Utövande, Slightly Amiss.
Name: Utövande
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Race: Hylian
Esper: Jämvikt
History: Every adventure has a beginning. Some involve dramatic events and frightening consequences, while others are marked by mental distress, when the pressure of staying in one place becomes too great, when one needs to escape from everything and reduce the focus in life to a singular goal. The latter is, or was, the situation for Utövande. A mental breakdown, entwined with a recently-unearthed lust to find relics of the past and a desire to bring balance back into his life, launched him down the road like the idiomatic bat from hell.
Born a city boy, Vande grew up knowing back-alleys and side ways, packed shoulder to shoulder with people of every race and all sorts. His father, the only family he was aware he had, ran a curio shop filled with the odds and ends that interest the dark back corners of every creature's mind. Always a bit claustrophobic, Vande found solace in the deep murky smell of dusty relics and subtle incense, the careful, contemplative way the people the shop drew in at all times of the day moved about, and, of course, the items for sale themselves. His father was no sketchy con artist, the goods he held in his store were authentic, antiques that resonated with the ages and cultures they rose from. Something about the civilizations that were long gone appealed to Vande, and the wonder of the notion materialized in their artifacts. Vande went to school like the rest of the adolescent population in the city, but it was when he returned home that his real studies began. He tore through every tome he could get his hands on, came to know all the prominent historians, and fancied himself one of them, a great explorer who delved deep into ancient ruins and recorded what was left of their ideas and philosophies. Though introverted, he had all the makings of a perfectly normal boy, soon to become a young man. This wasn't to last, fortunately or not. A unique storm was brewing, peeking over the horizon, foretelling and end to this relatively peaceful and ordinary period in Vande's life. Not a simple thunderstorm, of course, that would be terribly boring. Nature was not the cause of this tempest, no, this was created by the only force capable of such turmoil: The human mind.
This is no treatise on the chemistry of the brain, nor will the reader be bored with a lecture on psychology. However, an idea of the subject would likely help with the recount. The brain is a wonderful thing, a chemical cocktail, with each person, of course, being their own mixed drink. The way it all comes together decides every aspect of one's personality, from likes and wants to fears and motives. In the case of Vande, he was dealt a bit of a strange drink, with too much added from this bottle and not quite enough from that one, and though he was oblivious, in his mind was brewing a grand and cataclysmic explosion, a decrepit and broken clockwork mesh, spinning and spinning, bound to break eventually, bound to fall to pieces, the only variable being exactly when. And the “when” was rapidly approaching.
There was no dramatic moment, though, no great tragedy. The grain that tipped the balance was a simple remark, made in passing. Vande was known, like most teenagers who live in the vicinity of other teenagers, to keep a small circle of friends, more of acquaintances, really, who he would socialise with from time to time, if for no other reason than to remember what it was to be a corporeal being, to have his presence noted. On one of these days where he forsook the seclusion of his back corner, the choicest spot to pore over the volumes that had amassed, he stood, smiling, listening to one of the less bright of the lot speak of some nonsense. But then came a subject Vande was keen on: Civilizations. Now, this other boy was misinformed, but he had the capacity to say something so profoundly ignorant that it caused Vande to question everything he had ever done in his life. “What if,” he said, with what he must have thought to be a sage and educated expression painted across his simple face, “These ancient kingdoms and such are just myths, fancy stories passed off by men WE'VE never even seen before as fact, that all these things Vande's father sells in his shop just expensive-looking fabrications of wishful thinking, and we just have no idea of what came before?” Now, to the reader, and even to the dear narrator himself, this seems like a painfully stupid thing to say, and indeed it was, rude to boot, as well. But to Vande, who had had a strange mix of thoughts and feelings sloshing about his mind even before this boy had started questioning his entire life's purpose, what he had spent the last ten years of his life imagining, and to him, the notion produced a sound like fine crystal shattering, a high whine that penetrated every level of his consciousness, that twisted his mind like so much twine, balled into an incomprehensible knot. How much time he stood there, twitching, face bent and hammered into a pained grimace, is unclear, but he was there one moment and gone the next. And when he was gone, he was gone. It was not a flight, it was not an exodus, it was a disappearance. He was standing in a small square at one point of his memory and staring at the dark, gnarled trunks of the forest that surrounded the city in the next frame. At that moment, he had no real plan, no decipherable thoughts, no formulated ambition, just a great shapeless fear. Of everything. The careful, delicate foundation that his sanity had been built up upon was, for the moment, destroyed, and he had one real desire: Keep moving in the direction he was pointed. Stop when his legs gave. Start up again when they could hold weight. And indeed, he did. It was later, long past when he had lost all trace of where he was on the endless roads, that he came to understand why his body had brought him here while his mind was reeling and broken. The boy had brought about an interesting question, one that created such a specific reaction for a very specific reason.
The truth was, despite all his studying and fantasizing, he really didn't know what was real and what wasn't. For all the time he had spent secluded in a back room, tearing through mountains of books, he had learned nothing he could back with fact and assurance. The question was: What if that boy was right? What if it WAS all lies? How would he be able to continue with the crushing fact that he had nothing to look back to for wisdom, nothing to learn from, nothing to have a passion for? That was why he was there, on that road, the skies overcast and heavy with the coming thunder. He was going to see it all for himself, he was going to tear a portal in time and dive into the past, and, what's more, he was going to bring proof. He was going to bring artifacts, prints, samples, the things he had never had for himself. And more than that: He was going to search for enlightenment, a state of peace within his mind, to prevent himself from ever being destroyed like that again. He was going to bring balance into his life.
Personality: (coming soon, give me a break D: )
Appearance/Garb: (coming soon, give me a break D: )
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