Ciaphas

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Appearance

A tall, broad-shouldered specimen of elfkind with regally aquiline features, a posture impeccably straight and all the empathy and patience in his demeanour of a grand inquisitor. Pale-skinned and pale-haired, his body's well-muscled with the lean, athletic strength you'd expect from an elven armsman. He tends to be immaculately groomed, not a hair out of place, not a lace hanging loose, but more out of a militant obsession with order and neatness than any desire to look attractive. He walks with the long, heavy, purposeful strides of a drill instructor and regards the world like he's one out on uniform inspection, with a faint downwards curl to his lip and a sceptical set to his brows.

While typically dressed in understated finery in funerary black and bloody scarlet, he'll branch out into golds and greens while performing House functions. His typical suit of armour is a family heirloom, a work of art in itself crafted from enchanted mithril and truesilver, reforged to his physique and alchemically recoloured to his people's present tastes. It's heavily ornamented, with hawks' heads worked into either pauldron, the face of a dragon engraved into his breastplate and ornamental antlers crowning its greathelm.

Personality

While stoic, honourable and generally quite civil, Ciaphas is your quintessential iron fist in a velvet glove. Ardently conservative, stubborn and tenacious, he doesn't so much pride himself on impeccably gentlemanly conduct as he does see it as a burdening necessity of his existence, one which he nonetheless refuses to turn his back on. He silently pines for a golden age of Thalassian honour and decency that may or may not have actually existed, and this colours his every action, leaving a man with a strong sense of civic duty and unswerving loyalty to his family, his lord, his Blood Knight superiors and the Regent-Lord they serve. Conversational when prompted but generally reserved, he's extremely chaste and ascetic for a nobleman, and surprisingly, he has no religious justification for that behaviour. Quite the opposite, for he despises most forms of religion, especially the Light, and he's similarly happy to prove that patriotism and racism often go hand in hand in narrower minds.

But beneath his densely packed layers of etiquette, self-restraint and calm, a deeply internalised anger simmers. See, now, Ciaphas, for all his typically level-headed thinking, has an utterly savage temper. But he doesn't steam and hiss and let it all boil out when he loses it, no; he just goes cold, and makes things happen. Underneath all that civility is a very troubled and dangerous personality, and in between the two is some sort of callous, grim pragmatism. He understands that he's trying to live a dead ideal, and he understands that politics and noble life are both full of backstabbing and deceit, which he tolerates, but tries at least to avoid in himself. He is acutely aware that his system of values isn't quite in sync with the rest of the world, but it's a system that places family above all other things, and so it's one that he can happily live by.

History

Maenar Seregon was a kind and honest man, one whom Ciaphas thought himself fortunate to call a father. Born the eldest son of a prominent family within the Seregon house, he grew up wanting for little, living in luxury. Maenar left his mark on the boy from an early age – taught him to be just and righteous where nobody else would and to hold family above all else. His tutors steered him towards following in his father's footsteps as a magister, but his talents for traditional evocation and abjuration seemed negligible. Determined to save face, and making good of the boy's interest in fencing and physical activity, Maenar had him instead trained in glaive and shield while turning his studies towards canceling out and countering the sorcery of others, something he proved to excel in. You don't let your child enter a magisterial collegium without an extensive education in magic beforehand, so why would you let him enter Spellbreaker training without training beforehand?

He was known to be a charming, upstanding young man, having inherited his parents' good graces. But he'd also, the gossips said, received his paternal grandfather's temper and vindictive streak, and both of them hung over him like spectres. Many a time he'd act on petty spite if he felt slighted, and many a time he'd resort to violence too easily amongst his peers when a smart retort or stony-faced dismissal would be appropriate. Rigorous discipline and harsh punishment seemed to drill this out of him with time, although in reality it only pushed it back into the dark corners of his mind. Soon, and for much of his life, it seemed very few things could provoke an angry response out of him – and one of them was always debating the fallacies and merits of religious faith with a priest who his mother kept on retainer.

Although still a child in the eyes of society, Ciaphas, by the time he was fifty, was being steered into an arranged marriage with a political basis. A family of lesser nobility connected to the Seregons by commerce and old alliance sought to rekindle their friendship and earn the Seregon Lord's favour. Towards this end, they offered their daughter and heiress to all they had, a young woman by the name of Anadrael, in matrimony to the Seregons. Young Ciaphas the Spellbreaker-to-be was put forward to seal the deal. The gain, however, was twofold. This demure young flower to whom Ciaphas was being wed had been trained, from a very young age, to sabotage and kill and do so discreetly. The woman was to deal with the house's little problems, and the marriage would be a quaint cover story to give her an ear into their affairs and for the house leadership to keep her in easy reach.

But a noble marriage can't just be an alibi, and the match was imperfect. For his tastes, her tongue was too sharp and her wit was too barbed; and for hers, his upper lip was far too stiff. He was dour and uninteresting and she was flighty and resentful, but they slowly came to tolerate one another, and slower still to appreciate each other. Nonetheless, Ciaphas continued his training with blade and with magic, his father eventually deeming him ready to enlist in the Spellbreakers proper. And so, by the time Ciaphas had reached his first century, he was already a public servant and soldier, a husband to a woman he suspected he was slowly coming to love, and a father to a small child. In an organisation that selected its recruits both by birth and by merit, Ciaphas had the rare distinction of having both at once.

Life in the Spellbreakers was easy, relatively speaking, after the heavy training he'd received as a child. His duties were largely confined to patrolling, standing guard, and helping apprehend the odd renegade magus in the countryside, and the fact was that neither Ciaphas nor many of the Spellbreakers were particularly troubled by them. They took their duties seriously, true enough, and perhaps Ciaphas did more than most, but they were ultimately a ceremonial organisation first and the military arm of the Magisterium second. This didn't bother him in the slightest – in fact, he preferred it that way, because it permitted him continued, active involvement in his family's affairs, and gave him more than enough time to spend freely with his friends, his wife and his children.

Barring the occasional altercation with a superior or peer where he'd allow his temper to get the better of him, Ciaphas retained the image of a proud, upstanding soldier, servant of Silvermoon and nobleman, a patriot and a family man both. Those little incidents started to accrue, however, and they started to form a growing stain on his name. But Ciaphas, never a man for gossip, was blissfully unaware of it. He was content to work hard as a Spellbreaker, to be moved as a pawn (well, a knight, to give him credit!) in the house's political games and to enjoy the privileges of his rank and station in life. There was some concern for him, however, when he beat one of his younger brother Daedre's drinking buddies half to death outside an inn when he started slandering the house and made a drunken pass on his wife, to boot. But he was merely a commoner, and the commotion blew over quickly. Ciaphas, however, finally got the memo and he began to work harder than ever to keep his violent impulses in check – there was even a hired shadowmage involved at one point, and not because Ciaphas wanted one – and eventually seemed to succeed. For several decades his behaviour was impeccable.

Of course, problems like those have a habit of coming back to bite you in the arse when you've finally forgotten about them. Some decades before the opening of the Dark Portal, he was sent to Dalaran for a week as part of the guard and parade detail of a diplomatic envoy. As was proper, he brought his wife along with him – the fact that she had somebody to kill in the city at roughly the same time hardly factored into it. Spending long days marching in formation and standing to attention in full armour at high summer's heat, Ciaphas became increasingly aware of an apprentice mage's persistent attempts to swindle the diplomats – and his family - out of money, something which made him look incompetent. A firm talking-to didn't put a stop to his antics, and a further warning became a heated argument. From this came an exchange of threats, and when they both had the misfortune of drinking at the same inn late one evening, the young arcanist, piss drunk and fed up of the cold looks he kept getting from the off-duty Spellbreaker across the bar, decided to pick a fight.

In retaliating, Ciaphas broke much more than the foolhardy student's spells. Above all, Ciaphas broke the law. He'd committed murder (against a seeming trickster and con artist who just so happened to be the nephew of one of the seven Kirin Tor) and was promptly dishonourably discharged from the Spell Breakers, legally forbidden from taking up arms in Silvermoon's name ever again. Worse than this, however, was the shame and disgrace of the crime and the trial. His house went to great expense to prevent further embarrassment to their name after the incident, but still the damage was done. A heroic military officer and prominent nobleman became a craven murderer, convict and laughing stock overnight. For several years after his stint in a Dalarani prison, the Seregon family tucked him away from the public eye in case he caused further disgrace. He occupied himself with training – and a whole lot of it.

When he was permitted to 'resurface', Ciaphas was tucked neatly away in the Sons of Seregon, his noble house's private army, and expected keep out of the damned way. The Sons, he realised to his dismay, were chiefly political in function. They existed for families who wanted Elrohir's favour to send second and third sons to. However, it was important that they at least presented the exterior image of being a capable fighting force, and it was here that Ciaphas, a decorated veteran, found his niche. He made training new Sons his business for many years. While the nobility of Silvermoon certainly needed the services of armed men to carry out their dirty work, a public organisation like the Sons was rarely called upon, and if it was, never officially. Eventually, after sufficient time had passed and he'd earned enough prestige, Ciaphas was named the captain of the Lord Seregon's personal honour guard.

But he'd see no real action until the Second War, when the Horde set the forests of Quel'thalas ablaze. The Sons had been trained for duels, for holding shields and spears and standing beside doors looking tough. They were not trained to fight orcs, and Ciaphas was brutally made aware of it as he led them into battle. Although he was forbidden from fighting in Silvermoon's military, there was a convenient loophole to be found in technically fighting for his House. Many of the poorly trained, poorly disciplined Sons were overwhelmed and butchered by the Horde's forces, but they managed to emerge from the war intact, and so did their house. So did their Kingdom, but not without great cost, and Ciaphas himself was also severely wounded in action.

After the war, when the high elves withdrew from the Alliance, Ciaphas and the other leading figures within the Sons of Seregon began to build up their numbers again, taking on many discharged Farstriders and mercenaries. Ciaphas took the lessons of the Second War carefully to heart and arranged the new recruits' training accordingly, striving to turn them into professional soldiers rather than ceremonial guards. It was all well and good to know how to duel and to fence and to look imposing, as Ciaphas had learned first-hand, but it wasn't much good if you couldn't hold a shield wall against a charging mob of berserkers. There was enough distrust for the central authority within Quel'thalas in these years that many noble houses began to bolster their honour guards and retainers, 'just in case', and through his efforts with the Sons Ciaphas began to rekindle his reputation for decency, diligence and competence that he'd worked so hard to cultivate. In his eyes, and in the eyes of Silvermoon's high society, he'd almost redeemed himself.

Almost.

And then the world came crashing down around him.

Ciaphas had fought the living dead before. True enough, orcish necrolytes and death knights had proven to be amongst his most dangerous adversaries in the Second War, but he'd never faced a full army of revenants and spectres. Who would dream of such a thing? The dread architects of the undead Scourge did, it seems – and their dream was fully realised and unleashed against Quel'thalas. And it all happened so very, very quickly. The beacon of arcane beauty that was the Sunwell was sullied and ruined. The majestic golden spires of Silvermoon City crumbled and fell. Darkest magics had carved into the ground a great Dead Scar that bisected the High Kingdom, once the highest in all the world, and life seemed to leak out of the land like wine from a punctured skin. Not just in the sense of the dragonhawks and the lynxes, the glades and the glens, but the people.

Nine in every ten quel'dorei were killed, and most survivors were left scarred and broken inside and out. Ciaphas himself lost his parents, countless cousins, aunts and uncles, alongside many coworkers and comrades-in-arms – but more than that, he lost his family. His wife and his children were missing, presumed dead. The very kingdom, the house, the people he'd sworn to protect . . . well, there wasn't much of any of them left to protect. It nearly sent him mad with grief and anger. When the Crown Prince Kael'thas proclaimed them the sin'dorei and taught them how to quench their magical thirst through demonic power, they were, to the heir of Maenar Seregon's legacy, mere bandages on a wound that needed serious stitching.

It surprised nobody that Ciaphas, alongside several family members and retainers, aligned himself with a company of sin'dorei who'd resolved that they'd take the fight to the Scourge. Riding south through the treacherous Ghostlands, they made way towards the so-called Plaguelands and the Chapel of Light's Hope, where they pledged their swords and sorcery to the cause of the Argent Dawn. For months and years he'd fight with them, and for just as many, the people he'd set out with would steadily drop dead, one by one, falling to disease, to battle and the simple, horrid accidents of war.

But what Ciaphas signed on for as a way to directly battle the Scourge quickly turned out to be, in his eyes, a collection of zealots and evangelists and self-righteous do-gooders. Their Templars in particular both irked and awed him, and he was at once amazed and disgusted in seeing how the faith he mocked so easily could turn a paladin into a god of the battlefield against the Scourge. He envied their power, coveted it, and for pragmatic reasons even began to study the Light in the hope of matching it – but setting down the path of the Light with the sole hope of coming to wield its power never ends well.

But one day, a Thalassian messenger falcon swept in with a message meant for Ciaphas' eyes, penned by the hand of the Seregon household's former retained cleric – the same priest Ciaphas had argued and debated with so fervently in his youth. The Magisterium had rebuilt Silvermoon overnight, and it needed proud soldiers to work towards its defence. Soldiers like Ciaphas. The priest wrote that the Light had left him as it had many others, and that perhaps Ciaphas, all those years ago, had been right. But through the Sun King's grace and His Majesty's expedition to Outland, they now had the means to wield the Light again – and a soldier like Ciaphas could wield it, too.

He made his mind up quickly. Spreading the word amidst his fellows, Ciaphas returned to Quel'thalas with haste, meeting up with the priest, now a high-ranking member of the Blood Knight Order, and several members of his family. Exaggerating and playing up stories of his heroics during the Siege of Silvermoon, citing their country's desperate situation, applying political pressure here and there and maybe slipping the odd bribe into the odd pocket, the Seregon house appealed the Magisterium's judicial body and successfully got Ciaphas' ban from bearing arms in Silvermoon's name repealed. He was offered reinstatement as a Spellbreaker, but declined, and the same afternoon, Ciaphas was sworn into the Blood Knight Order, learning how to wield M'uru's stolen Light alongside his blade with the same alacrity with which he'd once broken spells.

There would be no more mistakes. There'd be no more shame and seclusion and dishonour. As far as Ciaphas was concerned, his vicious temper and past failures be damned, there would only be service. That's precisely what he gave. He served Silvermoon as a Blood Knight with pride, dignity and unshakable diligence for several years, partaking in the mighty effort to push the Scourge back out of Eversong, confining them to the Scar and the Ghostlands, and then serving in Tranquilien for some considerable time. After they'd helped him earn his right to serve, though, distanced himself from his family. Every time he looked at them, those who remained, he was haunted by the spaces left by those who did not. Moreover, he looked at the Seregons and saw a rabble of simpering dandies clinging desperately onto power that was slipping steadily through their fingers, sinking further and further into obscurity and insignificance under the incompetent leadership of Tavarius Seregon. It sickened him to know that the legacy of his father Maenar - what he and Lord Elrohir had striven so hard to accomplish - was crumbling into dust.

When Lady Liadrin swore the order to the Shattered Sun Offensive, Ciaphas was cautious, at first, to work so closely alongside people so pious as the Aldor and the Scryers. But he remembered the Argent Dawn and he remembered the results those people tended to reap against unholy foes, and he gladly marched beside them to the Isle of Quel'danas and the tainted Sunwell that was housed there. The revelation about the Sun King's madness hit him as hard as it did anyone, but he did what he had to do - his duty - even if it brought him to clash blades with his fellow sin'dorei. Calling the servants of Kael'thas sin'dorei at this point, he realised, would not be entirely accurate. They'd been irrevocably tainted by the very magic that had saved them from becoming Wretched, and in doing so they'd simply become mindless slaves to another addiction. Around this time, he discovered that at least one of his children had went to Outland with the King. He discovered as much as he stood over her mutated body. But when the Sunwell was reignited, so was Ciaphas' hope. Hope that his beloved youngest daughter was not alone in venturing to Draenor, and that those who'd went with her had been wise enough to avoid her dark, grisly fate.

When Regent-Lord Theron was browbeaten by the Dark Lady into supplying blood elven troops for the Northrend campaign, Ciaphas was among those sent. And he couldn't have been gladder for it. To strike at them in the Plaguelands was one thing, but to hit them where they lived (proverbially speaking)? Glorious. Or at least that's what he thought it'd be when he set out there. For a moment, he forgot the horrors he'd faced in the Plaguelands, but Northrend proved to be everything the Plaguelands was and so much worse. Fighting alongside the Horde - alongside the very living dead and greenskinned savages who had ravaged his country twice over - blood elves like Ciaphas battled their way across a continent against all kinds of unimaginable horrors. But eventually, while Ciaphas himself barely set foot in Icecrown, they got what they'd come for - revenge. After a long struggle, the undead Scourge decapitated and thus all but neutralised as a threat, Ciaphas was promoted to Blood Knight Master for his service and he found that he could rest a little easier at night.

If only a little.

The year he returned from Northrend was a good one for returns, it seems. He returned home to Quel'thalas to find Silvermoon much as he'd left it - the magisters had grown cosy in their positions and the Regent-Lord didn't look likely to budge from his, either. By all accounts, the Seregon household was still a pack of decaying dandies, to boot. At least until Lord Elrohir returned to Silvermoon, to boot, stepping out of seclusion to reclaim what was rightfully his. Tavarius Seregon was murdered for the laughing stock he'd made of the house, and for the first time in nine years, Ciaphas could look a member of his family in the eyes and say honestly that he was proud of his name.

More than that, though, two familiar faces, long thought dead, have come to appear in his life once more - those of his eldest son Danothil and his wife, Anadrael. They had indeed ventured to Outland with the King, but split off with the Scryers before it was too late, and while Ciaphas had never been a religious man it was almost enough to make him thank whichever gods would listen. He welcomed this tiny sliver of normality - even if his son, once a Spellbreaker like him, had trained with Vindicators in Shattrath to become a paladin, he could live with it. They were his family, after all. They were his blood. So is his pathetic hedonist of a little brother, Daedre, who has proven in recent months to be much more capable than Ciaphas first thought. So is his Lord Elrohir, who is the harsh taskmaster whose whip is slowly driving House Seregon back to glory.

And now, still serving as a Blood Knight, Ciaphas has made it his mission to ensure that no harm can befall his family ever again.

Skills and abilities

For a man once renowned as the 'Shield' of Seregon, Ciaphas is a brutal, offensive fighter, typically armed with a glaive or a two-handed sword. Above all other things, he's a swordsman - his expertise has always lay chiefly in blades, and in magical might second, even if he's a former Spellbreaker. As such, he places greatest stock in what he does with a sword, and his manipulation of the Sunwell's blessed power supplements rather than supplants this. The Light is hardly his sword and shield, but rather the poison edging the former, the spike mounted to the latter, and the dagger in his boot. It coats his blade as he swings it and lashes out at his foes as they strike him. He is extremely adept in wielding it to attack, to the point where his skill in using it to heal and defend suffer somewhat.

Ciaphas

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