You said, "I can't prove to you you're not gonna die alone,"

Content warning: do not follow if you are under eighteen. elvenderelict is nsfw. canon-typical body horror, violence, descriptions of gore, grief, child abuse and injury, fantasy racism, systematic abuse and ethnic cleansing, sexual assault, smoking, drug and alcohol use, suicide ideation, and more.
tagging format is cw: (trigger). let me know what to look out for.

"but trust me to take you home."

height, weight 5'5" 110 lbs
build ectomorph, prominent biceps
eyes dark, steel blue
hair auburn, thick/unruly, 2B
complexion fawn, heavily freckled
clothing loose. wool. grey. brown. dark blue. sweaters. avoids black.
scent pipesmoke, petrichor, salt-bleached wood
speech denerim docks accent with th-fronting, swears liberally, stilted, sometimes slurred, many unintentional pormanteaus

name seysil tabris
aliases eys [ pr. 'Ace' ] , tabs , the stray of denerim
b.d. 17 Harvestmere, 9:07 Dragon
b.p. Denerim Alienage, Ferelden
species elf
gender male (he/him)
orientation homosexual
class rogue
specializations night elf, street fighter
affiliations Friends of Red Jenny, ferelden grey wardens
alignment chaotic good
mbti esfj
religion chantry-critical lapsed andrastian; still swears like one. his mother revered fen'harel and he shares some of those beliefs, but doesn't advertise it. Personally, he believes in the indisputable right of each person to direct their life as they choose to without the interference of heavy-handed religious authority or archaic dogma, but you can still catch him praying when things go sideways
health intermittent explosive disorder, traumatic brain injury, aphasia, chronic migraine, blight
skills marksmanship, cqc, lockpicking, trap engineering, mending and repairs, stealth, free running, sleight of hand, intimidation and blackmail, calligraphy and forgery, provisioning, childminding, cleaning and laundering
languages King's Tongue, Denerim Thieves Cant, limited Elvhen
family Adaia [ mother ] , cyrion [ father ] , Soris [ younger cousin ] , shianni [ younger cousin ]
partners mathalin [ ex, dalish apostate ] , nesiara [ betrothed, invalidated ]
pets biscuit [ male mabari ] , jester [ blue dun mare ]
gear 7' Whitewood warbow [ primary, ranged ] biteback axe, fang of fen'harel [ secondary, dual wield ] gambeson, filched steel pauldrons and greaves, close-faced helm, wool shoulder cloak, adaia's boots, repeater tabs, wedding band

personality [ brave, proud, reliable, overemotional, nurturing, unforgiving, genuine, jaded, resourceful, domineering, considerate, overprotective, selfless, self-sacrificing. ] Most of the people who knew wild-hearted Adaia in life would say her son takes after her - including Seysil and Cyrion - but in truth, the core of his personality overlaps more with his father's. They share the same dedication to their own, the desire to shelter what they care about from harm, the same fear of loss. The difference is that Cyrion is subtle, tactful about this devotion, and Seysil is not.There's a raffish quality to Seysil Tabris that's difficult to put a name to. When things are going well for him, he's respectful, but rarely restrained, and never refined. He's the sort of man who's knowledgeable about a truly bizarre potpourri of subjects and enjoys bullshitting about topics he has no authority on despite that. Unless he has misgivings about someone, he's generally kind and open-handed with strangers, willing to sacrifice his time and wealth to offer a hand up as long as it doesn’t put friends and family in a tough spot. Towards those he loves, he’s tolerant, playful, openly affectionate, and deeply protective.But when it’s ugly, it’s very ugly. Sensitive and emotionally volatile, a feeling can come fast, intense, and dominate rational thought - when he’s laughing, that’s not a problem, but when he’s angry he’s furious, waffling between withdrawn and explosive unpredictably, and when he’s sad he’s despondent and prone to bouts of inconsolable tears. He’s aware and self-critical of this problem, as well, but struggles to improve. Talking through it never helps - the more overwhelmed he gets, the less he’s able to articulate himself, and the more likely he is to redirect it onto someone who doesn’t deserve it. The best he can do is point it at darkspawn until he’s spent or climb a tree and take a smoke break when there aren’t any darkspawn convenient.And of course, he’s severely proud. But he doesn’t see a problem with pride, considering how hard the world has worked to strip him of it. He’s only willing to swallow it for those he loves, which makes him difficult to contend with once he’s made up his mind about something.

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appearance He has a very distinct, expressive face, but not an especially attractive one by common Thedosian beauty standards. While he's of average height for a city elf, malnutrition has left him awkward in ways he can't grow out of; his face is very narrow in the brow and jaw, but wide in the cheekbones, leaving him with crowded teeth and a dramatic diamond shape that accentuates his gauntness. His eyes are wide, with high, sparse brows, and a shallow, slightly upturned nose.The Maker painted him in vibrant, saturated color, however; he has a warm beige complexion heavily mottled with vermilion freckles. His eyes are a dark, intense shade of blue. He has brick red hair - a lot of it - that grows in wavy at the roots and twists more dramatically at the ends. He usually piles it in a high, wildly voluminous ponytail, but he's been known to sport a similarly uncooperative mullet in warmer climes. If he manages to survive to forty, he will have gone completely grey by then.

likes

• Scruffy, pathetic, ugly animals named things like ‘Rubbish’ and ‘Fleaboat’ and ‘Smelfungus’. The more shitty the animal, the more he wants to shower it in love. This extends to inanimate objects.

• Fiddles and rebecs, gemshorns, woodsy sounding percussion. Women humming. Plucky working songs. Aggressive wind before a storm. Thunder. Valleys beneath the Frostbacks, full of sedge and wildflowers and endless uncultivated space.

• Mechanical puzzles. Ciphers and lateral thinking riddles. Mathematics. Dwarven architecture and engineering. Taking that technology apart to see how it works.

• Long conversations over drink or hash, ones that begin in the evening and linger well past the point where both parties are tired, but don’t want the moment of connection to end, so they keep going until they’re both incoherent and soft cornflower light is creeping through the window shutters.

• Chatterbox genius types. It’s nice when they’re not condescending, but if they’re hot enough they can get away with it. Men with big brown eyes like a baby cow. He likes them a little high-strung and pathetic. Stop looking at him like that.

• Going very, very fast. If you asked him about the best thing that's ever happened to him, he'd cite Mathalin's gift to him the night of his twentieth birthday; fade stepping between rooftops all over Denerim.

night elf The Night Elves were a covert operations unit of archers under Loghain Mac Tir’s leadership during the Ferelden Rebellion. As the name suggests, it consisted entirely of elves, who were chosen for their superior low-light vision, and its primary function was to sow terror among the chevaliers. Adaia set many bolts on the Orlesians before Maric took the throne, but when her unit was disbanded she laid down her bow - she was marrying a doe-eyed boy from an Alienage, where elves were not permitted to bear weapons, and she couldn’t persuade him to leave. Of course, she laid down her bow where seysil could find it.Adaia hoarded tools and weapons in caches around the city and passed her skills onto her son in secret. Seysil learned to make his surroundings his first weapon. Given time to prepare, he’ll create traps that corral his quarry into an ideal location and pick them off from a great distance, under the cover of night. If the enemy is intelligent, he’ll leave a few alive to tell the tale; the goal of a Night Elf isn’t to eradicate, it’s to frighten and disorient.street fighter Seysil’s education under his mother ended when she died at human hands. Frustrated with what he believed to be complacency in his family and neighbors, he ran away from home and made Friends elsewhere. Most of his skills blended nicely with the things Slim asked him to do, but there was work on offer that couldn’t be tied up neatly by playing the cat burglar or sniping some pomp from twelve yards away.He developed his style for close quarters combat in the poor quarter, scrapping with thugs in the employ of a loan shark with more proxies than scruples. His mother had taught him how to use her short sword, but it was never the focus of their sessions - so, instead of throwing himself at those mercenaries and hoping for the best, he took her other lessons and tried to translate them to a different medium. In the same manner that he adapts an environment to himself, he’ll try to stack the odds in his favor, wearing his opponent down with bleeding and bludgeoning damage. Once they’re exhausted, he’ll catch a shoulder or a hip with the hook of his axe and puppeteer their movements, pulling them into Fang. It’s not polished, there’s no clockwork choreography or uncounterable maneuvers, but it’s methodical, brutal, and allows him to contend with much larger opponents.

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appearance cont.
He possesses the same spare frame found on a good proportion of city elves, lean by nature and emaciated by a lifetime of thin, inconsistent meals and a weak appetite. His ribs and vertebrae can be counted; his elbows are sharp, hands boney. While the Blight will build more muscle on him, he’ll trade poor nutrition for an altered metabolism and struggle to gain weight over the course of his life.His right ear is jaggedly cropped, missing an inch of length. More of the shell is intact on the bottom than the top, giving the illusion of having one long ear up and one short ear down. His remaining ear is wide and curves more dramatically outward than most elves.He's heavily freckled, with higher concentrations over his face and shoulders. In certain places, the spots are so large and dense they seem more like port wine stains than freckles.He's been scrappy his entire life and he's not precious about his health or appearance, so he boasts quite a few scars, but some are more notable than others.distinguishing features cropped right ear, port wine stains on shoulders, scar that runs over temple into corner of left eye, puckered gash right of adam's apple, many haphazard scratches under chin, laceration on thigh above knee, slightly buck front teeth, missing both lower left incisors with more teeth chipped.

dislikes

• The Rich.

• The bright midday sun made harsh grey and inescapable by the overcast that characterizes Ferelden weather. Metallic grinding, abrasive voices. Lengths of the Imperial Highway that are particularly worn down. Humidity, both hot and cold.

• Tedious, rote memory tasks. Fixed schedules. Staying in one place for longer than a few weeks.

• The cleanup after a fight. When it’s darkspawn, it’s always grisly work and he’s usually exhausted by that point, and it sets his mind on the taint in his blood and that he’ll never be home again and what happens after the Calling. With people and animals, he’s coming down from a temper flare, so he course-corrects into cloying guilt unless they really had it coming.

• Being spoken down to, the assumption that he’s uneducated and unskilled. When a word’s on the tip of his tongue but reaching for it only chases it away. When other Wardens insist he has more of an obligation to his position than the life that came before it. Dismissive behavior in his direction.

• Tobacco; it’s an absolutely pointless luxury that he feels guilty for indulging whenever he finds a box. He never spends actual money on it.

• the rich.

001 . Seysil was born in Denerim in the autumn of 9:07 to Adaia, a veteran of the Ferelden rebellion and an all around free spirit, and Cyrion Tabris, a well-spoken servant at the estate of Bann Rodolf. Within the heavily impoverished context of the Alienage, the Tabris family was considered affluent in the early years of the Dragon Age, and a young Seysil benefited from better nutrition and education than many of his peers.It couldn't last. Unfortunately, the Tabrises also had a reputation for being agitators and insurrectionists. When the Denerim Alienage was purged in 9:10, many of Cyrion's siblings were singled out and murdered by the guards. His attempts at shielding them drained money and assets quickly, and he was ultimately only able to save an orphaned and homeless nephew close in age to his son. Seysil was raised alongside his cousin, Soris, after he was adopted into the household. The years after that saw Cyrion's remaining sibling lost to another hate crime. When he returned from a week-long trip to his brother's razed homestead, it was with a five year old Shianni in one arm.These were not the only instances where Cyrion gave what little he had to save another - many friends and neighbors can attest to his generous nature. While this openhandedness emptied Cyrion's savings completely by 9:15, it modeled a principle that Seysil took to heart; what he had was meant to be shared with the community, even if the sacrifice came at great expense to himself.Adaia taught him something else entirely. Before he was even five, it was evident to his parents that he'd never possess the temperament that would secure him a well-paid position as a servant. Cyrion hoped his clever hands meant he could still learn a craft, but Adaia decided that he could do more with the skills she'd used to cut down chevaliers during the war; martial discipline would make something productive of his temper and the Alienage needed as many seasoned fighters in its defense as it could hide, she reasoned. It was illegal for elves to bear arms - these lessons became something of an open secret within the community.Molded by these facets of his upbringing, Seysil grew principled and tenacious - and also pushy and insubordinate, viewing himself as something of a folk hero as a child. Cargo would go missing from the docks and food miraculously appear in his family's cabinets, or infamous bullies would find themselves in a spot of misfortune. He was often argumentative with his elders when they tried to correct his behavior, even Valendrian - he did listen to their lectures, but the prospect that his actions might bring more violence down on them was so frightening that he’d shut down. Why would his mother teach him the skills she had, he wondered, if he was really meant to do nothing?trigger warning: child abuse and injury This came to a head in 9:20, when he defended Soris from an undeserved punishment under the publican they worked for. The man attempted to dock one of Seysil’s ears instead, and when met with resistance, battered his head against a counter until he was still. Severely concussed, he fell comatose for four days, and when he woke up he was incapacitated by a migraine that lasted weeks and by the inability to speak. While he could understand what he was being told, his words came clipped and incomprehensible when they came at all. The headaches eased and slowed and he worked through the aphasia, but he remains susceptible to ocular migraines and, while he can talk at length and speak eloquently on a good day, he struggles to find the words to say precisely what he means years later and has slurring speech that visits from time to time.002 . In 9:24, a friend of Seysil's was abducted by the Chantry. Then a sixteen-year-old boy prone to disproportionate feelings of responsibility, he took upon himself the impossible task of rescuing her. In the months following, he became obsessive to the point of physical exhaustion; the threat of destitution meant that everyone in the family needed to contribute financially, so he’d spend every minute of daylight working odd jobs for a pittance. Then, when night came, he’d track down a questing templar - a mage-hunter by the name of Everett - and hound him constantly, always shadowing from the rooftops. He believed he might glean information about what was done with mages once they were taken. But weeks of amateur reconnaissance bore no fruit. With little food or rest, he grew delirious. The delirium would contribute to the obsessive stalking, which fed back into the fatigue. It wasn’t sustainable.There came an evening where he found Everett alone in the courtyard of an abandoned shelter.He struck the man unconscious through stealth and trussed him up in the empty building, only peripherally aware that Templar talents could still have an effect on non-magical persons and convinced that as long as Everett’s hands were bound, he would not be able to call on those talents. So when the man called down a Holy Smite, an already exhausted Seysil weakened rapidly.Panicked, he slit Everett’s throat to end the effect. It did not return his strength, but it did make him a murderer.The 9:10 Purge, thought Seysil, before he blacked out for a second time in as many minutes, was over a drunken fist fight at the dock that got out of hand. Everett was not a dockworker. Everett was a Knight-Lieutenant, nobleborn and Chantry bound.His mother found him shortly before the guards found Everett’s body, alarmed by the light of the Holy Smite. They were in the courtyard; if Seysil had been capable of moving, they would have slipped away without notice, but he was close to collapse. They would execute him if she didn’t act, so she traded his sword for Fang, smeared her arms and face with blood, and led the guardsmen away from where her son fell unconscious in the weeds.Still, Seysil thought he could personally change the outcome of his family’s misfortunes if he tried hard enough.Despite Cyrion expressly forbidding it, he attended the execution when Adaia hung in his stead. He hoped to find some way to save her. No such opportunity presented itself - he’d been there the full hour it took her to suffocate, searching for an opening. When he returned, his father confronted him about it, wearing his heartbreak plainly.Sick with guilt and waiting for someone to say plainly that his mother's death was his doing, Seysil took this as an accusation - his grief grew wrathful. There was no one to blame but himself, but Cyrion wouldn't let him withdraw into his thoughts.With nowhere else to put it, he turned on what remained of his family until his throat was raw, and then fled to find somewhere private to cry. Spent and afraid to face the consequences of his actions, he took a walk that turned into a five year absence.Intermission. Someone had been amassing a collection of ill-gotten blankets around Northern Course and Rowans, material plucked right from the laundry lines every week. Slim Couldry was intrigued; textile theft wasn't exactly in his wheelhouse, but one would think the sheer weight of the bedding this mystery villain had spirited away would’ve been too much to hide. He took to snooping around the abandoned buildings outside the market district between leads and contracts.He found Seysil in the damp, dilapidated rise above what was once a taxidermist’s showroom. There was a gaping hole in the roof, so it was miserably cold, but that meant that no other vagrant would dispute the territory. The boy had insulated a washroom with three layers of fabric on every wall and still shuffled around wearing a quilt. Had it been night, Slim would’ve missed him; the place became intolerably chilly once the sun went down, and Seysil preferred the cover of night to run his errands, anyway.Slim and Seysil knew each other, sort of. Denerim was a large, heavily populated city with a big Alienage, but everyone in it knew about the veteran in the Tabris household, and rumor was she made her oldest into a soldier, too. Slim still got rumors from the Alienage through his siblings. And being noticeably elf blooded, most folks recognized Slim from when he was one of the few short-eared people who belonged within the walls.They stared at each other in silence for a long moment, Seysil interrupted from his game of stacking stuffed pheasants on a mounted elk’s rack, Slim debating the morally correct thing to do in this situation.“...Hey,” Seysil said, at length. He clutched the dead bird close to his chest. “Please don’t tell my dad I’m here.”003 . Slim didn’t regret the decision to introduce Seysil to the Friends he knew - whatever Adaia had done during the Rebellion, it couldn’t have been terribly scrupulous, because despite this being his first foray into organized crime Seysil was a more adept sneak and sniper than rogues ten years his senior. He’d seen very little of the world and wouldn’t leave Denerim until Duncan took him from it, but the amalgamate nature of the Friends of Red Jenny exposed him to many concepts and cultures he hadn’t encountered in his sheltered upbringing. Trained well and learning quickly, he began to take on notable work - the wealthy would often complain of a Stray between the years of 9:25 and 9:29, sneaking through the kitchen door to make off with the imports.The Friends weren’t the only connection Slim had, however; he was trusted by the Mages Collective, who had a nettlesome Dalish, separated from his clan when very young, in need of shelter and paying work until he could track his people down. They were asking Slim to do something about it. At seventeen, Seysil hadn’t given up on his friend and often asked for information about how the Chantry dealt with their mages. Slim saw two birds and threw his stone.Seysil and Mathalin became friends of the will they, won’t they variety - the mage was clever, worldwise, and aloof in a way Seysil found attractive, and he was tragic, in need of being saved, in a manner that drew Seysil like a moth to flame. Mathalin saw an elf with mettle, not inured to cruelty but unflagging in the face of it; this was significant to him, as he’d always been shy, yielding to even a slightly raised tone when he knew that was no way for the People to act. They both knew a relationship between them wouldn’t end well. Mathalin was insecure in a manner that made him grudging, even mean-spirited at times. Seysil’s tolerance for poor treatment was abiding to the point of self harm when the abuse was coming from a friend, but the wrath when that patience was spent could be devastating.Still, after a year and then some of this, they fell into codependency and alleys out the back of poorly named pubs.In 9:28, Seysil became caught up in a conflict between the Friends in Denerim and a loan shark known only as Evergreen. Whoever Evergreen was, he owned land and city blocks, he financed the drugs being smuggled into the city, and he preyed on the poor and desperate with gamed rates of interest. He was a creature worthy of a bolt to the throat, but that was the problem - Evergreen never dealt with an annoyance in person.By 9:29, Seysil knew what it was like to be a soldier. He’d spilled a river of blood while cutting blindly at the corruption, but none of the blood spilled was Evergreen’s, just the men and women in his employ - as far as he knew, none of them had any real stake in this. They were just mercenaries, in as sorry a position as Seysil.Late in the summer, after slaughtering two drunks who worked for the wrong man and wandered too close to where he shadowed them, Seysil quit the effort. When Mathalin tracked him down and made backhanded comments about something petty, not realizing Seysil’s injuries or his black mood, he quit that effort too. And weeks later, he realized how foolish he’d been to walk away from the wonderful things he had as a kid. The Stray of Denerim wasn’t heard from after that.004 . The prodigal son returned to the Alienage notably subdued, uncharacteristically tame. It was antithetical to everything the elves of Denerim knew about the oldest Tabris boy. It unnerved everyone - most of all Cyrion, who knew very well that his son had no interest in women and still promised him to one, hoping to prompt a reaction as well as ensuring grandchildren. Even this failed to evoke a strong reaction. In the months leading up to the Blight, Seysil accepted everything directed his way - his father’s wishes, Shianni’s light mockery, Soris’ cool anger, his neighbors’ decision to shun the agitator and deserter - with the passive acknowledgment of someone who knew they’d done wrong and wanted to change.Unfortunately, fate would not let Seysil turn from the path he’d been set on. Rumors speak of a riot in Denerim, elves that stormed the palace and slew the arl’s son - they do not know that it was only Seysil and Soris who spilled human blood that day.Seysil hadn’t accepted Vaughan’s cowardly deal, but he did make a bargain; the last thing his mother taught him was that a loved one can be saved and a purge prevented as long as someone pays the blood price for killing the shem back. Seysil took the blame for everything that had happened and walked willingly to his execution.But that isn’t how the story of the Fifth Blight goes, is it?When Duncan returned with recruits from Denerim, one was a wisecracking pickpocket, and the other was a man who hated Duncan so fiercely and completely that the Commander of the Grey was mindful not to sleep too deeply when he was near. He could feel the elf’s hard eyes on his back the entire walk to Ostagar.

"to clean up that blood all over your paws."