Introducing Daevion. Born under the stars of the Ritual and therefore blessed by the goddess Mara, he belongs to the ancient race of the Altmer, the cultured, tall, magicka-gifted elves from Summerset Island.
Unlike many of his kin, he doesn’t think of himself as belonging to a superior race; while he’s certainly proud of his cultural heritage, he’s also well aware that it was the same advanced society that sent his mother in permanent exile on the mainland for being the offspring of an illegitimate union of her Altmer mother with an Imperial man, thus making her of impure blood and unworthy of living on Summerset. Daevion himself was born and spent his childhood in the Imperial City, considers himself like a citizen of the Empire to all extents, and believes that his kinsmen should begin to seriously rethink their core values instead of acting all haughty and collecting distrust from the other races.
Like all elves, Altmer can live longer than a thousand years. Daevion is 257 years old, which would make him about 26 in human years. He is always seen wearing a red vest which he took care in enchanting so to grant him greater magicka resources; one might say it’s his signature item of clothing, and it comes as no surprise that people in Cyrodiil have come to refer to him as “the crimson mage”.
Calm and of pleasant disposition, Daevion is well loved among gents and rulers alike; as an adventurer he’s always the first to lend a hand with dangerous jobs, and he has fame of being selfless and heroic. Even though he genuinely likes to be helpful, it must also be noted that he genuinely likes to go on adventure and get his hands on a good loot, so those claims are not completely true. Anyway, he is a sworn enemy of everything evil and believes in purging the world from wretchedness. He is especially concerned with freeing the world from the ones who live off harming other people, since they’re a hazard to society; he has no pity for bandits, necromancers, assassins and vampires.
Apart from these strong opinions, he tends to be a mild and forgiving person. He is cheerful in a quiet way - he greets people with a smile, but is never overly jumpy. It’s funny, cause even though he dislikes his stuck-up kinsmen, he can’t help but keep a certain Altmer poise.
Very spiritual, Daevion worships the Aedra in the Altmeri ways; most of his worship goes to Mara, who’s been protecting him since his birth, but he’s also devout to Zenithar, Kynareth, and - of course - Auriel. He also worships some Daedra princes; he is especially fascinated with the powers of Vaermina and Sheogorath. He thinks that sanity and madness are actually often overlapping, and he wishes to know more about this subtle balance. One of Daevion’s strongest motives is his unquenchable thirst for knowledge; this has often led him to follow the orders of some deities to better understand their sphere of influence and position in this world. However, he will not just blindly go on any quest: if there is evil, there must be deities connected to evilness, and he’s not going against his principles in exchange for knowledge which is best not to have.
In spite of being so intelligent and wise, Daevion is also very possessive as for what concerns his belongings and always looking for more to own and more money to make. He says that he likes to surround himself with beautiful things; the obvious truth is that he’s just plain avid. Also, because of his ability to talk himself out of any situation, he’s considered by some to have a manipulative streak - which is not entirely wrong, even though this is something that’s probably beyond his control.
Most Altmer are powerful sorcerers, and Daevion is no exception. He is especially skilled in bending reality with Alteration magic; he can open chests without even touching the lock, make heavy equipment weigh less than a feather, and transform his body at will so he can run across lakes or breathe underwater. His other specialty is using elemental Destruction magic to scorch, freeze, or electrocute his enemies. He’s also good at Illusion magic; however, he won’t use it for tricking people into following his orders - he just likes to use magical Light to illuminate dungeons and other dark places, and he has enough confidence in his skills that he just doesn’t care about giving away his position to enemies. Should things go wrong, he can anyway use his knowledge in matters of Restoration magic to heal himself and get back up. He is also good at Alchemy, a decent Mysticism scholar and knows the basics of Conjuration.
While his crimson robe is his most prominent piece of equipment, Daevion also wears a few enchanted pieces of jewelry that help him overcome the Altmeri weakness against elemental magic and grant him the ability to reflect spells and physical damage to the attacker.
When adventuring, he will usually keep a balance between charging in and taking his enemies down from a distance. When facing enemies wielding a blade or a blunt weapon, he will get very close so to cast spell directly at them while taking in hits to reflect right back at them; spellcasters are taken care of from a distance, because this way he can dodge their attacks with ease.
Daevion’s mount is a unicorn. Cliché much? It may seem so; the truth, however, is different. As ridiculous as it may sound, Daevion was exploring the Heartlands and just sort of stumbled upon him. Unicorns are aggressive creatures and will think of anyone in sight as a possible threat and will proceed to impale them; however, this one seemed to be friendly towards Daevion and let him jump on. Maybe it was because only a pure of heart can ride a unicorn, or maybe it was because Daevion wasn’t carrying any weapon besides his own magic; in either case, the two have been sharing a close bond since then.
The unicorn seems to be a wandering soul, as it will often walk away when Daevion dismounts. This causes him to be easily attacked by creatures or bandits, case in which his elven friend will hear his cries and come to the rescue. Sometimes the unicorn will run after deers and Daevion will play along and join him in the hunt. Why not? Venison tastes good.
As a result of his adventuring combined with his fine bartering skills, Daevion is very wealthy. He owns a large house in Cheydinhal, and even though he rarely stays indoors for more than a day he sure likes it there. He filled up his place with interesting items he happened to come across during his travels.
His calm expression. I noticed that the playing character in Oblivion can have an array of other facial expressions, but you will probably never notice since you’ll either be playing in a first-person perspective or only seeing your character’s back. In my experience, they can frown, yawn, look grave (like in the second screencap in this page) and smile.
Taking a guess, I’d say the frown is for when your character is in battle. The yawn may either be random or an idle pose, since I spotted Daevion yawning while he was waiting for Count Hassildor in Skingrad’s castle hall. The grave look…the only time I saw it was at the time of that screencap: at the end of Vaermina’s quest, looking at Arkved drowning in his nightmare. I’m sure it’s a separate expression and not the default face, but why should that even exist anyway? I’m not sure about the smile either, it may have something to do with disposition but I’ve not noticed any consistent behavior. Oh well.
fireballs are so good
his amulet
(this is totally not an excuse to draw him half-naked)
what
I-I think I like my own character, is that a bad thing?
woah that was a massive post :o as a side note, I think I may suffer from the blank page syndrome. I could go on writing forever when no one cares, but when I want to write a lot I get stuck and end up procrastinating. The worst part is that this happens no matter how much I actually want to write, and this may also be why I don’t write stuff for ATP as often as I’d like. I should find a way around this.
on other news I moved to an apartment and I’m loving it :D well, except for the current lack of internet connection, but this is only a temporary issue
I think I’ll post pictures when we’ll be finished with assembling the furniture! we chose some freakin awesome stuff. our living room table is white with black chairs with white cushions and looks fantastic; the table for the room, on the other hand, is going to be plain badass. black with red legs. the best part being that it was my roommate to suggest the color combination, figure that.
BUT LOOK AT ME, GETTING ALL EXCITED ABOUT FURNITURE soon I’ll find myself going nuts over new curtains and I’ll get in the news as the first person to become an elderly at nineteen years of age
