Dream of Dawn

The Demon Crisis left a mark on Averine that isn't visible: a fragment of demonic essence — a scar from the demon Pazuzu — lodged in his psyche when he was an infant. Dorienne shielded him and was contaminated herself. She spent the next two decades quietly monitoring him for signs of corruption.

After Dorienne's disappearance, the scar awakened. His Astral Self — normally the monk's projection of inner light — manifested as a jagged, demonic shape, responding to his emotional state rather than his will.

He fled Satrea in grief, traveling westward toward Regnum Aurelia, carrying Dorienne's research notes and a ciphered message he hasn't decoded. He appears sarcastic and calm. He is neither.

His eldest brother, Varon Rhun, is one of the most celebrated figures in Regnum Aurelia. Averine has not spoken to him since Dorienne disappeared.

Kessia, Axia's mother, was a researcher of excellent reputation. She spent years decoding a scroll written in a dead language no one could trace — in secret, locked away from the censors. The work consumed her. Her hands shook. She stayed later and later. She got sick and no healer could explain it.

Before she slipped into a coma, she pressed Axia's hand and said: "It won't open for hands alone… it needs what stirs beneath your skin."

Axia's father went looking for what the scroll described and never came back. She funded her mother's care by selling artifacts to Luana on the black market. Then the Spellstorm hit the Aerarium — a pulse of raw magic, blood on ancient parchment — and Axia woke up on the floor knowing things she hadn't learned.

There are beings just behind the edge of the world. Sleeping. Watching. Teaching. The scroll was not written by mortals alone. It was dictated — whispered into minds until they spiraled into madness.

Axia transferred to the archaeology department for the freedom it grants. She is now the overseer of excavation Site C42 — a ruin that may be the location her father was looking for.

Evander's parents prepared for his birth with prenatal rituals, classical music, textbooks, and celestial invocations. He came out walking early, with stunning fine motor skills — and took much longer than other children to speak, never grasped math or grammar, and struggled bitterly with arcanics.

His younger brother Emory graduated early with top marks. Evander retook several classes, scraped by with help from his shy, brilliant roommate Lucas Zabell, and generally survived on hard work, some luck, and a non-zero amount of cheating.

Lucas, during their years of late-night study sessions involving runic tattoos and smelling salts from the different planes, discovered that Evander had an unusually strong connection to the planar tree — a product of the ritual circumstances of his birth. They tried to strengthen it. It didn't work the way they intended. They danced around their feelings for five years without admitting it.

Then, on an internship trip studying Spellstorms in Epida Amini, Evander rushed in further than anyone else would dare to take a sample — and the storm flew into him. It tried to express itself as spells he barely knew. His planar connection absorbed the excess, shunting it into the planes. When it was over, he had lost everything he'd spent five years learning.

His spellscar is not magic trapped beneath the surface. It's a void — a magnetic pull through a portal, a call from magic far away, reaching for its kin.

In the drow settlement of Zhaerivra, halfbreeds sat barely above males and slaves in the social order. Luana had one friend growing up: a wizard named Khaless, who let her study his material because he was male and somewhat crazy. Her passion for artificing started when a deep dwarf trader showed her a self-loading crossbow that fired five bolts without reloading.

When she was nearly seventeen, a wind came through the cave and a week later people started to rot. The infection was quick for most. In Luana, it moved slowly — spreading up her arm over months rather than days. She gathered what she could, told her mother she had the rot, and walked into the underdark alone.

She found the deep dwarf artificer Skorri Brommik, who had shown her the crossbow years before. He took her on as an apprentice and helped her make prosthetics when the rot took her fingers, then her forearm. He told her to look for a cure in Regnum Aurelia.

In Aurastis she found pills that slowed the rot. She also discovered withdrawal symptoms from her previous medication — a problem she solved by testing substances until she found combinations that worked. Some of them became habits. She funded everything through artifact dealing, and when the money ran out, through the Black Tide smuggling network.

She paid her debts. She kept the contacts. She is currently a "consultant" — independent, protected, and busy.