Aquaries Val'Amoldo

Aquaries is the young protagonist of Song of Sages. He is a young scholar 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 at precisely midnight on the 14th of Snomat, 1293 in a dwarven cavern while his mother was assisting his uncle in studying some old runes to determine if they were of Labyrinthan or Amyanan origin. Formal documentation chose to state his birthplace as Vaholm, however, as there were still territorial disputes regarding the cavern's location and a specific location was required on birth documents in Vasguard.

Thanks to the efforts of his mother and uncle, Aquaries had a relatively peaceful childhood, and he would be described as a very kind if shy child. His magical abilities would spark at the age of six when, in an emotional outburst in response to being teased by some of his peers, he knocked out a series of enchanted lamps. Aquaries would reminesce this event as something that taught him very early that he needed to manage his own feelings, as he was fortunate it was only a few lamps that were damaged and not others.

When he was eleven years old, he would meet Rosalie Val'Anilla, an orphan girl who had recently been brought to the city after being adopted by Captain Anilla Val'Mille. Although he had experienced brief and fleeting friendships prior to her, she was the first person to whom he felt he had developed a deeper, stronger connection with. This was aided in part by the encouragement of Aquaries's mother, who worked with Captain Anilla to arrange for Aquaries to also act as a sort of tutor to Rosalie in order to get her caught up with their peers in school.

Adolescence

Aquaries would have a much more tumultuous adolescence, coinciding with a noted increase in his magical power that brought with it a greater strain on his ability to control it. In addition to this, his friendship with Rosalie would become temporarily strained as the latter intensified her training under the Order of the Dawn in anticipation of entering squireship.

During this time, his classmates's teasings became far more malicious in nature. Some were motivated by envy towards him for his skill in magic, others were motivated simply by the fact he willingly chose to associate with the 'weird outsider girl' as a friend, and still others were simply motivated by the perception of him as an trusting and naive target.

In one incident, Aquaries would be misled by his classmates into going into a shadier part of the city where he would be beset by thugs. However, before any serious harm befell him, the thugs fled in terror from something previously unseen. After a moment of stunned confusion, Aquaries would realize he was being protected by a guardian spirit, though one whose nature he would not fully understand for some years yet.

The culminating event of his adolescence, however, and one that he would always consider the greatest tragedy, was the loss of his mother when he was only seventeen. Official reports stated that she had perished in a carriage accident, though his uncle held that this was only the partial truth, and would spend the next four years absorbed in his own investigation on the matter.

In the years following his mother's death, Aquaries would sink into a deep depression, isolating himself from everyone around him. On the second anniversary of his mother's death, he would find him reaching a snapping point and would make an attempt on his own life. He was halted, however, by the timely intervention of Calum Val'Sindri, a then-recent arrival to the city who had himself only recently climbed out from the rock bottom of a pit of despair.

Calum would listen to Aquaries's woes and offered him compassion and understanding in return. As Aquaries would slowly pull himself back up in the following months, he too would eventually learn Calum's story and the two would bond, finding something comforting in each other's companionship.

New Harmonian Investigation

Some time after this, Aquaries would join his uncle in the pursuit of truth over his mother's death. This was in the interest of maintaining his relationship with his uncle as much as seeking closure for a burning mystery that personally affected both of them.

Their efforts would be confirmed as justified when one night, when Aquaries was working late in the archives, he would be attacked by a young woman with red eyes, who claimed to be acting under the orders of New Harmonia. During the attack, Aquaries lost use of his right eye and briefly lost control over his magic, resulting in the young woman's death and the loss of any information she had.

During the following investigation, Amoldo would later discover that someone had slipped a mildly hallucinatory drug into Aquaries's drink that night, explaining why his emotional response was so potent as to cause his powers to slip. However, before Amoldo could present this information to Aquaries, he vanished. Aquaries would find this out when, while snooping around the Chancellor's office, he found a letter in his uncle's handwriting that detailed the discovery, as well as a second letter that was addressed directly to Aquaries but had been hidden.

The contents of both letters would cause Aquaries to conclude that it was no longer safe within the walls of Vaholm, and he needed to seek out his uncle's old friends elsewhere. Calum and Rosalie, both concerned for Aquaries's well-being and having their own growing suspicions and discontents with the city, chose to accompany him.

Abilities

Eyes of Umbra

Aquaries was born with natural night vision, said to have been an additional blessing from the goddess Umbra due to the fortune of him being born at precisely midnight.

Shadow Magic

Aquaries has a natural aptitude for shadow magic, which is additionally enhanced by the eventually-revealed nature of his status as the next sage of Umbra. His powers rely heavily upon his environment, however, which is why he carries a lantern at his hip to ensure that there are always shadows for him to manipulate.

Dual Wielding

Aquaries has trained himself in a two-weapon fighting style as a means of taking advantage of his ambidexterity. Although his style is very quick and decisive, it also unfortunately leaves wide gaps in his defense that he needs to rely on his allies to cover.

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 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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