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Name: Kiran Xuresh
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 18 Cloudreach, 9:03 Dragon
Occupation: Circle Negotiator, Loyalist Enchanter, and Chantry pilgrim.
Companion(s): Ser Cedric Simon Sampson, a loud-mouthed male human templar that can somehow get in more trouble than an actual mage.
A Circle success story, Kiran stands at 6'0, proudly wears his cream-coloured Chanter's robe earned from a prior vow of silence, and is normally seen with a thin smile that brims with positivity. His face is full and has a bit of spry youth to it, attesting to the wonders of restful sleep and a daily shaving routine. Lacking muscle and callouses alike, he is clearly the scholarly type and thin to boot, having missed his fair share of meals to the throes of Just One More Page. In fact, it's a miracle he gets anything done at all with the library so close at hand.
A large gash sits on the left of his forehead near his hairline, a reminder of the one and only time the tower's worth of healers generally surrounding him had to pick and choose rather than tending to every little paper cut. Eyes that are a bright blue-gray sit at odds with his dusky features, the Fereldan's complexion darker than is usually seen this far south with black hair always kept short and tidy. It yearns to curl with just a bit more length, already one pesky tendril spiraling to heart's content somewhere on his forehead.
Coupled with his well-defined nose and jawline, and Kiran could almost be considered attractive. Maybe if he grew out a goatee and got himself a brooding, haunted look to practice in the mirror...
Class: Mage
Specialization: Knight-Enchanter (novice)
Weapons & Armor: His Enchanter's staff is a straightforward design: a palm-sized sphere on a stick. All the elaboration lies in the paint job, the underlying colour a gold still visible at the bottom, and the top smothered in a black varnish that had streaked however gravity willed it. When he's feeling especially flashy, sometimes there will be a few extra curlicues of ice and other geometric shapes snaking around. Maybe. If the weather is compliant and present company not too twitchy.
Languages: Native speaker of Common with full literacy.
Capable of comprehending terse documents, which some consider their own language.
Can passibly read Orlesian and Anders manuscripts, albeit with a peculiarly ecclesiastical vocabulary, and he still prefers to have his trusty dictionaries at hand.
Non-Combat Skills:
Master: Reading, Research.
Expert: Arcane Lore, Bookkeeping, Calligraphy, Religious Lore (Chantry).
Intermediate: Bartering, Diplomacy, Engineering, Evaluation, Historical Lore (The Anderfels, Ferelden, Orlais), Natural Lore, Writing.
Novice: Coercion, Contacts, Cultural Lore (The Anderfels, Ferelden, Orlais), Navigation.
Combat Skills:
Armour: Light
Master: Spirit (Barrier, Mana Drain → Dispel, Mana Cleanse → Anti-Magic Ward → Anti-Magic Burst)
Expert: Arcane Lance, Staves
Intermediate: Winter (Winter's Grasp → Frost Weapons)
Novice: Spirit Blade, Creation (Heal).
Ever the chipper chanter, Kiran possesses a boundless optimism unbecoming of his age. It's not a lack of tragedy to stamp the tendency out, however - it was a hard-learned life lesson to get him to this point at all. He used to be dour, a troubled youth who went through all the usual turmoil of the tower. He has since found the Maker, and with it a quiet regret for how things used to be, and an outspoken passion for how they could be better. After all, who else is more acquainted with the failings of the Circle than the children who felt it tear their lives apart?
It was this natural desire for improvement and a head for numbers that got him on his current track. Most others find it dull to pour over records and contracts day in and day out and scrutinize all those little interpretations, but to the man who's always comprehended far better than he's composed, they possess an explicitness he can appreciate. Schmoozing is what's difficult; the shrewd words and coy manipulations of the politically savvy are as baffling as fire magic to the mage, although he's found success in simply being genuine. He always did want to help others, and it's easy to fawn over everyone else's life and accomplishments when he spent his only ever reading about the world that passed him by.
But he doesn't always like the work, either. The reformer is just wise enough to know his own shortcomings, and the perpetual paranoia of second-guessing others when he prefers to lead with faith weighs heavily on him. Even worse are those moments when he knows he could get better terms, yet doesn't have the heart to push others for them. He's still learning at it all and rebelling against the heartlessness most seem to think necessary, but those are concerns best left between him and the Maker.
In the meanwhile, he's spent too many years forgetting that he's not the one dead. He's ready to live now.
Long before his failed mentorships, the aimless skillset, the helpless anger, the fluke Harrowing, the wasted lessons, and the tower, the templars, and his magic at all, Kiran was already lost. He didn't make a very welcomed son, Marisa and Edarin Xuresh scraping by just to provide for their family of four by the time he entered the picture. He didn't even make a good youngest child, only holding that prestige for sixty-three seconds before his twin came along. 'Trouble-maker' wasn't much of a title when everyone knew all the mischievous ploys were Tiran's idea, nor could he claim to be the funny one, the athletic one, or even the studious one, either.
It wasn't exactly a happy childhood, always feeling adrift like that. At least he had his brother. They understood each other, sharing a secret language fostered by the absence of their family, and they always made each other their biggest priority. Lightning storms in the dead of night weren't as frightening, knowing that Tiran also couldn't sleep. Meals were always an even split, too, whether they were provided by their elder sister or an afternoon pissing off Old Man Hetchinson in his berry bushes again. While he still didn't have a direction, Kiran at least had a place at his brother's side.
Then their magic came, and soon after, the terrifying men in suits of armour who took the eight-year-olds away. Templars, they were called. All Kiran sought to do was keep his brother out of trouble, too. A menace of a brat picked on him, resulting in flared tempers and singed shoes. He had already put the embers out with his ice magic, but that didn't keep the scary men away.
This is one of those memories Kiran hates recalling. Not because he regrets fighting for his brother - were it not for the surplus of healers, he'd still have the broken nose to prove how much he tried. And it's not because he harbours disdain for the templars, either, although panicking mages or not, surely they could have made a better decision.
It's because he never got to say good-bye.
By the time he awoke in the infirmary, his brother was already gone, sent off to a Circle in Orlais. His last memory was just blurs of hands pulling them every which way and far too much shouting. And then a shite day turned into a worse week when he finally heard the news: there had been an accident on the road. Tiran never made it to Orlais, and Kiran was lost all over again.
Needless to say... the years that followed weren't exactly productive. A misbegotten apprentice, he continued acting out in all the usual ways a troubled boy vying for attention does. Some years of squandered training, all of magic seeming to dislike the boy, and he finally got a letter from home - his parents had been taken in for lyrium trafficking. That was a real fun winter of sidelong glances and suspiciously hushed conversations every time he entered a room. As if he hadn't heard all their theories already. Then his Harrowing approached, and a languished magical gift filled the Enchanters and Templars alike with concerns. One even spoke to him privately about accepting an alternative, a Rite that wouldn't have to pit him in a challenge of life or death.
He still remembers his reason for taking the test. He still hasn't told anyone except his first leather-bound journal.
Unsurprisingly, a proper title and the presumption of adulthood changed little. He tried a little harder with his studies, but he was loathe to become some magical weapon, and the healing arts weren't any kinder to a temperament that was still so anguished and hollow. He embraced his solitude with books. The rest went into his magic, where it speaks for itself that the only spells to come easily to him were the anti-magic kind.
Not that he stayed out of trouble entirely. He was 25 and going nowhere when he landed himself in solitude again, probably another silly squabble about an overly harsh book-borrowing rule - there were always so many to rankle against, it was like the library was designed to taunt them. However, this was the last time he would end up in that room. With far too much time to dwell in the past, and just enough to consider the future, Kiran decided that this was not the kind of life he wanted to lead.
Faith was a harder thing to accept over the years. He read about it plenty, needing a new ideology now that 'seething anger and silent grudges' wasn't quite going to cut it anymore. He plied his hand around the Circle, wanting to do more than sulk his days away, but an earnest heart didn't make up for a lack of talent in any of the traditional pursuits. Then the tower fell to chaos, his life spared another near-scrape thanks to his love of the library, and it became harder to keep assuming coincidence.
When the Grey Wardens called for assistance in Denerim, he went. Not the most spectacular contributor in the unit, but it was something. When they returned to Kinloch Hold, he assumed a greater role in its restoration and one that it turned out magic couldn't easily fix: a budget. It was humourous, how many of his fellow magi could reshape the earth, stave off frostbite in the heart of a blizzard, and even bring back the fallen from the brink of death, yet adding up a few numbers was the miraculous impossibility. Better yet was that they had skilled craftsman and unique wares to leverage, if they'd only stop relying on the tower's enviable tourism to draw in customers, with plenty of opportunities in previous supply contracts to renegotiate.
It was around this time Kiran threw himself into the Circle and the Chant wholeheartedly, for the first time in his life realizing that the two were not mutually exclusive. He finally had a direction, all his time in the library paying off and continuing to work with the trade side of the tower. His own personal reform was acknowledged when he was offered the path of a Knight-Enchanter, although the lessons have been too recent and sparse to really call himself one yet. It's not something he'll complain about; Kiran understands completely that Kinloch has more important priorities right now.
He has a number of reform ideas he'd like to propose, but the Circle is going to need stability and resources first. Daily concerns have finally calmed enough to grant him a business trip, an outside excursion to update old agreements and maybe even work out a few new ones. And... maybe swing by a few pilgrimage locations. And take in the sights of a real, proper city. And meet a dwarf. And sleep under the stars. And enjoy fresh berries again.
All purely professional, of course.
