Thavius

* Arc 1
* Arc 7

Official image of Thavius, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

(Both by SK-73)

Official image of Thavius, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

Thavius is a Player Character of Arc 1 and Arc 7 and played by Kyle.

*This page contains no spoilers for Arc 7 in the Arc 1 infobox and up until the section "Between Arc 1 and Arc 7". After that, please proceed with caution.*

## Description

Thavius is a Shadar-Kai, or Shadowelf, and has very pale, white-ish grey skin and pale blue eyes from being born and growing up in Shadowfell, a plane of death. His hair is white, fairly straight and goes down to his mid chest. He wears black clothes as Shadowfell is very monochrome, and usually has his hood up as protection from the sunlight. He used to track his age but lost count sometime around age 100. On his arms he wears two metal clamps.

His skin is surprisingly cold, but his pulse is normal. Despite his complexion and him not being used to sunlight, he does not seem to get burns or rashes from it.

Having spent all of his life in the shadow realm ferrying souls, Thavius is a very bland elf. He is not yet used to sunlight or colour, people that do not ferry souls for a living, social situations or standard etiquette. Because of this, he usually just tries to follow the lead of his companions for what is normal behaviour and tries his best to adapt and understand.

He generally does not speak unless spoken to, and answers in a matter-of-fact, but not unfriendly way. Similarly, he is good at following orders, and will do so when given one.

Shadar-Kai have to physically bind their souls to their bodies while on the Material Plane, or else it might escape. This could also happen if they rest for more than four hours. Thavius has his metal clamps that stab into his forearms and thus bind his soul, but additionally, he has found a way to only temporarily unbind it, attack with it, and rebind it to his body. To bind it again, he again has to stab his forearms with the clasps, which is slightly painful for him. When he attacks, his soul looks like a blade of pale blue energy, and his attacks leave no visible wound, but do psychic damage, because the person attacked just cannot comprehend the horror that is being touched by death. Nobody is quite sure what would happen if Thavius' soul were to escape, neither to Thavius nor to witnesses who might stand by.

He carries with him a soul coin that he protects more than anything else, even more than himself. This coin is about palm sized, greyish silver and has inscriptions in Infernal. He can receive a little bit of the essence of the soul coin to get temporary hitpoints, but apologises after doing so.

An important aspect for Thavius is the natural cycle of life and especially death. He understands that death is something terrible in the eyes of most people, but for him, it is something that should be honored once it happened, and not made undone. Because of this, he despises any form of necromancy, and tries to free the affected soul from it. For him, necromancy is sacrilege, and against death as it should be. It makes him angry enough that his form starts to flicker when he faces it, and sad enough that he prays a lomg, silent prayer over the remains of a body that had been used for a necromancy spell.

## Background

Thavius was never given a last name, because it just wasn't necessary.

His job at the Shadowfell was to ferry souls, as most Shadar-Kai do, and he neither thought nor felt or talked much during the first few centuries of his life while doing this. For the most part, the only contact he had was with the whisps of the souls that he ferried.

One day, a soul was found to not belong there, a righteous soul sent to the wrong afterlife. This soul was turned into a soul coin, and Thavius sent on a quest to find out where the soul belongs to and to bring it there. While he is on the Material Plane, he protects this coin with everything he has, to make sure that it reaches its destination.

Thavius stepped through an obsidian portal into the Material Plane about half a day before the start of Arc 1, where he was promptly found by Hope Lovejoy. The two continued their journey together.

## Character Arc

### Arc 1

At the beginning of Arc 1, Thavius has only spent a few hours on the Material Plane. During the adventure, he tastes things for the first time, sees new people, many different colours, makes friends, and receives his very first hug.

While the adventure does not bring him closer to getting the soul coin to its destination, he makes friends he remembers for a long time, and even has a tear rolling down his cheek when he has to say goodbye to them, before sprinting away to not lose any more time for the soul coin. His friends not only show their world to him, but also teach him how to feel, especially how to love other people.

He plans on returning to Thymore at some point to finally, once and for all, undo the necromancy spell on Damir Mortyss.

### Between Arc 1 and Arc 7

In Arc 4, it is revealed that Thavius never gets to free Mortyss. Still, he stays on the Material Plane: while trying to get closer to his destination for the soul coin, he gets sidetracked again and again by people asking for help, because he doesn't know how to say no to them. Thus, he still carries the coin with him, without actually getting much closer to finishing this mission, which gets even harder because he sometimes has no idea where he is or how he got there.

On his first mission without the Arc 1 party, he helps save a woman by the name of Evelynn Sunbloom, a wood elf from the tiny town of Springhaven. The two of them later get married, but don't spend a lot of time together: Evelynn has an embroidery business she is occupied with, and Thavius is off adventuring, during which he often even forgets for a while that he has a home to go back to, and only visits when he remembers. The two of them make it work, though, are happy with this arrangement, and hopelessly in love.

Thavius enjoys being on the Material Plane, and after about 500 years of not actually being able to live life to the fullest, he wants to get as much of it as possible.

In 132 AE, he accidentally finds his way back to Summerview and stays there for about 45 minutes, just long enough to deliver a book to SK-73. Apart from that, he mostly kept in touch with Hope, his first friend, and occasionally writes to Deb, but not nearly as much. When he does receive letters at home, though, he is an excellent responder, and makes it his first priority to do so.

Probably the most notable one of Thavius's missions is one where he single-handedly dismantles an assassin's guild in the underground of Tyle, after he realises that he accidentally became their leader. This little adventure brings him enough fame that even Sir Mister Person hears about him. During the adventure, he finds some imps in a sewer, and a nice couch that he brings home to Evelynn, and that is now in her living room.

### Arc 7

By the time the arc starts, Thavius has reached level 12. He is still on the Material Plane, and now usually wears the hood of his dark cloak down, because he got used to the sunlight. Instead of the crude iron braces he used to stab himself to turn his soul into a weapon, he now has fancy dark blue braces that only have a needle instead of a whole spike, to make the process less painful for him, and less intimidating for the people he wants to help. In addition, he now has the String of Guidance, which he got from his wife to find his way back home, and the Tell-Tale Heart.

While he is still an avid listener, he also talks a lot more than he did before, because now he has his own adventures that he can tell of. Still, he has not completely grasped the subtext of many conversations, and doesn't quite understand the tone of people. Also, he does not fully understand all customs of the world, yet.

He comes from his home in Springhaven to visit the party in Summerview, with his hair braided by his wife. He not only brings a gift for Arthur, but also for each of his friends, and manages to slightly break through Sir Mister Person's more bitter exterior. When Sir Mister repeatedly tries to avoid his old friends and leave, Thavius suspects that he might be in danger, and tries to confront him about his behaviour and help if necessary. His care for Sir Mister shows in most things he does, even when he punches him to get him out of a charmed state, he apologises immediately. Still, his closest friend is Hope, and he is there to comfort her when she needs it, or talk up her confidence.

He understands enough to realise that his friends have their personal troubles, but doesn't pry, as long as he knows that their problems won't affect the mission. However, he talks them up as much as he can, trying to build their confidence and strength back up again, and also shows how much he cares when interacting with the children.

In Episode 4, it is revealed that the person inside of Thavius's soul coin is Lathe Nightrym. Since Arc 1, he has learned to communicate with Lathe and even have short conversations, and many of Thavius's adventures have actually been tying up the loose threads Lathe had left when he passed away. Lathe does not really want to move on, yet, and tries to make Thavius carry him around the world. He does not, however, want to talk to his old friends, even though Thavius asks every time they talk.

When fighting against their enemies, Thavius immediately forms a team again with Sir Mister. They both still know the other's strengths, and know that they can rely on each other.

During their final fight, Thavius gets banished to the Shadowfell for four seconds, which he neither expects nor understands. He did not plan to return there for as long as he lived, and as he realises where he is, with only the soul coin reassuring him that the last two years actually happened, he drops to his knees and screams in frustration. As the elven woman they are fighting looses concentration on the spell and he comes back, he shows his vengeful side and tells her that he never before expected to enjoy deafening someone with the Tell-Tale Heart.

After the fight, Deb and Thavius stay in the library for the night together with Skeventy. They help him out, and later, Thavius and Deb have a talk about Deb's time in the Feywild. Deb opens up that they are scared about the things they might have done there, but Thavius tries his best to comfort them by telling them that he believes they are one of the few people where he is absolutely certain that they were a good person.

Thavius also realises that he would like to continue adventuring with the party, but also that he puts Lathe at risk by continuing to carry him around: should anything happen to Thavius, that would essentially doom Lathe, too. Because of this, he asks his friends to join him on a quest to bring the soul coin to its rightful destination.

Before they go on this little adventure, they visit Thavius's wife Evelynn, and there, Thavius takes the time together with Lathe to write down five letters he dictates to him, to send to his old friends, and then writes a sixth one against Lathe's wishes to provide some context.

### Soul Coinclusion

The Soul Coinclusion Oneshot is Thavius's mission to bring the coin to where it belongs. To find the temple of Celestian, he leads his friends on a path he doesn't really know himself, but hopes they trust him well enough to get lost with him, and they do.

In the room of lost things, he finds a beaded necklace that was gifted to him by a ten year old child he saved on one of his earliest adventures, during which he got dangerously wounded and nearly would have left the adventuring life. He lost it while dismanteling the assassin's guild in Tyle, where the leader aimed for Thavius's neck and caught the necklace with his knife instead, ripping it, and it skittered down into the sewers. He searched for hours, but never found it. The necklace made Thavius who he is, and at first, he feels unworthy to put it back on again, but he is glad to have it.

He also helps Deb not only to find their item, but also to confront their repulsion against everything that has to do with the Feywild and their time there. He does his best to tell them again that they must have been a good person there as well, and that they probably had friends there, too.

After the room of lost things, Thavius is able to bring Lathe to the realm of Celestian, the Constellations, through the altar. Before they say good bye, Thavius gives up some of his own strength and energy to grant Lathe the opportunity to manifest in a body, meet his friends, and hug again. As Lathe goes into the Constellations, for a brief moment, Thavius meets the Raven Queen, who grants him her blessing in the form of a big raven feather, and then disappears again.

At first, Thavius feels lonely, because for the first time in two years, Lathe is gone from him, and he doesn't have the coin to hold on to when he is sad or anxious. When he realises that, though, immediately, his party is by his side to be there and comfort him.

## Trivia

* Kyle is known to play edgelords, and Thavius does not help that trope - although him being edgy is entirely by circumstance, coming from the Shadowfell. Thavius following a darker theme was something Kyle decided knowing that the other characters were bright and happy. He almost chose to play a Fallen Aasimar.
* In Arc 1, Thavius has 29 hitpoints.
* His favourite colour used to be pale blue, like his soul. After seeing more colours, he really likes the colour of Deb.
* In Arc 1, Kyle was not sure whether Thavius would learn to love on the Material Plane, but stated that the partymember he was closest to falling in love with would be Sir Mister Person. In Arc 7, both of these characters had gone their separate ways and married different women, something that was addressed by Kyle and Gus in Episode 0 (they had independently from each other decided that their character would have married in the meantime).
* In Arc 7, Thavius has the Mobile feat.
* Thavius does not have Thieves' Tools, he "is not that kind of rogue".
* He does not like to read and is not very good at it, despite being a good pen pal.
* Thavius does not really know how old he is.
* The letters Thavius writes can be found on the Patreon and accessed at any tier.
* When it comes to drinking alcohol, Thavius is a "light weight".
* Thavius is Bombyx's uncle through marriage.