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Iuri Irinovych Gareldov

Background

Iuri was born on Eyrth on the Plana Siberia as his mother fled Khazaria. She managed to deliver Iuri to the Triumnal Confederacy, but was forced to return to Khazaria herself, leaving Iuri to be raised as a ward of the state.

He spent his childhood initially in an orphanage and then in foster care. Permanent placement proved tricky. Not all foster parents were equipped to deal with Iuri's behavior and abilities, and there were requirements made by the government with regards to his mage training which Iuri was resistant to. Only one foster parent, Kerrlyn, was willing to deny the government's requirements and put Iuri's well-being first, and Iuri was quickly taken away from her.

He finally landed in the home of Talbright and Sanna Perisyn, where he was forced to attend his training and punished if he failed to act as Talbright Perisyn required.

A miserable home life was compounded by an equally miserable school life. Iuri's personality and behavior earned him no friends among his teachers and peers, most of whom saw him as competition. Additional betrayals by adults in positions of power further cemented a deep and abiding hatred of authority.

Iuri was emancipated from foster care at age 16, but the damage was already done. In return for being given his own accommodations, he agreed to finish his mage schooling. It was already clear at this point that he was likely the strongest mage in the Confederacy.

Having his own housing made Iuri a prime target for romantic overtures: a new layer of attention he did not want but suffered through while completing his schooling.

After graduation, he was given an apartment above a bar and ended up friends with a waitress, Wendy, and a local policeman, Bert. The government, as a requirement of his housing and liquor license, forced him to meet potential partners. He rejected them all.

His dissatisfaction with the authorities never really went away. Shortly after the execution of a mage who had violated the absolute ban on mind reading in an attempt to save a child's life was broadcast, Iuri stumbled across a fissure in reality and made his escape.

Eager to reclaim their best weapon, the authorities chased Iuri. He managed to evade detection by choosing nonmagical means of concealment, most notably hiding himself underground for months on end while waiting for his magic to acclimate to each new reality enough for him to escape into the next one.

This continued for eight years, until after several strenuous events, Iuri walked into the town of Halwen and was given a job by the town librarian. It was here that he met a sorceress named Tanasha, a member of the adventuring group the Azure Haze, who were tracking down an ancient relic. After the party left, Iuri found her scarf behind some bookstacks and decided to try and track her down and bring it to her.

This brought him to the Waystation. While searching for Tanasha, he fell in love with a strange wizard who was under the influence of a truly horrific entity. Unfortunately, he couldn't save her from this entity. He could not even save himself: the entity was trying to destroy him, thwarting his desperate attempts to retain his sanity as he was drawn into the Shadowfell and given an impossible task. He tried everything to complete this task, even obtaining a shadow mastiff to assist with it, to no avail.

The pressure caused Iuri to break down. He would have been lost, but two strangers, a Shadar-Kai named Gwyn and a human paladin(?) named Minoru Paxton, found him and his strangely faithful dog and pulled them back from a Shadowfell gate.

Paxton took Iuri to a safe location far from the Waystation and stayed with Iuri until Iuri was better able to take care of himself. In the process, Iuri learned that he was not the only Iuri in the universe: there was another, an old friend of Paxton's. It was because of this other Iuri that Paxton had come to rescue Iuri and refused to leave his side.

While Iuri recovered, allies of Paxton were able to find Tanasha. She had died along with Iuri's unborn child. They gave her an ocean burial as befit the customs of her homeland and sealed passageways between their realms and the Waystation so the torments would not be able to reach him again.

Iuri went to the gnome city of Gnodessa to recuperate, spending a year furthering his skills as a librarian alongside his faithful shadow mastiff, whom he finally named Stella Carpathia. It was there that he met Hillyknot, a good-natured gnome who took pity on the hapless human when he came down with a flu.

Iuri answered the advertisement for an open librarian position in Luma and came to work at the Library of Lost Knowledge. He has been there ever since, attempting to deal with the fact there no one else who works at the library has any business being there, and the previous librarian left a lot of books overdue. Despite maintaining a healthy hatred of adventurers, magic, fighting, noise, bright lights, loud noises, blood, dirt, disorder, teamwork, camaraderie, and firearms, Iuri can often be roped into offering his expertise on various quests to assist the adventurers of Luma.

After arriving in Luma, Iuri lived in the Inn of Infinite Doors, but found he had difficulty sleeping there, so began to save up to buy his own house. After many months of penny pinching, he was finally able to afford a pod apartment home in Crawlers Fall.

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Personality

The word that best sums up Iuri is exasperated. From his history on Eyrth and his time on Halwen, he observed a lot of people with power throwing their weight around with people who have less. He tends to have very little patience with adventurer antics, and despises dishonesty.

Trained to be tactical in combat, Iuri is highly intelligent and creative. Though he's used to mage battles with distances measured in kilometers, not feet, he is constantly aware of his surroundings and willing to use them to his advantage. He has an engineer's brain and approach to magic. His willingness to use the mechanics of his spellcasting to the fullest makes him formidable in a variety of situations both in and out of combat. He can also be quite physically lazy; he rarely lifts a finger except to cast a spell.

As powerful as he is, Iuri prefers diplomatic solutions, and has a particular empathy for powerful yet isolated intelligences based upon on his lived experience as one.

Iuri suffers from narcoleptic migraines, which can knock him out of commission for 1d20+20 minutes at a time.

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Family

Father: Unknown

Mother: Irina Gareldova

Siblings: None