Aquaries Val'Amoldo

Aquaries is the young protagonist of Song of Sages. He is a young scholar of only 18 who finds himself leaving the city he's long called home in an effort to locate his missing uncle after becoming frustrated with the city's authority constantly undermining his attempts to get answers.

He is childhood friends with both Calum Val'Sindri and Rosalie Val'Anilla, whom accompany him on his quest for answers and continue to do so when his goals are forced to shift shortly after.

Biography

Early Years

Aquaries was born the third child of Rodolfus Vasguarda and Aleyda Falkenrath, the then-reigning human monarchs of the kingdom of Vasguard. However, his mother chose to keep his birth a secret due to troubling visions she had in her dreams, which she attributed to her mage bond to Umbra. Thus, instead of a life as a prince alongside his two elder brothers, it was instead decided that Aquaries would be raised as a ward of his uncle and live the life of a scholar in the city of Vaholm.

Among the other scholars in Vaholm, his and his uncle Amoldo's true relationship was somewhat of an 'open secret', though one that Amoldo strongly urged his colleagues to keep secret, for Aquaries's own safety. Aquaries himself would become aware of the whole truth of this affair sometime in his adolescence, though even as a child he had his suspicions that the story everyone told openly wasn't the truth. Especially with regards to his mother making discreet visits over the course of his childhood, as she couldn't bring herself to completely abandon her child.

Adolescence

During his school years, Aquaries excelled academically and consistently impressed his teachers with his grasp on magic and natural ability to remember even the most obscure details of a subject. However, when it came to socializing with his peers, he often found himself faced with difficulties stemming both from his blunt honesty and from various lenses of envy his fellow students felt towards him being the school's star student. Between this loneliness and a growing pressure to achieve greater success academically, he quickly became very exhausted with the world.

His loneliness and tiredness came to a head when, after the sudden death of his mother, he reached his breaking point. Were it not for the timely intervention of Calum, at the behest of Aquaries's childhood friend Rosalie, Aquaries may have made a drastic decision to end his own life. Instead, however, he was offered a different perspective as well as an affirmation of support. From that day on, Aquaries became inseparable from his friends, frequently being seen slipping away to visit them between his lessons.

Archivist

Towards the end of his schooling years, Aquaries took up a position within the school working under his uncle in the archives, collecting and organizing research from other scholars and faculty. He found this position to be quite pleasant, as it offered him bountiful opportunities to learn about varied subjects without the unyielding pressure that simply being a mage would have given him.

During this time period, however, he would get his first glimpse into the dangers his uncle had been diligent in protecting him from for many years. A young woman who would later be identified as working with New Harmonia disguised herself as a student to slip into the archives undetected, having been tasked with striking down Aquaries's uncle. Instead, however, she ran into Aquaries, and upon realizing what he really was, changed targets. In his efforts to protect himself, Aquaries was forced to take a life for the first time, and lost his eye in the process. Though he knew it was justified, he still showed remorse for how the encounter ended.

Journey's Start

His uncle would then devote more time into training Aquaries in ways of protecting himself. This training would continue until one day Amoldo was called from the archives at the behest of an old friend to assist in surveying an archaeological site. As more and more time passed without word from Amoldo, Aquaries grew concerned. However, he quickly found that his every attempt to either arrange for a search party or even simply gain some perspective on what was going on was quickly shut down by various high-ranked members of the different organizations in Vaholm. Suspecting a conspiracy, Aquaries would instead turn to working in the shadows alongside his friends to find the truth.

Notes

• Aquaries's shadow is animated by his own will and emotions, which is useful for having an extra pair of hands but not so much with hiding your feelings.
• A side-effect of Aquaries's extensive use of shadow magic is that his blood runs ink black instead of red. This is purely aesthetic and doesn't harm him in any way, though it does serve as an indicator of how rich with magic his body is.
• Aquaries is a bit of a sucker for a romance novel, but prefers to keep this aspect of himself a secret to everyone but a select few.
• Aquaries's character playlist is available on Spotify. A YouTube playlist will be made available sometime in the near future.
• Aquaries is one of RollRobin's oldest OCs and had a drastically different personality in his original incarnation, being a young prince with ambitions on conquest. His current character design began to form sometime around 2015 or so, when focus shifted towards making him the main focus of the narrative. At this time, the concept of him being a benevolent and darkness-aligned mage began forming. It would be another couple of years before the 'prince' aspect of his design became downplayed in favor of making him more of a scholar.

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