Phædryn Sol'Zalkyrion Arvælyn
Details
Full Name: Phædryn Sol'Zalkyrion Arvælyn Princeps Draconum (AKA: Arvine Venasyr AKA: Arvalyn Val’Cithæron AKA: Kyros Len’Sorokys Arvælyn AKA: Phædryn Val'Aværyan Arvælyn Dux)
Race: Dragonborn Golden Half-Elf
Sex: Male
Age: 21
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 144lbs
Birthdate: 13th of Wither, 101st Year of the Age of Steel
Birthplace: The Free City of Antiris
Profession: Crown Prince of the Umbrium
Housing: Palatium Umbrarum
Partners: Finn
Titles: Princeps Draconum
Factions: The Zalkyrian Dynasty
Fluencies: Common, Mythrasi, Vastian
Conversationals: Vallenor
Ineptitudes: None
Appearance
Arvælyn is a slightly built youth with a narrow but prominent nose, full lips and golden blonde hair. Arvælyn spent the majority of his life indistinguishable from an Hytori or Sunborn Re'hyæan pureblood, including long, pointed ears and eyes that glint with the colour of polished gold. At the end of his 20th year, he underwent a metamorphosis as his draconic lineage began to present itself in the form of a pair of golden wings, small horns and churning, fiery eyes with vertical slit pupils. Hitherto this change, his paternal background was being suppressed by an ancient, divine artifact.
In his day-to-day life he dresses in various high fashion styles as suits his fancy, when he isn't in the simple, black and silver uniform of a Silver Sentinel. As a former performer in Ailizane, his sense of fashion can push the limits of the audacious.
Personality
At heart, Arvælyn is relatively timid from an upbringing that encouraged him to ‘hide his light under a bushel’. He grew up avoiding eye-contact, and shirking attention to what extent he could. He came up in a slum and fell into a life of crime where such abilities were further encouraged and honed. Only upon arriving in Kalzasi and reinventing himself did he find a penchant for pageantry. Perhaps this is was always his true nature, finally excavated after years of suppression, or perhaps it is complete artifice, but upon learning of his lofty Solunarian heritage it certainly felt vindicated.
History
The Antiran Years
Arvine “Arry” Venasyr was raised by his father who was estranged from his mother for reasons never disclosed to him. Although Ruslan occasioned to drunkenly regale his son with stories about having had a remarkable career as a renowned tinkerer whose contraptions had been commissioned by great heroes and mighty kings, Arry was raised primarily in squalor. Arry could remember living in a house with many rooms as a very young child, but as Ruslan’s savings dwindled along with his ambition to do anything beyond drinking, their quality of life diminished proportionally. By the time he was five they had a basement flat in a human-dominated ghetto of the Free City of Antiris. Due to the culture of their immediate surroundings (and perhaps for Ruslan’s own unstated- perhaps even subconscious reasons) the younger Venasyr was taught to conceal and repress his Hytori side. With an ever-present woolen cap to cover his ears, the soot-covered visage of an urchin to conceal the lustre of his complexion and frequently downcast eyes, Arry became quite adept at being overlooked.
Despite the shame he was trained to feel over his heritage, Arry was privately obsessed with the idea of his mother and her proud, ancient culture. He felt that the hatred certain humans felt toward them was based in jealousy, and that he would have been better off in Sol’Valen living in the lap of luxury with a mother he imagined to be steeped in regalness and puissance.
By the time he was twelve, Ruslan had grown very sick which, at the time, Arry didn’t realise was a result of and not incidental to his copious drinking. The child realised he would need to start bringing money in to keep them fed and clothed. He fell in with a gang of petty criminals whose leader, Demitrov, found Arry’s talent for disappearing in plain sight to be of great use amongst his band of pickpockets and burglars. There were boons for young Arry amongst this crew of misfits. Demitrov saw that all of his charges were taught to read, in case their burgling brought them before any sensitive letters that might prove valuable. Moreover, there were several other mixed bloods amongst the crew, and Arry was able to pepper them with questions to learn about other realms. He would practice Mythrasi with the other Half-Hytori in the troupe who’d been born in Sol’Valen.
Late one evening, Arry returned home and was startled to find an intruder sitting at his father’s bedside. A figure in a pristine, silver-white cloak who was hunched over holding Ruslan’s hand and whispering something into his ear. Cithaera had come in answer to a letter from Ruslan, revealing that his days were numbered and that their son would need her help. At once horrified at the prospect of his father’s demise and thrilled to meet his mother, Arry asked if they could go live with her on Sol’Valen. She explained that her aid would have to come through more indirect means. She bequeathed to him two gifts. The first was a simple, wooden charm necklace that he would wear constantly for years thereafter. The second was a rune, etched into the soft flesh of the underside of his left wrist. It would not go easy, she explained, but it would protect him in the long run. He would not remember the next few days, but his mother remained there to nurture him as she hadn’t since he was a babe in arms. She saw him through the precarious period of his threshold sickness, and when he woke from delirium both of his parents were gone and he was alone and changed in ways he didn’t understand.
Having met his mother had done him in in myriad ways. He went between being awed at how much of what he’d dreamt she’d exhibited and resenting her for appearing so briefly only to abandon him again. With nothing keeping him in the hovel of his upbringing, Arry moved into Demitrov’s headquarters where most of the crew already lived. He committed himself to surviving and doing what he could to better himself in spite of his bad situation.
He was sixteen when a bungled pickpocketing attempt turned into a fateful opportunity. He’d taken a rakishly handsome young man for an easy mark, but before his hand could so much as loosen his coin purse from his belt, Arry found his wrist tightly gripped. Rather than calling the constables, the stranger invited Arry to have a drink on him at a nearby pub. He obliged the man, who introduced himself as Aurin, and after three mugs of ale he found himself with an opportunity to reinvent himself in a distant city. Arry declined the tempting offer and returned to the devil he knew.
Two years later, the city watch of Antiris raided Demitrov’s headquarters and started arresting everyone they could grab. Arry was able to slip out into the alley, but was grappled by a constable. Terrified and desperate he gazed into the officer’s eyes with his own golden orbs… He felt a tingle in his wrist and a shard of the way he felt when he first saw his mother doff the hood of her cloak. From out of those feelings, he sensed something behind the eyes of the man holding him down. No longer pleading for his freedom with desperate screams, his voice waxed placid and made the simple suggestion “Release”. The constable looked startled as his grip slackened, he froze there gazing into those strange, golden eyes as Arry scrambled to his feet and darted down the street.
The Kalzasern Period
His 18th birthday passed on the road to Kalzasi. There was nothing left to keep him in Antiris, and the memory of Aurin’s offer loomed above all other concerns: Reinvention. It was the 119th Year of the Age of Steel when, filthy from travel, with a woolen cap concealing his sharp, Hytori ears, Arry Venasyr appeared at the Velvet Cabaret and asked after Aurin Kavafis.
Soon after being taken in, he contrived an aristocratic alter-ego: Arvalyn Val’Cithaeron, an exiled Alatar of Sol’Valen, whose artistic inclinations never jibed with the expectations of his conservative family nor the court in which they served. Since his golden attributes by far favoured his mother with blonde hair, a sun kissed complexion and eyes the color of gold, he exploited his knowledge of Mythrasi and his talent with linguistics to promote this falsehood for his personal betterment.
During his time in Kalzasi, he started out working at the Velvet Cabaret performing on stage and in back rooms. He worked hard at his ambitions and eventually went from a chorus boy to a soloist as both a singer and dancer. One fateful day, he was taken by the voice and face of a young human busker named Finn. Initially under the genteel guise of Arvalyn, Arvine entreated Finn to work with him on improving his voice. The pair decided to write a song together and, eventually, entered into a romantic relationship. Arry eventually dropped his mask for Finn, and told him the truth of his unsavoury background, but the human was unfazed. Although the half-elf's abandonment issues left him with a vicious jealous streak, their relationship evolved apace.
When his patron, Aurin Kavafis, started work managing a more estimable venue, The Golden Peacock, Arvalyn was able to audition and soon joined their repertory company. Within months, due to the unfortunate affliction suffered by the star of the controversial spectacle "Aværys Eternal", Arvalyn was promoted from a featured role to the titular lead. At the time, he'd never heard of Aværys and had no idea what a role the popular foreign deity played in his past and would play in his future.
Arry was starstruck to attend the capstone performance of his lover's symphony for Prince Talon, and later the royal's wedding. However, tragedy struck when the reception was subject to a political attack that left the Shokaze slain and the prince kidnapped. Although Finn and Arvalyn escaped relatively unscathed, they realised Kalzasi might not be safe for long. The rest of the run of "Aværys Eternal" was cancelled, due to anti-Arcas themes inherent in the foreign work and Arry was crushed at the loss. Around this time, Arry's benefactor, Aurin, travelled to Antiris to research Arry's background, and discovered that Ruslan Venasyr had, at one time, resided in Solunarium... the distant, desert kingdom that devoutly worshiped the demigod Aværys Arry had recently played onstage.
Aurin was able to jockey an audience with the visiting Solunarian ambassador, Sentinel Phocion, who ended up offering an open invitation to Finn and Arvalyn to visit the realm. With their concerns about an impending war between Kalzasi and Zaichaer, they didn't wait long to take him up on the offer.
The Solunarian Era
Arvalyn and Finn arrived at Port Tertium, where they were met by an envoy who brought them to the Phædryn Villa on a cliff overlooking the port. When Phocion arrived via portal to greet them, he came with Arry's estranged mother, who turned out to be Princess Cithæra, head of the royal cadet house of Phædryn and her consort, a sunborn elven Sentinel named Kyrin. It was revealed to Arry and Phocion that they were half-brothers, and thus Arvalyn found his actual heritage to be more impressive than the one he'd concocted for himself in Kalzasi. It meant that he bore, after all, the divine blood of both of Solunarium's founding deities.
Cithæra explained that he was originally named Phædryn when he was born, but that "Arvalyn", the name he'd adopted for himself, actually sounded quite Solunarian. He soon found, however, that Solunarians were wont to mispronounce it based on the spelling, and so Arvalyn became Arvælyn. Cithæra further explained that knowledge of their connection would be dangerous for him, so she suggested they devise a scheme wherein Arvælyn was the foreign-reared son of her consort Kyrin, rather than herself. Meanwhile, Arry and Finn were offered the resources of the sentinel order to acclimate themselves to Solunarian ways and receive a formalised arcane education.
So it was that Arvalyn Val'Cithæron became Kyros Len'Sorokys Arvælyn and was offered a lovely domus in a posh, elven neighbourhood of the Luxium. He and Finn both took advantage of the offered education to learn the local languages and better understand their magical talents and eventually took on the positions as Subvigils (or Sentinels-in-Training) to aid in their deception.
Although Arvælyn took to the culture easily, Finn's scruples didn't jive well with the severe and bloody elements of the local religion. Since Solunarium proved quite theocratic, this caused tension between the lovers that culminated on their pilgrimage to Mount Kaladon in Auris, where they met Aværys and Varvara and were subjected to a trial. They offered their interpretation of sacrifices. Finn offered a song, and Arvælyn offered the charm gifted by his mother the day she carved his Rune of Mesmer. The gods posed horrifying hypotheticals that put the very souls of the two young men to the ultimate test. Ultimately, each boy offered to sacrifice their life for the wellbeing of the other and, seeing echoes of their own past trials in the couple, the Solunarian Founders saw fit to gift the two lovers with their emblems: Majesty for Finn and Supremacy for Arvælyn.
On the way back to Solunarium, Arvælyn took ill. The next day his mother sent him to seek the wisdom of the Solunarian dragons to aid in the soothing of his symptoms. He personally met with the Crownwyrm Zalkyriax, who ushered him deeper into the bowels of Mount Sorokyn, where he was informed he was suffering from "Greater Threshold Sickness" and bathed in the blood of Master Mages who bore the same Runes as he. There he remained until emerging on the 75th Day of Ash in the 122nd Year of the Age of Steel to attend the opening ceremonies of The Solar Sovereign Thalya IV's Centennial Jubilee.
