ephyr

Standing six feet tall with a dark complexion and dark hair, Zephyr is clearly from a nomadic desert people. He is human, and speaks with a strong accent. Zephyr moves quickly and quietly.

The hexagonal brass plates of his studded leather occasionally glint from beneath his dark nomadic clothes. His curve-bladed glaive is constantly in his hands, though he uses the added butt-spike to stick it in the ground when he needs both hands free. Slung across his back is a massive curved sword, two hands clearly required for its use. Slung the other direction is a small bundle of javelins, often used as tent poles in his protection against the desert storms.

Zephyr is a guardian dervish of the northern Al Aziz Xchtozchatal (rough translation: "Wind Dancers"). Zephyr, like other Wind Dancers, does not share his real name with outsiders. (It's also unpronounceable in the common tongue.)

Like his fellow dervishes, Zephyr has long trained in the arcane arts and speaks Draconic, the secret language of magic. His arcane talents have not yet manifested in ways more powerful than minor cantrips, but he feels both the arcane and divine potential of the dance calling him. Zephyr carries with him a small tome of Wind Dancer battle poems and magics.

As a guardian dervish, Zephyr's role is to protect his people and herd. He is trained in the ways of battle and the wind dance. While performing the wind dance, Zephyr enters an ecstatic trance, whirling while chanting auran poems of battle. In this trance, he gains great strength and hardiness. He moves in spinning leaps, often tumbling more than truly dancing. When it is over, he is exhausted and weakened.

In the evenings, he often chants poems in a strange language and dances in great tumbling turns. This dance involves his glaive or sword, sometimes both. To those that listen carefully, each night is a new poem, and if asked, he refers to these as "wind chants." He spends considerable time reading a small, well worn book that contains strange symbols and glyphs.

As explained in his wind chants (the poems that make up his game journal), Zephyr left his tribe to seek aid for the sickness afflicting their herd. He traveled with a fellow guardian dervish, bound for the town of Culloden. As they slept on the first night near the desert, undead rose from the ground and ambushed the men.

The fight was terrible but brief; both men were badly wounded and it was clear that they could not win. Zephyr's companion ordered Zephyr to run while he held the unholy creatures back. Conflicted but obeying, Zephyr fled. He saw his friend fall as he crested the next hill.

Zephyr ran through a haze of tears until many hours later he collapsed in exhaustion near a trade road. He later awoke to the sounds of a caravan, which he hailed. After a tense parlay with the caravan's guards, the group allowed Zephyr to join their journey to Culloden.

Read Zephyr's poetry.