Averill Rooks

Averill Rooks
Error creating thumbnail: File missing
Gender	Male
Race	Hyur
Clan	Midlander
Citizenship	Unaffiliated
Age	27
Occupation	Vagrant
Height/Weight	5'9"/143 ponze

Basic Info

Averill Rooks (formerly Tomus) is a vagrant Midlander. Claiming no citizenship or loyalties of any professional measure, he wanders Eorzea sating a lust for new roads and challenges every day.

The scion of a long-dead Lominsan family, Averill has taken great pains to distance himself from the last of his family, removing himself to increasingly violent and dangerous locales for reasons he is hard-pressed to explain. Surviving on the road for almost ten years, living through even the Calamity on the strength of his will and unique abilities, he carries a wealth of stories and an innate curiosity about the travellers he stumbles across.

Appearance

Standing at average height for one of his clan, Averill's road-weathered physique evidences clear experience to the rigors of travel, combat, and simple survival. Scars litter his body, most notably across his left side, so severe as to render his left eye pale and useless.

Typically, he wears armor crafted from the scraps and skins of beasts he has slain on his travels. His gear is piecemeal at best, leaving his chest exposed to preserve his innate agility. His arm is the only item he has purchased; a custom-made axe, forged to channel his abilities with devastating effect. He wields it comfortably in one hand or two, carving a whirlwind of steel and blood in whatever melee he throws himself into.

Biography

SPOILERS AHEAD

Childhood

Show text

A child of traumatic circumstances, Averill was born into the family of noted Lominsan Arcanist, Dawson Tomus. A gifted scholar and student of aetherical balances in the environment, Dawson had travelled to Gridania with Averill's mother, Elaine. The pair shared a love for their craft almost unmatched in all of the Guild, with publications and treatises sat on the shelves on many who studied aether to any degree.

Their expedition brought them to Gridania as part of an extended study into the presence of sprites in certain regions. A truth, long accepted, was that the presence of sprites in a given area indicated, at least roughly, the balance of aether. Fire Sprites in the Sagolii, Lightning Sprites in La Noscea - the pair had documented the presence of these curious elementals across Eorzea, and their effects. They now turned their gaze to Gridania, and the curious abundance of Wind Sprites. Averill was conceived during their stay, and would be born nine months later in a Wood Wailer cell.

Two full moons had passed since the Tomus family's arrival, and the pair camped in the Shroud. Watched over by a hand of Wailers loaned out by the city-state, their fire drew the attention of Garuda's fanatical Ixal, a growing presence on Gridanian soil. In one of the many crimes that had severed the peace between Gridania and the original Ixal, Dawson's camp was attacked in the dead of night. Though successfully defended, when the smoke cleared and the survivors counted, Elaine was not among them.

All thoughts of research fled from Dawson's mind. He abandoned his work to the shelves of his room at the Roost, dedicating day and night to scouring the Twelveswood. A small hand of Wailers assisted - mainly survivors of the initial attack, men and women whom Dawson could count as friends. The group was eventually located, butchered and Elaine rescued, but the savage Lady of the Vortex had already laid her claim. Gone was the brilliant mind, the delicate cursive that joined Dawson's sharp hand. A feral woman, a mere vestige, clawed at Dawson's desperate embrace.

Elaine was secreted to a Wailer prison, far from the eyes of the public. The Elementals demanded any tempered's execution, but the revelation of her pregnancy complicated matters. Conjurers, Hearers - even the Seedseer herself could not discern the judgement of the Greenwrath's sentinels. Through the quiet storm raging at Gridania's heart, Dawson watched, and despaired.

As the child neared birth, a fragile agreement was found. The child would live, its mother would die, and Dawson's would never again be tolerated in the shadows of the Shroud. He and his progeny would leave Gridania at the soonest possible moment, lest another tempered plague the city. As if recognising that her baby was the only thing keeping her alive, Elaine grew increasingly desperate in her final weeks, risking both of their lives.

Nine months after the ordeal began, Dawson and his son, Averill, were ushered from the city-state as urgently as possible. Secluded in the cabin of an airship, Dawson left Elaine to her fate, and returned to his Lominsan estate a changed man.

Teenage

Show text

In the years that followed their return to Limsa Lominsa, the Tomus estate showed rapid and worrying change. The rumour mill turned, fuelled by news of Elaine's disappearance; then her death; then her suspected tempering. Lectures were cancelled. The Tomus name fell from the shelves of noted scholars. The man himself vanished from all eyes, buried behind the ever locked door to his study - vanished from all, including his son's.

Young Averill grew under the watchful eye of Dawson's retainer - the aging Duskwight Percevains Tomus. His proved to be a tempestuous childhood; much as father and retainer desperately tried, it was painfully clear that Averill's fits of rage and stubborn resistance to civilising education stemmed not from his birth mother, but from the savage Lady of the Vortex herself. All who met the boy sensed, perhaps reacting to his nigh-illimitable wells of corrupted aether, that he was no ordinary Hyur.

As the family neared their tenth strained summer, Averill's wanderlust took on a greater role. Percevains, ever the stern sentinel, dragged the boy back from market streets and marauders' training grounds. One occasion saw them returning from the borders of Aleport, the boy stowing away on the smallest boat he could find. Dawson withdrew to his study to greater extents. His son could barely recall his weathered features, remembering once tense meals shared over opposite ends of the long dining room's table. The subject of his mad pursuits was a matter of public ridicule, but Percevains remained ever faithful. Of the scraps of arcanima he could comprehend on his nightly visit to deliver meals, Percevains recognised Dawson's attempts to correct Averill, to restore his twisted aether to its normal state.

The boy retained little from his lessons as he was pressed into a desk at the arcanist's guild. His staggering lack of talent only exacerbated the Tomus family's shame. Eschewing the dusty tomes and droning lectures of his tutors, Averill's tardiness rewarded him with a discovery that would give clarity to his unusually violent temperament. One late afternoon, as he drew close to the marauder's guild under cover of the waning eve, he stumbled across a discarded axe. The battered thing sat easily in his young hands. He'd learned to play the fool, to maintain at least a tenuous grasp on the guise of a civilised citizen, and in doing so he concealed the blade for practise in the dead hours.

He took to the fields of La Noscea, where the bracing cold and ocean gales called to him like a jackal slinking from its cage. Dragging the heavy war axe, Averill took to practising on the small beasts pestering Limsa Lominsa's borders. Adventurers culled the beasts regularly; few would think it strange if the boy joined in the slaughter.

The battles proved to be his favourite teacher. Arcanists drilled him on the sciences and geometries, and Percevains hammered the humanities and etiquette - these were struggles Averill faced daily, but here... Here in the night, in the cold, with his heart racing and blood boiling, he found peace. The seeds of savagery and bloodlust Garuda planted in the babe so long ago began to take root.

With his new deception bringing quiet to Averill's monstrous instincts, he found his circumstances vastly improved. Tutors reported to Percevains on the child's sudden interest in class. His manners improved, and gone were the echoing shouts of the late night. Thinking his condition suppressed by the constant pressure of civilisation, Dawson relaxed on his studies, believing that whilst his aether still required normalizing, Averill could at least pass as a growing lad.

Seven years would pass, the aging Dawson and now-ancient Percevains none the wiser to Averill's late night melees. As the boy took strides towards maturity, his needs turned to ever larger prey. Where once the occasional drove of feral pests would lay slain under the stars, now the local aurelias and, when Averill's mood proved particularly insatiable, goobues perished, their viscera spoiling the soil of La Noscea. All truths must eventually find the light of day, however, and his morbid stress-relief proved no exception.

On the eve of Averill's seventeenth birthday, Dawson escorted his son from a Yellowjacket cell. He'd been found - rescued - from a camp of belligerent Kobolds. The adventurers that found him reported a scene of carnage expected from freshly-summoned voidsent, of beasts on the hunt, or a man whose mind was not his own. Long had rumours swirled and festered around the shameful scion of the Tomus name, and so the Yellowjackets, recalling the fear Elaine's rumoured tempering had sparked, locked the boy away.

His practise discovered, Dawson's rage knew no restraint, and he unleashed seventeen summers of grief, of loss and terror and rage at the youth. Averill responded the only way he could. He struck Dawson and, axe in hand, stormed from the estate. Forging a name conjured from the clumsy pronunciation of the Sea Wolf that had captured him, Averill Rooks purchased passage from the Vylbrand, and turned his back on all he knew. On the father he'd never seen, on the retainer that enslaved him to civility. He clutched his axe. Soaked in his corrupted aether, the dull blade sang keenly to his bloodlust; the crow's call of his true mother, the savage whose quiet song carried in the winds that bore him to the shores of the Silver Bazaar.

Present

Show text

Ten years have passed since Averill first crossed the Strait of Merlthor. His father's rage festers in the far reaches of fitful sleep. The Calamity is a memory of ash, smoke, of choked lungs and hellsborn struggles.

Averill survived. He always survived. As soon as he made land, it was his every intention to join the Adventurer's Guild as a means to justify his violence. With no such luck in Ul'dah - the guild potentially seeing straight through his attempt - he turned to living off the land, hunting where he could and learning more of Eorzea every day.

The axe he brought with him served faithfully for many years, perhaps clinging to life in the same way its wielder did. At its end, shattered on the rocks, the staggering volume of aether it had soaked up was enough to eviscerate the earth surrounding them. Every blade he wielded since never lasted for more than a moon, though it gave him rounded experience in numerous blades of various shapes.

He wandered the length of Eorzea, from Ul'dah to the Shroud, and back again. His presence became known throughout, notably in Gridania. The Elementals remembered the circumstances of his birth, and his twisted aether sent ripples of distress through the boughs. Hearers and Wailers both feared the presence of darker threats, but upon finding the young vagrant merely warned him off further incursions, lest the Greenwrath awake from his actions. Averill avoided his past whenever strangers brought it up, and for several years his roots remained back in Limsa Lominsa. Shortly following the Calamity, however, their tangle found their way across the waters to drag him home.

A missive from the Tomus estate found Percevains waiting for Averill, on one of the rare nights he ventured into the Quicksand. An aging Dawson, far past the prime of his life and so consumed in his research, now suffered under the pall of sickness. To see his son returned had become his fixation, and in squandering the last of his resources and connections, he had located the wayward scion. Initially furious at his father's intrusion, Averill eventually ceded and, under the watchful eye of the stalwart Percevains, returned to his father's deathbed.

Never knowing the secrets of his birth, Dawson understood Averill's juvenile rage and his habits more deeply that he ever thought possible. He bared it all - Elaine's capture and tempering, the battle he fought to preserve a child's life, corrupted as it was, and the fruits of his research. For nearly two decades he had pored of tomes esoteric and forbidden, crafted geometries and pushed the limits of his knowledge to their absolute reach in vain efforts to normalize Averill's aether. In his last days, Dawson had admitted defeat. There was no cure for tempering - as everyone, Averill included, knew.

Knowing the mother of Averill's brutal instincts shook the young man. He realised his mind had, perhaps, never been his own. His violence and bloodlust were traits well known of the Lady of the Vortex, perhaps the most savage and sadistic of all primals. He'd clashed numerous times with Ixal, and realised now just what that peculiar kinship their battles had stoked in him meant.

Percevains approached as Dawson's strength began to fail. His father spoke; if he could not cure him, then with the last of his strength, he would at least help him cope. The ancient retainer delivered an axe to Averill. A fell thing, with a head as broad as his shoulders, forged from metals unknown to him. His father's last gift; a true home and focus for his abilities. Much in the way a Thaumaturge might use a staff, or an Arcanist their tome, this axe would serve as both channel and focus for Averill's aether. Capable of surviving the great tempest his strength wrought without shattering, it could successfully quell his most barbaric rages.

With Percevains's pledge to forever serve the Tomus name, Averill abandoned the ghosts that haunted his family's estate, and returned to Eorzea a man carving out his identity in every perilous encounter he threw himself towards. Reports abounded of a savage beast roaming fields as far abroad as Dravania, even to the very reaches of the Orn Wilds. Man and beast both trembled as his scars rent the lands he blighted. There would never be a chain that would bind him.

Footnotes

Template by Bancroft Gairn