[hider=LOCAL TREE LITERALLY TOO ANGRY TO DIE]
[table][cell][h2][color=#D68300][center][img]https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1048534330273697805/1050593416796450816/e43c13303deb52c0b731e850c097ac6e.png[/img][/center][/color][/h2]

[center][color=#D68300][i]"If the gods wanted me to die, then they didn't try hard enough."[/i][/color]

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1KtKqowvdQ][i]🎶"In the mist of the morning a winter's day came a man in robe from far away. Out of ashes and clay of the magic vale, 'cause sorrow sails on the Warlock's trail."🎶[/i][/url][/center][/cell][cell][img] https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1048534330273697805/1050596078946365490/image.png?width=442&height=625[/img][/cell][/table]

[h3][color=#D68300][b]Species[/b][/color][/h3]
[indent]Shirik is an Iriad, despite their appearance. They do not have the same biological functions as a typical Iriad, but they are still a plantlike being nonetheless. They've been changed by magic, and now consider themself something else.[/indent]

[h3][color=#D68300][b]Appearance[/b][/color][/h3]
[indent]Most Iriad are willowy creatures with skin for bark and leaves for "hair." Shirik's body, however, is charred black and caked with ashes that never seem to disappear. What was once branches that stemmed from their body are now jagged stumps that smoke with dried tree sap, and their bark-like skin as peeled away in some places to reveal an exterior beneath. Like metal armor, Shirik's skin is merely an outer shell that conceals a roaring, crackling inferno underneath, which seeps out through their joints. If the Iriad as a people are a forest, then Shirik is a tree burned black from the inside out by a wildfire.
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[h3][color=#D68300][b]Magical Affiliation[/b][/color][/h3]
[indent]Shirik is a heat mage down to their very core. Literally.[/indent]

[h3][color=#D68300][b]Occupation[/b][/color][/h3]
[indent]TBA

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[h3][color=#D68300][b]Key Skills[/b][/color][/h3]
[indent][list]
[*][u]Heat Domain Mastery[/u] - As someone who is roughly a thousand years old, Shirik may as well have wrote the book on the heat domain. They're a master at it, to the point that Shirik is sustained by fire. They do not even need to eat food because of their affinity for magic.

[*][u]Survival[/u] - Geography, foraging, navigation, and even tracking. Shirik has travelled a lot over the years and therefore picked up such skills overtime. They know how to figure out the quickest or safest course to a destination, or what is and isn't edible. 

[*][u]Wisdom of Travel[/u] - Having been all over Kanth-Aramek, Shirik has visited every major city, learned every language, and explored the ruins of virtually every important thing on the planet. If a word needs translation, Shirik can provide. If someone needs to know what to not do to offend a certain population, just ask Shirik. If there is a question of history not written in the books, Shirik may have the answer.

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[h3][color=#D68300][b]Backstory[/b][/color][/h3]
[indent]
One thousand years ago, Shirik lived in the Myriad among their people. The forest was untouched by the outside world for as long as the sun had risen and was as old as the sea. Everything changed when the Empire set fire to the great cities. Shirk watched the S'Tor soldiers light the first sparks, and was consumed by the blaze in minutes. As the fire rolled against their skin, and pain took over, Shirk could only see light. And they saw it through a hundred billion embers that became a hundred billion eyes.

Every fraction of warmth rippled through the trees like waves across an ocean, travelling an endless distance before a collision determined by fate, only to join into a greater flame. From the smallest traces of what was at one point an unchanged thing could because an effigy of the very thing by which creation was facilitated. The flame gives, and the flame takes. That was the lesson instilled in Shirik over the course of a length of time they could not have quantified. The light of the infernos were blinding, and the heat consumed everything that it touched. Everything except Shirik. They experienced an awakening, so real and profound that they entered a state of uninterrupted meditation. All Iriads could hibernate, but to do so while being burned alive was... Simply indescribable. 

[color=D68300][i][b]The fire gives. The fire takes. The fire gives. The fire takes. The fire gives. The fire takes. The fire gives. The fire-[/b][/i][/color]

When they finally woke up, what was once a boundless horizon of green and brown was little more than a shriveled plain of ash and dead wood. The moon was obscured by smoke, and the only light was from Shirik's body. They felt absolutely nothing of the pain they felt before, but Shirik felt [i]alive.[/i] Flames rolled from their body, and after the smallest movement of their hands, the flames reacted. Shirik was no longer the same person. When they found their people, they could not engage them safely. Fire exploded from their finger tips with every motion, and so Shirik had to leave or risk endangering the Myriad further. Their mind was an endless storm of rage, pain and confusion, and Shirik's own people could not stay safe in their presence.

Shirik left, and travelled to a far, distant part of Kanth-Aramek, where they would spend the next 600 years learning to understand their newfound power. Endless sessions of meditation to heal their wounded mind, endless hours spent harnessing the unfaltering blaze that bonded with them, and prolonging of their lifespan through hibernation helped to calm Shirik. They learned how to make the fire bend to their will, but their perception of time became a blur. To them, it only felt like a few years had passed, but it was actually centuries of isolation. Once they felt ready to step back into the world, Shirik was met with talks of something called magic in the new age they had lived to experience. Others were beginning to understand the things that Shirik had been exposed to centuries before. This was a time when Shirik was not an outlier by their presence, but by their own skill... They could work with that.

For the next 400 years, Shirik caught up with the world, learning about the gaps in history that they missed, travelling to the cities now forgotten by the Kolodon Empire, and left to fend for themselves, and meeting others who had been opened to the power of magic. This was not the same world they lived in once, Shirik was a living relic from the past now, but there was something waiting for them all this time, given to them long before the world was ready for it. All they had to do was walk forward and find a place in it. Their place, however, never stayed in one spot. Shirik travelled all across Kanth-Aramek in search of wisdom and understanding, and learned much about what the world was catching up on. They've been thinking about paying a visit to the Ascendency to apply their skill with the heat domain, but a star fell from the sky, and so a change of plans was in order.

Something was about to happen, and Shirik was going to be a part of it.

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