Meet the Characters
His is a life torn apart by tragedy. Of noble Emerinian birth but orphaned at an early age, Arien was raised by a neighboring family. His bright future was torn from him, sending him fleeing to the human lands, there to live in self-imposed exile and misery.
Arien finds a home in the Great Library of Thanis, whose vast collection of books allows him to pursue the study of sorcery. His long solitude comes to an end when circumstances throw him into a shared quest with Cat Sabledrake.
Silver-haired, with a voice like velvet and a cool aristocratic handsomeness, Arien tries to remain distant and detached. But Cat's friendship, and the bond Arien shares with his familiar, Darkfire, force him to unlock the prison that is his heart.
And that is what Arien fears the most, for he knows all too well the deadly danger it might bring.
Author's Notes --
In a perfect universe, the movie version of
Arien would be played by David Bowie as Bowie was in the early 1980s. His
performance in the film Labyrinth had no small influence on me when the
time came to develop Arien as a character.
If Arien had a theme song, it would be Simon
and Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock."
A familiar shares a bond that is mental, emotional, and magical with the mage who summoned it.
Darkfire, Arien's familiar, is a drake, a miniature dragon. He is about the size of a housecat, with scales of glossy black and jewellike eyes. Darkfire also has a voracious appetite, a funloving demeanor, and a tendency to hoard shiny things.
Author's Notes --
I always get aggravated when I see yet another
example of what I've come to call "Orko Syndrome" (after a character from
the old He-Man cartoon), the practice of putting in a cutesy wisecracky
often-animal sidekick. Yet, I must admit, that's the role Darkfire fulfills.
I envision Darkfire as sounding like Larry
Brantley, who provides the voice for Wishbone
in the children's television program of the same name.
The daughter of a human man and an elven woman, Cat was raised by her father after her mother's mysterious disappearance. Since her father, Tahm Sabledrake, was a professional thief, he taught his daughter that trade. When he felt Cat was old enough to look out for herself, Tahm left in search of his missing wife.
Cat is a member of the Nightside Guild, a well-organized band of thieves more-or-less in indirect service to the Highlord of Thanis. She does not consider herself a leader, but when she organizes a quest to Castle Selbon, she is surprised to find herself in just that role.
With her father's dark hair and golden skin, and her mother's startling sapphire eyes, Cat has a unique beauty of which she remains largely unaware. She is a creature of contrasts. Elven and human, the innocent thief.
Author's Note --
It's unnerving to create a character
and then meet someone who looks like her. That happened to me in the summer
of 1990, when I met Debra. It wasn't exact, but it was close enough so
that when I sent descriptions of Cat to artist friends of mine, some of
the finished products wound up bearing a noticeable resemblance to Debra!
Cat would sound, I imagine, much like Meg
Ryan did as Anastasia, having that same youthful clear quality while not
being "girlish."
Alphonse came to the human lands when rivals for leadership of the clan made it clear that the old chieftain's son by a human woman was no longer welcome. His size, strength, and brutish appearance lead most people to think that he is stupid and mean, when he is neither.
Alphonse is loyal and intelligent, with a deep love of music (something that occasionally causes disagreements with his friends, who don't have a fondness for orcish war ballads). He hates vermin of all kinds, particularly insects, and keeps himself as scrupulously clean as possible.
Author's Note --
Alphonse has a bad case of "Nice Guy Disease,"
in that he's a gruff big-brother type nobody would ever think of in romantic
terms.
Sybil broke her family's heart when she gave up their prosperous upper-class merchant lifestyle to become a priestess of Talopea, the Goddess of a Thousand Pleasures. Her main joys in life are all things pleasing to the senses. She adores luxurious clothes, exquisite food, art, music, and of course the attention of many, many lovers.
Talopeans tend to be vain, flighty, and shallow. Sybil is no different, though she is also dedicated to her friends, even if she cannot understand their reticent ways. She is blonde and curvaceous, favoring revealing clothes and lots of flashy jewelry.
Author's Note --
Sybil would be the perfect model for an artist
whose style was 2/3 Phil Foglio and 1/3 Boris Vallejo. She would sound
like Mae West with slightly less drawl.
A huntress by trade and a loner by choice, Jessa spends most of her time living in Arrowood, outside of Thanis. Her friends number exactly three -- Cat, Greyquin, and her trained hawk Kiah. She trusts few people, especially men
Author's Note --
Steve Jackson, who wrote the foreword for
the book, once commented about Jessa: "She might as well be wearing a red
shirt."
It's all Cat's father's fault that Greyquin became an adventurer. Entranced by Tahm's stories of quests and treasure, he hung up his carpenter's apron, got himself a riding war-dog, and hit the road.
Like most gnomes, he is an odd, eclectic little fellow, a Jack-of-all-trades who occasionally has trouble taking things seriously. He always plans to pay a visit to his home and the girl he left behind, but he never seems to get around to it.
Greyquin's steed, Bear, is a great jolly beast that never seems like a war-dog until the fighting starts.
Author's Note --
I wish I knew more people like Greyquin.
When you are the small stuff, it's easier not to sweat the small stuff.
He'd be voiced perfectly by Thom Adcox-Hernandez, who provided the voice
of Lexington from Gargoyles and is an all-around great guy and a
real hoot to hang with!
Sometimes, hiring a mercenary, you get more than you pay for.
Arien, realizing that his lack of combat skills could endanger the party, hired Rayke as a bodyguard for the quest to Castle Selbon. The red-bearded swordsman quickly became a valued member of the party, and not just because he gave Sybil someone upon whom to focus her attentions.
Author's Note --
The very first game I was ever in (at the
tender age of 14), our GM (GameMaster) added a fighter to our party because
we seemed to be having trouble keeping from getting killed. Poor guy was
supposed to be named Errol, as in Errol Flynn, a somewhat dashing chap.
But we couldn't remember his name and kept calling him Elmo. I'm sure you
can imagine the difference that made in how he was perceived!
For some reason, I always think of Elmo when
I think of Rayke.
The self-styled Archmage of the Universe, Solarrin yearns to be the ultimate evil necromancer. To that end, he cultivates a lush white beard with a single sinister black streak, dresses all in robes of maroon velvet, and carries a black staff topped with a blood ruby.
The effect is hampered, though, by the fact that Solarrin is an obese, crippled, bald old gnome with beady little eyes. Thanks to a variety of health problems, the speeches that he wishes to come out with rolling menace are often interrupted by wheezing and coughing. He survives on a foul-tasting elixir and has learned to draw his strength from his suffering.
Solarrin travels with Bostitch the minotaur, riding in a specially-constructed backpack that gives him a commanding view.
Author's Note --
The cartoon "Dungeons and Dragons" is about
a bunch of kids who get zapped into a fantasy world (and they had a pet
unicorn named Uni, another prime example of Orko Syndrome). Running the
show is a chap called the Dungeonmaster. Solarrin could be his evil twin.
Anyone looking at Bostitch, all six-and-a-half-feet and 300+ pounds of him, would find it hard to believe that he had been driven out of the minotaur herd for being a weakling. Not only was he considered scrawny, but he is also dull-witted even by minotaur standards.
His arrangement with Solarrin works fairly well. Bostitch is the brawn, Solarrin is the brain, and if Bostitch is secretly scared half to death of Solarrin, well, that's just how Solarrin likes it.
Author's Note --
I could easily see Bostitch being voiced by
Keith David, of Gargoyles fame. Especially later on in the story,
and in the sequels, when Bostitch's character changes dramatically and
he gets a lot of the good lines.
The enigmatic Archmage of Thanis has compiled his life's observations and assorted words of wisdom into a series of tomes called "The Book of Yor." Appropriate selections from these appear at the beginning of each chapter.
Talus Yor himself is a puzzle. He is known to be close to 200 years old, yet has the appearance of a mid-thirties human. He lives alone in his Tower beside the Highlord's Palace but is not standoffish, frequently entertaining guests (and frequently young ladies as well).
His familiar, Ilgilean, is a petite red drake who develops an interest in Darkfire.
Author's Note --
I'd love to see Kyle MacLachlan play Talus
Yor in a movie. But then, since I've had a crush on him ever since Twin
Peaks, I'd like to see Kyle MacLachlan in just about anything.
