Athevan

**Athevan** is a member of the Yellow Family. He is a scientist, inventor and past student of Archyon the Wise. Having left the tribe entirely earlier in his life, he's rejoined the Yellow Family in hope of gaining resources required for his research.

## Description

A young man is usually seen in a red coat with black patterns. His left arm has been severed and since been replaced with a mechanical prosthetic. A machine connecting his nervous system with his augmentations can be seen beneath his mane of Beachwood coloured hair. Behind his back floats a jar with a small brain inside it. A chemical used in this neural interface has caused his eyes and veins to turn an amber colour.

## Abilities

Athevan can extract the brains of other living beings and attach them to his own, thus increasing his own intellect.

## Personality

Athevan is easily exited by prospects of scientific discovery. His voice is quite gravelly, reminding those who meet him of the rumble a sleeping tiger.
Athevan believes that the divine exists, but instead of having any actual spiritual superiority is merely another part of the physical universe. As such there’s no reason to give it undeserved praise. During a period in which he lived alone in the mountains, Athevan has developed a theatrical flair to keep himself entertained. The Sparrows brain he's attached to his own ocacasonally causes him to act quite skittishly.

## Possessions

**Arm prosthesis:** A large prosthesis of Athevan's own making. Athevan often alters its design with new ideas. Its claw-like hand can be rapidly replaced with a variety of tools, among them axe heads, chisels, and even a violin bow.

**Neural surgery equipment:** A set of tools Athevan developed based on the equipment he'd found in the medical bay in Mining Rig 7. Its primary uses are the extraction of living brains and keeping them in temporary suspension, as well as the connection of Athevan's inventions to living neurons.

## Backstory

#### Early Years

During his youth, Athevan used to be a student of Archyon the wise. However as the people of the tribe began to worship Archyon more and more, and yet Archyon was doing nothing to stop it, his secular student grew frustrated. Eventually, after Athevan decided to confront his mentor about this, they had an argument which resulted in the young man leaving the tribe.

#### Mining Rig 7

Athevan wandered the world for the next few months eventually ending up in The Blueridge Mountains.
While he was walking along a narrow ledge a sudden gust of wind caused him to lose his balance and fall down into the ravine below. Near the bottom, his left arm caught on a protruding branch and was ripped clean off. However, this slowed his fall enough to where he managed to survive with merely an amalgam of bruises across the rest of his body.
Knowing that if he stays where he is, he’ll probably die, Athevan began walking along the bottom of the ravine, looking for an exit. Instead, he found an entrance. The entrance to what he eventually decided to call Mining Rig 7. Behind a door of steel, he found a small hall with a whole lot of strange machinery he didn't understand, a rack with clothing made of a material he didn't recognize and a surprisingly conventional dinner table. To the side, there was a comfy looking chair surrounded by yet more machines. Athevan was quite tired of the whole ordeal, what with the cold, the bruises, and the blood loss, so he decided to sit down for a minute. He almost had a heart attack right then and there as the machines surrounding him pushed him harder against the chair and a burning hot steel arm cauterized the stump of his arm. At the same time, something else was injected into Athevan's neck.

During the following years, the young scientist attempted to reverse engineer the machine that had saved his life, as well as the neural interface now jammed into the back of his neck. Surprisingly, to some degree, he succeeded. He managed to make himself a prosthetic arm that he could control through his neural link, and that he used to climb out of the ravine once the food he'd found in a cabinet near the dining table ran out.
Afterward, he continued to live in the mining base at the bottom of the ravine, only occasionally visiting the tribe to replenish his stock of supplies like clothing or food.

#### Discovery of Brain Attachment

One day, on a hike around the nearby area, he came across a dying sparrow and gripped by a sudden burst of compassion attempted to save it. He scooped up the poor animal and ran back to his new home. However, the 'magical' chair didn't respond, be it because the bird wasn't a human, or because of Athevan's of tinkering. When upon closer inspection Ahevan saw that the birds' internal organs are irreparably damaged he came up with another idea. Using tools he'd made based upon his studies of the machines in the room, he extracted the sparrows' brain and put it in a jar of preserving biological fluid. Afterward, he connected it to his own spine through his neural interface. Surprising both him and the bird, the procedure actually ended up working. Athevan suddenly found himself being able to think just a bit faster. He was also able to a small degree to communicate with the confused consciousness of the sparrow.
The next morning he decided to put aside his differences for the sake of science and returns to the village to tell Archyon of his discovery ...only to find Archyon had disappeared.

## Trivia

Alongside his scientific pursuits, Athevan quite enjoys composing and playing music.