Fanerel Zesmir

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**Fanerel Zesmir** is a magus from Wenderia. She began her life as a semi-troubled youth, whose circumstances made her a supposed danger to the ruling body of the world. When she became an adventurer, she changed her name and hid those very circumstances from everyone around her.

## Appearance

Standing at 5'7, Fan is a little on the tall side for a lady. She's relatively attractive, with smooth, olive-tone skin, long purple-black hair, and red eyes. She looks a bit young for her age, but she carries herself with the full wisdom of her learnings, head held high and posture straight. She has three tattoos on her face, as well as one on each arm, each with its own meaning and all of which are vibrant red. Typically, she's seen wearing a dancer-like outfit - a strapless midriff-baring top and loose, broad-legged pants.

## Personality

Fan is a complex individual. At her core, she's never really grown out of being a child, wanting for acceptance and understanding. Because of her mixed sex, what little acceptance she had has always been ripped violently out of her hands, so she layered hatred and envy over that want, then layered cynical sarcasm over that.

Her cynicism can make her somewhat unapproachable - Fan speaks frankly, even if she often speaks in riddles and oddities. She's typically truthful about things not relating to her - a fact that hasn't really won her any favours in making friends. Among the only things people even find tolerable about her, in fact, is her loyalty - if she's given a promise, she WILL keep that promise. If you've earned her trust or admiration, or if you're an orphan or lose family, Fan almost can't help but step in for your benefit. In those moments, her almost sisterly nature surfaces, and she'll do whatever she can to calm or protect the object of her nature.

Outwardly, Fan projects herself as a strong, confident woman with a no-nonsense attitude and a distaste for excess. Her envy and hatred for those with families, with friends they can rely on, stays more or less hidden, though her words hint at her self-hatred in some measure. People also call her reserved fairly often – when she perceives there’s nothing to say, she usually keeps to silence. She refuses to let people close because every time she has, they’ve ended up dead or hateful of her.

Her temper runs hot, though, and she’s not so much as slightly against inciting a fight. It doesn’t even take much – Fan would much rather act in violence than have to deal with talking. Talking, in her experience, unearths too many issues. Talking is what’s gotten her friends and family killed, in the past. Better, then, to settle disputes with steel, and mark ‘friendships’ with food or drink. Drink, too, has the added benefit of making people look less closely at her and the flaws in her armour. If you really make her angry, though, she is ruthless and unforgiving. The world showed little compassion to her, and so she finds it difficult at best to show compassion to the sort of people who would further that harmful idealism that some are more “righteous” or “worthy” than others.

Books are another safe-haven for the magus. In books, she can immerse herself in learning and improving, the way she can with exercise and routine for physical pursuits. No matter how dry and awkward the text, Fan usually has at least a couple on her person, and she’s more than willing to impart wisdom as she can, if someone’s actually interested in what she has to say. Her worldly experience is, after all, something to be envied – if one doesn’t look so far as to figure out just why she has so much experience just surviving.
If you can make it beneath all the walls and blocks Fan’s put up in her life, somehow slipping past every fear and worry and into her circle of true trust, she’s a fairly normal girl. She loves cute things, from animals to charms to oddities. These things remind her of the good that remains in the world, and provide a stable center for her to keep pushing to keep her own darkness at bay.

## History

### Fractured Formations

One of the most prominent facts of life in Wenderia is that it is ruled almost invariably by the church. According to that very church, a thorned birthmark on someone's left hip is "the mark of a demon's presence" and those possessing such should be killed in order to avoid any possession or danger to the status quo.

Born with such a body, Fanerel was deemed cursed from the very moment of her birth. Though she has no particular memory of the event, her mother sought to end her life in accordance with the church's mandates. She was stopped by Fan's father, who stole away with her and left her on the doorstep of the man and woman who would raise her for the next twelve years.

### Endless Endearment and Evolution

Eilavur and Varilaan christened her 'Revilaan', a Pazuzuan name that translates to "Heaven's Radiance," and raised her in celebration of her body. Those first handful of years are the only real positive memories she has - they nurtured her curious nature and hunger for knowledge, all while teaching her to be careful because of her body, because people didn't understand it. They refused to allow her to feel shame for what she was, persisting in their ideals that the right one for her was out there, the person who would understand her no matter what she was.

The desert tribes of Pazuzu were known for their grappling and swordfighting (a style christened "XivKur", Pazuzuan for "graceful dance"), and several had branched out into knowledge of the arcane, whether as wizards or magi (or, extremely rarely, clerics or paladins) - Eilavur was one such magus, though she was a much different sort than Fan would eventually become. Both of her adoptive parents supported the young girl when she requested to learn XivKur, and from a handful of years on, she began mastering fighting. By the time her tenth birthday came, Revilaan earned her first tattoo - the first of four stripe markings that signified one who had mastered each of the four unique styles of Pazuzuan fighting - for mastering the first part of XivKur.

Just fighting didn't feel like enough, though, and soon Revilaan was asking Eilavur about magic. Though willing to explain it to her, the woman assured her that she was much too young to start really learning how to *perform* it. Revilaan accepted this, assuming that her abilities as a fighter would be enough to help her protect her family. Besides, she reasoned, both of them were strong in their own rights. Surely, she thought, no one could overcome them both.

### Tacit Tragedies

Nothing is so simple, of course. Years before, in order to lessen the wrath of the church, Revilaan's birth mother had gone to the church to explain what had happened. Her father hadn't returned, knowing he would be killed if he did - but that wasn't as important to the church as finding the child herself. A marked child living unhindered within society was a dangerous thing, as it painted the church as though it were lax in its own teachings.

They had dispatched their own sect of 'hunters', naturally, but it was well-known that radical groups known as "heretic hunters" existed throughout the land. While not specifically sanctioned by the church, these hunters piggy-backed off of the strict laws governing heretics (most of which boiled down to the idea that supposed heretics and those who willingly aided them were trash with no rights - to life or anything else) and brought said individuals to justice. It didn't matter to the church who *killed* a heretic or how (excepting their moderate internal stance, which governed the actions of their hunter sects), so long as they brought proof that the deed was done. Long after the church deemed her too troublesome to continue to try to track, the heretic hunters continued their work.

A group of hunters, the names of which Fan would never learn, caught wind of her location. Through several Pazuzuan rituals, her parents were similarly alerted to the coming danger. It was at the most important juncture when they sent Revilaan out to collect fruits and vegetables from a nearby oasis. By the time she returned, the fight between her parents and the hunters was already over - long over, by the corpses left behind. Corpses and a simple message: 'HERETIC' was written along the wall.

With no clues who had done this (aside from the presumption that they were somehow affiliated with the church), Revilaan did what she could to move forward. At twelve, she took a new name, casting off the old so that the gentle girl she had been could rest. Thus, Fanerel Zesmir was born.

### Reluctant Relationships

For three months, Fan traveled the Pazuzuan desert, trying to find a place. Embittered by the treatment she had received and in many ways too damaged to give trust, she had no intention of getting close to anyone else. That was dangerous, she decided, for all parties involved. Unfortunately, when you're not getting close to anyone and traveling wholesale, you run out of food eventually. And when that happens, you become too exhausted to fight the next good-natured people who try to help you.

Arenao and Sfrezia were the good-natured people in question - a pair of Pazuzuan scholars who had taken her in with the intent of at least seeing her fed and back to full strength. Despite her best efforts, their friendly treatment wormed its way into Fan's heart, and she reluctantly found herself treating the two like family. The only detail they *weren't* privy to was her mark - largely because she felt that was far too dangerous for them.

Unlike her former family, these two weren't as combat-oriented - though as it turned out, Fan was able to learn the ways of grapplers from them and their friends. Alongside this, Fan made use of the pair's extensive library to learn about magic (something she had begun with Eilavur, and would continue far beyond her home life). It was that dedication that led her to learn about Shadow magic, its draws, and her own affinity to it.

The signs were all clear - in almost every single case, anyone who used excessive amounts of Shadow magic (akin to necromantic magic) would eventually go mad with power lust due to the nature of it. The more she read about it happening, the more she began to fear what she might become if she gave into her growing want to *use* magic.

That fear wasn't her only driving factor, however. Had it been, perhaps Fanerel would never have really picked up magic, could have moved forward with her life without letting its allure in. Some scant few weeks after she began studying, though, the nightmares began.

In them, she would consistently meet up with a man - covered from head to toe in runes, he would watch from a safe enough distance while countless monsters piled up around her. He even went so far as to entice her to use her powers, to unlock them and destroy her enemies. Though his tone was always a little cruel, Fan felt as though she knew him - from where or why, she couldn't say. His words spurred her to action once she woke. In their shadow, she declared that she would control her power, would prove that it could be used for the better.

To that end, she pored over every tome and scroll she could find, searching for links between Shadow magic and *controlling* it. In that search, she came across innumerable mentions of those who had strayed, the same as her earlier research led her to believe. For nearly three years, she studied her arts, perfecting each one in turn. By her fifteenth birthday, she had received the following three markings that defined her as a master of all four Pazuzuan fighting styles.

By sixteen, she had also received the ritual markings on her forehead that defined her not only as a magus, but as a student of Shadow magic. Around that same time, she had the tattoo on her left arm created - a tribal tattoo that signified her as someone who lived, despite all odds. Her magic (and the lingering sense of shadow that came with it) began to be seen as a comfort around this time.

### Permeating Panic

All was well until Fanerel was nearly eighteen - at which point she found herself enamored with a young man. They had been good friends, and it remained so until she confessed - both to her feelings and to her body.

He didn't react well. To this day, she doesn't know if his kindness was an act or if he was just fearful of the church, but he threatened to turn her in. It would be an act that endangered her new family as well, and Fan reacted before she thought hard enough on it. She wouldn't lose more family, she swore to herself - and that voice from her dreams returned. *Use your abilities* - and so she did.

She would regret killing him for the rest of her life, but it also prompted her to decide just how dangerous it was for her to be close to anyone. So long as the church existed, she could never really be free. So long as its doctrines marked her as a heretic, she would keep hurting people.

She decided, then, that she would work to change it. And the best way to do so in her mind? To become part of the very organisation she loathed, to hide within their ranks and tear them apart from the inside. So, she left her home - leaving only a note that said she was going to be going on a journey and she didn't know when she would be back.

### Creating Contingencies

Getting into the church's ranks wasn't difficult. As a capable magus, she proved herself worthy of assisting the church in various tasks, and her personality was seen as somewhat severe, even bitchy. Where it wasn't one of those two, she was dryly, disgustingly sarcastic - both personality traits that kept most people at a distance. Given everything that happened up until this point, Fan was fine with that - she figured she had enough to deal with in her constant nightmares without having to deal with nosy men who thought her too pretty. The higher she climbed in their ranks, the more she was entrusted with - in both responsibility and knowledge.

If she was honest, she might have considered some of the crude-minded, quick-tongued men and women of the church friends if she'd let herself. The person she showed them wasn't her, not fully, but they embraced her sharp tongue and personal strength, both of character and integrity. Sure, she might have thrown more than one of them across the hall when they'd gotten too drunk and made too implicit an advance on her, but she never actually found herself blaming them for it. After a while, she even started to adopt some of their crude humour, keeping people at arm's length with half-biting flirting and no intention of following through.

Within those who fought for the church's causes, she began to learn that most of the people who believed in the teachings had only partial knowledge of much of their doctrines. They were also as individualised as any group - a lot of them didn't really follow the church's ideals fully, though none of them openly opposed it, either.

For a long time, she did odd-jobs with an ever-changing bunch of adventurers, never taking on tasks that were terribly secretive or overly dangerous. The longer she remained employed, the more her hatred for the church began to fade into the background - it was hard to put blame on an entire sect of people when very few of them even really knew the persecution the Elders agreed to.

Her nightmares ebbed considerably during this time, perhaps because she could see the better sides of the church, and she started to think that perhaps just changing things, rather than completely ripping apart the sect from the roots up, would be good enough.

### Following Foci

Shortly after she turned twenty-four, Fanerel met the group that would be her allies for some time thereafter. They were pulled together as a hodge-podge group of adventurers in order to track down an important magical item, and the truce they had was uneasy at first. They were, after all, very different personalities brought together more for their skills than those personalities themselves.

In the first few days of their journey, Fanerel became acquainted with the intelligent blade who would be her partner for the rest of her life. Lord Steven Jonathan was a peculiar sword indeed, prone to stating memorable turns of phrase (usually incorrectly) and being jealous of any other sword in Fan's possession. As it turned out, owning intelligent blades was also frowned upon by the church, but somehow, they managed to quell the information.

As they traveled the world, they seemed to be led around by the nose. The thieves who had taken the foci they were to bring back had begun in a small town, making its denizens appear as undead in the graveyard using mirror magic. Once broken, they returned them quickly to their homes and went into the graveyard's tower after the thieves, only to lose them outside.

With no clues to go on, they had to gather information over the next night or two, finding that the thieves (who were thankfully as colourful as they always had been, being a high-profile pair) had been seen going through what was known as the Ice Spider Caves. They'd taken a hostage with them, a young woman, and so the group set out to help save her.

The night before they left, though, Fan found herself restless and spent time wandering the town - where she was approached by one of her colleagues. He was a fighter and around her age, and expressed his worry for her given her aloof nature - though they had largely gotten along due to his naturally flirtatious nature, he did the one thing Fan assumed people didn't bother to do: looked beneath the scathing remarks and casual flirtations to the heart of her sadness. Even though she denied it and pushed him away, he persisted, leaving her a small wooden bear charm he'd carved along the way here.

### Small Sacrifices

The cave lived up to its name, and the group had to proceed carefully through its depths to avoid many attacks by Ice Spiders - so named because the cave they lived in was steeped in ice energy, and that had given the spiders a bite that could literally freeze a victim from the inside out. Alongside that, the inside was largely frozen for obvious reason.

They were doing fine until they got near the heart of the place and met up with the thieves themselves. While their liaison had explained that the foci they were searching for was very powerful and allowed its users a good amount of control over their surroundings, this was the first time they saw its effects first-hand. With it, the thieves took control of all of the spiders in the heart of the area and turned them against the party. During the commotion, they took their hostage a little further in, left her there, and fled alone.

If not for the fact that the foci's control ended as soon as the two thieves were far enough away, they might all have perished at that time. Instead, they managed to subdue the spiders - whose interests turned from attacking the group to protecting their Queen. Since the group wasn't interested in her, they managed to escape. That turned out to be a very good thing, as when they reached the outer edge of the cave's far exit, their marksman - a young man by the name of Kei - finally succumbed to the freezing effects of the small bite he'd taken. They would have to act quickly, else he would die from the bite. Luck was on their side in the form of the thieves' hostage - the small town's innkeep, who was also knowledgeable in herbs that could slow the spread of the spiders' poison. Healing it would require a specific ritual, which could thankfully be performed at the next town.

### Bewitching Benefactors

As if to laugh in their faces, there was a specific material required for the ritual to save Kei. Despite the fact that they'd not gotten along very well, Fan was among the first to be ready to go. It was the first of many instances where she showed her true colours - in working with this group, she found herself drawing closer to them even while she tried to keep them at arm's length.

It should have been a terribly difficult task, but the Gods seemed to be on their side (even if Fan herself would never admit to such a thing). Such little intercessions, if Fan had looked on them and taken the time to consider them, would likely have been able to change much of her thoughts involving the Gods themselves even if they couldn't change her anger at the church's doctrines.

Anytime they lost the trail of the thieves, it seemed something or some*one* would mysteriously arrive to point them in roughly the right direction. It also seemed that they showed up more commonly when Fanerel herself was at her wits' end in trying to help one of her allies - her friends.

They traveled this way for two years, and the longer she went, the more she started to forget her hatred. The closer she grew to her allies, the more she discarded her sharp outer shell, becoming more tolerable (if not any more gentle - she still snapped scathing remarks when someone did something stupid). Her feelings for their fighter only grew with time too, a crush she failed to act on both out of fear and out of guilt.

### Lurking Lowlifes

Nothing could last forever, though. Near the end of their journey, Fanerel got separated from the rest of her allies thanks to a careful scheme by the very same radical group that had murdered her first foster parents. They managed to incapacitate her, and when she awoke, she found herself in the desert and face to face with her *new* foster parents.

Sfrezia and Arenao were both informed that they had been harbouring a heretic, and when it became clear that they were shocked by the information, the two were given a choice. If they repented, then Fan's life would be the only one forfeit that day. Never in her entire life had she wished someone would cast her off, certainly not the way she wished it now.

They didn't. In fact, they downright refused to belittle Fan at all, and the radical group wasted little time in murdering them in front of her.

Her memory of the event comes in bits and pieces. A flash of red, a flash of black, the bodies falling. Pain so great that it felt like it might consume her. And then, darkness. Pure, enveloping, silent and black and *comfortable*. It was in the aftermath - when her vision returned and she looked over the bodies of half a dozen men and women strewn about in ragged pieces - that she realised she'd lost herself to her own darkness. Her shadow magic, her affinity, was starting to engulf her, and she could feel it eating away at her conscience. Where she once wanted nothing more than to prove shadow magic could be used responsibly, she now wanted revenge for everything - even if it cost her her life. As she cradled the bodies of her own foster family, she vowed to get just that.

With the destruction she'd caused, it didn't matter that these were clearly not church-sanctioned men and women. In those moments, it seemed she'd completely forgotten the acceptance she'd started to take for the church. Whether her emotions and self-hatred would come to a head in a manner she could control or if things would spiral out of control would depend on the reactions of her former party members - and her own presumptions, at that.

## Branch: Bad End

### Collecting Colleagues

Fanerel wanted to speak with her former allies one last time, though it would be a slow search to find them. In the meantime she settled on what she wanted to do - allying herself with other adventurers. They helped her further her skills and magical repertoire, and eventually she did finally meet up with the others. Worn out from the grip of her own darkness, she spoke with them about what her intentions were - and she offered up her life to them. It was, after all, the only way she knew would stop her from succumbing to the instinct she now fought daily (compounded by the unending nightmares and the ever more insistent, almost familial intervention of that mystery man).

They refused, insisting that they believed her to still be savable. Fan, in turn, informed them that when next they met, they would be enemies if the group was still working with the church. That they would have to kill her eventually, or be killed themselves. With her piece stated, she turned away from them and swallowed down the grief and affection she'd never truly allowed herself to feel in relation to them.

With her former allies put behind her, Fan started to meet with misfits and cast-outs - people the church had deemed irredeemable based not on their actions but on their births. She gathered them together and, despite her lacking social skills, ended up their de facto leader and the face of a revolution just starting to take its first steps. Deferring to those more suited to strategy, she simply implemented the plans that would carry them forward to stop the church, to put an end to the group that discriminated against so many.

The plots themselves took two years to reach their peak, and at twenty-six with a terrifying repertoire of magic, Fanerel found herself somewhat reluctant to continue with the plan. She still wanted revenge, but something nagged at her.

### Rotting Reflections

It wouldn't be clear what that 'something' was until she actually went through with her plan. She gave up much of her body in order to turn it into a magical foci, giving the Shadow runes a place to rest on her skin. It gave her immense power in exchange for making it much, much more difficult to control her darkness. In moving forward, she met with her former allies - as enemies now, as she had warned them. They fought, and when it came down to it, Fanerel 'won'.

Some part of her, even as she dealt each final blow, knew that they had *allowed* her to win. They hadn't fought with their full strength, believing in her until the end of their lives. She hated herself for choosing her task over the people she cared for, but she also couldn't reconcile a reason to stop. Or at least, she couldn't allow herself to.

After her allies, the church felt like a joke. Even its heroes seemed lackluster, unable to truly hold a candle to her abilities when she used the entirety of her Shadow magic. When bodies fell, she raised them to continue to fight, regardless to whom they had belonged in their lives.

In the end, she left the church in shambles. In the end, her life became all but forfeit - without a foe to keep her in check, her own darkness began to eat at her more. On top of that, the identity of the man who plagued her dreams for years became clear.

More precisely, he introduced himself to her. In defeating the church, what reason he had for hiding his identity was gone. Aiden Severo was a name known to history only as the supposed orchestration of devils during the Second Heathen War, and even then he was said to be a machination - not a true person, and certainly not someone who could have family. Even so, Fanerel had no question in believing him even when he informed her that they were directly related - that she herself was his granddaughter.

It was hard *not* to accept, given she had found ways to turn herself into what was effectively a magical foci, and as she stood before him again, she realised that the markings she held mimicked his almost exactly. The fact wasn't comforting, as it made things start to make more sense - the reason for the dreams, for example.

Aiden was happy to confirm those facts, as well. The dreams were meant to push her toward what he knew she could become, and according to him they were his only method of communicating with her in a way that wouldn't attract attention. Whether that was true or not, Fanerel found herself with more knowledge but no more direction. Without the hatred she carried for the church to guide her actions, she began wandering again.

To this point, she's remained a wanderer, occasionally working with others but never spending enough time around them to get close. After all, she now has confirmation from every turn in her life that her actions invariably cause the death of those close to her, intentional or not. She doesn't care for a fourth repeat of that.