#emrik din-rislan

Made a little progress on my Emrik doodle. Still very much a WIP, but thought I'd share it in case I never get around to finishing it lol

omg yes!! I love Emrik and relish the opportunity to talk about the stuff in his life that (most likely) won't come up or be relevant in AIBT's main plot lol.

Allow me to ramble through a (brief) summary of Emrik's past:

Emrik is Eskari, obv, (a drowen elf,) and he was born in Eskaria's capital city, Caskari. The oldest of three, he had two younger brothers, Amril and Helvrik. His father was a blacksmith, and his mother was a soldier with a strong skill for sword-wielding. They became infatuated with one another after she commissioned a sword from him, and the rest was history.

While Amril and Helvrik both took after their father with blacksmithing, Emrik inherited his mother's athleticism, strength, and knack for sword wielding. He followed in her footsteps and became a soldier, making a name for himself among the ranks of Caskari's City Guard, and was eventually promoted into the Rul ban-Kari, essentially Eskaria's national army. Soldier's life kept him busy, and he was often sent on campaigns to settle skirmishes or attacks at the border. (Even before the days of the Avissithi-Vann War - the long, final war between Alravanntir and Eskaria - the Vanntinese picked fights with Eskaria.) It was during one of these border disputes that his mother was slain by a Vanntinese arrow. Emrik managed to retrieve his mother's sword (the very one his father made for her all those centuries past) and bring it back to his father. And so by the time the war broke out in earnest many years later, Emrik had a very long history of hating the Vanntinese.

By the time the war came around, Emrik was a Captain in the Rul ban-Kari. The war lasted for centuries. The great mage who founded Eskaria, Vasuthann-kari, had passed on long ago and was no longer alive to protect his people, and so, with the full force of Divine power backing the Vanntinese legions, it was a slow, painful death for the Eskari people. Caskari was the nation's last stronghold. Emrik made sure his father and brothers stayed in the city all through the war, where he knew they were protected by the magic of Caskari's Concillum, but when the final battle arrived at Caskari's gates, the Vanntinese legions led by the Divine Heir Prince Inuele, Emrik couldn't shelter them any longer. In a final bid for survival, all able-bodied Caskari citizens were enlisted to fight, which included Emrik's family. All three were slain in the Battle of Caskari, despite Emrik's desperate attempts to protect them. It's a loss that he still feels to this day: his utter failure to protect the people he loved.

Which pretty much brings us to events we're familiar with. Inuele ripped the Concillum from beneath Caskari to win the battle, and was subsequently slain in retreat, falling to Emrik's sword - a sword that was made for Emrik by his youngest brother Helvrik. He has since lost that blade during his centuries spent on the lam, but he's thought of it often, and wished to have it back.

Some other general facts about Emrik are that, at the start of AIBT, he's about seven hundred-someodd years old (I forget the exact number I gave in the story lol), and he's a fairly average magician, as far as elves go. He's no great mage, but he has enough magic to be dangerous in battle. As far as his romantic tastes he makes no distinction between men or women, which is common across all elven cultures, but he's had very little time or interest for romance since the fall of Caskari. He often copes with fear using humor, and his humor tends to be quite dry, another trait inherited from his mother. Aaaaaand I feel like that's enough rambling for now. This answer is probably too long, but I've had so few chances to talk about Emrik's past during AIBT that I couldn't help myself 😭