[hider=Uriel Castur]
Former Title: Knight Captain of the Holy Order (Former), The Most Wanted Man in Averne (former), Chief Strategist of the Resistance (former)
Nickname/Alias: Uriel the Flame Witch
Name: Uriel Cartur
Age: 37
Pronouns: He
Race: Human (Witch)

Personality: A man who has risen, fallen and was raised again, Uriel has experienced much hardship in his life. Made a pariah by the very laws and beliefs he used to enforce, forced to hide his nature for so long or face death, he has been made cautious and distrusting; it has been a long time since Uriel met someone he felt he could trust.

Though once bright eyed and hopeful, time and experience has made him cynical; he has seen what those things he used to believe in are really like, what the people he used to trust were really capable of and what he was willing to give his life to uphold was really worth. He has little faith in people and even less in organisations or systems.

This does not prevent him from trying to help people however; he was once a knight after all and his reasons for doing so have not changed. Uriel will not suffer injustice to happen, nor will he watch idly by when someone needs his help.

Appearance: 
[img]https://i.imgur.com/GM5sf5G.jpg?1[/img]

Abilities/Powers: 
Witches Pact - Uriel is a Witch. He is a human who has made a pact with a demon in order to gain the ability to control magic; through his connection to his demonic familiar he is able to cast spells, sense and absorb mana, see in the dark and understand the language of demons. Witches do not always have a choice when a demon wished to make a pact with them, in fact most Witches are created against their will when a demon takes a liking to them; Uriel is one such Witch. Due to their demonic patronage Witches have certain weaknesses, vulnerabilities to sanctified substances or objects with holy properties; one of the measures often used against captured Witches to keep them confined is to soak their bindings in holy water, which burns their skin and works to suppress their magic.

Flame Magic – Each Witch has a magic specialty, determined by their demon familiar and influenced by their own nature. Witches can generally only cast magic related to their specialty meaning that no two Witches are ever alike when it comes to what they are capable of. Uriel’s specialty is fire, as determined by the demon he is linked with, Ignis. This specialty is further influence by Uriel’s vast experience as a soldier patrolling the frontiers of Averne meaning that his fire magic often takes the shape of an animal; a flock of flaming birds or a pack of fiery wolves chasing his target down for example. Ignis likes to call this magic “Wildfire”.

Military Experience – Before he became a Witch, before his secret was revealed, Uriel was a captain in the Holy Order. He was knighted by the King and the Church, appointed to a leadership position and tasked with tracking and capturing suspected Witches all across the kingdom. He has picked up many skills from his time in the military, from swordsmanship, horse riding, tracking, wilderness survival as well as leadership, military strategy and tactics. When he became a fugitive, it was these qualities that made him the most wanted man in the kingdom. And it was these qualities that made the resistance seek him out.

Equipment: A simple trousers and tunic, along with his leather boots, were all that they left him after his capture.

Inventory: None

Origin: Averne. A kingdom of religion and darkness; the king rules over a nation of pious and fearful people while the Church rules over the king. Wild magic has returned to the world, leylines bursting with mana as demons return to the plane of mortals in droves and the number of Witches explodes beyond control. The Holy Order seeks to drive out this evil plague, conscripting as many young men as they can into the army and sending their knights out into the kingdom to hunt down as many Witches as they can. Results are rewarded and failure is punished, leading to a zealous witch hunt that claims many more innocent lives than it does demons.

Years pass and things slowly improve. The flow of demons and the number of new Witches seems to stabilise, yet the Holy Order finds fewer and fewer Witches during its hunt; it seems this will be the new way of things from now on. Those who live outside of the larger cities are fearful and paranoid, wondering whether it will be the Witches or the Knights who come for them first; everyone knows they don’t particularly care about finding Witches anymore, not real ones anyway, so long as they can keep up the appearance of meeting their quotas. Those in the cities are safer and have a much better image of the Church, but even they fear the imminent threat of Witches attacking that the Church protects them from.

Word spreads of a resistance, someone opposed to the Church and their puppet king, someone who wants to put a stop to the futile hunts and restore some sanity to the kingdom; it would almost be something people could celebrate if it wasn’t run by the very Witches the kingdom seeks to eliminate. Even so, people join them; whether because they fear the church and its Witch hunters more than the Witches themselves, or because they fear what the Witches will do if they don’t, they join. What’s more, word is they’ve managed to recruit the former Knight Captain turned Witch, the most wanted man in Averne, Uriel Cartur to their cause.

Backstory: Uriel spent his entire life in service to the Church of the Holy Order. His father was a Cardinal, a high ranking official in the Church, and as a young boy he would attend services frequently, as was expected of him. When he was old enough he began lessons to become a knight; history, etiquette, swordsmanship, horse riding and so on. As a teenager he was squired to a knight to continue his training, leaving the capital city for the first time in his life and going on missions for the Church and the crown.

As a young adult, after eight years faithfully serving the knight he was appointed to, Uriel earned his own knighthood. Standing before the king and the Churches highest members he swore his oaths and was knighted, given command of his own regiment of soldiers and tasked with hunting Witches in the furthest reaches of the kingdom, where the wild magic was strongest. It was a difficult task, and daunting, but he accepted it gladly.

The next few years were arduous and dangerous; the furthest reaches of the kingdom were a perilous place and he spent as much time fighting off bandits or wild animals as he did hunting Witches. No matter how difficult though he was steadfast in the performance of his duties, tracking any rumours of the use of magic, any hint of witchcraft to their source, and dealing with whatever he found. Finding a Witch was rare however, they are not as numerous as the Church had led him to believe, and unlike other Knights he was unwilling to condemn innocents just to make himself look better. Over the years he received many reports from the capital stating their displeasure with his results; it was likely only his connection to his father, influential as he was, that protected him from greater reprisals.

At some point, Ignis found him. Whether he was a demon new to this word, or perhaps the demon linked to one of the Witches Uriel managed to capture, the fire demon latched onto Uriel without him knowing, forming a pact between the two and forever sealing Uriel’s fate. At first he began having dreams, dark and disturbing dreams, with visions of fire and pain and a whispered voice he couldn’t understand. He thought it was merely stress at first, his mind finally succumbing to the pressures of his duty and the harshness of his environment, but then he started hearing the whispers when he was awake as well.

Just when he thought he was going mad, Ignis appeared to him. A small, imp-like creature with a twisted grin and horribly evil eyes, intelligent and malicious; the demon promised him power, promised him freedom, promised him everything, promised him lies. There wasn’t even a deal to be made, his soul had already been sold, the demon had already won; Uriel had become a Witch and had all the power that came with it, but he chose to deny it. For almost a year he kept his nature hidden from everyone, from the soldiers under his command and from the people he tried to help; even from the Church.

Everything went horribly wrong when they found the leyline well however. Leylines are concentrations of mana that form naturally along the alignment of significant landmarks; where these lines cross over each other they form wells of immense magical power found in the world; as Witches are able to draw on the ambient mana in the world to fuel their magic, these leylines and especially the wells can greatly enhance their magical abilities. And in the case of an inexperienced Witch, or one such as Uriel who tries to suppress their power, it can cause their magic to run out of control.

When Uriel finally managed to get his magic under control and the flames died down most of his men were dead and his secret was exposed. A few managed to escape and survive, spreading the word of what had happened; this news soon made it to the capital and the Church and the King and soon Uriel Cartur was known as the most wanted criminal in the entire kingdom. A former knight, the son of a Cardinal, one of the kingdoms most trusted members revealed as a Witch; the man who’d sold his soul for power. The man who’d laid in hiding for years, worming his way into a position of power, before slaughtering the very men who trusted him most.

Or at least, that was how the Church told it.

For another two years Uriel survived as a fugitive, with his face posted in every town or village for everyone to see; everyone knew his face and his name and either feared or hated him in equal measure. For two years he hid his face, kept to the shadows and did whatever he needed to survive. And, reluctantly, he learned how to control his magic; he couldn’t afford another loss of control and, if he was to survive, he needed to be able to use it as a weapon. He tried to ignore Ignis’s gloating as he practised.

Despite his best effort however, he couldn’t evade the Holy Order’s Witch hunters forever. He was captured, thrown in a cramped cage on the back of a cart, chained with specially made iron binding that kept his wrists in contact with holy water, and carried towards the capital alongside all the other “Witches” they had captured.

The caravan never made it to its destination however; while stopped in a town for the night, Uriel’s personal cage strung up in the middle of town to scare or reassure the locals, the resistance came for him. Witches attacked the soldiers while they rested, killing many of them and releasing the other prisoners from captivity. The town was thrown into chaos and amidst it all Uriel’s cage was opened. He was carried to the woods outside of town against his will, his “liberators” transporting him to their camp in order to make a proposition; there he was introduced to the resistances leadership, small though it was, and tried to recruit him. The kingdoms most hated fugitive, a former knight and Witch hunter with all the military experience that suggested; he would be a great asset to them.

Reluctantly, he joined them. He didn’t believe in their cause and even if he did they were Witches, they weren’t to be trusted; a bit hypocritical maybe, but he knew better than most what it felt like to have a demon whispering in your ear. He didn’t trust everyone to remain innocent under that kind of influence. He joined because he had no other choice, nowhere else to turn, and a part of him didn’t think they would allow him to say no anyway. Maybe a part of him thought he could do some good for the people as well.

For another year and a half he worked with the resistance, helping them strategize and helping the carry out missions to weaken the Church. He saw them help people, he met people who were thankful for the help, he met a lot of people who didn’t like the Church or the King and heard their reasons for it. Occasionally it was necessary to fight those he used to call comrades, even to kill them; his conscience told him it was wrong while he reason said he had no choice. To be honest, it wasn’t hard not to have any sympathy when he’d seen first-hand what the Witch hunters did to a town and its people; he wasn’t blind to the crimes the Knights committed in order to protect the people. He tried to ignore Ignis’s opinions on the matter.

Over time he began to see what the Church was really like. He knew that the Witch hunters could be… overzealous at times, but he had been in their position and knew what it was like. He knew how much of a threat Witches could be and could understand their methods, even as he condemned their results. But seeing it from the other side, he saw how little the Church actually cared for the people outside of the capital, how they did more harm than good in their war against Witches. He began to agree with the idea of overthrowing them.

The resistance slowly worked its way closer to the capital. Along the way they captured, or freed depending on your stance, towns and villages on the way; more and more people joined their side in opposition to the King while the Church tried to crack down harder on those remaining to stay loyal, their enforcers only becoming more brutal, if anything making people more willing to abandon them. Eventually the resistance even made it all the way to the gates of the capital itself and laid siege to the city.

Uriel was to lead a group into the city via the sewers, to strike from the inside and open the gates to let the rest of the resistance in while the others drew the army’s attention to themselves outside. This plan was successful and Uriel was able to let everyone into the city so that they could begin their march on the throne itself.

Then the black tower fell on the city, and everything became meaningless.
[/hider]