Vervain/Adan

Adan

Notes

Adan is something of a major NPC, and became so entirely accidentally. Ever had one of those moments when your players pull the random NPC you didn't even have a name for out of the background and decide he's important and all that? Yeah. He was in my notes as "the fopp with no name", which is a reference to Neverwhere and very little to do with his actual character, aside from the fact that he did not, in fact, have a name at the time. He was subsequently dubbed "cute angsty guy" by one (female) player, who still regards him as her pet NPC.

The story goes like this: a rather foolish Dragon-Blood lady learns the possible location of an Anathema and decides, for a variety of reasons (none of them very good) to investigate it. She brings with her a small retinue of somewhat skilled fighters and spies, including one disgraced member of house Tepet, a strong half-caste who had nonetheless failed to exalt by the age of 19, named Tepet Adan. Tepet Adan was somewhat dissatisfied with most aspects of his life, and also something of a heretic, although he managed to keep this very quiet and put on quite a good front of belief in immaculate teachings. Tepet Adan, seeking to improve his standing with his family in general and, more specifically, the foolish lady in question (who happened to be a relative, and not one he was fond of in the slightest, but one who might have bought him back into better graces with his mother), did whatever he was asked to by his house. In this case, he was asked to spy, and to report back, and not to engage the Anathema. Unfortunately, the Anathema (known to those parts of the world she actually talked to as Sybil) chose to make contact with him. She had no idea he was intended to be spying on her, being quite straightforward and simply thinking he was attractive; and from here, the tale unfolds, including a lot of suspicion on all sides, Sybil accidentally prophesying Adan's doom in the Realm (nothing like a good unbidden oracle to start off a happy relationship), a lot of killing, and Adan going renegade. He is, in fact, still with the party, having realised shortly afterwards that he had nowhere else to go. Heretical though his views may be, hanging out with a bunch of Solar Anathema and some really big lizards is all a bit weird and scary to him, but he seems to make it through, and has yet to see any real evidence in favour of the Anathema being pure evil...

I have no idea how all this happened. Honestly. Oh wait, no... I do. Sybil's player scored 10 successes or so on her roll to seduce Adan and make him sympathetic to her plight. Hmph. He was [i]meant[/i] to betray her even if she did encounter and talk to him.

He has since exalted as a full-fledged Air aspect, in the slightly dramatic circumstance of being thrown off a Really Big Cliff.

Appearance

Adan is tall, dark and handsome. So sue me. He was designed to be attractive to Sybil, it seems I just overdid it a little, from the overall results of his introduction. I copy-paste, here, the description of him in the write-up of a session; this being the third time Sybil encounters Adan, but the first time he is actually described. I was kind to the player, in my write-up; I even left out most of the drooling. Apologies for the poor quality of the writing...

So focused did she become on her dance that she could not have pinpointed the time at which her mysterious man arrived; she simply became aware, some time as the afternoon wore on, that he was there. He was standing at the back of the crowd, dark hair falling across his eyes, a thoughtful expression on his face as he regarded her; and as she became aware of him, she almost faltered in her dance. She was glad the mask she wore shaded her eyes, or she was sure he would have realised she was staring. He was worth staring at, that was for sure. A tall figure, his fine features etched with traces of some private worry which did nothing to lessen their appeal, his dark hair pulled back into a braid, save for those strands which seemed to fall across his face persistently, though he tried to pull them aside. He stood in an easy sort of way, though much of him was obscured by the small crowd, and his clothes seemed simple; loose-fitting white shirt and tight-fitting dark trousers, under leather boots. The more she looked, though, the more she was certain he was of higher birth than he might seem; even she could tell that the clothes were finely-made, and as he moved his arm to try and tame his hair she caught a glimpse of an ornate sword hanging at his belt, the hilt finely decorated with what might have been blue jade. That, she thought, would have made him the chosen of one of the Dragons, but he didn't look it. His skin might be pale but she had seen the ones who carried blue jade and they were paler, their skin sometimes blue-tinted, and there were always small winds around them. She was sure he was just a mortal, then, but why did he have such a weapon? The mysterious man, indeed.

Future Plans

Yes, this IS where you stop reading if you're a player. Thank you.

Adan is set to stay around for a good long while. However, there's some interesting tension arrising between him and the Dragon Kings of Rathess, who have absolutely no love for Dragon-Blooded, and only tolerate his presence because Sybil has an agreement with them whereby she takes responsibility for him (although the idea of Sybil being the responsible one out of this pair is quite patently ludicrous). Things are, nonetheless, set to come to a possibly violent head when other Dragon-Blooded arrive in Rathess... one of which, coincidentally, will be family. Ok, ok, I have a taste for the overly dramatic confrontations.