Dhruv
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 12:00 am
Dhruv Val'Esdraelon
this is the first thing I have understood:
time is the echo of an axe
within a wood
-- Larkin.
time is the echo of an axe
within a wood
-- Larkin.
Details
Full Name: Dhruv Val'Esdraelon
Race: Hytori
Sex: Male
Age: 303. Or thereabouts.
Birthdate: 21 Frost 297, Age of Clockwork
Birthplace: Silfanore, Sol’Valen
Profession: Knight, spy, and broken clock.
Housing: Lost to time.
Partners: Lost to time.
Titles: Lost to time.
Factions: Order of the Dawnmartyr & the Phoenix Throne of Sol'Valen.
Fluencies: Vallenor & Mythrasi
Conversationals: Common
Ineptitudes: n/a
Appearance
Height: 6'4
Weight: 195
Eyes: Dark gold
Hair: Golden brown
Rune of Reaving, Rune of Semblance: back
The great age of this son of Sol'Valen is not at all obvious. Though three centuries of sleeplessness circle him in an ever-widening gyre, Dhruv continues to project the youth and vitality of all his ilk. Daylight spills through otherwise brown eyes, transmuting them to a warm and golden hazel. His skin is sun-bronzed and the fine lines at the edges of his eyes and bracketing his mouth are due more to how long his sometimes wild laugh has haunted the world than the vagaries of wrinkled age. Hard, lean muscle bears its share of scars and gold streaks through hair that is mussed and ungovernable as the rest of him. He's in the habit of slouching but that does little to lessen his natural elegance of motion. As Hytori, he stands out amongst beings of less noble lineage; but when amongst his own, Dhruv tends to slump into shadows like the ghost he's all but become, more often than not those that crawl out from the feet of legends and thrones.
Personality
Little more than a haunted house. He hasn't been anyone, really, in an awful long time. No one to know him, no one to be known by him. He can't remember how many centuries it's been since he even bothered to offer up his last name. He's comfortable in his skin if not in the moment. Competent, loner, deceptively easygoing. Fierce pride and an even sharper sense of justice -- or vengeance on the coin's other side -- can still trip him into trouble when he's not careful. He's got a wry, rampant sense of humor and either all the time in the world to waste or not so much a fistful of minutes to get by. He takes nothing for granted because it could be gone, left behind, and he is leery of attachments for the same reason. He's worn many faces, been a lot of things, and the only one he doesn't let anyone get too close to is his own. He still has a mission to complete, after all, and time is running out.
History
Dhruv Val'Esdraelon was born in the wolf's hour of the Heavenswar well over a millennia ago, the child of an irredeemably political union between Hytori factions at odds over the wisest course of action against their insatiable Lysanrin cousins. Dhruv was educated in the ancient elven ways, taught to honor the bright Raella and Eikaen, though it was the Mourning Lord, Wraeden, who came to him in whispers when he bothered much with prayers at all. He was tutored in the complex construct of his people's story from the days of the Rift Gates, through the heresy of Ilixidor, to the debasement of his people at the hands of the Clockwork Empire when the Princes of Sol'Valen were forced to kneel. And it was there, on his knees, that he cut his teeth on the spycraft and shadow warfare that dominated the age for all Hytori who refused fealty to ought but the Phoenix Throne.
Sharp, bright, and hot-headed as the rest of his generation, Dhruv joined the fray and ran the streets (and its secrets) alongside his friends. It was in those gutters and trenches, in bar backrooms and reckless little rebellions that he grew to admire the contributions of the lesser races to their mutual cause -- casting off the chains of the Clockwork Empire. Between his efforts to unify with common cause, his success record, and the influence of noble friends, Dhruv grew into a little-known but highly trusted agent. Two close friends, alike in influence and one Sol'Ralaqiel mage, tasked Dhruv with a desperate mission-- retrieve the Clock of Aeternus out from under Kaitos Diraegon himself.
Time collapsed, the revolutionary would later claim, shortly after.
The story, as Dhruv tells it, is that the Sands of Eternity within the artefact exploded when he stole it. Yet somehow the Sol'Ralaqiel who had, in part, sent him into this abyss managed to pull her own threads into unraveling in order to catch all of his -- all of him -- and cast Dhruv into the maw of Velar and Vicis in a suicidal attempt to save him from a horrifying, and endless, end.
It mostly worked.
The Hytori rebel and Sol'Valen spy woke up floundering on the shores of somewhen else altogether, jumped forward in time. His revolution had grown hot as wildfire and his friends embittered. His beloved parents had long since ignited on their own funeral pyres and the lover who had saved him was long since lost. There was one person, however, who yet knew Dhruv when he showed up out of moonless night on his doorstep; and a descendent of Queen Thessalia was not one to argue with a broken clock. And so Dhruv fought again at his old friend's side and worked to build bridges built between the Hytori people and their allies of other races until the day it all fell apart once more.
The Sundering triggered another toss through time for Dhruv, but only after he had witnessed the soul-curdling nightmares of its infant hours. He landed in the blood and dust of utter desolation, time-sick and soul battered. Hours, days, decades, they passed and he survived them. Eventually, jumbled memories reorganized themselves and he began the more arduous process of assuring others survived the hellmouth with him. The lessons he learned were the same he eventually taught others, rising eventually as a clean leader and a knight in the Order of the Dawnmartyr as an unlikely source of hope in those awful, early hours of armageddon. His was an odd assortment of people who would pack up at a moment's notice to fight or to flee, eager to see sky and breathe the open air. The dangers they faced were dared with a mixture of dread and exuberance, the clan's rebellious ancestry proving itself ready and willing to wake up and run once more. They grew scrappy and fierce, family and sometimes warriors, and swelled and ebbed in numbers but were interminable in their riding of time's tide.
Dhruv grew into a man of discipline and savage joy, fierce in the care of a household as well as a people. How to hunt and how to wait, when to go to ground and when to rise up with the wind in your teeth. Before the clock caught up with him again, he helped restore an old friend to a dead throne and raised up a family even as he crossed too many paths with the Cult of Mending. It only meant that he left a great many lives behind when the curse of his salvation ripped him out of the time he'd chosen to defend to another where all of his friends were dead. There were dark years, as dark as any of the rest, and too many to go named; but as in all of his lifetimes, Dhruv found a path toward purpose again. He joined those who were once his people -- though there was no one alive to know him anymore -- and fought largely nameless, deeds unknown in the War of Souls. He made good friends and worthy enemies, and he wandered, eternally unmoored.
The curse caught up with him, sure as Naori hounding his heels, and tipped Dhruv right into a new tomorrow again. This time the curse of the Clock of Aeternus (or the Blessing of Sol'Ralaqiel, depending on your point of view) crashed him badly bruised with a broken clock for a mind and a hand still reaching for the neck of a second he thought he'd almost won. He imagined he'd stolen back. Just for a moment. Or two. He was a stranger in a very strange world for what he dared not hope would be the last time.