Sirach Lunthálin

Details

When looking at Sirach it is hard to pinpoint where he is from. Growing up with one Xailan and one Lemurian parent and travelling all across the continent from an early age has given him a mixed accent and style. He is quite tall and years of having to survive on his own have given him defined muscles. The most remarkable physical feature he has are his eyes. Depending on the light and what he’s wearing, they tend to change colours; blue or green most of the time, but on occasion people have told him they were brown. He used to have long, braided hair as a child, but at some point after leaving Xaila, Sirach decided to shave it and he has been doing this ever since. He has plenty of scars from fights. On his left shoulder, he has a tattoo of a phoenix and on his right shoulder he has one of a luna moth.

He is confident, knows his skills and what he can do. He has spend years on the street, first stealing food to survive and then slowly working himself to big heists. He’s a planner, a schemer, but knows that a plan will only get you so far and will need to be thrown out of the door sooner than later. He loves improvising. He will not hesitate to kill when he needs to. When doing a heist or moving on a target for a hit, he will first observe before infiltrating the location to get to his target. While it started as a way to survive, he’s also grown to love what he does. He loves the adrenaline, the challenge, the way every day is different and requires him to think about new ways to handle the situation he’s in.

He is sarcastic, smart, having learned almost everything he knows himself, and witty. He’s pretty selfish as he won’t accept just any assignment. There needs to be something in it for him, or sometimes he just doesn’t like the look of the person hiring him. When he wants something, he will persevere no matter what. It might take time and careful planning, but eventually he will achieve his goal.

Sirach does not like showing his emotions and will do anything to avoid talking about them. It will take a lot for someone to penetrate his defences and for him to open up. There have only been a few people in his life that he was able to share everything with. Deep down, however, he does have a caring heart and he wishes for nothing more than to find a place to call home and be happy. Whether he will ever admit this to himself is a big question.

His father was specialised in illusion magic, using the source of moon magic to create mirages in the desert they called home. His mother, as a sorcerer, could use her gift to resurrect the dead. Sirach never showed an aptitude for either of these types of magic. It was only when he came across dark magic that he realised magic did not need to come from a source, someone’s belief or a dragon’s gift, but is a part of every living creature. He loves the potential of this and has spent more than two decades learning what different parts can accomplish. Combining some toes, a pair of ears and a minute of silence can make it impossible for someone to hear your footsteps. The problem with this type of magic is that he needs ingredients to perform it. Body parts are not always easy to store; especially when he’s in one of the warmer kingdoms it becomes difficult to keep the parts he has on him from rotting. Furthermore, he also needs to spend time acquiring them and sometimes a spell needs herbs or needs to be performed in specific circumstances. For example, a spell to make people unable to recognise you must be performed by moonlight. Lastly, it is difficult to develop new spells. Experimentation is needed to determine the perfect amount of ingredients and the right words to say. When he was first developing a spell that used elf eyes, he lost sight in one eye for a week.

A more recent discovery Sirach made is that energy and abilities can be transferred from one object to another. Hawk eyes contain the ability to see better and can be used to grant this ability. The same goes for the strength of a bear, sharp teeth of a wolf,... and also for magical creatures, for example merfolk parts can be used to get underwater breathing. He can also take a person’s energy. This will result in them feeling tired and losing their strength. This is something he often uses when infiltrating somewhere as it allows him to knock people out without making much noise. The energy he gains from this can be used to regain his own energy. This will make him less tired, able to fight longer, and sometimes even heal small wounds. Abilities can also be granted to objects. If a pair of ears is used to enchant two books, everything said while one of the books is in the room will be readable in the other. The downside with all of this is that he needs to use his own energy to do it. If he wants to use hawk sight, he will need to spend some of his own energy to transfer the ability from the eyes to himself. Abilities also do not last forever and will wear off after a while. The time this works depends both on the quality of the ingredients and on the amount of his own energy he uses. A little bit of energy combined with hawk eyes will make him able to see like that bird for a few minutes, ten at most. If he wants to use something for hours or longer, he needs to use more energy and the spell will exhaust him more.

His birth was not an easy one, but the joy of finally holding their baby in their arms banned every thought of exhaustion or pain his parents might have felt. They had lost several unborn children before and it came as no surprise that Sirach became their whole world.

The only shadow that hung over his happy childhood was his lack of magical ability. He was not born a moon elf, like his father, or a sorcerer like his mother. And even though they had never been happier, his parents still longed for another child, one more member to complete their family. It took years, but finally, after they had given up on it so many times, his sister came to this world and she took their breath away. She inherited her mother’s magic and showed a talent for it early on. Sirach took on the role of the elder brother, sharing the wisdom he’d gained in his seven year on this planet, but still sometimes he felt jealous of the attention Akilah received. The envy was easier to suppress at home, but hit him full on whenever they were around others. Sirach was human while his sister could wear the family name with pride and the other children and even adults were always quick to remind him of that fact. Still, he loved her, took care of her. Despite the negative feelings, he had a strong bond with her, they were a team and no one could drive them apart.

The happy years came to an end when his father and sister fell ill. His mother did everything to make them better, asked the best healers in the kingdom to treat them, but nothing helped and in the end they passed away. Malika could not handle this. She did not tell anyone about what happened and instead revived her husband and daughter. She ordered them to continue their usual routine inside the house and pretended they were still alive. It took longer than one would expect for this to be discovered and by then the heat had caused the smell in their home to be almost unbearable. Malika was locked up and wasted away, meanwhile Sirach was sent to live with an aunt and uncle.

He was around thirteen when he ran away from there. Life was hard, but he learned to survive on his own in the desert and eventually left Xaila behind him and explored the world outside the kingdom. When he was younger, he’d been to Lemuria to visit his father’s side of the family. His father had shown him the city where he’d grown up and even though he barely remembered anything about the place, Sirach made Silvercrest his new destination.

Having no one but himself to depend on made him turn to more illegal activities early on. What started as stealing food to quench his hunger got him involved in more organised versions of crime. You name it, he has most likely seen or participated in it. When he ran away from Xaila, he changed his last name; a lemurian name was less conspicuous and did not connect him to the sorcerer bloodline of Xaila.

He was smart, always had been and quickly learned how to thrive in his new environment. Stealing became something he was good at. It was in these years that he came across a book that told the history of dark magic and dark elves. In his eyes, dark magic had all the potential the typical types did not. It could accomplish anything and was limited in nothing but its ingredients and the willpower of the mage. From then on, his free time was spent learning dark magic. He took more jobs to be able to buy or gather the ingredients he needed, getting better at stealing and building more criminal connections at the same time. It took a long time before his first spell was perfected, but the challenge only made him more eager to continue.

Now, he takes assignments to gather herbs or items no one else can find or slay monsters no one else wants to face. It’s a way of gathering ingredients for his dark magic and earning money at the same time. In addition to that, he is also a thief, bounty hunter and hitman. What was a way of surviving became a way of living. He still has his own moral code and won’t just accept any assignment, but still, he’s willing to go pretty far.

- Was taught about astronomy and mapmaking by his parents.
- Has contacts all over the continent.
- He has a soft spot for animals that live on the streets since he shared sleeping space with them a lot when he was younger.
- Likes: swimming, drawing.
- While he does believe in the Odirian deities, he does not have a patron deity; believing that all of them have a place in the world after coming into contact with different beliefs over the years.