__________________QUICK STATSName: --
Aliases: Ten-Thousand-Winds, The Stranger, Kassim, El-Lion, Tahar, Achmed, Imad, Karim, Ghassan, Pavel, and a hundred others
Age: Over 200, but looks 30
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Ethnicity: Essyrni
Height: 6' 3"
Weight: 185 lbs
Occupation: Cursed assassin
Birthplace: Essyrn
__________________IN-DEPTH STUFFPhysical DescriptionThe man is tall and lithe, but his lean muscularity is obvious even beneath the thick swathe of robes draped over his torso. His clothing consists mostly of deep earthy colors, perhaps hints of green and tan amongst the brown. His sleeves are large, almost enveloping, but often than not they're at least pulled back up to his forearms. Occasionally a headscarf covers his head and features.
His features are distinctly Essyrni: curling black hair around umber skin, a pointed nose, thin lips. The face is a conundrum: at times he seems quite handsome, at other times quite homely, and more often than not his features seem indiscernible, almost generic. The one thing that stands out though, are his eyes. His orbs are an incredible gold-amber color in stark contrast with his darker skin and even darker hair.
PersonalityOnce he was brash and confident in his abilities, but loathing of having to live a life of servitude. Since he lost his True Name to the djinn and found his talents essentially being loaned out, he has become incredibly paranoid and lonesome. He keeps mostly to himself, often preferring to tend to a plant that he cultivates with care and love. While he does occasionally and accidentally lower his guard and befriend someone, invariably he loses contact with that person when the djinn gives his True Name to yet another vengeful wishmaster seeking someone's death, forcefully compelling him to travel the breadth of the land to find his target.
On occasion, though, his former self really comes to bear. Even years of reflection and introspection can sometimes give way to his former arrogant self. Those bursts of livelihood within the man rare indeed.
While very reflective of the loss of his True Name, it has not stopped the Stranger from continuing to do what he does best: kill people for money. He doesn't openly advertise his skills anymore, nor does he go looking for work. Rather, a select few people have heard of one of his aliases, Kassim, and know of places to leave messages to contact him. He does not always return the contact, and if he does it is never right away. But the pattern has become a familiar: Kassim arrives in town, people die, and then the man vanishes.
Magic/AbilitiesThe man is gifted with an ability to change his face, and even blend in with his surroundings like a chameleon. Whether this unnatural ability is magical or otherwise isn't fully known or understood, but it certainly suits his personality and his line of work to a tee. There's little wonder why he is so unrecognizable in a crowd, and why people who have met him before can never seem to recall such a meeting. His face-changing abilities make him a very capable assassin. While his sword skills are nothing spectacular, it is his ability to slip into even the most heavily guarded locales unnoticed that have people lining up to hire him.
The curse has essentially stopped the hourglass of his life, leaving him perpetually in the body of a thirty-something year old. While he certainly can be killed, something about the particulars of this curse has prevented him from ending his own life. He no longer feels the urge to eat, drink or sleep. The subtler luxuries of life are lost to him.
The CurseThe man relinquished his True Name to a deceptive djinn years ago, for the promise of immortality and the freedom to be his own man. However, doing so actually enslaved him to the whims of the djinn and anybody who knows his True Name. More than once, people approaching the djinn looking to have someone murdered have been given this assassin's True Name, and thereby given complete dominion over him. When this occurs, he feels an irresistible compulsion to seek out the promised target and murder him.
While he is compelled to complete his assassination missions, the man hates servitude more than anything else. When his task is complete, he seeks out the person who wished the murder and kills him as well, thus completing the bloody cycle. The djinn's promise of one death is binding: the man never kills anyone else while seeking out his target.
While he does not know his own True Name, having given up all rights to it years ago, people can inadvertently learn it from him through gaining the man's absolute trust. It is this reason why the man hardly ever befriends others, for fear that they learn his True Name and thereby also gain dominion over him and potentially using him for their own purposes.
RelationshipsNone.
HistoryBorn El-Tahir Fahid El'essi, and born a slave, this young man was raised as part of the servant quarters in a wealthy merchant's household, with a chain around his thin neck. His upbringing was characterized by brutality and woe, though the exacting lifestyle strengthened the youth like no other could.
When he was twelve, the merchant discovered his gift for changing his features and fading into his environment even in a crowded place, and sought to utilize the boy's powers for his own good. Unscrupulous characters from all corners of the world were brought to Essyrn to teach the boy the finer points of subterfuge and murder. When he became a man, he ventured out into the dusty streets of Essyrn to ply his trade for his master, infiltrating the compounds of the merchant's most hated enemies and killing them. He became very adept at his job.
But he yearned for freedom, so much so that one hot summer evening he finally escaped the confines of his master's estate and fled into the desert. The sandworms and the sandstorms would have ended his young life then, if not for his accidental stumbling across a cave that housed a trickster djinn. The desert spirit asked the man what he wanted most in life, and he answered: an eternity of freedom from the mortal bonds of servitude. The djinn granted this wish in exchange for his True Name. When he left that cave, he didn't know who he was, but knew that he was free.
Venturing back into Essyrn he found that nobody recognized him or remembered him. Elated, he settled down as a pottery maker in the slums of the city, intent on living a life of anonymity. It did not last long. The Djinn almost immediately doled out his True Name to another wishmaster who seeked the death of a longtime enemy. Compelled by the dominion over his True Name, the young man made his way across the city in the middle of the night, crept into the man's chambers, and murdered him. On the way out he encountered two surprised guards but managed to flee before they could catch him. When asked about this mysterious assassins, the guards were at a loss for an explanation. One said "He blew past us so quickly and so suddenly, like ten thousand winds gusting from the southern desert."
From that day, the man was known only as Ten-Thousand-Winds to the Essyrni, a nameless, faceless assassin. Nobody could figure out who he was, but whenever he returned town people died. The wishmaster who had prayed for that first murder was found dead soon after. For years the cycle continued: a man was murdered, and then soon after his rival (presumably the one who prayed to the Djinn for the murder) was also dead.
Since those early days, the assassin has left the boundaries of Essyrn and has traveled the length of the world, an unwilling pawn to the whims of whoever holds his True Name at the time. He has killed commoners, merchants, nobles, lords, even a Shah. While the man longs for the day that he can retrieve his True Name from the Djinn and end this farce of a life, until then he is at the mercy of fate, unable to settle down for long.
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