Han'ya/Hyant

Hyant Lazanir

Concept: Eunuch Poisoner
Motivation: Save the South-East from the disaster he was warned of by the Unconquered Sun
Twilight Caste

Fluff

Hyant Lazanir was born to a merchant family in the Scavenger Lands who had recently bought their way into the kingdom's nobility. As fourth son, he had no real demands placed upon him and no responsibility. While he was not frail or weak, he did not enjoy running amok with his younger siblings and rambunctious older brother. Instead he devoted himself to study, devouring all the books he could acquire. He gained some knowledge of thaumaturgy and the secrets of Ages past, and was well on his way to becoming a respected scholar at the tender age of 14. One week after his birthday, a horde of invaders from a neighboring kingdom took the city by storm, put it to the torch, and relegated its citizens to slavery or worse. He was taken to Aduga, the land of the conquerers, and put up for auction. A noble of that land, recognizing his intellect and the slabs of muscle concealed by a layer of fat, purchased him. He castrated him and then assigned him as the attendant of his youngest concubine. Hyant suffered indignities and understandable frustration for the next ten years of his life, but gained an understanding of the politics and culture of his new homeland, as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of and skill with torture and poisons, large industries in swampy, treacherous Aduga. In his eleventh year, he was freed and asked to stay on as a paid employee. He consented, and things continued largely as they had been. In his twelfth year in Aduga, the wheel of karma finally completed its cycle, and the nation of Kasigash, with its ruling family of Dragon-Bloods, conquered Ashuga and brutally slaughtered the decadent, conniving nobility of that land. Lazanir fled with two of the maids and his mistress' infant son, escaping the conquering army. He fled as far as he could with the resources the party could muster, and then settled down in a large city several kingdoms away from all the fuss. He started business as an apothecary, employing the two former maids as his assistants and training the young boy as his protege in the alchemical arts. In the second year of his business, an epidemic of cholera carried off one of the maids. He hired another girl to replace her, and that began a period of hiring many aids, servants, and hangers-on. After six more years in his third home, he was respected across the district for his skills as an alchemist, and within certain rarefied circles for his other, less socially acceptable talents.

In the month of Resplendent Earth, he Exalted. The Sun spoke to him and told him that a great danger was coming to the East, and the only hopes lay in the White Ziggurat and the Serrated Iron Palace, and at the bottom of Gesief's Pride. No explanation was given what these three things were.

After this understandably life-changing event, Hyant Lazanir left the management of his business to his several apprentices, and began to devote himself to research with a fervor that surpassed that of his youth. After much searching, he learned that the White Ziggurat was the tomb of a First-Age Anathema. He guessed that the other two mentioned things might also be tombs, and decided to make it his mission to find them. He took a corps of servants and attendants with him, and agreed to sell several works he had penned on poisons and potions to the Guild in exchange for a substantial amount of venture capital, one-sixth of which he invested in his apothecariat, one-third of which he invested in diverse other business interests, and the remaining half he used to fund a long-term expedition to the South-East to search for the three locales mentioned in his vision.