Baelvan [D&D]

Name Meaning: Forest-Guardian

Appearance:
Baelvan is tall for a half-elf, built almost more like a human, with a heavier muscular structure and a wider frame than most elves. But his elven heritage is obvious too, in the gently tapered ears, the artistic hands, the almond-shaped eyes. He only shaves when he’s going to be around people, which is rare, so he often has a dark brown-black growth of beard, though it’s not thick and bushy as a human’s, instead almost as silken as his hair.
His dark brown hair is long, uncut, braided here and there with barred brown-and-white feathers. His eyes are a brown so light as to be almost gold, though that may stem from his favored wildshaping forms—hawk and leopard. His skin is a copper shade, with hints of green in certain light that bely his wood elf heritage, his skin sylvan-smooth, though it should perhaps be weathered from wind and sun and living in the wilds. He carries scars from battles and scars from the everyday wear and tear of the woods. He dresses in earth tones, simple and unadorned, mostly deerhide.
He moves with silent feline grace, eyes piercing, missing nothing; he moves with elven pride, some might say haughtiness, though it’s more just proud aloofness. He does not smile, or laugh; he does not talk often. He is a person of few words, and his movements and gaze and something undefinable gives off the sense of wildness, ferality, a sleeping power held barely in control, like a lounging jaguar’s coiled menace.

Personality:
He is dispassionate. He is dedicated. Nature is his god, his liege, his lover, his life. It commands all his loyalty and all his heart. He is balance, and he lives by nature and balance. If the world tends too far to good, he works to rebalance it with evil. If it tends too far to evil, he works to rebalance it with good.
But the world is a big thing to keep track of—hard to do when residing in the depths of forests. So he focuses on smaller things. Focuses on keeping his patch of nature pure, free of man’s influence; focuses on whatever group of people he’s with, and the places he travels, balancing what he sees when he can.
Nature is not to be contradicted. What happens, happens; it’s only if something unnatural interferes that Baelvan allows himself to act. Undead are unnatural, most magicks are unnatural. Other races trying to destroy the forests and replace it with buildings and population-choked cities—that counts as unnatural, something to be stopped. But a wild bear attacking a careless human? That’s perfectly natural, and something in which Baelvan will not interfere; if the human survives, it’s not Baelvan’s job to heal him.
And battle? It depends on the situation, of course; Baelvan will take whichever side necessary to correct the balance of good and evil. Adventuring and dungeon-crawling? So the rogue set off a trap and broke his leg. That’s his own carelessness, and fate; Baelvan should not heal him. Baelvan himself set off a trap and was badly burned? He won’t heal himself, and won’t let anyone else heal him. It’s a rare situation where he’ll allow himself to be healed, even in times when one might argue that it won’t violate balance or won’t violate the whims of fate to heal him, which perhaps indicates a sort of martyrdom, almost a death-wish or a pain-wish—atonement, perhaps? Suicide is a violation of nature, but Baelvan seems to think that magickal healing is, as well. And certainly resurrecting someone is a violation of the natural way of things!
The half-elf’s dispassionate demeanor perhaps stems from his almost obsessive need for self-control. Emotion, passion—these are things of weakness, and lead to disaster. So much stems from emotion and lack of control: war, the very ideas of good and evil, all that causes imbalance. If no one let their emotions control them, if no one let their desires or weaknesses influence their actions, then there would be no good or evil; all would be in perfect balance. Or that’s how Baelvan sees it. He knows most people, especially humans and their ilk, will never be sensible enough to follow this ideal; he knows it is the nature of most races to tend towards either good or evil. So he doesn’t bother with trying to convince anyone of his opinions; he simply acts to keep the balance. No matter what that requires.

Background:
He was born to a wood-elf mother, the product of rape as most half-wood-elves are, raised among wood-elves to love nature and guard it and protect it. The lessons of nature and the dearness of it were perhaps drilled into him harder than any other, as humans are known not to respect nature, and so the wood-elves made sure his human nature would not manifest. But it did, nonetheless—not in any desire to harm nature, but in anger. A burst of anger, hot and uncontrolled, born of pent-up resentment for the unspoken mistrust, the constant reminders that he was not elven, he was no better than human. Born of his human nature, the passionate emotional aspect of humanity foreign to the long-lived elves. Anger like that, boiling under pressure, cannot remain checked forever—it exploded in mindless violence: the death of a young elf by his hands.
He was banished, by ruling of the elves and by his own wishes. He probably would have been slain, had his mother not begged for his life, had it not been for the innate elven respect for all life. He’d already been training as a druid at the time; now he threw himself into his studies and into nature. A lack of passion was the key, he decided; emotion caused the world’s problems, and a lack of self-control caused imbalance. So he worked at building up an iron control over his emotions, his human nature, his desires and his very sense of self. Denial of the self—that would give him control…
But it didn’t. He was naturally a creature of powerful emotion, and it was impossible to suppress that forever. There would be periods of calm and emotional numbness, for months even—but deep inside, beneath his subconscious, the emotional pressure would build, and eventually explode.
He found the solution in wildshaping.
Shapeshifting. Taking the form of an animal, living as a creature of the wild, even if only for a few hours. As an animal, he could give himself over to the shape’s instincts; he could hunt, he could race the wind as a hawk, kill as a cat. He could let out all the inner tension through the primal patterns. Wildshaping became his refuge, his outlet; the form of beasts felt truer than his own bastard half-elf, half-man body with all its emotions and higher thinking. He even learned to banish the guilt that came when he returned to his senses and his true form and found himself standing over a dead body—animal, humanoid, goblinoid, or whatever else. Wildshaping was an excuse for anger’s release, to drop the iron control for a time, and when he returned to his true form, it was easier to remain utterly dispassionate.
Baelvan prefers the humid heat of the southern forests, rainforests—that’s where he found his companion, the leopard that is heartkin. He has traveled, to be sure, even to the more northern reaches, to snow-swept tundra—though never too far north, and never for long. Winter is not his favorite time of year, by all means! He has visited the plains, and the temperate forests, but he prefers the tropics. He has not yet seen the golden expanses of the desert or the cracked earth of the wastelands, nor the endless waters of the sea.

Animal Companion
Name: Si’ethar
Name Meaning: Cat-Friend
Species: Leopard

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