Isha Horosha

*This article is a work in progress, and is subject to change as the character is developed.*

## Isha Horosha

### Affiliation(s)

Lux Praesidium, Koun Monastery (formerly), Kaoseu Chonghue (formerly)

### Birthplace

Raijin

Isha Horosha (commonly referred to simply as Isha) was a wandering scholar from southern Raijin. Pursuing an obscure lead on his area of study, he had found himself traveling alongside Lux Praesidium, only to find himself struck down at the hands of a wicked abberation plaguing the city of Norbury

## Appearance

Standing at 5'6", Isha is of average height for a Man. He boasts a slightly darker skin tone, along with the brown eyes and black hair commonly found among those from the Raijin region. His face is sharp and angular, and is quite youthful with only a few wrinkles around his eyes betraying his age. Weighing in at 128 pounds, Isha makes up for his weak physique with a surprising amount of agility.

### Discerning Features

Isha is commonly found with his hair drawn back into a bun, but occasionally will leave it down, where it rests just below his shoulders. In addition, he has burn marks covering a majority of his arms and torso, as well as the left side of his neck and face.

### Clothing

Forgoing armor of any kind, Isha chooses to keep his attire simple and light. He commonly wears the traditional garb of the monastery where he was raised, which leaves his upper left torso and left arm exposed, the latter of which he covers from his wrist to his elbow with a simple cloth wrapping. He also wears a blood red scarf and cape, both faded and tattered from years of use.

### Personality and Mannerisms

Typically quite and reserved, many who encounter Isha assume him to be antisocial, whereas he simply lacks experience in conversation and would love to discuss most any topic, although he has a habit of rambling and getting lost in his thoughts, which often drives away the few who do talk to him. Having a tendency to get caught up in his research, whenever an opportunity to learn more on a subject that interests him he will oftentimes abandon whatever he was doing to pursue the chance. As a kind soul however, no matter what his personal feelings he will always put his needs second if it means providing aid to someone in need.

## Birth and Early Years

Born sometime between the months of Tirn and Lithe of the year 1432, Isha was found abandoned on the steps of the Koun Monastery by Naitou Iekiyo, a young monk residing there. He was taken in and raised by the monks there, forming strong bonds with Naitou, whom he viewed as an older brother, and Takatsukasa Kanetoshi, the eldest monk at the monastery. While he was happy with his life, he always had a sense of estrangement, as if he knew he wasn't meant to be there. Regardless, he spent his formative years practicing and spreading the monastery's ideals of giving luck to those without any. He lived happily this way until the age of 13, when a group of travelers came and changed everything.

Isha, along with the other monks, were initially kind to this group of travelers, taking them and and feeding them as they were obviously worn from their journey. The travelers accepted their aid graciously, and were invited to spend the night so they may rest before continuing their journey. They were given a room adjacent to the main hall, which upset some of the monks who were distrustful of them, as the main hall was where all the monastery's relics were kept. Unfortunately, these monks worries held water, for when young Isha went to bring water to the travelers in the middle of the night, he found the five of them spread around the main hall, grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. Before he could say anything, Naitou rushed into the hall along with 2 other monks, all armed with katanas. After a brief and tense exchange of words with the intruders, the two groups began to fight. Hidden behind a pillar during this, Isha watched as the two monks who were with Naitou were slain, leaving him to defend against the intruders alone, adeptly at first, but as time dragged by his reactions grew slower and slower, eventually being struck down, falling next to his comrades. Isha let out a piercing wail and ran to the corpse of his friend, spewing curses at his assailants. Giving him no heed, the intruders finished gathering what they could, then filed past Isha and out the hall, with the final one giving an almost remorseful glance back, before gathering a ball of fire into her hands and casting it into the heart of the hall.

The following hours passed in a blur for Isha. He never left Naitou's side as monks rushed around him, at first attempting to put out the fire, then attempting to save what few relics they had left when the fire grew too large. Before he knew it, all that remained was himself, Naitou and his comrades, and the raging inferno that was once their home. Having lost everything in one night, Isha laid next to Naitou, silently cursing this cruel world for taking what little he had, and closed his eyes in both acceptance and defeat. He dreamt of an endless fall into a lightless void, of all the lives lost in the fire, and the cruel, twisted faces of those who ruined everything. He eventually awoke to the face of Takatsukasa, who had treated Isha's burns to the best of his ability, and informed him they would eventually heal, but he would be left scarred forever. Weeks passed as the two traveled from town to town, desperate to find anyone willing to help them in their plight, until eventually the lingering injuries from the attack caught up with Takatsukasa, leaving Isha alone once and for all. Lost and without purpose, he looked regardless toward the future with nothing but hope, and the twin katanas left to him by Naitou.

## Life in Solitude

The following years found Isha roaming to all parts of Raijin, finding work where he could, but more often than not he was chased from any semblance of civilization he found himself in. As word of him spread among the Stormlands, he was assigned the moniker Yùnqì Hǎoxiào, or Luck's Scorned, for bad luck followed him wherever he went. His arrival came to be an ill omen, and thus he was scorned by the very people who he spent his childhood helping. Defeated, he resigned himself to a life of solitude at the age of 19, and tasked himself with hunting down what he viewed as the source of all his woes; the group of travelers who had burned down his monastery all those years ago.

### Tracking the Intruders

From the ages of 19 to 23 Isha searched for traces of those who robbed him of his former life. At first very little progress was made, with most people simply refusing to talk to him, but as time went by he picked up on a few leads. First, he discovered that Koun Monastery was not the first to be raided in a manner as his was, nor was it the last. In fact, he discovered the existence of an enclave in the capital that housed monks who fell victim to this group. Second, he found that the group went by the name of Kaoseu Chonghue, and was in fact a small portion of a much larger organization which had a significant hold over the underworld politics of the region. Unfortunately, he was unable to ascertain why they raided temples and monasteries when they had better sources of income, simply that there were a large number of such incidents. Armed with this knowledge, he sought out the organization, and initiated himself as a low level member in hopes of fining more information on those he sought.

## Life as a Criminal

Isha's primary job as a part of Kaoseu Chonghue was as a messenger, tasked with delivering parcels to various members of the organization. One such member, Kam Eun-Cho, took a liking to Isha and helped train him in combat, as well as introducing him to the basics of rūn magic, which Isha was not interested in. Months passed until eventually Kam admitted to Isha that she was the one who burned down his monastery, and took him under her wing to attempt to relieve her guilty conscious. Initially furious, Isha refused to hear her explanation and avoided taking jobs to or from her for weeks, until eventually no one else would give him a job due to his unlucky streak of lost or damaged parcels.

Eventually and he reluctantly returned to her, and she forced him to hear her explanation before he was given work. She explained that she was one of the original members of Kaoseu Chonghue, which began as a group of outcasts who took advantage of monk's kindness to turn a profit. Using monks in this way always upset her, but she had to choose between her morals and her survival, and chose the latter. Koun Monastery was the last straw for her however, and afterwards she stepped down from her position as a head of the organization, for by that point it had grown from a small band of survivalists to a myriad of criminal entrepreneurs. She remained with the organization under threat of death, and chose to fill the role of an informant, gathering information for her superiors benefit. She also informed Isha that while raiding monasteries was initially simply a gambit for survival, clues from various temples and monasteries hinted at the existence of an extraordinarily powerful magical artifact which Kaoseu Chonghue is now seeking out.

Caught off guard by this information, Isha asked Kam what his next course of action should be. Instead of giving him a choice, Kam instead told him that the information he now had painted a target on his back, for only the highest echelon of the organization was privy to this information, and informed Isha that she would be exiling him for his own protection. As a last word of warning, she told him that he now carried the burden of stopping the discovery of the artifact, for if its power was truly as great as it was rumored to be, it could spell the end of not only the Stormlands, but the entirely of Nera itself, and that the power of rūn could be his greatest ally if he chose to pursue it. With that, Isha was once again alone in the world, now with a burden greater than what he could carry himself.

## Pursuit of Rūn

Now 26, Isha was able to use the skills he learned as a member of the criminal underworld to more easily infiltrate and reside in cities and towns without alerting the people around him of his unlucky nature. As a result, he was able to pursue a study into the power of rūn as Kam advised him to do, and thus began the next chapter of Isha's life. No longer purposeless, he studied rūn with an unyielding determination, his old anger returning with a burning passion. He consumed the works of Nara Kagami in less than a year, yet still yearned for more. He began to scour the ruins scattered about the Stormlands in a bid to gain a greater understanding of rūn, of which he was already one of the more learned members of the field by this point. His endeavors eventually paid off with a the discovery of an ancient civilization referred to as the Hoshiri, which reached from the northern edge of the Stormlands to the southeastern portion of the Eastweald. He became the first in untold centuries to explore the ruins of this civilization, each one helping him gain a deeper understanding of rūn, while hinting at similar, yet different, form of magic.

At the age of 33, Isha discovered the remnants of another lost civilization in the Avunn River Valley, who called themselves the Astari. Remnants of their culture were few and far between, but Isha was able to determine that they practiced a form of rūn that was bastardized with another form of magic that was quite similar in concept, although instead of focusing on the principles of light and dark, it focused on the four elemental building blocks of the world. Intrigued by this new discovery, Isha put a halt on his study of rūn to pursue this new variant of it, which was simply referred to as runic magic by all accounts he could find.

### Runic Magic and Alvea

Only able to gather so much information of runic magic in its bastardized state in Astari texts, Isha crossed over the Orean mountains into Ivarne, where he began to travel from city to city, searching for the slightest lead on his search. Over the next few years, he spent time in every major city in Ivarne, as well as some in Northolm and Forn. He discovered surprisingly large amount of material on runic magic and its workings, but little on the civilization that pioneered it.