Voidshade

The traitor mage

Well, you and your friends were entertaining, I'll give you that. However, we need to leave. Places to go, people to murder. Oh, it seems my companion would like to give you a little something. Could you hold still for a moment?

Avelyn to a pyromancer

Magical terror

If one name strikes fear in people's hearts, it's the name of Voidshade. This mysterious individual is a dreaded rogue mage that no one can defeat. Entire circles of qualified mages disappear, or sometimes one of them survives branded with a mark harbinger of madness and the tale of their defeat.

Voidshade will do various things like assassinations or robbing caravans, sometimes even organize heists. No one can see the logic in their actions, except that they are interested in magic items. According to the witnesses, they are accompanied by a spirit calling itself Avelyn. She seems to enjoy the attempts at stopping them.

While she has been identified as a female human, her true identity is unknown, as she always appears with a bandana and shifting facial features. However, she uses strange and forgotten magic and never talks, letting her familiar speak for her. They share a sort of telepathic link of some kind, which is how Avelyn knows what her master wants to do or say.

History

Voidshade first appeared in 1187, when a circle of mages in direction of ancient ruins got ambushed near their goal and murdered, leaving no survivors. This act surprised the Duranian Mage Guild, who censored as much information about it as possible, fearing what would happen if people learned about a single unknown person killing an entire circle. However, what she did one day changed that. One day, against all odds, she murdered a high mage. While a high mage dying is something terrible, a single opponent managing it is terrifying, as few have the power to do such a thing.

They then turned her into an outlaw and put a huge bounty on her head. However, no matter the many mages and bounty hunters sent to kill her, she kept killing them. One day, king Valerius had enough and sent an entire division of the Praetorian Guard to capture her. However, despite their training and the help of multiple mages, they weren't prepared for such a situation. As such, she evaded capture numerous times, killing many guards in the process through cunning and magic. This humiliating operation was stopped when about a third of the members died.

Since then, Voidshade has pillaged Duran with impunity, and the king is starting to get furious at her acts, to the point where it is prohibited to talk about her in his presence. House Naga has to suffer regular heists and while it is mostly for magical objects, some of their more suspicious merchandise also disappeared, which damaged some of their international trade. However, despite her numerous enemies, she has managed to evade capture so far.

Avelyn

Voidshade doesn't travel alone, like some mages, she has a companion. Avelyn, a strange little spirit accompanies her in her adventures. However, she isn't just a regular spirit, she's a curious void spirit that joined her for fun at first, although they quickly became friends. The two are complementary to one another, as where Voidshade protects Avelyn and does the dirty work, the spirit gives her a tremendous amount of energy to cast powerful spells.

However, her presence brings many other questions. Unlike other spirits being forced to join them using rituals of binding, void spirits are too powerful for the magic of this time to be captured that way. Normally, one has to contact them, a stressful and dangerous thing, and make pacts with it. This means that either Voidshade is powerful enough to bind an otherwise too strong being, or she willingly accepted to work for Avelyn. Both would explain her powerful and ancient magic

High mage Lenia

While her status as a powerful rogue mage is common knowledge, the Duranian Mage Guild has led investigations with rather disturbing results. Firstly, she not only possesses the power of a high mage, but also the same level of training. However, only one high mage has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. The rare ones going rogue and becoming criminals have their identities known, and their techniques documented. Yet while Voidshade's abilities and motivations are unknown, some theories of her identity have sprung up.

Even if there is little evidence proving it, many higher-ups believe that she is none other than the shy and enigmatic high mage Lenia, who mysteriously disappeared one year before Voidshade was first spotted. She was a skilled yet timid mage that kept a lot of things for herself. As she became a high mage she started to become even more reserved, coming out rarely and often staying inside for days, yet would still keep a smile and reassure people that "I'm just making progress".

One day, while a high mage came by to visit, she disappeared. They found her room wrecked, most of her notes torn and her presence nowhere to be seen. From what they could recover, it seems that she was investigating a group called the Truthseekers that worshipped an ancient deity, and also that she had strange dreams, like floating in the vastness of space or seeing great civilizations rise from ashes. Most of it is unreadable and no one knows what happened.

The Mark of the void

While the mark is most often placed on bodies or looted crates, as a sort of signature, it is most infamous for being on persons who tried to arrest Voidshade. The mark that some bounty hunters come back is either placed on the person's torso or its back, and looks like a circle with a closed eye in the middle, and is branded on the skin in a way that it cannot be removed, and has strange effects on the bearers. What starts off as an itch slowly becomes a constant burning, even though the person isn't harmed. As time passes, they'll start having dreams about great civilizations and the vastness of space. They'll sometimes hear voices talking to them, trying to make pacts with them.

If they accept, the tattoo will change and the pain decreases. They will gain power and knowledge and will need to give some services to the entity in order to progress. At some point, the eye will be completely opened and the individual will always leave for somewhere unknown. Despite having tried, any spy sent to get the mark and explore it always defect like the others. When interrogated on what they learned, it is about something fitting them, like an art style or magic spells, that they master and some bit of knowledge of the universe. However, it is radically different than that of any archive.