High Elven Master Barber of the Age
Proprietor of the Forbidden Fruits Orchard and Distillary
Master Craftsman of the Seven Deadly Sips
Wielder of the Scissors of Ish-ti-Mair
Dimensional adventurer
Conqueror of the afterlife
Collector of the Souls of Gog the
Restrainer of the Four Defiled
Archlich of the Kouréas
Friend
HISTORY: Once Zen hit elven middle age at 742 years old, he decided to hang up his barbers’ frock as most High Eleven Men do when they have their mid-life crisis. His silver scissors had slid through hair like a renaissance painter’s brush slid over canvas for centuries. Each cut removing all trace of the hair that once existed after the cut, erasing it from existence. The ends of each hair were finely polished to a gleaming surface after each and every cut, twinkling like the stars in the heavens. Zen was the definitive master barber of the age, and everyone from The Bucklers to The Palisades looked fabulous.
A stroke of luck and circumstance found him neck deep in the murder case of an Orchard owner. His business was small but showed great potential. His two young daughters were left manage the orchard with no means to continue the business, or protect themselves. After solving the case with two companions, and always the generous High Elf, Zen offered to buy the decrepit orchard their father had left them for 20 gold pieces and free haircuts— yes they got a sweetheart of a deal, and they looked fabulous.
Shortly thereafter Zen cut ties with the two adventurers; one having been fired from his position as an apprentice after being caught in a mountain of scheming lies. The other seeming caught up in a ridiculous 3-hour bedtime ritual, which prohibited his ability to continue adventuring. Honestly, not the sort of dregs a High Elf master barber and business owner should be associated with.
Cashing in a few piles of gold from his infamous barber shop, Zen took the orchard and refashioned it into the Forbidden Fruits Orchard and Distillery - known in the far reaches of the map for their Seven Deadly Sips.
Gluttonous Hard Apple Cider Slothful Amber Ale Greedy Malted Porter Lustful Sangria Rosé Envious Pinot Red Prideful Port Rum Wrathful Dwarven Whiskey
This is where our adventure begins, however… let’s go back a few centuries…
Zen and his twin brother Auin were born to prominent Selduin High Elven parents. Twins were… a terrible omen for the High Elven people. Under these circumstances Zen and Aiun were raised in society as the same person, as to not bring shame to the family. At times Aiun was allowed out in society while Zen remain hidden at home and vice versa. For all intents and purposes Zen and Aiun were the same person to the High Elven gentry.
As descendants of the formidable and quite brutal High Eleven Mage Ish-ti-Maier, they enjoyed a life of comfort, the best education, and access to all the benefits of the gentry. Each night they would share their doings of the day and assimilate them into each other’s memories. They found after decades of practice that they could begin their nightly meditation and pass this information back and forth to each other’s minds, making it feel as if each had lived both lives over the course of the day. They truly were one person living two lives simultaneously.
During a break from their studies, while roaming the cellars and catacombs of their palatial estate, Zen and Aiun found a box hidden away in a compartment under the monument dedicated to the legend of Ish-ti-Maier. The stoic mage’s statue stood several meters in height proudly raising his three fingered right hand to the stars, obsidian skulls of the Nethiril of Darkhold beneath his feet. Inside the box they found an untarnished pair of silver scissors covered in ancient Selduin runes. Looking closely at the finger holds they could see opalescent magic radiating out in azure and crimson hues. A white silk tied to the base of the thumb hold read in contemporary High Elvish - The Scissors of Severing, place fingers in the holds and suffer the fate of Ish-ti-Maier
So… Zen and Auin did what young posh elven gentry do, they started leaving the scissors out for unsuspecting schoolmates to pick up. They made studious observations and recorded their findings.
After 32 classmates attempted to pick up the scissors, they concluded that:
1. Once someone placed their thumb and index finger inside the scissor holds, their fingers would be severed and removed.
2. The fingers would disappear almost like they were remove from this plane of existence; no trace of the fingers remained.
3. The remaining edge, where the fingers had been severed, were cleanly cauterized and polished like glass.
4. We probably could have made these assumptions with just two or three subjects instead of thirty-two.
Zen and Auin were obsessed… They poured over grimoires, books, and scrolls looking for anything that could tell them more about Ish-ti-Mair and the scissors of severing.
The obsession did not taper off even after decades of searching. They would take shifts, all the while connecting information between their minds— at this time information streamed to and from each of the brothers continuously, living both lives simultaneously. While one searched the other continued “their” life in society and studies without ceasing, not even a second thought from their family and peers. Their parents had almost forgotten there were two Lycoris brothers at the estate.
After a relentless search, they happened upon a black leather-bound book with symbol of the three fingered hand embossed upon the surface. Two binding seals wrapped from the inside of the book around to the back, making it so that the first portion of the book could be read by anyone. The other two seals would to be opened to access the other two portions. After observing the seals closely, they noticed that the first seal shimmered with a faint azure blue hue, the second a light crimson red. Opening the first section that was unbound they found it was written in ancient Selduin… The Autobiographical history of Ish-ti-Mair.
The Quiet Year (Session 0)
- The lecherous necromancer Lich who caused the apocalypse that ended the world before The Quiet Year — formerly Zen au Lycoris, progenitor of The House of Lycoris.
- His cataclysm killed countless people of every species and ancestry, leaving a small band of survivors on the island-continent of Kouréas to rebuild.
- Believed to still be alive on Eritessa; if he returns, it will come from the east — a threat looming over the community as Winter and the year end.