Name: Pel
Age: 25+
Contact: wehwalt
Other Characters: N/a
Interests: When Inquisition was coming out, a character named Argent was announced for multiplayer, which annoyed me a bit, because her backstory implied the Inquisition profited from slavery. Mhavos is my attempt to explore this issue in more detail, with more sensitivity.


Name: Mhavos Dalat.
Canon/OC: OC.
Journal: murderbaby.
Race: Elf.
Nationality: Orlesian.
Occupation: Spy / Assassin.
Division: scounting.
Mage or Not: Nah.
Age: 24. EDIT: Now 25.

History

• The Orlesian Alienage he called home was purged when he was about four; a human family of rich merchants took him in and trained him up as a page and clerk in return for food and board. Mhavos became an indentured servant.
• Mhavos became quite good with letters and sums. While the family that owned Mhavos' contract weren't awful to him, they had little patience for their servant stepping out of line. Mhavos learned fast that taking up as little space as possible, being quiet and obedient, was the best way to insure safety.
• His employment contract was purchased by a noble who noticed his ability to blend into a crowd, and began to train him to eavesdrop. Slowly, he grew into a spy.
• Eventually, his skills caught the interest of a family more ambitious and ruthless than his previous masters. After purchasing his employment contract, they focused on using him more lethally; they not only wanted him to slip in and out of places unnoticed, but tip the scales in their favor with poison. This inevitably escalated to killing outright; Mhavos could easily slip in and out of houses unnoticed if he dressed as a servant, and years of running errands had made him quite nimble.
• With the application of combat training, Mhavos became an assassin and spy for whoever held his employment contract. By the time he was an adult, he'd killed several people, human and otherwise.
• Mhavos' employment contract was purchased by the de Revin family, and one of their daughters had cause to visit Kirkwall. There, she lost a fair sum to gambling. To pay off her debts, she pawned off Mhavos' employment contract, and it ended up in the hands of a member of Riftwatch.
• Seeing the employment contract for exactly what it was, the Riftwatch officer ripped it to pieces. However, having been in servitude all his life, Mhavos had no clue how to proceed, and submitted himself to the officer anyway, who suggested he may as well join Riftwatch if he was so eager for a job. And he was, so he did.
• Not really thinking he had a choice, Mhavos informed the higher ups of his capabilities as an assassin and spy.
• However, outwardly he maintains his disguise as an average clerk to the general public, to the majority of Riftwatch or otherwise.
• EDIT: After the fighting in Nevarra, Mhavos was given the assignment to tail a rich noble for a few months. He's now returning from that assignment. If approved, this can be fleshed or kept vague; I'm good with either. His cover story is that a friend of Riftwatch needed an accountant for a few months, and the project ran longer than anticipated. An important note: during this time period, I'd like to have Mhavos survive a near death experience for the purposes of some character development & generally making him a bit easier to write.

Personality

Mhavos has made his life on being unassuming and easily overlooked, so it's essentially his default. This doesn't mean he doesn't have a temper or opinions, however, he just assumes no one is interested in them, because no one ever has been. While Mhavos has lived a life in servitude, he isn't happy with it, or his orders; he simply never saw a way out, and isn't entirely sure how to operate outside of the strict guidelines of forced service.

Mhavos does not enjoy the kill. He is repulsed by his talent for murder and falsehood in general. Some idealistic streak persists within him, though he lacks the ability to express it; he simply knows killing is wrong and a good person shouldn't be so good at it. He's prone to bouts of depression afterward, or simply when thinking on his murders too much. He can become melancholy in general, and will be especially vulnerable to these depression jags when he is faced with the full extent of his freedom. Without the pressure and structure he's lived with every day for years, he'll be a little at a loss.

That said, Mhavos is not so brainwashed by servitude that he doesn't recognize it, or fear freedom (he just doesn't know what to do with freedom, having never experienced it). He can occasionally strike out in tiny acts of rebellion, though they're so small as to barely count by most standards. Being rude, or telling jokes, he considers rebellious behavior; after all, both things make him stand out. Occasionally he'll be daring and let loose particularly snide or sarcastic comment in a language the people around him don't know; he's more liable to joke in Orlesian, for example.

Knowing the importance of being overlooked, Mhavos also understands the reverse. Gifted with an expressive face, Mhavos usually chooses to go unremarked, but his features can twist into ghoulishness to inspire fear or upset as needed. It's something he uses to his advantage during assassinations and fights. Considering he's a pretty small dude, every little bit helps.

Mhavos is very much a loner, though not by choice. He sees himself as a perpetual outsider-- an elf, but with no real memories of the Alienage, Orlesian but not human, educated but not respected, alive but without purpose. Deciding to work for Riftwatch was the first real decision he's made in his entire life, but he's not sure where to go from there. The future is, for the first time, a complete mystery, and that's as frightening as it is exciting.

EDIT: During his assignment, he nearly died-- no one's fault but his own, he slipped on a wet roof tile-- and nearly cracked his head open. The experience made him want to experience more in what time he had. It's made him a bit more patient, gregarious, and out-going, but not to a huge extent.

Opinions & Affiliations

• MAGES VS TEMPLARS: Mhavos is afraid of magic due to his utter ignorance of it, and thus unthinkingly supports the Templars. He's never met any people from either group, though, and is liable to be easily swayed if he forms anything like a connection with someone from either party. He'll only think critically on the subject if he forms a kinship with those from both parties.
• SLAVERY VS MORALITY Stridently anti-slavery (and anti-indentured-servitude, which he privately considers synonymous but is deeply reticent to actually say aloud), Mhavos kinda has skin in the game. Further, he's generally against Alienages, thinking that it puts elves at special risk, having them all in one place (Alienage purges are kind of a thing). These are all opinions he'll voice only under duress or extreme hesitance; having political opinions is an excellent way to get noticed, something he still kneejerk avoids.
• ELVES VS THE WORLD Being an elf, Mhavos is generally pro-elf, however he feels rather awkward about it. A city elf who barely remembers his Alienage, and has no commonality with the Dalish, and is far more educated than an elf generally is, where does he fit in? The answer, he assumes, is nowhere, and so he keeps his wish to be accepted to himself.
• THE CHANTRY & FAITH Mhavos is nominally religious, in that he believes in the Maker and has read several theological treatises and monographs. That said, he's terribly curious about the Dalish gods, but all the books on them he's read seem terribly biased. As such, he's certainly a Deist, but beyond that his devotions are largely performative in order to fit in. That said, he respects the Chantry as an organization, appreciates the art they commission, make and inspire, and the history they preserve.

Strengths & Weaknesses

MENTALLY

➕ Very well educated. Excellent mind for book learning. He knows his sums, basic philosophy, economics, literature, and history. He's fully fluent in both Orlesian and Trade.

➖ The practical application of all those fancy books is entirely lost on him, having never needed to, well, apply it.

EMOTIONALLY

➕ Really, really good at keeping calm and carrying on. Even though he's having an existential crisis inside, he'll show little sign of it outside.

➖ A depressive with a fine sprinkling of constant lowkey anxiety and no real way of dealing with it; now that he's not under the thumb of some rich bigwig, he's got no real idea how to act and is just gonna fake it while also losing his shit internally. He's liable to become paralyzed by indecision over the most basic things, or choose 'too quickly' and agonize over something that genuinely does not fucking matter.

PHYSICALLY

➕ Essentially the typical rogue / assassin archetype, Mhavos is fast and light on his feet. Able to hide himself in shadows as easily as crowds. Fights largely with concealed knives, occasionally poisoning the blade, and he's handy with garrotes and traps as well! He makes an ideal spy or assassin.

➖ That thing about glass canons. Mhavos is trained in stealth. He's not made to take direct punishment; once he's hit, he's seriously vulnerable. He likes to set the stage to his advantage, using traps and poison and hiding and waiting until the enemy is unawares. In a normal battle, with no pre-planning available, he'll be in for a rough time. That said, he may learn to be more of an active fighter with time, but he sure ain't there right now.

Inventory

Some simple servant's clothing, even simpler leather armor, knives, a chapbook of Orlesian poetry.

Motivation

Though he wouldn't know how to phrase it, Mhavos wants to figure out who he is when he's not stick in a cycle of perpetual servitude. However, he needs some structure in the interim, and that's what Riftwatch provides. He has no clue how to live without someone telling him what to do, and Riftwatch will provide that while also not, like, being as awful as Orlesian nobility. Jeez, those guys suck.



I'm going to link all my TDM threads here, just so I don't loose track of them; cheers.

TDM Toplevel.
TDM friendship.
TDM literature.
TDM mental break.

EDIT: 1 & 2.