Backstory

Life inside the Feywild
Born to Darius and Eludria Orthall, Cyran was raised by his family and surrounding kin within the outskirts to the Fields of Harvest inside the Feywild. His early adolescence was largely uneventful and filled with adventures around the neighboring villages and woodlands. This had changed when some of the lords of the feywild began to encroach upon one another’s territory and led to numerous conflicts, and more notably, disruptions within the balance of raw arcane magic in the realm.

One such disruption manifested heavily in the form of a pure mote of energy just on the outskirts of the forest line. Cyran, the ever-adventurous young Eladrin, discovered it and became fascinated with the magical power it held. One night, Cyran had snuck out but did not realize that his parents had decided to tail after him – worried and curious about his strange infatuation with leaving the village constantly.

When he arrived at the forest line, he began to test interactions with the energy mote and found the reactions to be a great source of entertainment. Fearing for the potential of Cyran harming himself, Eludria promptly moved forward exclaiming for the young boy to get away from the mote. Startled and unable to respond properly to the situation, Cyran had tumbled directly into the energy mote which erupted into a massive chain reaction of arcane energy.

When the chaos had settled, the forest had been incinerated by a hue of multicolored flames; Cyran, himself, shimmered radiantly while he remained unconscious at the point of impact – but Eludria was not so lucky. While there was no body to be found, the closest assumption was that she disintegrated within the blinding shockwaves of arcane energy as the remainder of the forest was reduced to cinders.

Unable to locate any sign of his wife, and forced to confront his now comatose child, Darius did what he could to hide his family’s involvement of the matter within their residence. A close companion and fellow eladrin by the name of Seville Duskmere had kept close tabs on the Orthall family. He kept up the secrecy regarding Cyran and the family’s situation as a whole, while also aiding Darius in fighting through the grief of his loss. Eventually, Cyran had regained consciousness but held considerable gaps within his memory. In order to preserve some semblance of peace and prevent further grief upon the young boy, Darius and Seville had informed Cyran that Eludria had passed away due to conflicts between the autumn and winter realms.

It was discovered soon after that magical energy responded differently around Cyran. It was if he was both a conduit and literal engine of the wild fey magics to the point that he could potentially tear holes within the fabric of the plane. Fearing the worst, given the plentiful abundance of magic around the feywild, and the escalations of the conflicts – Darius had sought to escape the feywild with his son before the fey lords could have abducted him and tried to weaponize him within their ongoing wars. With a heavy heart and little knowledge of the material plane to go off of, Darius, Seville and Cyran had escaped the feywild and wound up in the southern regions of Qinla’Un.

Shortly after their arrival to the material plane, the trio had to deal with the hardships of life in an unforgiving and foreign land. Still a young boy and far from applicable to aid in most circumstances, Cyran was an unfortunate burden on Seville and Darius, but it did serve as a reminder to them that they must persevere as best as they could for the sake of keeping their family going.

Eventually, they would take up residence within Hollow Star Cove and from there, they sought out opportunities to handle trade charters, transfers and other transportation related jobs as a means of building a foundation for their livelihoods. Throughout their time spent within the feywild, both Seville and Darius were established tradesmen and often handled many of the logistics related to the harvesting and transportation of crops – a handy set of experience that leaned itself well into what they had been doing in Hollow Star Cove.

As time continued, Cyran was placed within every possible opportunity for tutelage and held a very sheltered childhood as Darius stringently sought to educate Cyran in the ways of the world and every detail he could possibly uncover within the libraries and texts he discovered. Meanwhile, the criminal underbelly of the region (and city at large) began to under go numerous changes, shifting towards a more violent and oppressive system of control. This level of crime had went so unchecked that even neighboring regions such as Sequine and Havengar were impacted by the criminal politics of the realm. Try as the paladins could, but holding order in the lands was a near impossible task and Hollow Star Cove had become unsustainable to the point that they wouldn’t even venture to it out of the sheer futility in effort.

Darius, beleaguered and downtrodden from the continuous thefts of property and exploitation of his livelihood, had determined that if order was to be restored, it would have had to be done through force and pressure. Fortunately for him, he had held several allies in high regard and Seville during this time had proven himself to be a force of nature all unto himself. In a series of power plays, Darius – leading up a coalition of trade companies – had cornered several of the fringe pirate and criminal groups. Using financial leverage or simply pressuring them to seek easy profits over risky and meager profits, Darius had intentionally recruited several bands of pirates.

Leveraging their expertise in theft, disruption and browbeating, Darius had positioned these groups in such a way as to strangle the finances and livelihoods of the more violent gangs and cartels in the region. Inevitably, these organizations were forced to either submit (and thus join under Darius’s banner) or be starved into non-existence through the continuous blockades and embargos. Over this time period, nearly 20 organizations were forcibly broken apart or consolidated into three central pillars of power. It was at this time that the coalition truly began to transform into the Orthall Crime Syndicate.

As Darius began to centralize and consolidate political and economical power within this organization, he sought opportunities to shift the criminal element away from more violent or crippling crimes into something focused around the acquisition and utilization of wealth. As such, the three crime families had severely limited violence within Hollow Star Cove and while tensions flared up at times, they all agreed that bloodshed was simply bad for business.

The remaining hot-headed groups or fringes of these various organizations did occasionally take potshots at the three families which led to a surge of attempted assassinations, but fortunately for Darius, Seville had deeply established himself in the underbelly as a very notorious and dangerous bodyguard. It was only a few times that Seville intentionally struck first and carried out a hit, but these were often caused by more violent groups seeking to cause harm to begin with. Darius lamented over the bloodshed but Seville understood that to make meaningful progress, sometimes one must do it through fighting.

It was also during this time that Cyran had gotten his biggest levels of exposure to the crime syndicate, something that would forever weigh on Darius’s conscious. Cyran was young, impressionable and naïve to the ways of the world and his reality outside of studies seemed to be encompassed with the criminal revolution that was taking place. He had already seen his share of conflicts, innocents dying and people struggling as the three families had initially began dealing with the consolidation of the more violent groups.

As the years continued, the families had successfully mitigated most of the violence in the realm and re-established partnerships with one another, other organizations in Qinla’Un and even the various lawful organizations. It was perhaps the first time that paladins and other law-oriented groups could peacefully move about the city and see that things were operating in a prosperous fashion. Darius had firmly rooted the Orthall Crime Syndicate as a lesser evil, but a necessary evil in that he deterred violent crimes and exploitation of the poor away – despite breaking the law frequently through the use of smuggling contraband, redistributing exploitive merchants (or wealthy dignitaries) finances both to themselves and the local populace (normally in the form of building up the community as opposed to handing gold straight to the citizens). In a weird duality, the Orthall family is fairly respected by the local folks, and tolerated by the rich and wealthy. The occasional lawful zealot shows up to try and bring them up on some of their many numerous crimes, but often the litigation and politics causes them to give up their efforts when they realize that it just isn’t worth it to interfere.

Seville, having now earned some respite from his bloodier days in the syndicate’s inception, continues to support Darius and Cyran as a mentor, advisor and butler of sorts. As such, Seville has personally trained Cyran in how to defend himself and at the behest of Darius aided in his studies. Cyran eventually took to the research of magic as a newly formed obsession, not aware that he innately was capable of magic to begin with. In fact, this reality was somewhat relieving for Darius as the material plane offered little in the way of magical energy reserves so it led to preventing Cyran from having ANY accidents with his magical energy, and the focus on learning magic from an engineering standpoint helped provide Cyran a level of control over his capabilities, even if the rules in place were purely set by his own mind.

Fascinated by magic and seeking new ways to bring it forth into the world, Cyran had learned to form runes, formulas and other equations that allowed him to create magic through the use of science rather than magical aptitude, further protecting him from a more harmful reality. Having crafted his own firearms, and imbuing the ammunition (and weapon itself) with countless glyphs and runic symbols, Cyran had became an adept spellcaster in his own right – believing it to be the work of his engineering prowess. For Darius, this served as a proud moment in his life, as he could finally see his son begin to flourish into his own, and truly believed that this was the safest route for him to take. Seville, on the other hand, was disappointed in Darius’ unwillingness to explain the truth to Cyran, fearing that the longer things go without him realizing the truth – the harder it will be for him to accept and overcome it. Nevertheless, Seville understood it was not his place to interfere between father and son, so he simply watched in silence and supported the boy as he began to reach adulthood.

As Cyran grew up, his view on the syndicate had not really changed. He viewed it as an unethical, immoral organization that sought to exploit people for its own personal gain. While there were some truths to this, he had a tendency to look solely at the negatives of the syndicates presence without acknowledging the positives that it had brought to the town and the people as a whole. The family as a whole tend to look at Cyran with high regard and respect, despite his negative views of them, as they know he means well and simply doesn’t understand that compromises need to be made if someone wants to build something in the best way possible for all people involved – a reality that Cyran simply has not had to confront yet.

Seeing the opportunity to move from underneath his father’s shadow, Cyran had prepared his equipment and set out from Hollow Star Cove in search of the Arbiter’s Guild and a small mining town called Silverwick. For the young eladrin, this was the first time he has ever ventured beyond the city on his own since he lived in Qinla’Un.