Aython · Ashvail · Aurelius
- Acrobatics+5
- Deception+7
- Insight+3
- Intimidation+5
- Performance+7
- Persuasion+5
- Sleight of Hand+5
- Stealth+5
"Pour the wine first, then the verse. The truth keeps either way."
- Bardic Inspiration3 / rest · d6
- SpellcastingDC 13 · +5
- Ritual Castingfrom book
- Vicious Mockerycantrip
- Rapier — Finesse+5 · 1d8
Beloved
- Wine, song, candle-light, applause.
- A clever room — the kind that laughs at the right line.
- The desperate, the unloved, the small. (Quietly.)
- His own legend, slowly written in someone else's ledger.
Abhorred
- Honest labour. Honest hours. Honest letters.
- Anything academic — names of kings, dates of wars.
- Loving someone too plainly. It always becomes a debt.
- The Aurelius name used as a leash on him.
Aython was born the second son of House Aurelius, an old line whose chief inheritance is the word "nobility" and the obligation to keep saying it. His brother Vincent took to the Aurelian Guard the way other boys take to dogs.
Aython took to the stage. Where the family saw discipline, he saw a long polished hallway with no music in it. By eighteen he was singing for coin under another name in the Lower Quarter — and laughing at all of his mother's letters.
Then came the Gala of the Silver Wolf. A wine fountain, paid for with House money he was not, technically, allowed to spend. So generous the candles drowned in it. The Duchess Henrietta took the floor and named him — in front of every name that mattered — "the Black Sheep".
She sent him out in last season's coat with a single sentence: return when your name is worth more than gold. He bowed at the door like a stage actor leaving applause behind him, and has not bowed since.
And that — was the start of the long pilgrimage from cellar to cellar.
When the salons close and the candles drown and there is no Duchess left to disappoint, the smile slips and the Aurelius stare comes out. He does not draw the rapier with grief. He draws it like a closing line.
until they refuse the cup. "