Silas Black

[Silas Black]

Name: Silas Black
Age: 30.
Race: Half-elven

Physical Description:
A man who is maturing into his adulthood. He just about exactly 6 feet tall in height, or is on the few occasions he stands up straight. His hair is dark brown, as is his thick beard, though both have begun to show streaks of gray within them. His stomach is rounded with a little extra heft, though his arms and legs are thin and don't have a great deal of muscle.

In terms of form and feature, Silas is an unremarkable man, neither particularly handsome or ugly. What most people focus on when they first see him, however, are the ways in which his body has been twisted against him. His left leg and foot are turned so that he cannot straighten the leg fully and he must walk on the edge of a curled foot, something which is a constant, if familiar, source of pain. His right arm is underdeveloped, and his right hand has only a small amount of function. His right shoulder is swollen, larger than the right, and moving his arm is also painful. He hunches slightly, and his back is twisted so that he rarely straightens up.

Silas has an ashwood cane that is never far from his side. When he stands, he does his best to put a minimum amount of weight on his malformed leg, and instead divides it between his good leg and the cane.

His clothes are not expensive or particularly flattering. They tend to be large and baggy, and in simple, solid colors. Browns, blacks, and dark greens are all common, while the brighter colors are almost entirely absent from his wardrobe. He wears a black felt hat with a wide brim on a regular basis.

Possessions:
Ashwood cane, with a wooden grip and bass ferrule.
Black felt hat, old and battered.
A short sword, of battered and poor quality steel.
An old locket of tarnished silver inlaid with gold.
A journal
loose sheets of paper
ink bottle
Pens and pencils
scrivener's case holding above
jack knife
Camp utensil set (plate, bowl, knife, fork, spoon, tin cup)
Clay pipe
pouch of smoking leaves
Flask full of liquor
An old coat, much patched
A pack to carry all his stuff

Powers or Strengths:
Speaks and writes several languages
Knowledge of history and literature
Knowledge of mundane healing teqchniques
Magic:
Minor Telekinesis: Can move objects. The size of the object and the speed with which Silas can move it are inversely proportional. He can lift a weight of 20 pounds and hold it but not move it. A straw of grass he can zip around quickly.
Light: A small light, about the same effectiveness as a candle but without the flame or heat.
Summon flame: essentially the same as a match, a small flame that he can make appear on something flammable. There has to be material to burn, it can't simply appear and hover in the air.
Twisted luck: He is fortune's fool. His luck can sometimes be spectacularly good.

Weaknesses and Flaws:
Physically very weak. Walking is painful, and so exercise in general is not possible.
His physical deformities are resistant to magical healing.
Magical healing is generally less effective on him.
Twisted luck: He is fortune's fool. His luck is sometimes spectacularly bad.

History:
The course of Silas's life has been determined primarily by three people he has never met: his parents, and the half-elven wizard who cursed him in his mother's womb.

Though he never knew these people, the story was a well known one in the region in which he was born and raised, and he had been told the general outlines several times. His father was a sailor on a merchantman from the north of Eyropa, having been born in the small town of Trelham. Silas's father (named Silas as well), came south with the ship he crewed on. Due to some disagreement with the captain (rumors of bishoni missing from the ship's purse are common, though the details of the story at this point tended to change with the teller), Silas the elder was left behind in the city of Bellaza. With few other skills to keep body and soul together, Silas the elder took to hanging around the docks, picking up bishoni unloading ships and crewing fishing vessels for a day or week. Permanent work escaped him, and so he remained in Bellaza working odd jobs for several years.

That all came to an end when Silas's mother, an elf from the duchy of Morua, arrived in the city. Her name was Ellesandra, and she came as part of a group of diplomats that were negotiating an end to the latest of the interminable squabbles between the three Corezan duchies. Her father was a diplomat, and she had been brought to help and care for him. In any case, the delegation arrived by boat, and Silas the elder happened to see her as she disembarked.

Whatever else Silas the elder might have been, he was known to be romantic, and also mischievous. Conceiving himself to be struck by love at first sight, he found ways to put himself in Ellesandra's way. He happened to be in the market at the same time she was shopping for that night's dinner. He was standing nearby when she entered the ducal court. There were few occasions when a diplomat's daughter and a wharf dog might meet, but old Silas figured out all of them, and took advantage. The strange courtship culminated in Ellesandra arranging for her bedroom window to be unlocked, and Silas using his sailor's skills to clamber up the wall to it.

What Silas had not realized was that Ellesandra had already been betrothed to another elf, a wizard who happened to have traveled with the diplomatic delegation. The wizard quickly deduced that something strange was going on, and through his magic, discovered what precisely that was. Enraged, he could not help but reveal what he conceived to be Ellesandra's shame. In public, he assaulted her, accused her of falseness, and, when he was pulled off of her by guards and bystanders, cursed her where she lay bleeding. 'Your child shall be twisted,' he managed to say, putting the force of his magic behind his words, before he was dragged from the room. He was dismissed from his post, and disappeared.

Silas the elder was also thrown from the city, and barred from returning. The true depth of his love was unknown. In any case, whether he truly felt something for Ellesandra or merely was looking for an unlikely conquest, he disappeared as well.

Ellesandra returned home, and when it became apparent she was indeed pregnant, she was hidden away. She died in the birth of her son, and so never saw the first result of the wizard's curse: her son was deformed from birth. Silas's grandfather summoned healers to correct the problems, but he proved resistant to magical healing. Silas in general would prove resistant to such healing throughout his life.

Ellesandra's father had little love for his grandson. He sent him off into the country, to be cared for by nurses and schoolmasters, raised by the impersonal hands of his grandfather's retainers. His mind was quick, and he proved friendly. The twistedness of his curse had not seemed to touch his mind, but only his body. As he grew, he found he enjoyed learning, and spent much of his time in study.

It was with little surprise that he was discovered to have gifts of magic. Magic had shaped his birth, and combined with his elven blood, it seemed almost inevitable that he would have a link to the Astral Plane. He was taught a few things by a tutor his grandfather provided, but he took most quickly to those uses of magic that addressed his weaknesses. Spells that moved things at a distance allowed him to retrieve objects without having to, painfully, cross the distance on his own feet. Summoning a magic light allowed him to read into the night without wasting candles or electricity.

Silas proved to have extraordinary luck, both good and bad, throughout his life. One day he would find a fifty bishani coin on the ground. The next, a donkey would choose the moment he walked by to kick out, breaking his ribs and putting him in bed for a month. There was no equilibrium to be kept. Bad luck was not countered with good, or vice versa. It was random, and he might be met with unbelievable good fortune for a month before hit with a sudden piece of bad luck. The thing he accounted the best fortune of his life was when his grandather's locket, with a picture of his mother painted inside, fell into his hands.

As he grew older, Silas realized that genteel captivity was to be his fate. His grandfather, whom he had only met three times in his whole life, felt a duty to care for him. But, he also had little affection for his grandson, and felt no need to introduce him to the world, or provide him with an occupation or purpose. Silas 'escaped,' if that was the word, fairly easily, and there was no pursuit to retrieve him.

As Silas saw it, he had two goals that he might pursue. The first was to find his errant father. The second was to pursue the wizard who had cursed him, and convince him somehow to remove the curse. His father meant little to him, at that point, and he couldn't imagine what a real family would be like. Removing the curse, however, was something concrete, however difficult, that would benefit him immeasurably. He started after the elven wizard soon after escaping his grandfather. As he left, he decided to sever his links with his family, and chose the surname Black to replace those he had given up.

The elven wizard had been known as Alain Coruba Belmonte in Corezo. As news of his rage and curse spread, Alain took a different name to hide from the blackness of his reputation. Silas found that the elven wizard changed his names on a regular basis, and had fallen in with the darker and less reputable side of life. He tracked him ever further east, working to pay his way and searching for word of the elven wizard's passage. This has led him to Marn, at the end of his money for the moment, only knowing that the elven wizard had passed this way a few years before.

[Saruna]

Hey there and thank you for being patient with the review!

A quick nitpick -

His right arm is underdeveloped, and his right hand has only a small amount of function. His right shoulder is swollen, larger than the right, and moving his arm is also painful.

please clarify which you mean.

Strengths

I would like some clarifications on his strengths - is his knowledge limited to his local area, Eyropa, the world?

What sort of mundane healing techniques do you mean? Is he brushed up on minor magical techniques (which are very common in Eyropa), the sort of stuff a local hedgewitch might know, herbs, stuff an apothecary might know, or just general first aid? Maybe something else?

I would like to see the luck strength/weakness either changed or replaced with something else. As is he sounds like a normal person. Sometimes people get lucky and find a $100 bill lying on the ground... and then they get hit by a bus and wind up owing a few grand to the hospital. Unless this is somehow patterned, or he is constantly facing extremes on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't really seem to affect him any more than what a normal person faces every day.

History -

The history of Silas' parents doesn't really work with Corezo's culture, so my suggestion would be to move his mother and his mother's betrothed to being from Darleone. They could be in either a diplomatic party to Quijas (which is who they interact most frequently with) or as a merchant party settling some kind of dispute (the elves tend to be in conflict with Eyropa due to different beliefs).

In the case of Corezo, a family would use a bastard to the betterment of family. In Darleone, especially if the child is a half elf, the bastard would be hidden away and disliked immensely.

Additionally, Quijas is home to one of Corezo's biggest port cities, Qadis.

Small heads up - electricity is less of a thing in most places in Corezo. Magic is common enough that it is used for things like infrastructure in most decent sized cities.

As far as Silas' quest goes, I would like to suggest giving him a good reason to go to Marn in particular. With Marn being an anti-magic city, it doesn't really make sense for a wizard to go there without a good reason, or to take that trade route over the other if he was heading towards Tian Xia. I would suggest that perhaps what he learns takes him to Marn, perhaps due to rumors of the mysterious Belatucadras (lord of Kaledin Manor) or some other person there.

Alternatively, if you're willing to work a little bit harder to get your rp going, you could leave him in Corezo and have him start his journey there -- which would be easier to make sense in a narrative kind of way, and would leave you greater avenues for grander adventures that wouldn't be as possible given Marn's limited area. Totally up to how you want to play it, however.

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a pm, hop into chat, or leave a reply here.

After you've made some changes and are ready for the app to be looked at again, please leave a reply in this thread.