Neo'Savok Cetirnen Midali di'al K'Ristos

Hard. Sharp. Polite. Jaded. All words that describe Cetirnen, despite his relative youth. He is, without fail, an impeccably polite man - though his politeness often hides the bite of venomed words - and he expects similar out of everyone he must deal with on a regular basis. He is not a man of friendships or gregarious interaction, but will, without hesitation, move to save anyone sworn to him (or, as he's proven on occasion, any child whether belonging to his people, allies, or enemies) if moving to do so doesn't imperil the overall progress of his people in peace or war.

Those who meet him often come away with the impression of aloof interest, almost as if he views himself as apart from the general world - not so much above it as set to one remove beside it - and doesn't truly understand how to interact with those around him. While this isn't precisely true - he can become personable if he tries - it is true that most emotions he has are restricted to small, brief expressions that most people miss. For example, the faint lift of one corner of his mouth is nearly equivalent to a full out grin, while the tiniest narrowing of his eyes telegraphs building rage to those who can read him. His control, in public, is so absolute that he can take news of a crushing defeat without flinching, but in the privacy of his castle suite, where even his servants are barred from entering, he releases his rage in a magical display more suited to an Inferno Strategist than a Crystal Strategist.

He has a quick mind, and constantly requires some sort of information to process and turn over in his head. Anything - from learning new languages to studying advanced magical theorems that should be beyond the grasp of anyone but an Aether Magician - is fair game to him, and his constant dedication to the scholarly arts makes him an outcast amongst his peers, who all prefer the path of the Knight to the Scholar or Strategist.

Cetirnen is really not sure what to think about all the dragons he's begun to gather about himself, though he has begun to wonder if he might no need to find a new place of residence because of all of them. For, truly, he has begun to prefer their companionship over the companionship of his own people. He finds their lack of complete stratefication a breath of fresh air (though he has learned that some races of dragons have a caste system almost as rigid as the system of his people), and their lack of warmongering even more refreshing.

In Sycho he finds a willing companion to discuss his latest research and experiments. In Solath he finds friendship and an easy comraderie he never thought possible with anyone. And in Yniaqueth he has discovered that, perhaps, being the total focus of someone's life isn't quite as bad as he previously believed. And in his own, quiet way, he loves all three of them as brothers.

Cetir has long, raven black hair, sharp, emerald green eyes, and skin tanned a deep bronze by long days spent in the field - often on a prominence or some other manner of 'higher ground' overlooking the battlefield, usually without the faint relief of a tree to shade him. He wears his hair pulled back in a severe tail, the end of which touches his mid-back, and manages to somehow keep wisps from escaping the tie. His face is hard, often taking a grim appearance, and his eyes tend to lack visible emotion when on the battlefield - the perfect image of a collected, intelligent tactician confident of his strategy.

Cetir always wears spare, practical clothes of a solid steel gray color, over which he'll wear simple light armor and a standard issue sword if he's heading to the battlefield -- off the field, he discards both armor and sword as swiftly as possible. Not even official events can persuade him to wear finery, though he does wear other colors - such as black, blood reds, ocean blues, and the same sharp emerald green of his eyes.

A fifth generation Savok of the K'Ristos line, Cetirnen was born into war, grew up in war, and internally rages against the fact that he is most likely to die in war. His father having died moons before he was born, his mother had taken command of the army, and had him in the midst of a battle, still issuing commands to the troops during her labor. The battlefield may be no place for a child, but it was there, in the tent camp of the army, that he took his first steps, spoke his first words, and learned his discipline. He was riding before he was five, running messages from captain to captain, mounted on the back of a tiny pony and clutching dispatches in his small hands. He learned the sword from the moment he could stand without wavering, and spent most of his time that wasn't dedicated to sword or horsemanship in the company of his mother's strategist, learning whatever he could and developing a flare for the art of strategy that he didn't have for swordsmanship. He also studied magic at his mother's hands, focused upon the traditional Earth-based spectrum of his family, as he showed no other apparent indicators of a different elemental affinity.

Upon his coming of age at fifteen, he went into the testing with the declaration that he would take the title of Strategist, not Knight as was traditional. Once he forced the judges to swallow their protests, Cetirnen blazed his way through the trials with an ease bordering almost on insolence, becoming the first of his family to be declared a Crystal-ranked Earth mage at the age of fifteen, and one of the only Crystal ranked Strategists in the land.

Once gaining his rights, Cetirnen was sent directly back to the battlefield and formally placed under his mother's strategist - an Umbra Strategist - and managed to wrangle magical lessons out of him as well as strategy lessons. While it is unheard of for a nobleman or noblewoman of any rank to 'contaminate' their magical specialty with another specialty - especially if they've gained the top rank in their family's specialty - and therefore impossible for Cetirnen to test under another Specialty's court, Cetirnen was tentatively ranked by his mother's strategist as a Penumbra-rank Shadow mage, one step below the highest rank of Shadow.

By the time he was eighteen, Cetirnen was the strategist in command of an entire division of his mother's army, and remained there for most of the war, gaining experience and skill. He was twenty when that war finally ground to a halt, both sides exhausted after over two decades of constant strife, and a battle hardened veteran with little love for the "glory" of war. His mother had been struck down by an enemy Mage when he was nineteen, he had spent the last year of the war as the leader of his people, barely even taking the time to get himself officially recognized as the new Neo'Savok of K'Ristos, over ten years before tradition states that the title is to be passed on.

But now, without the constant pressure of the war to weigh on his mind, Cetirnen finds himself at loose ends. And, while he knows that a strategist is no use to anyone without a war to fight, he's so tired of war that he goes out of his way to snuff out the mumblings of his peers about resuming the war. He spends his days in his study, devouring text after text in between caring for his land and people, and completely ignores the social norm of having a court full of courtiers surrounding him. Because of this practice, Castle Renosant has become a ghost of its former self, filled only by Knights, soldiers, the occasional scholar, and servants.

Shimmer Green Neis: Neis is warm to Cetirnen's cold, affectionate to his distance, and completely at ease with displaying her love of others. She tends to play 'tiny thing to hug and cry on' to Cetirnen's wards (especially when they feel too self-conscious to approach Cetirnen) and is hell-bent on proving to others that Cetirnen truly does care. Cetirnen dearly wishes Sarvatha hadn't requested a talking flit for him. Neis finds this amusing.