Arion is currently the owner of several inns and taverns within the city of Ascada, though is often not seen around town as he spends most of his time in the manor he is currently renovating.
History
Arion was born as Kyarian in 122 BC in present day Wales, England. His name is derived from the English word 'aria' meaning 'gentle music', and from 'kye/kylan' which is a name referring to a 'wood or church'. Arion usually says the translation means 'song of the forest'. His mother was Aíthlín the Windwalker, an archdruid among her people. Tarron was a warrior first and foremost, and a believer in the Old Magic like his wife, who practiced it.
When the Romans came to Britain in 43 AD, Tarron and his family adopted the name Illianaro and Kyarian took the name Arion. By the time the Romans reached the small island now known as Anglesey around 77 AD, the family was well established with their new names and roles. His decision to immerse himself with the invading force led to a split between him and his wife. To increase his power in the Roman Empire, Tarron wed his sons and daughters to humans to create alliances. The only one that Aíthlín fought to keep out of his plans was Arion since he showed promising talent of becoming a druid of the old magic, like herself. Arion was thus kept in Anglesey as Lord but was expected to cooperate with the Romans. Aíthlín and her druids hid in the woods, often moving. Arion was the only one to know their location and he kept it a secret from everyone, even his father.
In 116 AD, Arion went hunting to cool off after his father sent a message that said his favorite sister, Tessiana, would be marrying to further Tarron's status in the Empire; he wanted Arion to escort her. During the hunt, Arion stumbled upon a young woman with silver hair and pale skin, bringing her back to the Keep and tending to her personally. When she woke, a language barrier prevented them from communicating but she was a quick learner and soon managed to learn enough to explain what happened to her. Her name was Leyna Evernight; she was a moon elf from a different world and was sent to his world after a planar rift exploded. It was a bit much for Arion to understand but he took her to see his mother who lived in the forests. His mother's words were ominous (and less than helpful to get Leyna back to her world). Arion returned home but promised that he would find a way to get the woman to her family. Falling in love with her had not been a part of the plan, and she rejected him often due to losing her previous lover. Leyna grew to trust and love him back, despite Aíthlín's warning that her coming would be the coming of a great evil.
Arion and Leyna were later attacked by spellcasters from her world (or a world like hers at least) and a vampire. The vampire was defeated but had carried a sword that, when picked up by a weak-minded soldier, caused him to attack everyone. Leyna, knowing what cursed, sentient weapons were like, was quick to end the threat and the sword, which Arion nicknamed Betrayer, was sealed in a vault. For added security, Leyna placed all the warding spells she knew because the aura of the weapon was powerful.
When Tarron arrived to collect Tissiana for her wedding in Rome, he called Leyna out as a witch and demanded she be executed. Arion negotiated having her brought to Rome to be judged, even though he knew what her fate would be and hoped to find a way to escape with her before reaching the city. Tarron ignored Arion's warning about attacks similar to the one he and Leyna had fended off with the vampire and the group set off. Days out, they were attacked again and Leyna and Arion escaped when both realized they were after her - or rather the sword shard she had been found with. Not knowing the fate of his family and hoping taking Leyna away from them would spare them further attacks, Arion started to head back toward the caer to ask his mother once again for help.
While traveling north, Arion and Leyna witnessed an elderly man being killed in a grove. Leyna recorded the event in her journal before falling asleep but in the morning neither remembered what happened. Her journal said that Arion mentioned that the old man was a spirit of the grove, or a lesser god. Both feared that what they saw was his destruction - so complete that he was erased from living memory, too. Not long after this, they were attacked again and led to a safe place by a hawk. The grove was that of the goddess Cerridwen who showed Leyna how to use the broken piece of the sword to craft an amulet that would contain the spirit of the entity Arion nicknamed the Godkiller. During this time, the two had a respite and Leyna conceived a child, which she kept from Arion, wanting to tell him when everything was over.
When their sanctuary was breached, the vampire leader bit Arion during the fight. Leyna destroyed it and Arion did not die so they assumed he was fine. Arion kept quite that he felt like something was wrong, but he could not place it. Given everything was riding on Leyna to perform a powerful binding spell to seal the Godkiller into the amulet, he kept his fears to himself. The two met Aíthlín on the road with her druids and she confirmed that the Godkiller was the evil that Leyna brought with her, or at least awakened. Aíthlín had fought this entity in the past and was skeptical of the binding spell Leyna said Cerridwen taught her. She was also concerned about Arion but he brushed it off, telling his mother that he had given his heart to Leyna and would not leave her. Aíthlín was already suspicious of the changes in Arion and performed several spells on him which he admitted helped.
At the Circle of Stones (Stonehenge), the Godkiller came, as predicted, and Leyna began her binding spell. Arion fought alongside the druids but when his mother was disintegrated in front of him by the Godkiller, the 'monster' within started to take root - his eyes started to turn red and he gained inhuman strength. He bought enough time for Leyna to complete the spell, binding the Godkiller's soul to the amulet. This act drained her and Leyna died in his arms. Reacting and turning himself over to the voice in his head, Arion bit Leyna and drank her blood. In the morning, Leyna was sitting up but her eyes were red - she had been turned into a vampire.
Arion himself did not change quickly - he fought the urges, usually slacking the bloodlust on animals when he went hunting alone. He kept Leyna in a dungeon and would give her animals or those sentenced to death. He tried to reach the woman he loved but Leyna changed physically and did not seem to recognize him, talking to herself and in her own world. Arion despaired and finally, in the winter, he brought himself to read Leyna's journal in desperation to remember the spirited, feisty woman he had loved. The last passage broke him - learning Leyna had been pregnant and the doll made from human skin was possibly from the child she had been carrying - he did not know if the creature (for he could no longer consider it Leyna), had killed his child or it had been stillborn. Regardless, Arion surrendered himself to the Monster and in the morning, he and the creature he had created left the bloody courtyard of the caer having murdered every man, woman, and child. It was the day Arion Illianaro died.
Over the next 1,962 years, he and his companion traveled over the world, adjusting to the times, changing and adapting. He began to call the woman Red due to her blood-red hair. The night he left the caer he had learned that she had powers over the dead and could resurrect corpses. While her mind seemed utterly broken, she was focused when attacked, or when the amulet was threatened. The amulet itself Red guarded zealously, even from him. Knowing what the Amulet contained, he kept Red close, protecting (if one can call it that given a vampire's vanity), her while she kept the Godkiller in the Amulet.
In 1840, he and Red took up residence in an underground domain in Chicago, Illinois. He would later purchase the Viceroy Hotel under a different name sometime after the Awakening occurred in 2011, bringing back metahumans such as elves, dwarves, trolls and countless others. This allowed him to walk around as an elf and not hide his ears. He had many aliases and in 2079 the owner of the Viceroy Hotel was Gavin Taylor; he also would pose as Owen Taylor, Gavin's twin, who owned the manor in Anglesey. To Shadowrunners and those connected to underground crime, he was known as Ghost. Few actually saw his real face for he often killed those who did to keep his identity hidden. Very few people realized he was a vampire - the real kind, not the virus created kind. In the vast basement of the Viceroy Hotel he had given Red her own lair which he often avoided except to make sure she was not trying to plot against him.
Sometime around 2011, the amulet's wards began to fade. Red then used her personal servants, known as the Red Vipers, to find those with necrotic energy. She would then feed their soul-energy to the Amulet, killing them. Ghost knew about this but did nothing because he also knew the threat that would escape should the wards fail.
In 2079 AD, Ghost was confronted by a group of plane-traveling adventurers who were accompanied by Logan Wallace, a gunslinger/inquisitor who was looking for his niece, Jenny. Jenny had disappeared months previously and through his network of Shadowrunners, Logan had traced Jenny's disappearance to the Red Vipers who were linked to Ghost. With Logan's assistance, Tarja Ar-fein, Zelgadis, and Jace Belerian were able to get into a private event where Logan went to his contact, the ArchMage Cal'Yenna. Meanwhile, Zelgadis made his demands to the vampire lord. Ghost, not being one to simply give into the demands of people, left the room knowing the group would follow and led them to the underground labyrinth he often used to torture and kill those that pissed him off.
Tarja was able to see through his invisibility and kept pace; Ghost misted while running through the tunnels that led even farther under the Viceroy Hotel, using one of his many escape routes to vanish. The group continued down and into Red's Lair, which was full of the hundreds of people she and Ghost had killed over the past several hundred years. While the group confronted Red, who at first ignored them while she went about her task of preparing her latest sacrifice (the group's former companion Ruby Shinimi-something), and the nearly dead Tal'Esarion, Yenna's brother. Ghost simply watched the events unfolding, his confidence shattering only when Red was defeated nearly instantly, sending her back to her coffin as mist. Only then did Ghost step from his hiding place and engage the party. It took all of them, including a rescued Ruby, to send Ghost retreating to his own coffin.
Tarja remained behind while the rest of the party returned to report to Ishyar (who had helped retrieve the Amulet of Souls Red had been guarding). She renewed her search and found Ghost and Red's coffins in a small cave illuminated with artificial light (and a fake tree). Red was staked and Tarja then took a seat and waited for Ghost to wake up, making a deal with the vampire lord and using Red's life as blackmail. For the time, Ghost took the offer but it was never in his nature to trust or be the blackmailed one for long. After scaring Ishyar's messenger, ArchMage Dar'Ronan, Ishyar himself arrived again and asked to see Red. Upon seeing her, he turned to Ghost with the most anger and hatred Tarja had ever seen on the generally calm phoenix. Ishyar reversed the vampirism on Red and healed her shattered soul; Ronan was instructed to take her back to Thyrayyah as she would need the help of Ishyar's best healers. He then confronted Ghost, who reacted as Red was taken away, trying to attack. Ishyar easily held him then pinned him in phoenix form, burning the vampire out of him and leaving him barely alive. Tarja agreed to keep an eye on him and Ishyar left, telling her when she was ready to call him to join him on Rerir as he had a proposition for her.
Arion spent several days recovering before he eventually woke and turned to cleaning up the mess, or starting to, that Ghost's defeat had or would bring. He freed Jace Beleran who had been captured early in the fight. Then, under one of his aliases, Owen Taylor, Arion set about faking the deaths of his various personas, business arrangements, and personal ones, including the fake death of Owen's twin brother, Gavin - another alias used by Ghost to control the Viceroy Hotel. When all this was in place, Arion took Icon, Tarja, and Jace to his manor in Anglesey, which was near his ancestral home. While here, Zelgadis rejoined them and Arion asked them to help him with one final task to which they agreed.
The night before, Icon had gone to talk to Arion and they ended up sleeping together, which both agreed was a mistake after the fact but Icon did get her point across and Arion promised that he would be returning to Leyna. Tarja learned of this, finding Icon still in bed with Arion (she had fallen asleep while they had talked things out), and later returned to attack Arion who stood his ground but refused to actually attack Tarja, trying to talk to her instead. When Tarja sent a cold ice strike at him after a long fight that he eventually used dimension door to get out to the courtyard to prevent further damage to his room, he was prepared to go on the offensive when Icon intervened, taking most of the blast from the spell. Tarja ran while Arion used the last of his healing spells to save Icon's life. He then simply wired for Tarja to calm down and return. When she did, he talked to her, both coming to a mutual agreement in their relationship.
The next day, Arion left Earth and went to Rerir. While the group passed through the market, a clad figure ran through them pursued by guards. Arion caught a glimpse of the person and inserted himself between the guards and Leyna, who had escaped the healing ward. Leyna was then escorted with the rest of the party to the Keep where Ishyar talked to them all about their next step in the journey, which was to find Jenny. Arion was able to provide assistance in this, giving Ishyar a clearer photo from the camera's in Red's lair that he used to make sure she was still there (as Red escaping in the past was never a fun thing to cover up or clean up). While the party left to find Jenny, who had teleported herself to Eberron using Tessek's brooch, Arion remained at Leyna's side.
In the weeks that followed, Leyna's health improved drastically and the two reconnected though Arion was unable to explain everything to her. Leyna figured most of it out herself and convinced him to start his own journal since he could not tell her. After a time, he did. He also helped her remember how to wield Moonfyre again, content with two far less magical weapons that Ishyar let him have. When Kessen and his family arrived, having been found and rescued by the party while on Eberron, Arion gave Leyna her space to reunite with her brother and get to know his family.
Weeks after this, Arion, who spent much of his time with Ishyar while Leyna spent her time with her brother, began to notice changes in the phoenix. It was not his nature to simply confront or assume anything immediately and Arion continued to watch and take note of things, sensing that something was not right with the man who saved him. When Ishyar suddenly summoned Arion and Leyna to his study late one night, told to prepare for a trip, Arion realized only then that something about Ishyar was off - though he still could not place it and Ishyar would not tell him, growing angry when Arion persisted. "The only thing that matters is getting you both safe and..." but Ishyar never finished this and opened a portal, telling them that they will learn what to do once there. Arion did not want to leave - something was that wrong - but Ishyar pushed them through and the portal snapped shut instantly leaving Arion and Leyna in the middle of a forest at the base of tall, gray mountains that made Arion even more uneasy. Perhaps, he decided to himself as he and Leyna made a camp and waited, the feeling he had felt had been him, not something wrong with Ishyar. With no proof, Arion kept this to himself and allowed himself to enjoy Leyna's slowly changing denemor to their situation as she remembered the joy of adventuring again.
The next day, Arion and Leyna set off, heading to the mountains after a long debate of which direction they should go. They did not go far before running into the party, who had come to this world after a very round-a-bout journey from Eberron. Tarja explained that they were here looking for a place called the Hall of Judgment - a place that they were told Arion needed to go. This made Arion more uneasy - like a snake starting to uncoil within him, but as Tarja told them what the party knew so far, he resigned, agreeing to this and hoping it was the right choice - for Leyna.
They set off into the mountains and after several days were attacked by a rhymoraz that nearly killed Leyna by swallowing her. While Tarja did manage to jump up and cast freedom of movement on the moon elf, Arion had only seen Leyna swallowed and went into a blind rage that only ended after he went unconscious, unable to feel the pain each as each of his own blows caused the creature's fiery blood to cover him. Tarja shoved him into the Shadow Plane and prevented his death, but when she returned after saving Leyna (who had used Moonfyre to step into the plane to try to find him), Tarja punched him in the face and gave him a piece of her mind. Arion said nothing - he knew Tarja was right but he was also feeling like the snake inside his gut was starting to wrap around his heart. He didn't feel right and what he did feel was making him have flashbacks to some of Ghost's greatest victories - none of which Arion was actually proud of.
When the group besieged a fortress commanded by orcs, goblins, demons, and various other evil creatures, it was clear that Arion had a target on his back - someone in this land wanted him though they did not know if that was dead or alive. After clearing the fortress (and freeing the prisoners, which consisted of the last two ArchMages Ishyar had asked the party to return to Rerir), they continued to the city of Bridgewater. While the party preferred to appear like mercenaries, Arion disguised himself and Leyna as presents, intending to blend in and hopefully catch any useful information from the peasants or guards - things that would never be said to a mercenary. While he didn't get much, Arion eventually joined the party when they went to get into the main city. While trying to figure out a way to get out of the north gate, which was clearly not going to be as easy as the south gate, the city was attacked by two spectral shadow dragons that reigned down on the city indiscriminately, though primarily focused on the battlements and standing army. During the chaos, and trying various plans to leave, using the dragon attack as a distraction, they ran into a mercenary that knew Zelgadis and Jace quite well - Jaq, who demanded they hand over Arion. The group decided to not do that and were willing to fight a duel, which Arion stepped up to do himself only to find that Jaq was way more than he could handle. During the fight, Arion felt a moment of fear as he realized that he was in fact weaker than before and he could taste blood - though he was not bleeding. Zelgadis came to step in and Leyna sent a moonfire blast, hoping to distract Jaq and Arion made a dash for it, escaping narrowly. While he quickly healed himself, he used a trick to get everyone out of there but Zelgadis was not as lucky. They quickly found Tarja, who had been doing some recon of her own at a brothel. Tarja brought Zelgadis back from death (again) then demanded to know what the hell was going on.
[Arion was taken to the Hall of Judgment and sacraficed - he was forgotten by all living things, including gods.]
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