Xanthion Sin-Heart
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A fusion of his father, a horned devil, and his mother, a human woman, Xanthion is a strange sight to behold. His face is angular and his skin tough, with features that are smooth in some places, but hard and sharp in others. The tiefling’s complexion is a peculiar melding of his father’s scaly red hide and his mother’s gentle almond-colored skin, resulting in dark skin both hard and thick, with a dark-red tint throughout. A pair of long, bone-hard horns juts out from his forehead, behind which sits a head of jet-black hair falling nearly to his shoulders. Between his legs swings a rough, barbed tail nearly five feet long. While on the road, he is rarely seen garbed in anything other than his faded yellow cloak, which obscures all but his bony horns and the tip of his tail. In battle however, the cloak quickly falls away, revealing the heavy armor and halberd that have ended many lives.
Race: Tiefling (Cornugon)
Age: 20
Height 5'11"
Weight: 170 lbs.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
Facial Hair Style: Clean-Shaven
Personality Profile:
Eschewing the dark, morose demeanor that many tieflings are predisposed to, Xanthion strives to embody the compassion and empathy that his adoptive mother gave him, as his true mother would have wanted. Though he often finds himself naturally distrusting and doubting others, he is eager to give others opportunities to prove him wrong, and those who have proven themselves reliable may find him to be a loyal friend, willing to stand by them no matter what their struggle may be. A half-fiend by nature and hedonist by choice, Xanthion takes great pleasure in new experiences, challenges, and pleasures – within the boundaries of the law – as he searches for his life’s true purpose, a quest which has plagued him for years. The focused rage locked within his blood as well as the gem hung from his neck, which at one point would overtake him when he least expected it, he has since directed toward battle. Indeed, most who have seen the quiet fury he focuses into every martial maneuver in his arsenal, even in training, have described it as a truly disturbing sight.
General Health: Very healthy, after years of honing his body through rigorous martial training. An occasional sickness is not uncommon, but when it comes, it passes quickly, perhaps due to his infernal blood.
Deity: None yet
Initial Alignment: Neutral
Profession: Adventurer and explorer
Base Class & Proposed Development: Fighter 30
Habits/Hobbies: Since his youth, Xanthion has enjoyed exploring the dark, unknown places of the lands around his home. This same passion remains today as he seeks to discover his purpose in the world, driving him to explore extensively wherever he goes and catalogue it in his journal whenever an opportunity presents himself. He also takes great pleasure in brawls and bare-knuckle fights, another hobby which has persisted since he was a child.
Languages: Common, Infernal
Weapon of Choice: Halberd
Background: The first moments of Xanthion’s life were of fire and death. Whether it is the abyssal blood running through his veins and sharpening his mind, or the terrifying circumstances of his birth, Xanthion remembers these moments with great clarity and detail. He remembers the flame of torches illuminating a large stone chamber, and the disorientation of being passed from one robed man to another like a rock as they rubbed something warm and red on his body. He remembers coming face-to-face with a pair of heads on a table, both of which seemed strange yet unmistakably familiar to him. One was soft, with sun-baked brown skin and straight black hair. The other was several times larger and covered in horns, and red of both skin and eyes. Xanthion, a mere newborn, did not understand the significance of the attachment he felt for these disembodied heads, or why watching the remainder of their blood pour out of their skulls disturbed him so.
He had no time to contemplate what was happening in any case. Without warning, the scene around him erupted into chaos. Men and women in myriad colors appeared, and the beings in robes around him began to fall amidst light and clashing metal. Even after the main excitement had passed, and only the strange people in colored clothing remained, shouting and yelling filled the air. Xanthion ignored them, merely occupying himself with the strange heads beside him. Someone put a dagger to Xanthion’s chest several times, but the baby found the heads much more interesting and ignored the blade. Eventually, the talking died down and one of the people snatched him away from the heads despite the fierce resistance he put up. Many years passed, and as Xanthion grew, he occasionally thought back to those moments, never understanding just what had happened. All he knew was that his mother and father had quit adventuring around that time and settled down in Wayfork, the village he now called home.
Alas, the secret of Xanthion’s origins could not be concealed, especially from himself. The ten-year old Xanthion – or Zant, as his friends called him – was a popular boy, owing to his rebelliousness and competitive streak. But that popularity drew rivals, and when some boys began to yell "Devil-child!" at him, he had no way to respond. He had always looked so different from the other kids – rough, reddish-brown skin and eyes; a pair of small horns poking out of his forehead; a peculiar tail that only seemed to grow over the years – but his mother always attributed that to a skin disease. She and his father were different too, like the soft, lifeless head in his memories… They looked human like the rest. Who was he to question her, who had only ever given him a peaceful life and taken care of him? But after days of concern and multiple fights, the young Zant decided he’d had enough. When he approached his mother, he found that she was already prepared to tell him the truth. She said it began several years before he had even been born.
Deep in the wilderness of Trollbark Forest, set against the mountains, a cult of Bane worshipped and plotted from within their underground lair. One day, they set out to breed a half-devil which would spread their message of death and tyranny across Faerûn. This would be no normal tiefling, but a hybrid infused with the very essence of hatred and ferocity of its Baatezu parent, making it extraordinarily powerful and evil. Over several years, they gathered the materials they would need for the ritual. Then they enlisted a powerful mage, who called forth a Cornugon from the Abyss. After torturing it for many weeks and infusing its hatred into a glittering gem, the cultists kidnapped a young woman from the nearest village and let the devil have his way with her. As chance would have it, her sister was a part of a skilled adventuring party. Over the better part of a year, they tracked her down, but reaching her only minutes too late. After discovering the cultists’ plan and slaying them, they found both the woman and the horned devil beheaded, and a blood-soaked newborn tiefling quietly examining what remained of his parents. There was no sign that the cultists had yet embedded the gem into the boy as they had intended. One of the other adventurers suggested they kill him, but his mother’s grieving sister decided to keep it and raise it, as a final act of defiance to the cultists. She settled down in Wayfork and married shortly thereafter, and the rest of the village swore to secrecy about the baby’s origins, in honor of her beloved sister’s memory.
Xanthion changed after that. Though it was not visible to others, and he continued to act like the rebellious child – and later teenager – that he had always been, he began to doubt himself. Up until then, he’d had no reason to question anything in his life. Though he was smart, he would have been content to become a blacksmith and spend the rest of his life forging weapons, never leaving the village. That no longer seemed fulfilling to him. Even adequate. His mother... no, his aunt had been a great adventurer, and he himself had been born for greatness. As he grew up his adopted mother often told him of his real mother, and he realized she'd had only kindness and compassion in her heart. The same compassion his aunt, who had taken him in, possessed. "Then what do I have of my father?" This question, instead asked his adopted father, on the day of his sixteenth birthday.
"I don’t know, son. Your fierce temper?" He smiled. "I once thought you had more of your father in you than your mother. I was wrong about that… among other things, and I’m glad I was. So, I suppose you’ll have to find that out for yourself." He slid his old dagger out of its sheath, still as gleaming and sharp as ever. "I’m not the adventurer I once was. I’ve held on to this for a long time, but I don’t need it anymore. But perhaps you will. So, it’s yours now. Happy birthday, Xanthion." The young tiefling stared at the dagger for a long time. It was identical to the one in his memories.
Not long afterward, he found himself looking through his parents’ old belongings from their adventuring days. He soon found what he was looking for: a map. There was one thing missing from his aunt’s story, one thing he was determined to find. Two days later, in the crumbling ruins of his birthplace deep within Trollbark Forest, in the corner of a dark stone room, he found it. Buried under a skeleton and a pile of loose rocks was a perfect, polished ruby, undoubtedly the gem that cultists would have buried in his body instead. That was the only remnant he would have of his father. By the time he reached Wayfork, ruby clenched tightly in hand, his mind had been made up. Though his father was more vile a being than he wished to imagine, there was no denying that part of him. The ruby felt so right in his hands. But he would draw strength from it, and strength alone. He would embrace that strength, and hone it, and wield it in opposition to everything his father and the evil men responsible for his birth represented. Xanthion went to his adoptive parents and immediately asked to be trained as a warrior. They agreed on the spot.
Twelve years have passed since that moment. Not once has Xanthion, who has since proven himself as an exceptional warblade, ever allowed the power of its malice to overcome him and turn him away from his one true goal: finding a purpose. Nor has the ruby ever left the necklace sitting around his neck. Now his surname is Sin-Heart, an acknowledgement of the danger within his blood and around his neck, so that he may never forget the dangers the bring. Whether any of this will continue to be the case remains to be seen.
Goals: Xanthion's main goal, and the reason he decided to enter a life of adventuring in the first place, is to discover his life's purpose. After discovering his true origins, and realizing he could not find the answer to his internal conflict between the compassion of his mother, the viciousness of his father, or the hateful intent responsible for his birth, he has decided that only out in Faerûn where he could find both good and evil in endless supply would he find his purpose. His secondary goal, which he has harbored in his heart ever since he learned of his true origins and the fate of his mother, is to eliminate Banites wherever he can find them.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
- Xanthion encounters a Cornugon, but the horned devil realizes that he is in fact Xanthion's father
- Xanthion learns of a survivor of the Trollbark Forest Banites in the area, perhaps attempting to restart the same plot that brought about Xanthion's birth
- Xanthion discovers the identity of the warlock who first bound his father to the Material Plane in the area
- Someone (or something) that claims to know Xanthion's father meets him with a message/request/greeting.