The Orphean

Like his Bohemian parents, Trevor Cushing lived to savor beauty, especially music. Bright, compassionate, and a musical prodigy, he easily earned a scholarship to Emerald City's Arcadia College. There, his search for true beauty ended in Heather Adams, a fellow musical prodigy with a gift for bringing out the inner beauty in others. Soulmates and equals, theirs was the happiness most only knew in dreams or ballads.
Filled with the contentment of love and his extraordinary natural gift for music, Trev­or’s appreciation of the world’s beauty bloomed until his music opened fully the doors of per­ception in his mind and allowed him to glimpse the strands of fate that bound all the cosmos together. His intuitive, lyrical un­derstanding of magic eventually grew into a self-taught but capable magical skill, exploring larger reali­ties for the joyous otherworldly beauty found there. While Heather lacked Trevor’s arcane insight, her understand­ing of human nature and keen sense of observation made her a detective of no small skill, and together the pair solved a variety of supernatural mysteries in and around Freedom City, until Earth-Prime’s then-Master Mage Adrian Eldrich took notice.
In need of help tracking down and thwarting The Hellqueen and her cult, Eldritch enlisted Trevor’s and Heather’s aid, which proved decisive in the victorious battle that followed. While El­dritch favored banishing the Hellqueen—both the demon control­ling her and the unfortunate Gwen Nugent’s soul—back to hell, the young lovers saw a chance to heal a wounded soul. With Trevor’s magic and Heather’s gift for bringing out others’ inner strength, they could banish the demon and finally free Gwen from her demonic taint. In time, as their positive influence taught Gwen new strength, the three bonded, sharing their loves, joys, hopes, and dreams.
As Gwen’s mind healed, she shared vast stores of knowl­edge she’d culled from the mind of the demon riding her soul, dating back to the supernatural secrets of ancient Greece. Long before the Olympians stepped away from the mortal world, they hid ambrosia—the raw essence of divinity—in small caches across the Mediterranean. While not enough to grant godhood, it was more than enough to render two perfect lovers—those who saved her soul from damnation—immortal and forever happy. After the trio survived a series of adventures, Trevor and Heather planned a wedding to begin an endless lifetime together. All went as planned, but just as the now-im­mortal Trevor handed the divine sustenance to his bride, the Hellqueen re-emerged and concluded her years-long revenge scheme by immolating Heather before Trevor’s horrified eyes. Himself now deathless, Trevor would be apart from her for all time.
Though shattered, Trevor knew well magic holds infinite possibility, and within it must be a way to return his beloved wife to life. In this quest, Trevor has abandoned every­thing, including his principles and compassion. As he betrayed and seized mystical knowledge from former friends, Trevor was branded “the Orphean” after the figure of Greek myth. Continuing his sin­gle-minded pursuit, the Orphean remorselessly experimented with black arcane learning to pluck the strings entangling life and death, but was somehow always unable to recover or even contact Heather’s soul. The Orphean now brings woe to all who bar the path to whatever mystic wisdom and arti­facts he seeks; all the while, his broken heart turns black.

Physical Description

Special abilities

Trevor naturally possesses a supernatural sense of hearing, which first helped awaken his mind to the world of magic, and a lifetime of cultivating that gift allows him to effort­lessly detect arcane energies and hear the subtle strum­ming of destiny that suggests encroaching danger. Through his music, the Orphean wields potent sorcerous abilities, capable of reordering human memory and upsetting reality. He can weave melodies along the strings of fate to create protective fields, levitate, teleport short distances, warp mortal minds with illusions pulled from their dearest or darkest memories and even rend the soul from the body. The Orphean’s newfound knowledge of black magic also allows his songs to raise scores of mindless undead minions.
Imbibing ambrosia and nectar endowed the Orphean with eternal youth and enhanced physical capabilities, and bars him from forever entering the afterlife.

Mental characteristics

Intellectual Characteristics

The Orphean has always been charis­matic but quiet, preferring to express his deep passions through music. Now that passion focuses on restoring Heather, and what was once abiding love is now ruthless determination. All that matters to him is returning his beloved to life—any misstep on that path is jus­tified so long as he succeeds, and no lives sacrificed matter so long as hers is restored (whether her soul wants it or not). The tears and songs that follow are in mourning for his misdeeds, for the good man he once was.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Prior to his wife’s death, the Orphean aided many heroic members of the mystical community, and is now es­tranged from everyone he once knew. The Orphean plans on someday exacting bloody vengeance on the Hellqueen, while Hellqueen considers him a delightful plaything, easily wound up and pointed at her enemies by spreading the slightest rumor that they may hold some knowledge or artifact that can raise the dead.