Nicovante Drahar

Magister Nicovante I Drahar is the young patriarch of House Drahar, and sits upon the Myrish Conclave of Magisters. Having only returned from his studies a year ago, his father and brother both suffered mysterious accidents, leaving the mysterious Nicovante as patriarch of the powerful Drahar Family. His powers lie not in coin as his father, and grandfather before him, did - rather in secrets and dark arts that were learnt in the dusty libraries of the Citadel of Oldtown, and the dark, blood-reeking, city of Qohor.

Appearance and Character
Nicovante does not look like the typical Myrman - his skin is near porcelain in its paleness, and his eyes are a deep, watchful green, hearkening to the northern heritage of his mother. Long black locks frames a thin face that is almost more beautiful than handsome, with the paleness of his skin brings out the blush in his cheeks, the ruby shade of his lips, the delicate features. His frame is as slight as expected - Nicovante is not a tall man, nor is he broad and strong. Slight and slim, lean and swift.

While Nicovante does dress and act as a Myrman does, he still shows aspects of the other cultures he has lived in. While usually in expensive, if subtle, silks of red and black, and jewellery of silver and ruby, he commonly adds in black furs from distant Qohor, and leatherwork and woolens from Oldtown. Nicovante does not like to be overtly ostentatious. He is a quiet man, and rarely desires to bring overt attention to himself, speaking with few words, and softly when he does so. He is rarely without his ebony cane, topped with the a silver raven skull. Rich as he is, Nicovante keeps a pet, as many Magisters do - this one a black raven, a hearkening back to days in Oldtown. This is not the only reminder of his time of Westeros - amid the silver necklace that he often wears around his neck, the centerpiece is always the twist of Valyrian Steel links from his time at the Citadel.

Nicovante is a quiet man; not especially shy, but careful with his words, using a look where a sentence would serve others. With Nicovante's more esoteric abilities, keeping his secrets is paramount to preserve his position and keep the mobs from the door, so Nicovante is not one to reveal much at all - especially about his experiences outside of Myr. The young man can be charming enough when he wishes to be, accompanied by a skill with plying the strings of instruments, already gaining a reputation in the city for composing mournful, dark, music. There is much below the surface of Nicovante Drahar; that much is obvious. The true extent of that uncaring darkness must be kept under wraps, for his own safety. Nicovante cares for very few, and even then they are more possessions than people to him. Anyone may have King's Blood or the like in their veins, and Nicovante would not be one to allow sentimentality to cloud his ambition in life, and that ambition is grand. The Magister has a dark plan; one that, if all comes to fruition, will see him an unending and undying presence in the shadows of Myr, a horror of cycling faces that no one will know the truth behind, of who truly wears them.

While he worships the Black Goat due to his time in Qohor, it is not out of reverence that he does so; the gods, all of them across the continents, terrify Nicovante, and that terror grows with every abominable crime he commits. The Black Goat promises power, power enough to hide him from, even trick, the wrath of the divine.

Nicovante would let a city drown in blood for his immortality; he may even well plan to.

Childhood - 411 AC to 426 AC
Nicovante Drahar was born in the waning days of the year 411 AC, in the hour of the wolf in a bed filled with blood. His mother, a Qohori noblewoman by the name of Nora Varott, died screaming and begging to kill the child to let her live - a request countermanded by Nicovante's father. In her last breath, it was whispered by the servants that she cursed the child she bore, promising him to her queer god - the Black Goat of Qohor. The whole while, the babe had not cried once. Aedrys Drahar finally had a son at the cost of a second wife, and while publicly he ignored the insidious rumours of his son's cursed birth, he had the tongues torn out the mouths of any slaves who dared to mention it, paying dearly for any rumours of repeat.

So it was that Nicovante entered the mortal world soaked in blood - and soaked in power. Perhaps the Black Goat had noticed his birth. Certainly, some power had, as would be proved in far off years.

Nicovante proved to be as silent a child as he had been a babe; shy was the polite term. Creepy the more accurate one, perhaps. Nicovante, however, was not friendless. He had charm, in his own way, and he excelled in playing people off against the other. Nicovante was the boy that other children knew to go to for that which was not quite approved of. Gossip, whether about other children or adults, or even things like wine, spirits - it was whispered even drugs and darker things. While he had none of the business acumen of his father, he was certainly more cunning, and kept any suspicions at bay by acting ever the supplicant son to the ageing Aedrys. On his father's recommendation, he even learnt music, a passion that Nicovante would surprisingly find himself keeping his entire life.

'Creepy' became more and more apt as Nicovante grew; but the boy became better at hiding it. He would insidiously twist the serving and slave children against each other, delighting in causing fights between them, the more violent, the better. It was here where Nicovante's obsession with blood, the body, began as well. He began with finding a dead dog, skull crushed in an ally behind his father's manse. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on drew him to the carcass, to draw the ostentatious knife he had been given for a birthday, and to explore with it. That desire to learn about what powered life would fester and grow. It didn't take long for the animals he 'found' to have been killed by a more personal hand than pure accident. Nicovante even grew confident enough to show his workings to one of his true, actual, friends - Norah Mar Noyne, who he was delighted to find in her another soul who could appreciate such a fascinating topic with. However, even Norah eventually distanced herself from him - merely teaching Nicovante that, yet again, he was alone. Trust would always be a weakness.

It was when Nicovante was ten and four when his obsession came to a head. A slave boy who had angered him with the barest of slights one too many times. It was easy enough to lure him into a dusty cellar underneath the Blackhall Palace, one that hadn't seen a living soul in years. All went well - until Aedrys found his son elbow deep in a dead slave's guts, pulling out organs and setting them neatly aside in lines of jars.

Nicovante was the spoilt heir of a magister; no punishment was given, not truly, and the body was burnt quickly. Nicovante did not leave the eyes of his new 'mentor' however; his cousin Saras watched his every move, shackled down from his ship as one of the few people that Aedrys felt he could trust. Just as things seemed to settle down, with Nicovante falling into a sulky, but silent, existence, chaos struck Myr.

The Mar Noyne coup left the Drahar Family reeling, with the foolish Aedrys fearing for the lives of his family. Children were, after all, a weakness and could be used against him. His younger children, from the next wife taken after Nora, could hide with their mother and her family. With Nicovante, however, came an excuse to put the boy out of mind until he hopefully matured. Using Saras' contracts, Aedrys arranged for him to take his eldest son into hiding in Oldtown, to wait upon safe word to return... and perhaps after Aedrys had seen if his second son would prove a more pliable heir.

Oldtown - 426 AC to 432 AC
The journey to Oldtown was smooth enough - until they arrived. As Saras and Nicovante entered the manse, late at night under a shroud of secrecy, they were set upon. The guileless Saras was taken by surprise utterly, and fell to the knives from the hooded figures. Nicovante, however, ever paranoid, fled as quickly as he could, disappearing into the back alleys of Oldtown. The swiftness of the attack did not surprise him, nor was he truly taken aback by it. There was only one way it could have fallen on that night - if the murdered had been Saras’ own crewmen. And there was only one person who would’ve had enough time to insert agents upon Saras’ own ship.

Aedrys.

It did not take Nicovante long to find one of the murdered, bragging in a winesink how he had even duped the Magister of the Drahars to loot the manse as well. That, Nicovante cared little for. It was a small matter to put a knife to the man when he drunkenly went outside to piss against a wall, and extract what he needed - and then, when he was done, to leave a bloody message for the others.

Nicovante had been left with some coin, but not enough. Certainly not enough to take him back to Myr in any position that he wouldn’t be at his father’s mercy. So, instead, Nicovante went to the one place he thought would have knowledge of his language, and would be forced to help him: the Citadel of Oldtown.

Dressed well enough, if the clothes were wearing ragged, to at least gain and audience, Nicovante was sent for swiftly by the Archmaester of Magic - a man who had long held interested in Essos, and what mysteries lay there. A handsome boy with at least a modicum of charm, Nicovante spun a tale of omen and darkness that surrounded his birth. He had always been somewhat fascinated by tales of magics; from the fire-blessed of the Red God, to the water weavers of the Rhoyne, to far off shadowbinders of Asshai, and most of all those of his mother's city.