Lord Asriel Darkwater
There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea shining in his head frightened people and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
Description: Asriel Darkwater is lean in the way of a man who will occasionally forget or forego a meal, but his height chases away any notion that he's truly inappreciable of build. The unruly hair which crowns his head is sometimes tamed, and though he's come into his middling years it is as night-dark as it was in his youth even if some strands of moonsilver have gathered near each temple. Age has stripped some of the polish from him that many might have come to expect from a member of the Peerage, but it is an age he has settled into quite admirably and it has done little to dull the fierce intelligence that shines within his brown-black eyes nor the often tempestuous looks he no doubt learned from the very weather itself around his ancestral home of Darkwater Watch.
Personality: Oh, Asriel - brooding, brilliant, bone-tired Asriel. He isn't without his eccentricites, but whatever charm was lacking in the former Count Draevor Darkwater wasn't lost from the family line entirely. As it would turn out, it just blew into the sails of his brother instead. Which is to say Asriel Darkwater is terribly charming, or at least he can be when he wishes it. That charm is even sometimes enough to smooth over whatever strange glances he's prone to collecting when a wild idea finds itself entangled in the shroud of his frenetic, often unyielding curiosity. He can be generous or selfish by turns, caring or cold-shouldered, quite compendious or loquaciously brimming. The only constant is that he's rarely ever lost between them, showcasing himself as a creature of extremes.
Background: Asriel Darkwater has ever been a notoriously private person. Still, not every facet of his long life has been masked by the sort of mystery he so often cultivates around himself. What is it they say in the law courts of Arx? Just the facts, please. Asriel was known to be a precocious child, nobody would argue that. A noble's education and a hunger for knowledge would find him growing into a young lord of House Darkwater with a brilliant mind and a bright - if sometimes questionable - personality full of idiosyncracies. Yet no amount of radiance would help him to escape from beneath the long shadow cast by his brother Draevor, a man who better espoused the qualities a Darkwater was thought to need at the time.
It could be fair to think that because of this, a younger Asriel Darkwater might have already harbored a healthy resentment for his more brutal brother even before whatever passed between them that would cause an informal falling out. In the years leading up to Draevor's death, a distance grew between Asriel and his family at Darkwater Watch. Where once he had put his keen mind to use handling finances and other important details for his House, more and more he failed to come home altogether. Every stretch of absence was longer than the last, until one day he disappeared entirely. Before he seemingly fell off the face of Arvum, Asriel had been pursuing the life of an antiquarian.
Though the return of the Darkwater lord wasn't inevitable, it wasn't an accident either. It was by the hand and efforts of the newly-elevated Countess Carita that the letter which would finally convince Asriel to come home would reach him. While he isn't always quite the outgoing socialite he once was, his philanthropic nature and driven curiosity has remained intact through whatever ravages time has brought down upon him. Many of the Peerage expected that perhaps Draevor's brother might pose a challenge to the latest Countess to grace the head of House Darkwater's table, being the neo noble that she is, but to their surprise his return has found him steadfastly vocal about his support for her.
| Name | Summary |
| Athaur | A Thraxian book collector. I didn't think there was such a thing! Seems an interesting sort of fellow though. |
| Harlex | Looks like he belongs on some vista, watching the waves crash. Sharp as a shark tooth, from what I can tell. |
| Ronja | It's always a little odd when someone asks for a tale because they think they've heard of you before. I want to trust him, but I also don't want to set myself up to admitting to some nautical indiscretion some weird noble has a grudge about from years ago, or something like that. |