Ephra Stromlight

Ephra Stromlight

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Ephra Stromlight is a red and silver dragon-born, originally from the city of Nesih in Xolta. The Stromlight family were all deciples of Xolta's one true god, Etthar. His family lived at the Temple of Etthar and were priests and teachers to the town's people. Because of his ties to the Temple and his family's involvement in it, Etthar was all that Ephra knew while he was growing up. To him, Etthar was as real as any other person that he met on the street. He never even stopped to think about whether or not Etthar was real. That is, until Ephra grew older.
One day when Ephra was out in the town, he ran into a group of human clerics. While normally Ephra would walk past and ignore the clerics, knowing that his god was the true god. But, something that the clerics said made Ephra stop to listen. They were speaking of Xiaris, the god of Charity. They spoke about how Xiaris accepted everyone into their coven, from the most beautiful of people to the most hideous, from the richest to the poorest of people. Ephra, who was living on a small allowance of only five gold pieces a month, was interested in how Xiaris, who was the god of Charity allowed his disciples to have money like that. Not only that, but the idea of having an accepting god - a god who did not care what one looked like - was interesting to Ephra.
While his family worked to serve Etthar, people of his faith, and other faiths as well, would mock the Stromlight family. If they did not mock them, they scolded them and told stories of evil and horrible dragon-born from long ago. His family taught Ephra to be quiet and patient and to not allow the unkind words of others affect how he felt about things, but when he was little, it still hurt Ephra's feelings and pride. Ephra always found it extremely difficult to look at his fellow priests or teachers and have them mock or scorn him, saying that dragon-borns, for their discretion against Etthar. He even had to face the fact that people would tell him that his family were not good leaders of Etthar because of their blood.
Upon hearing of this new god's acceptance of everyone, Ephra rushed home. He locked himself in the library of the Temple, reading any book that he could get his hands on. He devoured books. Anything on Etthar that was available, he read. When he finished reading everything in Common and Draconic that he could, Ephra started to read and translate other books, learning new languages, just so that he could read more about Etthar and Xiaris. Ephra's main goal was just to find answers. Any kind of answer to the questions that he had about his god.
When he couldn't find the answers in the texts, Ephra decided to join a few clerics of Etthar on missions to try and understand through them. However, in all his research, Ephra still couldn't find the answers he was looking for. In fact, instead of feeling more confident and strong in his faith, Ephra was more lost than before, not sure if he was ever going to find the answers that he was looking for. So, after about twenty years of intense studying of the texts of Etthar, Ephra went to his family and told them that he was going to travel the Empire to help spread the word of Etthar.
Ephra didn't have the heart to tell his family that he was going to try and discover more about Xiaris and the other gods of the Empire. After all, his mother and father had been priests and teachers at the same temple in Nesih for over five hundred years. Telling them that he didn't know if he believed in Etthar would have broken their heart. So, with the blessing of his parents, and the supposed blessing of Etthar, Ephra set of to the Empire with nothing but his glaive, his shield, and his determination to find the answers that he so desperately needed.
Ephra was out looking for answers for about five years before he came across a small town in between two cities that he was traveling to. In this town, Ephra met Tareyan. The Empire had been a lot more cruel to Ephra than Xolta ever was, as there was no dragon-borns native to the Empire. There were even a few places where Ephra had been kicked out of because of his blood. However, after those past five years, Ephra was used to the stares and the insults that were thrown at him. So, when Ephra found Tareyan staring at him in a bar one night, he thought nothing of it.
However, instead of insulting him, or saying that he was unwelcomed, Tareyan offered to buy Ephra a drink. Taken by surprise at this kindness, Ephra accepted and asked Tareyan to sit and talk with him. The two of them talked for nearly three hours that night, and it ended with Tareyan offering Ephra a place to call home; one that he would always be welcomed at: The Lord Moon's Cirque. Ephra, who was more interested in Tareyan's claims of being connected with Novstus, the god, then the actual cirque took him up on the offer, joining the Cirque ten years before Trendall did.
And while Ephra never gave up on finding the answers that he was looking for, often taking his free days off to go to a library to find religious texts, he was happy to join with a group that accepted him with no questions. For the first time in a while he felt welcome and accepted by a group that wasn't his own family. And of course, meeting his best friend Trendall was an added bonus.

Birthplace

Slatefell

Eyes

Black, squinty, dragon-like

Hair

Black, very short, pulled back

Height

6' 7"

Weight

325 lbs