Character 82 - Torin (Altorielal) Illiskata

Illustration by Luis Perez

When I was looking at the stats for this week’s random rolls all I could see was an elf that didn’t care. What little is known about the Deamon Harbinger Ahriman show that he is a true nihilist and so are his followers. The character’s lack of charisma and high intelligence I saw as being cold and calculating. His lack of wisdom comes off to me as not having an emotional understanding of anything. So I went looking for some classes to reflect that.

Since he was going to be thoroughly evil but curious, when I saw the interrogator archetype for alchemist I knew that was where I wanted to go. But then I saw the empiricist archetype for investigator and I knew I wanted that too. Lastly I took a look at the vivisectionist archetype for alchemist and I knew exactly where I was going with the character. However, because I needed to multiclass to get the full scope, this character is not actually written up as first level, as my usual characters are.

Torin (Altorielal) Illiskatal

Torin was born within the confines of the elvish homeland of Kyonin. His parents were servants to one of the noble families that lived in this small enclave. As a child his life was not easy, the children of the noble families would pick on him relentlessly. They would do so, not only because he was beneath them in station, but because he was odd.

The young elf didn’t understand people; he would trap himself with whatever books he could sneak out of the noble family’s library. He found interest in the strangest things, dead things. He was constantly bringing small creatures he found to show his parents, although he never understood why they would look at him so strangely when he did.

No one applauded his interest in the internal workings of things. Nobody wanted to know why things worked the way he did. And so as he grew older he learned to stop sharing with people, even his own parents and sisters. Even though he stopped being openly so weird he still met with malice from the other elven children around him.

Torin’s curiosity turned from morbid to downright violent. There were times when he couldn’t find corpses to poke and prod and so he would make his own. People’s pets began to go missing but, despite suspicions, no one could place these deeds on Torin. Although he hadn’t learned to understand why people found his musings creepy he recognized that they did and made sure to hide his curiosity and his misdeeds from them.

Eventually Torin would head off to school like all elves. Even the lower class children attended classes. Torin was an excellent student. He voraciously devoured any forms of knowledge and was especially keen on those things having to do with anatomy. He was top of his classes which saw even more derision from his peers, many of whom felt their status meant they should be better at everything than him.

During his time in school he had one rival, only one person who was as smart – and occasionally smarter – than he was. The two were always in competition, but the race for academic supremacy spurred them both to greater heights. Torin’s heights also included becoming more vicious and spiteful.

Illustration by Luis Perez

One of the things Thorin had become good at was convincing others to do things. He wouldn’t appeal to their emotions, he would assault them with unerring logic. In many cases he could convince others that the ideas he was pushing weren’t his but the logical next steps in their own thinking. During one particularly tough assignment he wanted to beat his rival so badly that he convinced one of the local pixies to destroy the student’s project. Driven by his own malice he turned a creature of almost pure good into an instrument of chaos.

Thorin’s misdeeds would eventually catch up to him as he took further and further risks to slake his curiosity. Although he had yet to make his first kill he came across a body. A man died in the woods, by the look of it from an animal attack. Thorin took the corpse back to his secret ‘workshop’ and began the arduous task of taking it apart bit by bit. But the experimenter’s lair was not so secret –at least not to his rival – and the guard came upon him up to his elbows in blood and gore.

After being found out he became a pariah, an outcast. Thornin fled Kyonin over the border into the human occupied land of Galt. The constant revolution usually saw people fleeing from Galt and not to it, but even the nation of anarchists has a place where criminals and dissidents go to lay low. Thorin made his home in the town of Woodsedge at the northern tip of the Verduran Forest.

Because Woodsedge was a place where everyone kept to themselves and people came and went as they pleased, Thorin found it the perfect place to continue his studies. He had long since exhausted most of the study he could do on the dead and sought to test the limits of the living. His intellectual endeavors in Kyonin had included some alchemical study during his academic tenure but he began to explore that in earnest in Woodsedge.

The general temperament of the populace of Woodedge meant it was also a place that organizations went to recruit those with special talents; talents that may be looked upon unfavorably by the populace at large. Thorin was scouted and approached by not one but two such groups who believed they could make use of his unique skills.

The group known as the Grey Gardeners had – through informants – come to understand that Thorin had developed new techniques for interrogation. They approached the elf to join their ranks and help them root out those who would bring dissent to the land of Galt. They did so by first attempting to threaten Thorin, but his emotionless nature was unmoved by their posturing. He was, however, interested when they offered him an endless supply of test subjects.

The second group that sought him out was a small cult of a mostly unknown Daemonic being. The Usij, although mostly active in Katapesh, had come to Galt hoping to help the nation, which is hanging on the brink of destruction by a thread, sever that last connection to civilization. Promises of revenge against the elves of Kyonin and a link to the resources he needed to further his alchemical studies, without hunting down the rare ingredients himself, saw Thorin dedicate himself to this religious organization.

Thorin has come a long way from being derided by his peers. He now has the backing of two organizations and all the tools he needs to continue his experiments. How long he will remain among the Grey Gardeners or the Usij is unknown, but he knows that as long as they need him they will be of some use.

How did your elf’s background manifest? What class did he choose? When did he begin his worship of Ahriman? How did he corrupt a non-humanoid monster? And what did he have it do? Why was he bullied?

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The character illustration was created by the fine artist Luis Perez. You can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and on Instagram at luisperezart.