Tyvir Kromora

*"There Comes The Scarecrow, Crawling, Creeping*
*Creeping, Crawling The Scarecrows Coming*
*There Sings The Scarecrow, Steps A'Running*
*The Scarecrow's Come For Us"*

#### Born in the Dark

Born in the prison sinks of an ancient hive city that rests in the lands of Albyon on Terra, Tyvir knew not the sun; its light was as alien to him as the Xenos he would fight in his later life, its warmth as unwelcome as his presence was to many he would go on to meet. In the vast caverns below the hive, millions of souls toiled in the eternal night; condemned to the depths for transgressions against those above. But not all those who lived and died in the sinks were sent there for their crimes: children were born in the dark, raised alongside death and suffering with pale skin and iris-less eyes. Those that lived to see their first decade became known as “the night's children” and not even the most savage killers sought them out by choice. Tyvir was one of these children, born to a mother sent into the never-ending dark for crimes long forgotten, and a father who was condemned for gang activity and immediately joined one upon arrival in the sinks. Before Tyvir could form true memories, his father was killed in one of the frequent gangland grudge matches fought across streets and communities that eked out an existence in the hell they were placed. His mother raised him alone, selling her body to support her only son, as even in the darkest dungeon of Mankind its cravings never ceased, but were in fact amplified to an extreme. She treated her son well, the only beacon in her miserable life, and having come from a relatively educated background she taught her boy many things including arithmetic and literacy. They survived for many years, living off the little she could squeeze out of clients and the scraps Tyvir could scrounge using his small form to move quietly in the night. For a few short months of his life, when the gangs had settled all outstanding grievances and retreated to their turfs, trade between the islands of civilisation that littered the under-dark began and the state of affairs in his community improved slightly and Tyvir had actually felt contented with his lot. Until the Brotherhood Blue were cast down into the world below.

#### Brotherhood Blue

The Brotherhood Blue was a band of blackguards, mercenaries and gangers from the surface of Terra. It was rumoured that while their crimes were terrible and could fill volumes, they were not in fact cast in to the sinks but went willingly for some unknown, and likely unsavoury, purpose. The explanation many held as to this assumption was that the numbers they brought with them easily went in to the hundreds, they brought with them supplies and equipment no mere prisoners could have held on to, and some of them seem to actually enjoy being down in the shadows. In any case they became extremely influential the moment they arrived in the night eternal, having brought with them vast quantities of one of the most sought after luxuries the people in the prison sink craved: light. More specifically lamp packs and the batteries to power them as well as, at least according to them, the ability to procure more as needed. While an innocuous product above ground, below where most earned a “living” trawling through the vast catacombs, mountains of rubble, and ancient refuse from aeons long past in the search for usable materials and scavenge, the ability to see where one was and what one was holding was of great value to anyone searching in the pitch darkness. And so what little wealth came from this pit of hell began to flow through the Brotherhood Blue.

While tolerated as a strange allegory of a merchant guild by the other gangs, this soon switched to hostility and quickly erupted into open war when the Brotherhood defended their trade lines violently from attempted taxation by the groups. The short period of peace evaporated almost as quickly as it had come and Tyvir's small family was plunged into strife once more. It was shortly before his 10th birthday when the Brotherhood started slaughtering the gangs; mass shoot outs became commonplace again and the sounds of misery and stagnation were complemented by the dying screams of men and women bleeding in the streets. Whatever lines of acquisition they had, the Brotherhood revealed themselves to be vastly better supplied and equipped than the other organisations and even an unprecedented alliance between the four largest gangs in the dark, who not months ago were murdering each other, was unable to defeat the blue painted soldiers. This short and bloody war toppled the old territorial leaders and secured the Brotherhood Blue as the sole commanders of power in the small stretch of the night that Tyvir and his mother lived in.

#### Jackknife Boris

With their power absolute, the markets cornered and their guns ready to take down any new threats before they began, the Brotherhood exercised their newfound control in a variety of excessive and violent ways. Indiscriminate killings, torturing, debauched orgies, and sick games of blood sport played out in squares that dotted the blackness in full view of their “citizenry”. Unable to return to the surface and unwilling to move through the dead midnight of the inter-community wastes the people gritted their teeth and settled in for just another bad dream in their eternal nightmare. Tyvir's mother found good work amongst the least unsavoury bunch of the Brothers, tending to their primal needs without drawing too much attention to herself. Until she caught the eye of Boris.

A lieutenant in the Brotherhood Blue, Boris was known to his friends, his enemies and all those in between as Jackknife Boris or just Jackknife. He used an eponymous blade to cut out the tongue of any who called him Jack. A short, portly man with a balding head and a pug nose, Boris earned his nickname supposedly from the unusually large amount of jack-knives and other small blades he kept hidden on his person. The truth of this as the source is disputed but rarely will he discuss it without sticking a few of his implements in to the stomach of the inquirer. Jackknife first met Tyvir's mother when she was contracted to attend to a regular at their home; she walked in on said client's tongue being pulled out of his head by the brute. Boris barely noticed her as she looked on in resigned horror, finishing his work before turning to her. Snapping back to reality, she fled, outpacing the portly man easily; her slightly wasted frame keeping her light on her feet. She heard nothing about it for over a week and managed to breathe easy. At least as easily as one can breathe in the sinks. She went back to her business, keeping a wide berth around her old Brotherhood clientele. She knew that mingling with the Brotherhood Blue, while lucrative,  was not going to end well for her. And it didn't, for when Tyvir returned home one evening, he found a strange balding man leaving his home. With a sick smirk on his face the dog-faced thug patted Tyvir on the head as he passed, and began to whistle as he strolled along before disappeared into the permeating darkness. Confused, he entered his house and called for his mother, waiting in silence as no answer came. Searching for her, Tyvir eased open the door to her bedroom.

She lay there, a bag over her head and her clothes torn off, scattered around the room in tatters.

And in such darkness does innocence die. Tyvir shattered into a thousand pieces, a fractured remnant of what should and might have been. He broke, staring at his mother's waiflike corpse even as tears burned down his tortured face.

Tyvir died at that moment, and a child of the night was born.