Character(s) Gideon's Characters

[Gideon Morrow]

Seraphis Thelorion

Seraphis Thelorion is a newly-oathed Paladin of the Primordial Waters Lyrion and Thalmenos, bathed in their twin waters and sworn to uphold their love and life-giving nature.

His oath commits him:

• To share water’s bounty with all those who would cherish it as life-giving gift
  • Seek those struggling for survival and help them to thrive
  • Beyond all quarrels and politics
  • And teach those who would withhold the gift from others the mercy of water
• To seek balance
  • Water is balance: it can quench thirst and feed life but it can also flood and drown
  • Both a dearth of water and an excess of water are deadly
• To seek purity
  • Both fresh and salt waters nourish and heal in their true forms
  • Brackish and poisoned waters can kill life and must be returned to their true forms
• To defend the freedom to flow
  • Water charts its own path according to its nature, finding ways around obstacles
  • To seek to control or prevent its flow against its life-giving nature, to hoard and oppress leads to changes that harm all creation
  • So it is with all life that grows from water; its freedom must be safeguarded, promoted and accompanied with the wisdom of Lyrion and Thalmenos

Paladin of the Primordial Waters

The unique nature of his oath means that Seraphis is learning to commune with creation, to adapt to situations like water and to trust the skies. He can find and use water in all its forms, but not in ways that go against its healing and life-giving properties. In meditation, he can connect with the local ecology to come to know the flow of life in the area, and recognize death-dealing forces at work. The danger to be avoided is the total chaos of destructive storms and floods, though storms and floods do have their role to play in the balance of creation. This balance must be learned and deepened, it is a hard-earned wisdom.

He has been given the sacred longsword Heart of the Wave, forged with shimmering blue and silver runes that channel the water deities' divine power. Its blade is imbued with water magic, allowing it to unleash waves or torrents of water in combat, symbolizing purity and divine wrath. His fighting style is flowing, as much a question of attacking as retreating, joining the rhythm and flow of his opponent to overcome it. Killing is an absolute last resort; what must be found is the way to teach the opponent compassion and mercy. If killing is unavoidable, a price must be paid.

Seraphis came to the worship of Lyrion and Thalmenos as a result of a near-death experience in the desert, after being left behind by enemies of his family who had kidnapped him. A spring of freshwater miraculously sprang up out of the ground to quench his thirst. He was led by the inspiration of that water to a natural underground temple-cavern, where he was taught the Way of the Primordial Waters. He took the oath in gratitude for his life restored, and now seeks to share the gift he himself received. Since his oath commits him beyond quarrels and politics, he has been exiled from his family and city, who seek only revenge and dominance.

The Primordial Water Gods

Lyrion, the god of freshwaters—springs, rivers, and lakes—embodies the essence of clarity, renewal, and the origins of life. His domain is characterized by streams and subterranean aquifers, which serve as his "veiled temples," places where whispers of secrets and memories flow silently beneath the earth. As the "mind of the river," Lyrion's influence is felt in the gentle ripples, the dreams carried by salmon, and the sacred waters sought by mortals seeking remembrance or inspiration. His waters symbolize thought, reflection, and the hidden depths of consciousness. His realm is deeply connected to the terrestrial and subterranean, where springs emerge as gifts, and miners or travelers pray for his mercy, believing that sudden wells are manifestations of his quiet grace.

His eternal partner Thalmenos is the lord of seas, storms, and the cosmic waters that stir the heavens. His domain encompasses the vast, restless ocean, the clouds that carry rain, and the star-studded sky. His true form extends beyond the earthly seas into the cosmos, with the Milky Way seen as his overturned amphora, spilling luminous waters that ignite and cool suns. Thalmenos's presence is felt through the lightning that bridges sky and sea, symbolizing his pulse and the primordial chaos that birthed the universe. He embodies the vastness and power of water in its most tumultuous and creative forms, nourishing minerals and depths unseen beneath the surface. His origins lie in the dark reservoirs beneath creation, where he and Lyrion first met, their union giving rise to the mist, rain, and life-sustaining waters that define the world.

They were born together from a single, divine drop that split into two—Lyrion emerging from its calm, inward centre and Thalmenos from its stormy rim. Their meeting at the boundary where river meets sea symbolizes harmony and perpetual renewal, with their union renewing the world through storms, rain, and the flow of water. It is believed that each lightning bolt at river mouths signifies their constant renewal and love. Their relationship reflects the balance between calm and chaos—Lyrion’s gentle wisdom and Thalmenos’s cosmic fury—each necessary for the cycle of creation and renewal.

Lyrion’s influence extends to the unseen, profound waters beneath the earth’s surface—caverns, wells, and aquifers—where secrets and dreams are kept alive. These hidden waters symbolize the subconscious, inner thoughts, and the silent mercy of the divine. His presence is invoked by miners and dreamers who seek understanding or inspiration from these depths. Meanwhile, Thalmenos’s cosmic body encompasses the entire universe, with his waters flowing from star to star, shaping galaxies and tides. Lightning, storms, and the movement of celestial waters are expressions of his restless, creative force, which once churned the chaos-ocean into the cosmos.

The relationship between Lyrion and Thalmenos is rooted in unity and love. Their union is cyclical and eternal, symbolized by the stormy wedding that renews the world drop by drop. They are seen as lovers gazing at each other through the earth’s pools and the starry sky, embodying the interconnectedness of thought and cosmos, calm and storm, the terrestrial and the divine. Their story underscores the idea that life and the universe are sustained by this ongoing, sacred dance of waters—calm streams and stormy seas—each giving and renewing life, each representing different aspects of the divine creative force that shapes existence itself.

 

[Gideon Morrow]

Fayamuz Sahrazal

Fayamuz Sahrazal, "Son of the Raven", a muscular, black haired warrior descended from the Kolagh Sahra, sacred bird-founder of the Ghabileh people. He is a sworn protector of his people, and has inherited the powers of his Raven ancestor: manipulating air and fire, prophetic visions, a thirst for justice, and some shapeshifting skills. He is a skilled wielder of the scimitar, and a gifted dancer. His people are a desert tribe with a demanding and harsh sense of right and wrong; a new ruler has come into power, and bent and distorted the traditions of the people to serve his own ends. Fayamuz, as guardian of the ancient wisdom and defender of the people's way of life, resisted these efforts. The ruler thus set about finding a reason to exile Fayamuz, and started a campaign to blacken Fayamuz in the eyes of the tribe, exploiting his sexual orientation and spreading lies and rumours to turn the hearts of the people away from him, even though the sacred texts celebrate love between men. But the experience is rare enough among the people that they have been swayed and Fayamuz unjustly condemned.

He has no resources to either understand what happened (since he knows he has done nothing wrong and he knows his orientation is approved, even celebrated, by the sacred traditions) or resources to fight back against the manipulations of the ruler.

He has a vision of his Raven ancestor showing him the spirit of a serpent biting the ruler and infecting him. The Raven also shows him the chaos that will engulf the whole world if the serpent is not stopped. He must find a way to stop the chaos.

 

[Gideon Morrow]

Caelan Ashcroft

Race: Half-Elf
Occupation: Private Detective, Arcane Crimes
Setting: A rain-slick city where neon signs glow through fog and magic hums in the gutters

Caelan Ashcroft was born between two worlds that never quite wanted him. His mother was elven—old blood, old manners, the kind of lineage that kept records in living trees and measured time in centuries. His father was human—brief, ambitious, already tired of the world by the time Caelan learned to walk. Their love was scandal to one side and a phase to the other, and when it burned out, Caelan was left holding the ash.

He grew up tall, all sharp angles and copper-red hair that marked him as wrong wherever he went. Too rough for the elven enclaves, too strange for human neighborhoods. Elves saw him as unfinished; humans saw him as uncanny. He learned early that belonging was a luxury and silence was a shield.

The city raised him after that.

Caelan found his way into the Arcane Compliance Bureau in his twenties—part cop, part mage-wrangler. Magical crimes were booming: hexed street drugs, glamoured fraud rings, cursed weapons changing hands in back alleys. Full-blooded elves couldn’t stomach the filth, and humans lacked the instincts to survive it. Caelan could do both. He could read a spell’s residue and a liar’s face with equal clarity.

He was good. Too good. Good enough to notice when evidence vanished, when suspects were quietly “released,” when the law bent itself around the powerful. When he started asking the wrong questions, the Bureau repaid him the way institutions always do—quietly and permanently.

Now Caelan works out of a narrow office above a shuttered apothecary, the kind of place clients only find when they’ve run out of better options. He’s a private detective specializing in magical crimes that no one wants officially solved: missing spellcasters, illegal familiars, blood-magic debts that won’t stay buried.

What makes him valuable—and dangerous—is his access to the demi-monde: the morally grey undercity of hedge-mages, curse-brokers, spell-hackers, and fae-touched criminals. They trust him just enough. He speaks their language. He doesn’t pretend to be clean. And he understands the price of magic—because he’s paid it his whole life.

Caelan has a trace of elven magic in his blood—nothing elegant, nothing pure. His primary talent lies in perception: seeing through illusions, sensing emotional residues, catching the echo of a spell long after it’s been cast. It’s subtle, gritty magic, like finding fingerprints in astral dust. The kind that keeps him alive, but never lets him sleep easy.

Beyond his perceptive talents, he’s developed a rare and uncomfortable gift known in the demi-monde as Veilbreaking—the ability to forcibly peel back magical constructs layered over reality. Illusions, glamours, false memories, warded truths—Caelan can strip them down to their raw intent.

It’s not clean magic.

When he Veilbreaks, the world fractures for a heartbeat. Neon lights smear. Voices echo in wrong directions. He tastes iron and ozone. The spellwork he dismantles leaves scars in his senses—sometimes literal, sometimes emotional. He remembers things he shouldn’t: the caster’s fear, their obsession, the moment they decided to cross the line.

He can also bind residual magic to physical objects—bullets that remember the spell they were meant to stop, mirrors that replay the last lie told in front of them, cigarette ash that glows when someone nearby is under a curse. These tricks make him terrifyingly effective in investigations and deeply unwelcome in polite magical society.

Elves call his magic crude. Humans call it unnatural.

He walks the city at night, coat collar turned up against the rain, listening to whispers most people can’t hear. Elves think he’s fallen. Humans think he’s dangerous. Both are right.

And if he sounds tired, it’s because he is.

But when something goes wrong in the cracks between magic and law—when the truth slips into shadow—Caelan Ashcroft is the one they call.

Because he’s already living in the in-between.

 

[Gideon Morrow]

Raffaele della Luna

Lycanthrope | Camorra Enforcer | Suppressed and Severed

Age: 23
Region: Naples, Kingdom of Naples (under Spanish rule)
Occupation: Courier, negotiator, and enforcer for a rising Camorra family
Status: Lycanthropy magically suppressed
Bond: Soul-bonded in childhood to a male witch (bond suppressed in both parties)
Raffaele
Raffaele was born into a rural lycan pack in the hills beyond Naples.

Two things marked him as dangerous from an early age:

1. He began shifting unusually young.
2. He formed a tether with a young male witch from a neighboring coven — far earlier than such bonds typically manifest.

The bond was instinctive, powerful, and mutual.

It manifested in:

• Shared dreams
• Emotional co-regulation
• Heightened calm in each other’s presence
• Fierce attachment beyond ordinary childhood affection

The Alpha saw the pairing not as destiny — but as instability. A wolf who bonds before full training cannot be molded. A wolf tied to witchcraft cannot be controlled.

The decision was made to intervene. Both children were taken. A ritual was performed to:

• Seal Raffaele’s lycanthropy
• Suppress the soul-bond
• Erase conscious memory of each other
• Dull the magical resonance between them

The intention was containment — not mercy. The bond was not destroyed. It was buried. Both boys survived. Neither remembers.

Raffaele was abandoned near the outskirts of Naples and later found by a Camorra family.

The witch was returned to his family with similar memory loss, likely told illness or spiritual instability explained the ritual. Both grew up carrying:

• A sense of absence
• Emotional hollowness without context
• Recurring dreams without faces
• A pull that never resolves

Neither knows what was taken. But both feel the shape of it.

Raised by a rising crime family involved in maritime smuggling, Raffaele’s unnatural instincts quickly distinguished him. He developed into:

• A controlled and efficient enforcer
• A trusted courier
• A calm negotiator
• A man with an unsettling ability to anticipate violence

The family sees him as talented. They do not see the wolf beneath the skin.

Raffaele carries a dual suppression:

Dormant Wolf

• Physical restlessness during full moons
• Heightened aggression during lunar peaks
• Predator instincts surfacing under stress
• Occasional sensory distortions

The wolf is not gone. It is leashed.

Buried Bond

• Persistent loneliness
• Inexplicable emotional distance
• Aversion to deep attachment
• Dream fragments of warmth, ink, and smoke
• A subconscious pull toward certain parts of the city

He feels incomplete — but assumes this is simply how he is made.

 

[Gideon Morrow]

Adric “Relay” Venn

Name: Adric Venn
Street Name: Relay
Role: Relic Tech / Salvage Systems Specialist

Adric is known across scattered settlements as someone who can “make lost technology work again”. He scavenges ruins, rebuilds old devices, and studies the interaction between ancient technology and magical forces that permeate the world.

His nickname “Relay” comes from the way he moves between factions and territories that normally distrust each other. Like the electrical component, he connects systems that aren’t meant to communicate.

Adric is in his late twenties, standing just over six feet tall with a lean, wiry build. He isn’t visibly muscular, but there’s a quiet strength in the way he moves—someone used to climbing through ruins, hauling equipment, and enduring long days in dangerous territory.

His sandy-brown hair is thick and unruly, falling in uneven waves around his face and rarely staying tamed for long. It often looks windblown, as if he’s spent more time in the field than in front of a mirror.

He wears black horn-rimmed glasses, stylish but clearly repaired—one temple wrapped in dark tape where it once broke. The lenses are faintly scratched from years of dust and debris. Behind them, his grey-blue eyes are sharp and observant, often reflecting the glow of the scanner he carries.

Adric’s face is angular with a hint of stubble, giving him the look of someone who forgets to shave while focused on more important problems.

His clothing is practical and worn: a weathered utility jacket, fingerless gloves, and a heavy salvage pack strapped with cables, tools, and salvaged tech. Small devices clipped to the straps glow faintly as he works.


Alignment

Lawful Good — Principled Idealist

Adric is Good because his motivations are rooted in rebuilding rather than exploiting the broken world. He seeks to:

• preserve knowledge
• show compassion to anyone caught between the factions
• help rebuild civilization
• pursue truth rather than propaganda

His work salvaging and studying relics is ultimately driven by the hope that humanity can learn from the past rather than repeat it.

His Lawfulness does not mean obedience to governments, factions, or rigid codes.

Instead it reflects:

• a preference for order over chaos
• belief in structures and systems
• respect for evidence and disciplined thinking

Adric believes civilizations collapse when power outruns understanding.

He is therefore a principled idealist—not naïve about the brutality of the world, but driven by a persistent question: What if the world doesn’t have to stay broken?


Core Traits

Core Drive

Discover the truth behind the collapse so humanity does not repeat it.

The original catastrophe that shattered civilization remains unknown. Both magical and technological factions blame each other.

Adric suspects the truth is more complicated—and that misunderstanding the forces involved may have caused the disaster.


Primary Strength

Systems Intelligence

Adric instinctively sees patterns in complex systems.

He studies:

• damaged technology
• infrastructure of ruined cities
• magical residue and energy patterns
• the interaction between the two

Where others see chaos, Adric sees systems waiting to be understood.

Primary Flaw

Uncompromising Principles

Because of what happened to his father, he refuses to tolerate:

• careless use of power
• scientific shortcuts
• ideological lies about the catastrophe

This can make him:

• stubborn
• frustratingly ethical
• unwilling to sacrifice others for efficiency

In a harsh world that often demands survival over ethics, his commitment to understanding and responsibility can appear dangerously idealistic.

Fear / Wound

After the collapse, Adric’s father helped design a defensive technological system meant to protect a surviving tech enclave from magical attack.

The system malfunctioned.

A catastrophic interaction between magical energy and technology destroyed part of the enclave and killed his father, along with many hundreds in the area surrounding his father’s lab.

Official reports blamed magical interference.

But Adric suspects something deeper: the project may have repeated the same intellectual mistakes that caused the original collapse—power deployed without fully understanding its consequences.

His greatest fear is that humanity will repeat that mistake again.

Contradiction

Adric is a technological specialist who studies magic.

Most technological enclaves treat magic as chaotic and dangerous.

Adric studies it scientifically, convinced that magic and technology may be different expressions of the same underlying phenomenon.

This places him uneasily between both worlds. He is both a loner (and likes it) and a “relay” between the factions.

Behavioral Snapshot

When danger appears: He scans and analyzes first.
When confronted with ideology: He asks for evidence.
When encountering magic: He studies it rather than fearing it.
When pressured morally: He refuses compromise even if it costs him.

Signature Equipment — The Reader

Origin

The Reader began as an old-world diagnostic scanner used by engineers to inspect machinery and environmental conditions.

Adric rebuilt it from salvaged components, modifying it extensively so it could analyze not only technological systems but also magical phenomena. Inside the casing, he has scratched his father’s initials.

It also contains an internal circuit board from his father’s ruined project, a quiet reminder to understand systems before activating them.

Capabilities

The Reader can detect and analyze:

• technological power signatures
• hidden or dormant machinery
• environmental hazards such as radiation or structural instability
• traces of magical energy and arcane interference

The device allows Adric to study the interaction between magic and technology, making it one of the few tools capable of bridging the divide between the two worlds. From the tech perspective, this device is dangerous and illegal.