Le sourcil d'Avad s'est sillonné et il a ouvert la bouche pour poser une question à la princesse.
Puis, tout à coup, il s'est retrouvé défoncé le corps vers l'avant et son visage s'est claqué dans les barres d'acier de la prison, s'approchant très près de l'abattre. Une coquille de lumière grise transparente s'est détachée de son corps et il a gazé un moment dans le choc pur du moment. Quoi qu'il ait frappé, il avait traversé son bouclier comme s'il n'était pas là, et l'a encore frappé dans la prison assez dur pour l'amener près de l'inconscient. En l'état, il était lourdement remonté et incapable de s'élever.
Comprenez bien qu'Avad n'a pas été surchargé de combats à proximité du quartier général. En effet, il était proche de l'inutile, et sa robe officielle n'offrait que peu de protection. Il avait l'habitude de s'asseoir dans les coulisses d'une armée et de manipuler le champ de bataille à distance, sans se vanter de l'homme aux cheveux blancs qui venait de l'attaquer.
Gaspillant pour l'air, il a essayé de boucher quelques mots à un sort: "Achm...Achma..." mais a fini par siffler seulement à la place, la pierre gritty du plancher du donjon pressant beaucoup trop fort pour son goût dans sa forme sujette. Il leva la main droite pour dessiner un glyphe dans l'air, mais sans les mots de puissance correspondants, il n'y avait pas de raison. C'était comme essayer de déplacer l'eau à l'aide d'un tamis; la magie s'est simplement drainée à travers sa main. Enfin, il a réussi à bourrer le mot et à dessiner le glyphe : "Achmat." La foudre.
Il y avait des dangers associés à la formulation d'un sort si négligent. Sans instruction verbale de ce qu'il fallait faire, l'éclairage qu'il appelait pouvait faire tout ce qu'il voulait. Et bien sûr, c'est juste sa chance que le sort se soit rétracté sur lui. Bien qu'il ait réussi à lancer un coup de foudre sur l'homme avant lui, il a également couru une secousse d'électricité à travers lui-même. Sans la grâce de son bouclier, il a été repoussé avec force par sa propre magie, en collision avec le mur opposé et gémissant lourdement. En levant la tête, il a cherché à voir si quelque chose venait de son sort. N'importe quoi, à moins qu'il ne lui fasse encore plus mal.
Name: Avadodren Ichen Onem (the -ch in Ichen is pronounced as a hard, guttural hiss)
Age: Appears somewhere near his mid-thirties to early forties.
Race: Avadodren, or Avad, as he is known to very close friends, is 100% bonafide human.
Looks: No matter how exceptional I truly am, all that is seen is my exterior. By that standard, I was born average, and will die average. Av is exceedingly typical looking. He is of typical height, somewhere between 5'10" and 6', and average weight for his slightly slender build. He has a messy head of brown hair and a pair of gooey, dark-brown eyes. His skin is pale and fair, a few freckles smattering his brow and the bridge of his nose, to his eternal chagrin. He wears his uniform as a High Battlemage, a long, flowing robe of pale ivory white and embroidered with ash-gray and flaming red in elaborate flame patterns. His honorable stars are worn on his shoulder. He nearly always carries his spellbook with him. It is a massive tome, bound in dark gray leather and bound with ragged, long-used, gilt pages. He has a bit of a theatrical flair about him; often, he will twitch a finger and use a tightly controlled gust of wind to flip the pages instead of being a regular person and using his fingers in a more mundane fashion. Put it all together and you have a medium-tall, medium-light, brown-on-brown-on-pale person, eyes glimmering with deep intelligence, with a flamboyant nature and an incredibly sharp mind.
Bio: Avadodren Ichen Onem was born Avad Onem into a Valstand noble family of middling influence and wealth. Though he wanted for little in his childhood, he certainly had none of the absurd wealth of some of the higher families. He was trained in the standard noble pursuits; swordsmanship, riding, court manners. Then, at one particularly uninteresting party, he experienced a cataclysmic magic surge. As many such events go, there was much flash. There was, however, far more danger at Avad's magic surge than most. Several nobles were permanently injured, and his father, Veddys, was killed. Avad, desperate to escape the cloying guilt that ate at him, decided to find a noble death: a battlefield mage, torn apart either by the power of his own spellcraft or by whatever might be faced at the moment.
Through some cruel joke of fate, he lived through every campaign, and indeed, through many years, began to creep little-by-little up the ranks. Eventually, his desire for a good death fled, replaced by a savage desire to ascend to the highest echelon of magic: an Archmage. He took the name of the greatest Archmage in the history of Valstand: Odren. He appended it to his own, calling his determination for all to see: I will be an Archmage. Along the road, he took an honorific as well: at the battle of Ichen, he distinguished himself by saving over a thousand men with a well-timed fog cloud to obscure the enemy's lines of sight. Thus, 'Of Ichen's Glory' became his military title. He internalized it, turning it into a name as he fully took it for himself, becoming nigh-obsessed with his rise to glorious power, burying the memory of his past and determined to make his late father proud.
Over time, that motivation faded. He was no longer a child, and became able to look back without regret. His meteoric rise through the military steadied off as his frenzied energy petered away, and he settled into the life if a professional High Battlemage. While he still aspires to the Archmage's mantle, he longer pursues is feverishly. He's a close confidant of the king, and is able to see the good buried beneath the tyranny. He firmly believes the king has the best interests of his subjects at heart, and will support him in nearly endeavor.
Other: In departure from his typicality, Av is an exceedingly skilled mage specializing in storm magic. In particular, he has a talent for nimbomancy, or the control of clouds. He has a lesser talent for direct combat with his magic--although the lightning bolts and lashing rain ensure that he's no slouch there, either--but rather, when engaging, is far more adept at tactics and strategy. His fog and cloud control allow him to craft expert illusions and massive concealment and for one of his age, he has a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of military strategy, born both of natural aptitude and of enormous amounts of study. As a side of effect of his long military experience, he is able to remain unbelievably calm under pressure.