Young Valerion / Veras.

Valerion was born into a middle to upper class family in the High Rock region of Glenumbra, the year he was born was E2 245, making Valerion 1284 years old at the beginning of the dragon crisis.
His name, however, at birth was Veras Trion, his family being landholders and of an influential name, and having some form of influence of the days politics and other petty lords and ladies.
Valerion’s upbringing made him a fine candidate for his assumption of his families holdings and steadily growing influence, he proved to be an efficient leader, a shrewd negotiator and quite the man for a mind with business.
On top of that his studies in to magic yielded much as did his training with the sword.
His parents were beyond happy and satisfied with their son, someone who’d prove to be the one who would ascend their families name into the higher ranks of the nobility, when he was of the age of 22, however. He began to grow tired for waiting for his place as the family’s leader, and so, when his parents went to Daggerfell to convene with the other lords they were ‘’tragically’’ killed upon the road by a host of unknown assailants.
The other local nobility and the grander nobles of the provinces capital sent their sympathies and their hand in support of ruling his family’s lands, an offer Valerion thanked them graciously for, but in reality laughed at their petty attempts to assume a grip onto the lands that HE now owned; the lands he rightfully deserved.
It was here that Valerion learnt his first lessons in ‘pleasing the peasants’, as he called it.
These were incredibly important, as his predecessors were very proficient in keeping the farmers, and peasantry as well as the lower nobility happy which was no easy task.
There were many trips along the way, the worst being a small scale uprising by one of the houses Veras had managed to annoy greatly over some petty feud. He had them all put down for their transgressions, which kept most of the others under his control in their place.
When Veras hit the age of 34, he began to delve into some of the more unsavoury magics that were available, assuming a court mage; named Kaitlin Emriin, whom was an adept in Conjuration and even a student of necromancy.
It was at this moment that Veras started to learn about the power one could obtain from the planes of oblivion themselves, he started training in Conjuration immediately and within months bypassed his mentor in proficiency, together the two of them became fast friends and very powerful conjurers.
But it’s one thing to study and perform magic, but it’s another to learn the process behind it, the energies involved and to delve into the secrets of the arcane. Both of them started experimenting with spells fuelled by the desire to answer the questions of: Which plane of oblivion do they come from? Why does the lord of that plane allow the summoning? Is there a hidden price no one knows about?
All of these questions and many more were either just answered with theories or left unanswered, and the odd one came with a result. In the end, both of them abandoned their pursuits of magical theories and started expanding their knowledge in other areas, travelling to various locations in Glenmubra in order to try and get answers to former questions, or power and further knowledge of the arcane.
When Veras hit 47 worry started to work its way into his mind, that death would be here for him eventually and he didn’t really have much to show for the life he had lived. His house and name were fairly elevated amongst the higher echelons of the nobility, he commanded sway in both politics and law, and for the general rule people liked their ruler of their lands. But he handed that to his cousin, Veras’ pursuit of power and immortality began here, and he left on good terms with a fairly respected branch of his family’s tree.
With his friend at his side and his name sided with a considerable wealth left Glenumbra in pursuit of knowledge.
It took 2 years but they started to learn more about the life energy know as the ‘soul’; they were stationed in an old crumbling fort within Storm Haven, just a few miles south of Wayrest, right near the coast, they knew that soul trap was a very useful spell for the acquisition of souls but you needed a special vessel to contain the soul. And even then it was a mere shade of the real thing, its power very limited.
And so began the experiments in trying to find a way to ‘harvest’ the soul, at first it started on animals, with little success. So they moved onto more powerful animals, gaining scars and long nights on the hunt with once again, next to no power or life gained from the pure essence of the soul.
Eventually they realised that little could be gained from the standard Soul trap, so they bastardised it, malformed it and twisted it, into a spell that could tear the energy from their target and transmit it straight back to the caster, rather than losing much of its power and potential by constraining it into a soul gem.
They named it Goethia.
Now all’s it needed was a test, on a human, Kaitlin went and got a trader from the Wayrest, hoping to lure him into a trap that they’d set up, the story was as simple as valuing some of the things they had, persuaded with a few buts of silver and he did that.
Once the man got there Veras appeared in front of the man, he had a confused look on his face but before he could open his mouth top voice his doubts Veras used the spell Goethia, and the result was cataclysmic.
Whilst the spell worked perfectly as it rent the soul from man; his scream filled with agony resonated through the walls of the fort; it did something incomprehensible to Veras as he absorbed the soul.
At the time, he felt as if someone had used a lightning bolt on him, he became fully aware and his thoughts and feelings were going hyperactive, he eventually calmed down but the end result was conclusive, that he had gained time on his life and power from the soul.
It wasn’t till decades down the line that he would fully understand the consequences of that action.
After that seemingly obvious success of the spell they had created both Veras and Kaitlin began to use out at least once a day, on animals which only granted them small bouts of power but that was enough to satisfy them.
For the time being anyway, Veras had no trouble with the actions against the trader, but Kaitlin had her doubts about using it on other humans, even people who deserved it. This was a common debate between the two but never the less the opportunity didn’t arise for their argument to be put into reality for many years.
The both of them used the time to explore the world no knowing that they wouldn’t have to worry about time anymore; they left High Rock and started delving into Orinisium, Skyrim, Cyrodil, Valenwood, The black marsh and Morrowind.
Their travels and exploits as famous adventurers found themselves on the tongues of traders and patrons at inns as well places were the adventuring type went to for respite, joy or a place to rest.
And it remained for like that for 20 years.
But the first niche of their long lives started to permeate through the surface , the question on everybody’s minds were how adventurers so old could still be doing their job with such vigour. Their previous competitors had either all died out or were in retirement, at first it was admiration that both Veras and Kaitlin were still doing their thing, but it soon turned to bafflement and confusion, and jealousy.
And so, came the first decision that they had to make, which was to vanish after going into a ruin, and only resurface once their names were lost to legend, resurfacing with new names and a new role in the world.
But only one would in the end.