Darien was the youngest of the Councilmembers of High Central, an accomplished mind mage, the imprisoner of the Warden and Tezz's former "teacher." He was taken captive by the demons after a failed contract and eventually shown that his racist view of half-breeds was wrong, and he is slowly reconciling himself.
Appearance
Darien is a fairly average man in his mid-20s with tousled straw-blond hair cropped off behind his ears. He wears the standard long, straight, green-accented robes of a Councilmember and dons a black cloak when traveling. He always wears a leather arm guard on his left forearm. His familiar, Arceyx, is a large black eagle owl with amber eyes and shimmering blue runes marking his feathers.
Personality
Darien is a generally laid-back person. He takes everything with a calm and even temperament and only gets mildly upset under extreme circumstances, usually involving magic. Mundane affairs hardly interest him, which is why he finds it so difficult to get along with Kezia and Brion. Steady and solid, Darien is patient and has a silver tongue, able to worm himself out of troublesome situations very quickly. His personality type is INTJ.
Abilities
Darien's magic abilities are lacking in all but mind magic. He is adept at worming his way through mental barriers and toying with certain aspects of a person's mind. In an experiment, he gathered seven children under the pretenses of starting a "gifted" school and slowly splintered their personalities without their knowledge as the children worked, creating lunatic killer halves inside of each. Tezzeret remains the only living evidence of this twisted deed. Had Tezz's psychotic half remained, Darien would have been able to direct and manipulate him easily.
Another one of Darien's specialties is memory modification. In order to keep everyone in his dungeons from revolting terribly, he trained the mages under him to fix the prisoners' memories. That way they would dissociate themselves from High Central and the Exodus, and thus render themselves harmless to Darien's cause.
Darien has a special connection with his familiar, Arceyx. The two communicate thought-to-thought, Darien with words and Arceyx with pictures and feelings. Arceyx has the ability to detect magic and ethereal beings such as demons and fiends and the like.
However, despite all of these abilities, as of late he has been stripped of his magic, disconnected from his familiar and taken to work for the demons of Bloedrest due to a failed contract concerning the Warden's imprisonment.
History
Family
Role in the Rebellion
Season 1
Not present.
Season 2
Not present.
Season 3
The Council became concerned with various problems occurring in Darien's newly-implemented dungeons, such as demons disobeying orders and even a few prisoners escaping. Darien promised to inspect the problem as quickly as possible, volunteering himself to fly out and check on one of his prize dungeons--the one with the Warden locked up inside.
Kezia sent her half-breed servant Maralen with him and the two traveled on griffon-back to the ruins of the
Grounded Dungeon, which had its side blasted off and was half-covered with the glacier Tezz had created in his escape. Darien became panicked at the sight and demanded to know who was responsible for the damage. Maralen spotted the remnants of Treepelt and Tezz's initial confrontation and they followed the tracks to another ice formation, this one created by the half-breed Emily. They spotted a village near its base and entered it in disguise, going under the names Imam and Nadia and pretending they came from the village of Traebor north of the Sea of Sand to avoid detection by any of the rebels.
Mera greeted the two and asked about their history, to which Maralen answered convincingly with their cover story. However, Mera was still suspicious of the pair and was about to question them further when Blunt appeared and sufficiently distracted them by flirting with Maralen, outright kissing her, inviting her to dinner and stripping his shirt off consecutively, making Darien quite uncomfortable. He excused himself per Maralen's previous instructions and attempted to get away and search the camp, but Mera insisted on following him, suspicious of what havoc he would be able to wreak away from her watchful eye. While trying to shake her off, Darien was recognized by Tezzeret, who angrily approached him and accused him of being the one responsible for splintering his mind. Darien was thrown off by the
Tezz confronts Darien [by TreepeltA113]
sudden assault and tried to cover up in front of Mera, but it was too late. Tezz hurt him and demanded to know why Darien had done such a thing, reminding him of his name and what Darien had done to him.
Fed up with the attack, Darien pushed into Tezz's mind to take over the killer part of his mind but could find nothing, since Tezz had been healed by the Archon a few days before. The Archon himself appeared in Tezz's mind and dragged Darien into his own consciousness, slowing time for the mage so they could speak. He questioned Darien on his motives and the young mage became unsure of himself and of High Central. Satisfied with the doubt he had caused, the Archon left and Tezz continued to confront Darien. Maralen suddenly came to his rescue, injuring Tezz long enough for the two to get away. However, Arceyx had been warning Darien of a malignant presence in the camp, and finally showed him Haddock and the Warden. Darien dragged Maralen to a stop and told her he wanted to stay and investigate, and she agreed and went to go patch things up with Tezz.
Darien scouted the camp the rest of the afternoon, and in the evening stopped at a makeshift pub in his search for the Warden. Right before he left, he was stopped by Blunt, who had seen the earlier clash with Tezz, and Clover, and they demanded more information. Darien initially refused, and Blunt took him down into the cellar of the pub and threatened him with a "special technique." When Darien still didn't budge, Blunt turned the tables completely, attempting to seduce him instead, making him extremely uncomfortable. Eventually he cracked spilled all he knew about how he'd fractured Tezz's mind. Blunt was mostly satisfied with the answer, but he decided to be more cunning and inquire about Darien's choice of experimental subjects, pretending to agree with the head mage's ingrained prejudices. Then, when Darien revealed the depth of his half-breed racism, Blunt promptly broke his nose and told him to leave camp immediately, which Darien did, with his tail between his legs and his pride severely bruised.
Darien mounted one of the griffons they had brought and left Maralen in camp to head back to High Central. During a break from riding, he encountered a young man in the woods by the name of Vox Arnason, and suddenly he remembered the incident involving Vox and Dario six years ago. Vox nearly killed Darien on the spot, choking him until the desperate mage convinced him to let go. In a fluster, Darien promised to give Vox a dragon from Central so he could return home, and the two reluctantly parted ways. Just before he left, Darien was stopped by an armored man who demanded that Darien take him to Central. The man was revealed to be Orskaf, and Darien reluctantly agreed, letting Orskaf's army follow on foot, on the terms that it would be a peaceful negotiation that he would have no dealings in.
Having returned to High Central, Darien was finally ready to settle back down and forget about the rebellion and the Warden for good, but his troubles were far from over. Orskaf's army began looting and destroying the capital, and Darien attempted to escape in the chaos but ended up being confronted by Orskaf himself. Orskaf demanded that Darien come with him and show him to the rebels' camp. Darien went without struggle...until someone appeared and demanded to take him with her. Darien fearfully recognized her as the Empress and realized that he must have failed his end of the contract. His life was now forfeit to her. She transported him away from Orskaf to Bloedrest and handed him over to the Archon, who stripped him of his magic and sent him to work with the half-breeds until the Empress had further need of him.