Savas Tigh
01-28-09, 11:43 PM
Name: Savas Tigh
Age: 26
Race: Human
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Green
Height: 6'3”
Weight: 185 lbs.
Current Occupation(s): Necromancer, Archivist
Former Occupation(s): Wizard, forensic alchemist, arcanologist, translator
Personality: Savas is an outgoing, amiable sort of fellow – pleasant and genuine, sympathetic and downright kind to those who can wedge him into an actual conversation that doesn't rely on forensics, murder, magic or the unholy. Needless to say, he comes off as a bit unhinged to most people – tolerably so, but not the kind of person you would want to hang out with. He was a forensic alchemist for several years, and remains fascinated by the workings of bodies to this day. Any body will do. He's an outspoken optimist with a knack for the obscene, an affable sociopath who regards people the same way people regard things, and a sadist who's taken his interest in autopsy a bit too far on more than one occasion. You don't even have to give him an excuse; he'll give you a body just because it's there. Beneath the layers of his exterior, pleasant and monstrous alike, Savas boasts a razor wit that never stops cutting and never grows dull for any reason. He has few scruples, and even fewer fears.
Appearance: Savas is what you would expect of a Wizard, even now. Approximately six foot three and too thin for his own good; he's been described as looking something like an emaciated marathon runner. He's pale from too many hours spent lurking in dark, ill lit places, but tans easily. His hair reaches just past the shoulder blades, and it's quite literally pitch black. It doesn't even have a stereotypical shimmer in any lighting. His eyes are green, bright and a bit disturbing to look at. He has a long face and a prominent jawline, complete with a thin goatee. He generally wears any one of a dozen robes, most of them red or purple or black, or some combination therein, and almost always with a very long black vest that comes with a heavy hood.
Skills
Alchemy: Savas Tigh is an alchemist of average skill, with specialties related to poison. Given enough time, he can reverse engineer, create or counteract just about any poison you can pen a name to, but never in the midst of an actual combat situation. He typically requires some kind of aid to perform alchemy, whether it's a circle written in chalk or something more absurd, like a magnifying glass. Owing to his skill in forensic autopsy, Savas is intimately familiar with the human body; its layout and its composition. Given enough time, he can break a body down or transmute multiple bodies together. This ability is detailed in the Spells section.
Languages: Owing to his past training as a Wizard, Savas is an expert on languages. He can pick up the written elements of a language in less than an hour, though he only gains spoken fluency after a day or two. Like any properly trained Wizard, Savas is still able to read, speak, and comprehend anything written or spoken in arcane dialects. He can even speak with proper punctuation, or none at all.
Magic: Wizardry: Before he was a necromancer, Savas was a Wizard. He still retains all the basic knowledge and skills of that time, however twisted they may be now. His specialties lie in aeromancy, pyromancy, and shadowcasting. Though his spells in these areas are still obviously classic Wizardry, they now draw on necromancy as their chief power source.
Magic: Necromancy: By most standards, Savas would count as a mere hedge necromancer. He has great talent and potential, but his skill is currently lacking. Despite the low number of genuine necromancy spells in his repertoire, Savas fuels most of his magic with necromancy. As a consequence of this, all of Savas' spells – even the fire ones – deal at least some cold damage, regardless of elemental immunities. The effect varies from a mere numbing sensation to hypothermic shock to the formation of frost or ice at the point of impact.
Spells
While Savas' magic affinities and powers all have generic components that allow him to function without specifics, his named spells are generally a bit more powerful. At this point in time, there isn't much of a difference.
Harpy's Talon: An Aeromancy spell, basically taking the form of a talon-shaped gust of wind capable of piercing thin sheets of steel. It has a fairly short range, but can be cast with any or several of Savas' fingers, up to two on each hand. Most of the damage is done on impact, resembling various types of knife wound.
Efreet's Lash: A Pyromancy spell. Savas creates a rope-thin whip of fire, ten feet long and ending in tiny candle-like flames. The whip is anchored to a point one inch from his index and middle finger tip or from the tip of a focusing tool. Its appearance is a fairly good descriptor of what the Lash can do: It functions as an ordinary whip in terms of impact and tripping someone up, with the added chance of setting them on fire. It's an awkward spell to use though, as it requires focus and the use of an entire hand. Savas has the capacity, but he currently lacks the focus or skill to use two Lashes at once: He'd just set himself on fire. The duration of the spell depends on his focus.
Dead Man's Scream: A Pyromancy-Necromancy spell. Savas draws in a nearby spirit (or more) and channels it into a point just above his vocal cords. Then he screams. Magic shapes and ignites the spirit, such that it erupts from his mouth and nose and quickly takes the shape of a skull mask less than three inches from his face. The further it moves from Savas' face, the more the skull takes shape and the larger it becomes. At full size, Dead Man's Scream is roughly three feet in diameter. Its intensity varies based on how many spirits Savas can draw in (a maximum of five), their willingness to come to him, his ability to force them, and his ability to focus. It deals damage through a combination of impact (which resembles getting tackled by a professional football player), short-lived fire damage (even if the target is set on fire, the flames only last for as many seconds as there are spirits; from one to five), and longer lasting necromantic damage (the target's energy/magic is briefly sapped and their senses subject to stunning and numbness, entirely at the opposing player's discretion). Owing to the nature of this spell, Savas is unable to use it more than once per hour.
Hands of Shadow: A Shadowcasting spell. Using shadows as a conduit, Savas generates hands of shadow to reach out and ensnare his enemies – up to ten of them at his current level. Each hand is four-fingered, including the thumb, two-dimensional and intangible. They require a surface of some kind – any kind – and a base shadow in order to form. Their maximum reach varies depending on the victim's placement: A Hand of Shadow can reach all the way to someone's scalp if they happen to be standing within the borders of a shadow, but they can only reach for a maximum of three feet outside of their shadow of origin. Their strength is generally consistent; each one has about half the strength of an ordinary man's hands. While the hands are currently capable of holding someone in place and the necromantic nature of Savas' magic causes them to do cold damage at points of contact, they lack the strength to do any impact damage on their own. The duration of this spell relies on Savas' concentration. He has great difficulty maintaining more than six hands if he wants to cast another spell. Maximum range is approximately fifty feet in any direction.
Raise Undead:Pure Necromancy. Savas raises up to two corpses, preferably recent ones, to fight on his behalf. The corpses are each about as strong and fast as they were in life. They gain incredible resilience to conventional injury, requiring massive impact trauma or total limb and head loss to stop them. They have no special abilities on their own and are fairly mindless, relying on Savas for orders and functioning on instinct from there. They'll fight with whatever's on hand, including their own severed limbs. Unfortunately for Savas, his Undead only ever last for a maximum of two turns each, and he cannot raise the same body more than once every six turns.
Body Horror: Alchemy-Necromancy. Savas takes two or more corpses and transmutes them together. This is a time-consuming process and, since Savas currently lacks the skill or power to raise the Horrors he produces, not exactly applicable for combat. Requires the use of various reagents and Alchemy.
Necromancer's Voice: Not a spell per se, but a warped holdover from Savas' days as a Wizard proper. His Voice, when activated, manifests as an inhumanly deep sound with electronic properties; like rolling thunder in an echo chamber. Most people who hear it describe a Necromancer's Voice as being red on the brain; conjuring visuals of blood, roses, setting suns and crimson dawns. It can be disheartening for many people, but has no specific powers to cause harm on its own.
Equipment
Warlock's Blade
Picked up at the start of Savas' dissent into inhumanity, this is a steel short sword with a curving S-shaped blade, similar to a kris knife, and a Coronian-styled cross-guard to protect the hand from slipping. Carried in a sheath somewhere in Savas' robes. He favors its use as a spellcasting tool, and has below average skill in wielding it in an actual fight.
Wand
A holdover from Savas' days as a Wizard. His wand is about fourteen inches long, hickory wood colored solid black. No memorable characteristics, rarely used nowadays.
Alchemist's Kit
A self-contained alchemist's lab, albeit a small and feeble one compared to the resources Savas had when he worked for Scara Brae's Watch. Useful for forensics, poison-making, and the Body Horror spell. The kit is carried in a tough leather sack, similar to a modern day messenger bag except for having buttons in lieu of a zipper.
Grimoire
Savas' most prized possession, and one of his only material holdovers from his days as an official Wizard of any standing. His grimoire is a vivid red book with infinite pages, though it appears to have only a few hundred when unopened, its covers holding the texture and strength of human bone, and its spine reinforced with thick metal rings of an unknown make. The grimoire is held shut by a heavy padlock. Unusual by the standards of magical books, the grimoire has a fully functioning pen tethered to it with a long, thin chain. Where the pen's ink comes from, Savas will never tell. He normally keeps this in the same bag as his Alchemist's Kit, though it's occasionally been chained to his belt as well.
Familiar
Savas has struck up something of a Familiarity with an odd little thing identifying itself only as Fazen. It appears to be a fire-imp of unknown origin, less than six inches tall, red skinned and covered in flames the color of Savas' own eyes. Its eyes, ears and nose are all oversized for its skinny little body, and it moves in ways that are simply unnatural: Each step is more like a thirty foot jump, and each word is spoken out of sync with its mouth. Fazen currently has no combat function. That may change. Or it may not.
History
Savas Tigh was born to a relatively wealthy merchant family in Scara Brae, seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son and so on and so forth, all the way up the line: Every single one of his forefathers for the six preceeding generations was the seventh son of a seventh son. It wasn't long before his father slipped word of this peculiarity to a passing Wizard by the Name of Dead-Eye, who arrived unannounced to nobody's surprise exactly one week after learning of Savas' existence. He took one look at the future necromancer, then barely an infant, and immediately declared him a Wizard-to-be. Dead-Eye paid the Tigh family a sizeable amount to take their son back to Salvar and enlist him in one of the nation's sanctioned schools of magic as soon as he could crawl.
A few months later, Savas was taken from Scara Brae. According to any witness, he was cooing and laughing all the way to Salvar. Just as soon as he could walk and form basic words, Dead-Eye enrolled Savas in one of the arcane colleges of his order, a virtual fortress called Icecrest, situated in one of the dozens of fiefdoms on the frontier of Salvar. The place was strict enough to qualify as a lawful Hell in its own right, maintained by the Wizards with rigid oversight from the Church of Ethereal Sway. It was the kind of place that breeds monsters in the name of Gods, Kings and Countries, and it turned out a real success story with the young Savas Tigh. He reached Adept status at barely thirteen years, and was properly apprenticed to Dead-Eye on his fourteenth birthday, complete with a pointed Wizard's Hat and his own grimoire.
Icecrest made Savas into a monster. Dead-Eye refined the monster into a man, which may have been even worse. Under the old Wizard's tutorship, Savas' skills took form. He cast shadows and stripped away the light; he made fires dance and even sing; and he turned the air sharper than any mere blade. All the while, Savas was drawn to the darker side of knowledge. He took to alchemy as an excuse to hide his fascination with death and all things related to it. He masked his dissections of animals as mere curiosity, throwing away the trophies whenever Dead-Eye appeared to suspect that it was anything more. He moved up to human bodies as a legitimate practice, to start with anyway. He dissected his first human at the age of sixteen, in a dark and dusty basement beneath a church in Knife's Edge. He concluded that it – the body never warranted gender – was the victim of a chemical spill in the city's sewage system, combined with possible illness relating to the cold. He dissected a few more just to be sure, always careful not to find the poisons he used to get them onto the table.
He had a good time as Dead-Eye's apprentice, but it couldn't last. Good things never last. The old man started to suspect him, but he was too late. Savas slipped a little powder in his drink one morning, and by nightfall the elder Wizard was lying on his table. He was still alive. Still conscious. Maybe not quite numb, but he tried to speak and his mouth didn't move well and his vocal cords were paralyzed and Savas had never seen a heart still beating before.
He never did figure out how in the seven hells he got away with it. Didn't much care either.
A few months after his eighteenth birthday, Savas Tigh left Salvar and went home to Scara Brae. He was greeted by his family as their prodigal son, at least to begin with, fated to bring fame and fortune to the Tigh name. And then he disappointed them by applying for a job in a position that nobody had ever even heard of on that small island: Forensic Alchemist. The Watchmen scoffed at him to start with, but Savas remained cheerful and optimistic.
It helped that one of them died of a poisoning a few days later.
Savas did the autopsy, you see. He confirmed it and everything, then traced the poison back to its base elements and employed his skills as a Wizard to find the rotten, no good shopkeep who 'sold' the ingredients, and through him found the poisoner. It didn't matter that his father was the poisoner, of course. Savas arrested him personally, and he smiled all the way to the gallows. The Watch hired him on the spot, even if a few of them remained unnerved by the whole ordeal. Savas immediately went to work doing what he loved: Communing with the dead in his own special way.
This too, was much too good to last.
Others came. Wizards skilled in alchemy, taking his spotlight. To compensate, Savas branched out and took up Arcanology; the study of ancient arcana. It wasn't much, but he was able to establish himself as a relative expert in the field. Made some money on the side helping to verify artifacts and decipher ancient writings. Then some idiot had the misfortune of discovering a dark place beneath the city, a network of tunnels called the Catacombs. Like most Wizards in the city, Savas greeted the place with revulsion and horror. He ran. Locked himself in a bathroom and wouldn't come out for days. Unlike his compatriots though, Savas got over his fear. Slowly. Barely.
When the way was open for proper police investigation, he was the only one with the skills and will to go down there. He was accompanied by a few Watchmen, just in case the Catacombs' known inhabitants tried anything.
Two days later, they found the leftovers of the Watchmen. Nobody could tell what killed them, but it had been messy and Savas was conspicuously absent. Rumor has it that he killed the Watchmen himself, taken by some madness in the dark. They say he was lost in those dark tunnels, prey to voices that he couldn't understand, driven to awful things in the shadows beneath the world.
They say this, and they're wrong.
It was one Voice, and the necromancer called Savas has no intention of doing his awful work in shadow any longer.
Age: 26
Race: Human
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Green
Height: 6'3”
Weight: 185 lbs.
Current Occupation(s): Necromancer, Archivist
Former Occupation(s): Wizard, forensic alchemist, arcanologist, translator
Personality: Savas is an outgoing, amiable sort of fellow – pleasant and genuine, sympathetic and downright kind to those who can wedge him into an actual conversation that doesn't rely on forensics, murder, magic or the unholy. Needless to say, he comes off as a bit unhinged to most people – tolerably so, but not the kind of person you would want to hang out with. He was a forensic alchemist for several years, and remains fascinated by the workings of bodies to this day. Any body will do. He's an outspoken optimist with a knack for the obscene, an affable sociopath who regards people the same way people regard things, and a sadist who's taken his interest in autopsy a bit too far on more than one occasion. You don't even have to give him an excuse; he'll give you a body just because it's there. Beneath the layers of his exterior, pleasant and monstrous alike, Savas boasts a razor wit that never stops cutting and never grows dull for any reason. He has few scruples, and even fewer fears.
Appearance: Savas is what you would expect of a Wizard, even now. Approximately six foot three and too thin for his own good; he's been described as looking something like an emaciated marathon runner. He's pale from too many hours spent lurking in dark, ill lit places, but tans easily. His hair reaches just past the shoulder blades, and it's quite literally pitch black. It doesn't even have a stereotypical shimmer in any lighting. His eyes are green, bright and a bit disturbing to look at. He has a long face and a prominent jawline, complete with a thin goatee. He generally wears any one of a dozen robes, most of them red or purple or black, or some combination therein, and almost always with a very long black vest that comes with a heavy hood.
Skills
Alchemy: Savas Tigh is an alchemist of average skill, with specialties related to poison. Given enough time, he can reverse engineer, create or counteract just about any poison you can pen a name to, but never in the midst of an actual combat situation. He typically requires some kind of aid to perform alchemy, whether it's a circle written in chalk or something more absurd, like a magnifying glass. Owing to his skill in forensic autopsy, Savas is intimately familiar with the human body; its layout and its composition. Given enough time, he can break a body down or transmute multiple bodies together. This ability is detailed in the Spells section.
Languages: Owing to his past training as a Wizard, Savas is an expert on languages. He can pick up the written elements of a language in less than an hour, though he only gains spoken fluency after a day or two. Like any properly trained Wizard, Savas is still able to read, speak, and comprehend anything written or spoken in arcane dialects. He can even speak with proper punctuation, or none at all.
Magic: Wizardry: Before he was a necromancer, Savas was a Wizard. He still retains all the basic knowledge and skills of that time, however twisted they may be now. His specialties lie in aeromancy, pyromancy, and shadowcasting. Though his spells in these areas are still obviously classic Wizardry, they now draw on necromancy as their chief power source.
Magic: Necromancy: By most standards, Savas would count as a mere hedge necromancer. He has great talent and potential, but his skill is currently lacking. Despite the low number of genuine necromancy spells in his repertoire, Savas fuels most of his magic with necromancy. As a consequence of this, all of Savas' spells – even the fire ones – deal at least some cold damage, regardless of elemental immunities. The effect varies from a mere numbing sensation to hypothermic shock to the formation of frost or ice at the point of impact.
Spells
While Savas' magic affinities and powers all have generic components that allow him to function without specifics, his named spells are generally a bit more powerful. At this point in time, there isn't much of a difference.
Harpy's Talon: An Aeromancy spell, basically taking the form of a talon-shaped gust of wind capable of piercing thin sheets of steel. It has a fairly short range, but can be cast with any or several of Savas' fingers, up to two on each hand. Most of the damage is done on impact, resembling various types of knife wound.
Efreet's Lash: A Pyromancy spell. Savas creates a rope-thin whip of fire, ten feet long and ending in tiny candle-like flames. The whip is anchored to a point one inch from his index and middle finger tip or from the tip of a focusing tool. Its appearance is a fairly good descriptor of what the Lash can do: It functions as an ordinary whip in terms of impact and tripping someone up, with the added chance of setting them on fire. It's an awkward spell to use though, as it requires focus and the use of an entire hand. Savas has the capacity, but he currently lacks the focus or skill to use two Lashes at once: He'd just set himself on fire. The duration of the spell depends on his focus.
Dead Man's Scream: A Pyromancy-Necromancy spell. Savas draws in a nearby spirit (or more) and channels it into a point just above his vocal cords. Then he screams. Magic shapes and ignites the spirit, such that it erupts from his mouth and nose and quickly takes the shape of a skull mask less than three inches from his face. The further it moves from Savas' face, the more the skull takes shape and the larger it becomes. At full size, Dead Man's Scream is roughly three feet in diameter. Its intensity varies based on how many spirits Savas can draw in (a maximum of five), their willingness to come to him, his ability to force them, and his ability to focus. It deals damage through a combination of impact (which resembles getting tackled by a professional football player), short-lived fire damage (even if the target is set on fire, the flames only last for as many seconds as there are spirits; from one to five), and longer lasting necromantic damage (the target's energy/magic is briefly sapped and their senses subject to stunning and numbness, entirely at the opposing player's discretion). Owing to the nature of this spell, Savas is unable to use it more than once per hour.
Hands of Shadow: A Shadowcasting spell. Using shadows as a conduit, Savas generates hands of shadow to reach out and ensnare his enemies – up to ten of them at his current level. Each hand is four-fingered, including the thumb, two-dimensional and intangible. They require a surface of some kind – any kind – and a base shadow in order to form. Their maximum reach varies depending on the victim's placement: A Hand of Shadow can reach all the way to someone's scalp if they happen to be standing within the borders of a shadow, but they can only reach for a maximum of three feet outside of their shadow of origin. Their strength is generally consistent; each one has about half the strength of an ordinary man's hands. While the hands are currently capable of holding someone in place and the necromantic nature of Savas' magic causes them to do cold damage at points of contact, they lack the strength to do any impact damage on their own. The duration of this spell relies on Savas' concentration. He has great difficulty maintaining more than six hands if he wants to cast another spell. Maximum range is approximately fifty feet in any direction.
Raise Undead:Pure Necromancy. Savas raises up to two corpses, preferably recent ones, to fight on his behalf. The corpses are each about as strong and fast as they were in life. They gain incredible resilience to conventional injury, requiring massive impact trauma or total limb and head loss to stop them. They have no special abilities on their own and are fairly mindless, relying on Savas for orders and functioning on instinct from there. They'll fight with whatever's on hand, including their own severed limbs. Unfortunately for Savas, his Undead only ever last for a maximum of two turns each, and he cannot raise the same body more than once every six turns.
Body Horror: Alchemy-Necromancy. Savas takes two or more corpses and transmutes them together. This is a time-consuming process and, since Savas currently lacks the skill or power to raise the Horrors he produces, not exactly applicable for combat. Requires the use of various reagents and Alchemy.
Necromancer's Voice: Not a spell per se, but a warped holdover from Savas' days as a Wizard proper. His Voice, when activated, manifests as an inhumanly deep sound with electronic properties; like rolling thunder in an echo chamber. Most people who hear it describe a Necromancer's Voice as being red on the brain; conjuring visuals of blood, roses, setting suns and crimson dawns. It can be disheartening for many people, but has no specific powers to cause harm on its own.
Equipment
Warlock's Blade
Picked up at the start of Savas' dissent into inhumanity, this is a steel short sword with a curving S-shaped blade, similar to a kris knife, and a Coronian-styled cross-guard to protect the hand from slipping. Carried in a sheath somewhere in Savas' robes. He favors its use as a spellcasting tool, and has below average skill in wielding it in an actual fight.
Wand
A holdover from Savas' days as a Wizard. His wand is about fourteen inches long, hickory wood colored solid black. No memorable characteristics, rarely used nowadays.
Alchemist's Kit
A self-contained alchemist's lab, albeit a small and feeble one compared to the resources Savas had when he worked for Scara Brae's Watch. Useful for forensics, poison-making, and the Body Horror spell. The kit is carried in a tough leather sack, similar to a modern day messenger bag except for having buttons in lieu of a zipper.
Grimoire
Savas' most prized possession, and one of his only material holdovers from his days as an official Wizard of any standing. His grimoire is a vivid red book with infinite pages, though it appears to have only a few hundred when unopened, its covers holding the texture and strength of human bone, and its spine reinforced with thick metal rings of an unknown make. The grimoire is held shut by a heavy padlock. Unusual by the standards of magical books, the grimoire has a fully functioning pen tethered to it with a long, thin chain. Where the pen's ink comes from, Savas will never tell. He normally keeps this in the same bag as his Alchemist's Kit, though it's occasionally been chained to his belt as well.
Familiar
Savas has struck up something of a Familiarity with an odd little thing identifying itself only as Fazen. It appears to be a fire-imp of unknown origin, less than six inches tall, red skinned and covered in flames the color of Savas' own eyes. Its eyes, ears and nose are all oversized for its skinny little body, and it moves in ways that are simply unnatural: Each step is more like a thirty foot jump, and each word is spoken out of sync with its mouth. Fazen currently has no combat function. That may change. Or it may not.
History
Savas Tigh was born to a relatively wealthy merchant family in Scara Brae, seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son and so on and so forth, all the way up the line: Every single one of his forefathers for the six preceeding generations was the seventh son of a seventh son. It wasn't long before his father slipped word of this peculiarity to a passing Wizard by the Name of Dead-Eye, who arrived unannounced to nobody's surprise exactly one week after learning of Savas' existence. He took one look at the future necromancer, then barely an infant, and immediately declared him a Wizard-to-be. Dead-Eye paid the Tigh family a sizeable amount to take their son back to Salvar and enlist him in one of the nation's sanctioned schools of magic as soon as he could crawl.
A few months later, Savas was taken from Scara Brae. According to any witness, he was cooing and laughing all the way to Salvar. Just as soon as he could walk and form basic words, Dead-Eye enrolled Savas in one of the arcane colleges of his order, a virtual fortress called Icecrest, situated in one of the dozens of fiefdoms on the frontier of Salvar. The place was strict enough to qualify as a lawful Hell in its own right, maintained by the Wizards with rigid oversight from the Church of Ethereal Sway. It was the kind of place that breeds monsters in the name of Gods, Kings and Countries, and it turned out a real success story with the young Savas Tigh. He reached Adept status at barely thirteen years, and was properly apprenticed to Dead-Eye on his fourteenth birthday, complete with a pointed Wizard's Hat and his own grimoire.
Icecrest made Savas into a monster. Dead-Eye refined the monster into a man, which may have been even worse. Under the old Wizard's tutorship, Savas' skills took form. He cast shadows and stripped away the light; he made fires dance and even sing; and he turned the air sharper than any mere blade. All the while, Savas was drawn to the darker side of knowledge. He took to alchemy as an excuse to hide his fascination with death and all things related to it. He masked his dissections of animals as mere curiosity, throwing away the trophies whenever Dead-Eye appeared to suspect that it was anything more. He moved up to human bodies as a legitimate practice, to start with anyway. He dissected his first human at the age of sixteen, in a dark and dusty basement beneath a church in Knife's Edge. He concluded that it – the body never warranted gender – was the victim of a chemical spill in the city's sewage system, combined with possible illness relating to the cold. He dissected a few more just to be sure, always careful not to find the poisons he used to get them onto the table.
He had a good time as Dead-Eye's apprentice, but it couldn't last. Good things never last. The old man started to suspect him, but he was too late. Savas slipped a little powder in his drink one morning, and by nightfall the elder Wizard was lying on his table. He was still alive. Still conscious. Maybe not quite numb, but he tried to speak and his mouth didn't move well and his vocal cords were paralyzed and Savas had never seen a heart still beating before.
He never did figure out how in the seven hells he got away with it. Didn't much care either.
A few months after his eighteenth birthday, Savas Tigh left Salvar and went home to Scara Brae. He was greeted by his family as their prodigal son, at least to begin with, fated to bring fame and fortune to the Tigh name. And then he disappointed them by applying for a job in a position that nobody had ever even heard of on that small island: Forensic Alchemist. The Watchmen scoffed at him to start with, but Savas remained cheerful and optimistic.
It helped that one of them died of a poisoning a few days later.
Savas did the autopsy, you see. He confirmed it and everything, then traced the poison back to its base elements and employed his skills as a Wizard to find the rotten, no good shopkeep who 'sold' the ingredients, and through him found the poisoner. It didn't matter that his father was the poisoner, of course. Savas arrested him personally, and he smiled all the way to the gallows. The Watch hired him on the spot, even if a few of them remained unnerved by the whole ordeal. Savas immediately went to work doing what he loved: Communing with the dead in his own special way.
This too, was much too good to last.
Others came. Wizards skilled in alchemy, taking his spotlight. To compensate, Savas branched out and took up Arcanology; the study of ancient arcana. It wasn't much, but he was able to establish himself as a relative expert in the field. Made some money on the side helping to verify artifacts and decipher ancient writings. Then some idiot had the misfortune of discovering a dark place beneath the city, a network of tunnels called the Catacombs. Like most Wizards in the city, Savas greeted the place with revulsion and horror. He ran. Locked himself in a bathroom and wouldn't come out for days. Unlike his compatriots though, Savas got over his fear. Slowly. Barely.
When the way was open for proper police investigation, he was the only one with the skills and will to go down there. He was accompanied by a few Watchmen, just in case the Catacombs' known inhabitants tried anything.
Two days later, they found the leftovers of the Watchmen. Nobody could tell what killed them, but it had been messy and Savas was conspicuously absent. Rumor has it that he killed the Watchmen himself, taken by some madness in the dark. They say he was lost in those dark tunnels, prey to voices that he couldn't understand, driven to awful things in the shadows beneath the world.
They say this, and they're wrong.
It was one Voice, and the necromancer called Savas has no intention of doing his awful work in shadow any longer.