thieves' town of Lunpa. With Layana's assurance that the situation would soon be under control, they continued on their quest to the Venus Lighthouse, but Ivan felt terrible to have to leave his family in such a predicament.
They continued on to Tolbi, where they inadvertently wound up saving the life of its ruler, Lord Babi. In gratitude, Babi "allowed" (read: forced) Isaac to join the finals of the Colosso tournament, which, thanks to his Psynergy (and Ivan's idea to use their own Psynergy to fix the competition in Isaac's favor), he won; as a prize, Babi let them borrow an artifact that would allow the user to turn invisible, on the condition that they must use it in their search for the ancient land of Lemuria (so that Babi could prolong his already overextended life even further). They agreed to do this, but first went to the Venus Lighthouse (after a side trip back to Lunpa so that they could use this new artifact to free Hammet and his men - I'm not sure how the timetable for this was supposed to work, but apparently Saturos and Menardi waited for them) to prevent it being lit.
Although they defeated Saturos and Menardi this time, they once again failed to keep the lighthouse from being lit, but at least reasoned that it was over... until Felix, who had grown up in Vale with Isaac and Garet, announced his intention to finish what Saturos had started and light the remaining two beacons. Unsure what to do about this, they returned to Tolbi. Babi gave them the use of a ship that could only be sailed by Adepts, making them promise, again, to search for Lemuria for him as soon as possible. And they would, right after they rescued their friend Jenna.
Determined to get to the next lighthouse before Felix did, anyway, they set sail to Contigo, and managed (for once!) to get there first. As they waited in town, Ivan learned not only that this was his birthplace (and people remembered him, too), but that he had an older sister. He didn't have a great deal of time to wonder about all that, though, as Felix's party soon arrived as well.
Isaac's party hurried to beat them to the lighthouse and stop them, but there was one thing they hadn't counted on - Menardi's sister Karst and her partner Agatio, hell-bent on revenge. They very nearly knocked Garet and Mia off the lighthouse, and would have killed Isaac and Ivan outright if not for the intervention of Felix's group at the last moment. Surprised at being saved by the ones they'd thought were their enemies, Isaac's party finally heard them out and learned that lighting the lighthouses, not keeping them dark, was the surest way to keep the world from destroying itself. It came down to a choice between letting the world wither without Alchemy, or releasing Alchemy so that man could potentially destroy the world anyway. Eventually they agreed with Felix that Possible Doom was slightly better than Certain Doom, and joined his side.
On the plus side, Karst and Agatio both had the last Elemental Star and were en route to the last lighthouse, so all was well, or so they thought. Before they could leave Contigo, Master Hama arrived and told them two very important things: firstly, that she was Ivan's sister, and secondly, that Karst and Agatio were going to get screwed over at the Mars Lighthouse by something even more powerful than they were. To make sure the lighthouse actually would get lit, the new larger party set off in Piers's ship (now with wings, for some reason) toward the Northern Sea and Prox.
They reached the Mars Lighthouse all right, defeated Karst and Agatio (who had been turned into dragons somehow, so the party didn't recognize them until it was too late to save them), and confronted the Wise One, who informed them that Alex (Felix's friend and possibly related to Mia) had, out of nowhere, gone maniacally evil and was waiting at Mt. Aleph for them to light the final beacon so that he could personally harness the power of Alchemy when it was unsealed. After beating yet another dragon the Wise One loosed on them (which turned out to be made from Isaac's father and Jenna and Felix's parents), they lit the Mars Lighthouse anyway (thereby saving the aforementioned parental units) and returned to Vale... only to find that the town had been destroyed by the force of Alchemy being released so close by.
Fortunately, no one had been seriously hurt (although, despite what the Wise One had said, Alex was nowhere to be found), and joyous reunions were had all around. Ivan decided to remain in Vale a little longer to help rebuild the town, rather than going straight back to Kalay. It was in the middle of this that he was brought to Paixao for the first time.
He spent nearly a month in the city, making a fair number of unlikely friends and enemies, but then just as suddenly he found himself back in his own world, as if nothing had ever happened. After several more weeks passed in Weyard, Ivan began to wonder if his time in Paixao had been nothing more than a dream. But he was about to find out, once again, just how real it was...
Ivan was born in the remote town of Contigo, on the far southwestern continent of Atteka. When he was still less than a year old, though, his parents entrusted him and his then ten-year-old sister, both already recognized as having the powers of the ancient Anemos people, to the care of a struggling merchant, in line with an oddly specific prophecy. The merchant, Hammet, was at first reluctant to bring two children along on the extremely long journey back to his hometown of Tolbi, but when convinced it was for the good of the world (and given some money and prophetic business advice), he acquiesced. His wife, Layana, in part because she hadn't been able to have children of her own, welcomed both of them, but his sister Hama chose to move on anyway, and moved to the Lama Temple. Ivan grew up with no memory of her or of his origins.
Meanwhile, acting on the advice he'd been given, Hammet's business grew exponentially over just a few years. To escape the overtaxation he was running into in Tolbi, he relocated his business across the Karagol Sea to another critical trading crossroads, founding the town of Kalay. (This move was when Ivan was four, and is one of his earliest memories.)
Trade, trust, and low taxes caused the city to boom, and soon Hammet was safely able to call himself among the wealthiest men alive. It's in this environment that Ivan grew up, but he was far from spoiled; Hammet did everything he could to teach his adopted son the value of hard work, honesty, and perseverence, and - importantly - using what you're given to its fullest advantage.
Ivan's Psynergy manifested very early in his life, although he didn't know that was what it was. His parents did a fairly good job of keeping his strange powers under wraps, although Hammet did occasionally enlist his help when he needed it; nonetheless, they soon became the topic of several mostly-untrue rumors circulating around Kalay, and still are, on occasion.
His real adventure began during a fairly routine caravan north to Vault. Soon after they'd arrived, the nearby volcano of Mt. Aleph erupted, and in the chaos that followed, the caravan was burglarized. For the most part, Hammet was too spooked from the eruption to care, and intended to cut his losses and return to Kalay before it got worse, except for one thing - an artifact called the Shaman's Rod was once of the items stolen, and although Ivan didn't know it, it figured prominently in the prophecy about him. Figuring his powers would help him in the search, Hammet left Ivan in Vault to find the rod, and left town with the rest of the caravan.
Willing but unable to corner the thieves on his own, Ivan enlisted the help of two teenagers who'd just come from Vale - Isaac and Garet, who he was surprised to find possessed similar powers to his own. Together they caught the thieves and recovered the rod, after which Ivan meant to follow the caravan to Kalay, except that the heavy rains after the eruption had washed away the only bridge. Instead, he decided to stick with Isaac and Garet, figuring that if he couldn't get home yet, he'd rather do what he could to help them save the world than sit around in Vault and feel guilty for not helping.
So he followed them on their journey around most of the continent of Angara, also joined later by the Mercury Adept Mia. Together, they had their first fight with Isaac and Garet's enemy Saturos, saved a town whose people had been turned into trees, fought their way through two evil forests, learned fake kung fu, and saved a town from flooding. They passed through Lama Temple at one point, where Hama passed on the skill Reveal to him, but didn't tell him who she really was.
When they reached Kalay, they learned that Hammet hadn't come back at all, but was being held for ransom in the thieves' town of Lunpa. With Layana's assurance that the situation would soon be under control, they continued on their quest to the Venus Lighthouse, but Ivan felt terrible to have to leave his family in such a predicament.
They continued on to Tolbi, where they inadvertently wound up saving the life of its ruler, Lord Babi. In gratitude, Babi "allowed" (read: forced) Isaac to join the finals of the Colosso tournament, which, thanks to his Psynergy (and Ivan's idea to use their own Psynergy to fix the competition in Isaac's favor), he won; as a prize, Babi let them borrow an artifact that would allow the user to turn invisible, on the condition that they must use it in their search for the ancient land of Lemuria (so that Babi could prolong his already overextended life even further). They agreed to do this, but first went to the Venus Lighthouse (after a side trip back to Lunpa so that they could use this new artifact to free Hammet and his men - I'm not sure how the timetable for this was supposed to work, but apparently Saturos and Menardi waited for them) to prevent it being lit.
Although they defeated Saturos and Menardi this time, they once again failed to keep the lighthouse from being lit, but at least reasoned that it was over... until Felix, who had grown up in Vale with Isaac and Garet, announced his intention to finish what Saturos had started and light the remaining two beacons. Unsure what to do about this, they returned to Tolbi. Babi gave them the use of a ship that could only be sailed by Adepts, making them promise, again, to search for Lemuria for him as soon as possible. And they would, right after they rescued their friend Jenna.
Determined to get to the next lighthouse before Felix did, anyway, they set sail to Contigo, and managed (for once!) to get there first. As they waited in town, Ivan learned not only that this was his birthplace (and people remembered him, too), but that he had an older sister. He didn't have a great deal of time to wonder about all that, though, as Felix's party soon arrived as well.
Isaac's party hurried to beat them to the lighthouse and stop them, but there was one thing they hadn't counted on - Menardi's sister Karst and her partner Agatio, hell-bent on revenge. They very nearly knocked Garet and Mia off the lighthouse, and would have killed Isaac and Ivan outright if not for the intervention of Felix's group at the last moment. Surprised at being saved by the ones they'd thought were their enemies, Isaac's party finally heard them out and learned that lighting the lighthouses, not keeping them dark, was the surest way to keep the world from destroying itself. It came down to a choice between letting the world wither without Alchemy, or releasing Alchemy so that man could potentially destroy the world anyway. Eventually they agreed with Felix that Possible Doom was slightly better than Certain Doom, and joined his side.
On the plus side, Karst and Agatio both had the last Elemental Star and were en route to the last lighthouse, so all was well, or so they thought. Before they could leave Contigo, Master Hama arrived and told them two very important things: firstly, that she was Ivan's sister, and secondly, that Karst and Agatio were going to get screwed over at the Mars Lighthouse by something even more powerful than they were. To make sure the lighthouse actually would get lit, the new larger party set off in Piers's ship (now with wings, for some reason) toward the Northern Sea and Prox.
They reached the Mars Lighthouse all right, defeated Karst and Agatio (who had been turned into dragons somehow, so the party didn't recognize them until it was too late to save them), and confronted the Wise One, who informed them that Alex (Felix's friend and possibly related to Mia) had, out of nowhere, gone maniacally evil and was waiting at Mt. Aleph for them to light the final beacon so that he could personally harness the power of Alchemy when it was unsealed. After beating yet another dragon the Wise One loosed on them (which turned out to be made from Isaac's father and Jenna and Felix's parents), they lit the Mars Lighthouse anyway (thereby saving the aforementioned parental units) and returned to Vale... only to find that the town had been destroyed by the force of Alchemy being released so close by.
Fortunately, no one had been seriously hurt (although, despite what the Wise One had said, Alex was nowhere to be found), and joyous reunions were had all around. Ivan decided to remain in Vale a little longer to help rebuild the town, rather than going straight back to Kalay. It was in the middle of this that he was brought to Paixao for the first time.
He spent nearly a month in the city, making a fair number of unlikely friends and enemies, but then just as suddenly he found himself back in his own world, as if nothing had ever happened. After several more weeks passed in Weyard, Ivan began to wonder if his time in Paixao had been nothing more than a dream. But he was about to find out, once again, just how real it was...