Lassair's Bio

Lassair is 37, but he looks 20. He arrived quite recently in Port Saint Herve, and has taken up residence in the Ivory Owl where he plays music nightly. He has also been known to juggle fire from time to time. He has a shock of red hair, green eyes, is nearly six feet tall, and has a wiry build. He has a gregarious disposition and doesn’t take himself too seriously, probably in part because dozens of people have independently come up with the nickname “Lassie” for him. Oddly enough, he is also never seen without a high collar or a scarf.

He is the son of the deceased Alta Nathronæ - a Tethyrian woman famed for her music as well as for her great beauty - and the Elf-Lord Tyron of whom little is known. After they married, Alta continued to sing in the city while Tyron would depart for weeks at a time on quests, always returning with love in his heart and gifts from his victories. Alta bore Lassair in the middle of winter, and it was immediately apparent that he took after his father with deep green eyes and flaming red hair. He proved to be an inquisitive and charismatic child, and demonstrated a great aptitude for music, in which his mother delightedly guided him. When he was home, his father would teach him Elvish and tutor him in history and politics until, when Lassair was eleven years old, there was one quest he never returned from. Three days past the date of his father’s anticipated return, Lassair had a horrifying nightmare involving his father, a triple-peaked mountain and two great dragons: one red and one black. He awoke screaming to find his room engulfed in flames. His mother heard him and rushed through the fire to help him from his bed. They made it out of the house, but both sustained terrible burns. For several days, both Alta and Lassair were very close to death. Lassair pulled through, but retained significant scarring over his legs, arms, and much of his torso and up one side of his neck. After a couple weeks though, one of Alta’s burns gained an infection that was beyond the skill of the healer to tend. She died with eleven-year-old Lassair at her bedside.

In the weeks that followed, Lassair moved in with neighbors. In the city, people speculated that a lamp must have fallen and started the fire in the child’s room. Lassair had a growing dread though, because since the night of the fire, he had been continuously experiencing a strange heat and a pressure which seemed to permeate his whole body. He contained this pressure by force of will until, to test his half-baked theory, he went alone to the river and eased his control. His hands became wreathed in flames, but these flames did not burn him. Awestruck, he made a casting motion, threw the fire, and ignited a small shrub. He could feel the warmth with his mind, and the fire responded to his thought. He increased its size then decreased it drastically. He changed its color from red to purple to blue to green, and then extinguished with the flicker of a thought. The awful possibility then struck him, seemingly confirmed in the manifestation of his preternatural abilities, and he wept for his mother. He asked the neighbors who had extinguished the fire and saved half his family’s house about the cause of the blaze, and they confirmed that the shards of a lamp had been found on the floor next to the boy’s charred nightstand. He would never be certain though.

Lassair eventually became accustomed to the fire inside him, but would soon again be thrown into confusion. His scar tissue eventually began to molt away, revealing sheens of red scales which called immediately to mind the red dragon in his nightmare. He went to the healer who was at a loss for words. He went to the library, and after days of searching through different manuscripts, he realized that his nightmare wasn’t merely a nightmare. With more questions than he knew that anyone in his town could answer, he set out on his own, stopping first at the partially charred house of his family. In the unburnt study, he found his mother’s mandola perfectly preserved. He took this and several other mementos with his provisions and went east, playing exquisitely in the local inns and taverns along the way which afforded him room and board as long as he stayed to perform. His apparent love of traveling lead to many giving him the name Caillte. Over his years of travel primarily among humans and dwarves, he honed his musical and arcane abilities, always searching for information about his father, dragons, and the three-peaked mountain he had seen in his dream. After many years, that journey brought him here to Port Saint Herve.