Dathem

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Information

Player: Davem

Character Full Name: Dathemar Highstride

Character In-Game Name: Dathem

Nickname(s): Dathem, Date, Dee, ’Stride

Association(s): Scryers, House Highstride

Race: Blood Elf

Class: Ley Walker

Skills and Abilities: Adept at transport magic and reading the ley lines, Dathem almost exclusively casts arcane spells by directly tapping into the strongest nearby leyline.

Age: 82

Sex: Male

Hair: Dark

Eyes: Brownish Green

Weight: 9 stone 9 ounces (About 140 lbs.)

Height: 5’10”

Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor: Comfortable cloth wear - Scryer uniform. Reluctantly formal wear during official functions.

Personality

Alignment: Neutral Good

Introverted and rational, Dathem looks to always be improving himself, despite being highly confident that he generally has the world and people around him figured out for the most part. He prides himself on being logical while also being creative, on being scientific while also being capable of innovation. With some insight into engineering, politics, art and arcane magic especially, Dathemar looks to all categories of life as a rational thinker, always looking to be objective and have an open and leveled view of things.

He is fairly discriminative of all races, including his own, though not outspoken about almost any of these opinions. When asked, however, he will gladly say that he finds race X savage or race Y naive hypocrites. He is ready to overcome preconceptions about any of the races, but only should he find a significant number of exceptions to any given rule about a race or a social class. So far, he does not believe he has found any evidence to alter any of his ‘calculated’ bigotry. Despite this, he firmly believes in a presumption of innocence and the freedom of individuals to define themselves, be it as idiotic savages or stuck-up light worshippers. If made to pick, his affinity to gnomish thought-patterns would be note-worthy, though their volatility has prevent him from making any true friends in the race.

His confidence is directly proportional to his proximity to strong ley-lines, escape as well as powerful offense being available near strong veins. When only near thinner lines, he will often be quite diplomatic if not fully inhibited. When functioning as a leader, he attempts to be brutally meritocratic, while still lending weight to educating those that do fail. Socially, he will not follow social rules or consider social taboos that he considers absurd, unless he has higher goals that require such compromise.

Belief: Rationality fixes the world.

Impulse: Retreat to assess.

Traits: Calculating, curious, direct.


History

Dathemar was born the fifth son to the noble Oreollor Highstride, teacher of Arcane Arts and Shindara Highstride, a retired pyromancer of renown. His entire youth evolved under the conflict between the excellence-seeking desires for him of his father and his mother's desire to make him a free spirited individual, as with his brothers before him. Dathemar was raised under the same patterns of education as his four brothers, the parent’s experience with the four insuring some more finesse in his education. The eldest brother – Excellen took to the outland woods to become a savage hunter, Thelin, the next-born, became a member of the priesthood and politician engrossed deep into Silvermoon’s political wars on behalf of the Church. After hard service in the Outland, Viridial reluctantly took on the new Sin’Dorei way before throwing himself into the northern war to later return as a reformed scourge-knight seeing the continuation of true high-elf-kind in the Undercity’s Lordaeron. Singerius, last to leave home and the biggest influence on Date, after losing his connection to the light and leaving paladin service, took off to pursue a career of mercenary pyromacy work, then teaching, and ultimately diplomacy on behalf of House Novalight. The experience of his brothers and contact with them have had perhaps the most significant effect on the way Dathem relates to the world, taking each and every one of them as both positive and negative examples.

His youth was almost exclusively spent being educated in the finest schools available. As a rational decision taken in this context, Dathem always took it upon himself to not leave things such as physical condition, social skills or general variety of experiences become areas in which he would be lacking. He also has made it a point not to let himself be conditioned and judged by the criterion of the expectations others have of him. Turning from the Quel’ to the Sin’dorei ways was to him only a rational requirement for social survival. He holds neither cultural paradigm as being superior to the other, but would rather note both as significantly flawed.

Once he exhausted the worthy avenues of formal education and graduated from a good deal of academic structures, already a noted virtuoso of leyline-tracking, his desire for applied practice and on-field research backed up by sound ethics lad him to the Scryers. Ascending to a full field-researcher position soon enough, he pursued the projects negotiated with the Scryers. His section’s director, making note of his talents and capacity to learn, took it upon himself to initiate Dathemar into ley-walking. Taking like a fish to water, several years later, the Leywalker initiate can now dance across the ’Lines quite reliably, while still pursuing his research with tenacity.

With the small House Highstride needing to assign an active heir leader in Oreollor’s late years, one to already start speaking for the House, the wild Excellen was nowhere to be found (nor looked for), while Thelin, Viridial and Singerius were deemed too close to the Church, the Undercity and the Novalights respectively. With the Scryers being farther from Silvermoon politics than the above, it fell upon Dathemar to be that heir. Coming to grips and adjusting to the new assignment while maintaining his Scryer work, Dathemar must step outside his scientific comfort-zone to meet the intricacies of the political dance.