Name: Avendesei “Aven” Soravron
Age: 20
Hair Color: Dull auburn
Eye Color: Hazel
Height: 5’ 9”
Complexion: Slightly pale
Build: A bit stocky in his proportion, but has wiry muscle mass.
Disposition: Honest, straight-forward, and occasionally mood swingy.
Social Class: Servant/Apprentice
Nationality: Saldaea (Lesser city)

Talent: Illusions, Inverting

FIRE: Above Average
EARTH: Weak
SPIRIT: Very Strong
AIR: Strong
WATER: Very Weak

Aven’s parents were both from the remnant that was Maradon, their own parents having been too stubborn to leave after its near decimation by the forces of the Dark Lord. They had their first child, a daughter, named Seiera, meaning“blue eyes”, and waited another four years before giving birth to Avendesei, or “tree eyes.” Aven’s father was a scholarly sort in his free time, learning what he could where he could. Scraps of the old tongue were like honey to him; thus the names of his children. It was this learning that eventually brought them away from Maradon. Aven’s father had been hired by a local bank, after a clerk recognized his talent for numbers, and sent to their branch in a nearby city. It was on the way there that Aven, barely three at the time, was to have his life changed drastically. A Trolloc raid attacked their Caravan, and if they hadn’t been traveling with a group of Saldaean soldiers, for certain everyone would have died. As it was, two things died that day. His mother, and his father’s soul. They made it to the city, and his father began working, but he was spurred on only by an ambiguous sense of duty. Most nights he spent drinking his sorrows away in taverns and pubs, leaving his children at home by themselves. They fended mostly for themselves, getting by on the little money their father left for them.

Seiera, his older sister, early on assumed motherly roles for Aven. “Sei”, though not much older, essentially raised her brother on the small income that their father brought home. It was hard at first, but as they fell into a pattern of living, she was able to establish new routines that helped regulate the household, giving them some feeling of family. Nothing a tough Saldaean girl like herself couldn’t handle. She even acquired her own blades, and taught her brother his rudiments as well. Aven soon started doing all the odd jobs he could, first as a message boy for the firm his father worked at. As he grew, he took on more jobs, as an errand runner and a temporary servant to busy households. Aven continued his odd-job style of life until he was twelve. It was at that point that he was hired as an out-of-house servant by a local and somewhat affluent painter.

Aven began spending more and more time at the painter’s house. He was amazed by the man’s ability to render life immobile, yet fluid, on a piece of canvas. Fascinated, he began spending money on paper and charcoal, drawing whenever he could, trying to copy things like the man he worked for. As soon as he had finished his chores, he would watch the man paint from behind the door. Such careful, meticulous work! He thrilled every time he was sent out to buy fresh pigments, wondering what these exotic, rich colors would be used to portray.

By the age of fifteen, Aven had begun to feel that he was beginning to draw fairly well. Well enough, he hoped, to become the painter’s apprentice. Light knew he had practiced non-stop. Many were the times Sei had scolded him for wasting money on paper, though she never outright told him to stop drawing. She knew he nurtured treasured dreams, and had little desire to stamp them out. Why not dream? They didn’t have much else to enjoy.

Whenever he couldn’t afford fresh paper, Aven would draw on whatever surface would hold charcoal. Houses, stoops, fences, and the occasional floor were all in danger of sketchy graffiti when he was around. The painter first noticed these drawings when Aven left early one day, forgetting to clean the steps he’d been doodling upon. The painter, being a generally friendly, if somewhat intimidating kind of man, had been too great a personage for shy Aven to approach as more than a master. But when the painter inquired into the drawings, and actually seemed to like them, Aven blissfully showed him more. The painter, recognizing a rough talent in it, agreed to take Aven under his wing. Though still a servant, the painter began to teach him his trade. Sei was thrilled, and his father pleased. Though he felt that little money was to be made in painting, he recognized that they had little money as it was. At least his son would be used to his future conditions.
Aven took quickly to art. The painter was able to offer him many explanations and shortcuts that Aven had been trying to work around these past few years. He was even allowed to begin painting himself, proving fairly adept for one just beginning. His master even taught him the art of fresco painting. With the skill he already had, he would be able to get work in the more common houses, and with the rate at which he was learning, it would not be long before he was good enough to work in the respectable homes of the city.

His master impressed, he soon began helping with rush jobs, mixing the paint, even beginning paintings that his master would then add realism to. He was living his dream, happy beyond belief and making money for himself and his sister. Things were starting to go right for him. His hard work was paying off.

And then the accident happened.

One day his master was presenting his customer with a finished portrait when the patron flatly stated that he refused to pay. Being the third such person that month to refuse payment, and the painter having a temper, a shouting match quickly ensued. Words heated already hot blood to the point of boiling, and they came to blows. In the blindness of his rage, the customer drew his dagger and stabbed the artist. As the man gurgled his last breath, Aven entered the room to this shocking scene.

Aven was in shock. His master... he was dead. Dead, lying in a pool of blood before him, body still warm. He couldn't move. Neither, apparently, could the man before him. Aven barely recognized him. It.. it had been the customer. The one who'd hired his master to paint a portrait. Aven had..had helped paint the background for it... and...and...and now there was blood on this man's hands. His master's blood. His master was.. dead....

"No." Aven barely managed to say it, his voice strangling the word to a whisper.

The man across from looked up, startled, in almost as much shock as Aven himself.

"I...I didn't mean it, I was just so...so.....angry, and he..." The man faltered, staring, stupefied at the body on the ground, staring blindly at the hilt of the dagger buried deep in the body's chest.

Aven's view began to get..fuzzy around the edges. He felt something boiling within him, and... and without of him, just out of his reach, something terrible, something beautiful, something...something wrathful. And Aven was very full of wrath. His master. Dead. And this man.... this man had done it.

"NooOOOOOOO!!!" His features set in a portrait of seething rage Aven lashed out wildly, not with blows, not with dagger, but with this terrible, new thing inside of him. He was not surprised as the man was thrown into the wall, thrown part-ways through the wall. Nor was he surprised when the man caught fire, screaming in agony. He only began to come out of his rage when he saw the portrait... catch fire. His master's work....

He suddenly released the terrible thing and looked wildly around him. The fire was spreading. It could help it, with all the oil paint and rags full of turpentine in the room. He... he had to get out. get his master to safety... his master... dead...

Stupidly, he lifted the body halfway off the floor, dragging it as fast as he could out into the street. Around him were shouts and screams, some at the fire, and some screaming for the city patrols to come quick, there had been a murder....

It was in the office of the local guards that the Ash’aman found him. The man had actually been a patron of the artist, a scholarly al’Dieb Cha who had requested a number of historical works. Hearing of the sordid death of his favorite painter, he quickly deduced that only the Power would be capable of the murderer’s charred body thrust half-ways through a wall, not to mention such an intense burning over so short a period. After the guards had questioned Aven, the Dieb Cha did some questioning of his own, and found the boy to be an adequate channeler. Aven was allowed to go home for goodbyes, and within the space of five hours, stepped through the first Gateway he’d ever seen and took his first steps in his new home: Tar Valon.

*nods* Bravo. Very much approved.

ooh yes, I like ^^

approved :)