Mourning Star

A little bit of history- back during the Giant Crazy Story With Too Many Characters, there was a young woman named Radrazha; this was before any of the current countries came into being. Mages and smiths and weavers were common all over the place; mages more so than smiths or weavers, as actual arcane magic was seen as more useful than crafting. Radra was a windsmith at first, but she eventually came into her full power as an Omnismith after a series of incredibly traumatic events including but not limited to being raped, committing murder, and getting married.

She eventually went batshit and destroyed a huge chunk of the scenery. Her husband killed her and raised their son, who eventually grew up to restore the broken land and ascend the throne of this new country, Radrezaria. He named the place after his mother despite his father's protests, and eventually killed his father for getting in his way. As the son of an Omnismith and a very powerful mage of demonic descent, he was pretty damn badass in his own right- and he became the first Voyance.

The borders of Radrezaria became closed to outsiders for a while as the Voyance built up his power; he blamed mages for his mother's insanity and made Radrezaria a haven for those who practiced alternative forms of magic. When he died, he became one of the Dead- the very first one, actually. The next Voyance refused to reveal how he came into the title, and thus a whole culture of secrecy surrounds the succession- certain laws were passed by the first Voyance, however, that are strictly adhered to.

The Voyance is not allowed to bear or father children. (Female Voyances are rare, but they have existed.) The first Voyance passed along his powers when he turned himself into one of the Dead, and every crafter who was Killed after that becomes absorbed into the power base. So each successive Voyance becomes more powerful than the last as they absorb the powers of renegade crafters when they Die.

They're mutants, really; magicrafting is hereditary, and becoming the Voyance does some crazy shit to your genes so that the power is built into your genetic structure. Having more than one person with that sort of power at their disposal would have disastrous consequences on the balance of power in Radrezaria, and the first Voyance knew this from the start.

The Voyance himself can't actually use the crafting power he absorbs from the Dead; the successsion rituals but you in a permanent state of near-Death so that he can't actually craft anything. He's an Unweaver, an Unraveler of the highest degree. Despite the inherited power of enough smiths to make an Omnismith of unimaginable power, the Voyance is unable to tap into it, and can't actually touch the elements.

Theron's mother was a renowned aethersmith, and a member of the Voyance's council. She was a power hungry bitch with no compunctions about using sex to get what she wanted, and the fact that she was an aethersmith, the rarest of the rarest, only added to her appeal. The Voyance was a lecherous bastard, but he expected Shanonil to be smart enough to keep from getting pregnant. When he found out, he had her Killed (need a better word for it)- but somehow Theron survived this. Shanonil became Shanreth, and brought her baby to term. If the Voyance had figured out that she was pregnant sooner, Theron probably would have died; as it was, he managed to feed off her corpse long enough to be born prematurely, but this nearly destroyed Shanreth. (It's difficult for a zombie to regain its strength, you know.)

The Dead can't use magic and most of their memories are gone, but Shanonil had her memories woven into Theron before the Voyance Killed her and managed to recover most of them after being exiled. She took care of Theron out of spite, for the most part, and moved around a lot to keep the Voyance from finding her. Eventually she moved out to Luthra, a farming village in the asscrack of nowhere, near the border Radrezaria shares with this world's equivalent of the Lost Woods.

Theron doesn't actually find out who he is until he grows up; Shanreth leaves him in Luthra with Bren's family and disappears a little after his thirteenth birthday.

What all this means is that Theron's existance is against the law- and he's the first proper Omnismith to be born since the founding of the country. The combination of the Voyance's power sink and his mother's aethersmithing produced an Omnismith...and an inhuman, mutant freak. >:D

Theron knows his mother is a corpse; he's always known it. He lives a pretty lonely and occasionally abused life until he meets Bren, who decides to make it his job to take care of Theron. They're sort of friends, in the sense that Bren would do just about anything for Theron, and Theron doesn't hate him in return. For Theron, that's practically a declaration of undying love- but Theron's not the sort of person you want loving you. It's just not...healthy.

Next post will be a bit more in depth about Theron as a person. Whee.