Thusiax's page

Thusiax has three masks. His servant mask denotes his service to his employer (and former master), whose stock in trade is fine textiles. The mask is made of high quality steel, which has been artistically shaped and coloured to appear to be made of black silk. His employer's sigil is in silver, a small symbol on the side of his left cheek.

His citizen mask originally belonged to the real Thusiax. It is quite humble in design, with little ornamentation or extravagance, as befits a drow, yet it is constructed of quality materials: a light-weight alloy covered in the finest doeskin, with small jade insets around the eyes.

Karkoush's operations mask is a dull, non-reflective grey, shaped like the head of the bird that is his namesake.

Thusiax is employed by his former master, Lord Cornell Weaves-of-Midnight. Lord Cornell is a textiles magnate, at the top of the tree in that industry. Thusiax's role is that of an intermediary; he delivers messages (threats, bribes, deals, offers of alliance) to Lord Cornell's allies and enemies alike, both in the mercantile world and the criminal one. Textiles are Lord Cornell's main business interest, but he interacts (through Thusiax) with the criminal world both to safeguard that interest, and supplement it with other shady business opportunities.

To outsiders, Thusiax is merely another drow member of Lord Cornell's expansive household, a functionary in Gere-Nevin's guidance (see "Bonds", below); not even the other members of his "family" are aware of his true role. However, to those who play the same game as Lord Cornell, Thusiax is a recognised player; a precocious member of Spire's underworld, worthless and powerless in his own right, but a noteworthy tool of the powerful Lord Cornell.

Indeed, Cornell himself sees Thusiax as a favoured pet, a useful dog that knows many shady tricks. If Thusiax were to be killed by a business rival or criminal organisation, Lord Cornell would be furious, not out of affection, but because of the skillset that he would need to replace.

• Street-level bond with servants of my old master (3 servants).

The three employees of Lord Cornell that I am close to are:
• Gere-Nevin, Lord Cornell's devoted drow manservant. Gere-Nevin believes I am similarly faithful to his master, although he knows that I operate in a shadowy realm, and thus believes that the motives behind my actions are not always discernable from the outside. I must usually manipulate him by pretending that what I want from him helps me aid our lord.
• Zaria, Lord Cornell's young and beautiful drow maidservant. Zaria is less enamoured by the lord, but values her job very highly. She loves her people and hates the way the aelfir exploit them, but is largely resigned to the situation. She is also somewhat in love with me, and definitely sees me as a good catch in terms of my adopted family and position.
• Bran, the beaten and defeated middle-aged drow servant of Lord Cornell's head guardsman, Abraxin Songs-of-Pain. Abraxin is a vicious and cruel master, but I have managed to use my influence to make Bran's life a little easier. Not much, but a little.

• Bond with another PC, who I assisted during their durance.

As a boy, I assisted Clive while he was fleeing from guards in Derelictus by showing him a hiding spot. Later, Clive recognised me when he saved my life in the Vermissian Vaults.

The hardest thing for the boy to deal with down in the catacombs was the thought of his dead parents; with so much death around, they were all he could think about. The pain and hopelessness he felt with their death threatened to consume him, yet he did not allow himself to be destroyed. Instead, he used the horror to forge a fiery core of hatred and purpose within himself, hatred of the high elves, but also the will to drag his people up from the depths they currently wallowed in. He now feels very little fear; the closest he ever really comes to fear is feeling worried that he will die before he manages to make any impact on the struggle against the aelfir.

While training in the arts of subterfuge and pretension, the boy spent time impersonating many types of people. One day, while pretending to be a courier (in fact, stealing courier's loads and delivering them himself) he came across the son of an aelfir merchant lord living in Middle City. The package specified delivering it into the hands of the lord's son, which he did, deep in the depths of his warehouse/office. The aelfir ordered him to wait while he opened the package, which turned out to hold a perverse torture device. The merchant's son then had the boy restrained by his guards and proceeded to gleefully test the device on him for hours.
When the boy was presented with the Rite of Fury, he knew exactly upon whom to exact his revenge. Stealing into the warehouse complex one night, he isolated the high elf, tormented him by hunting him through the empty, darkened warehouse, and finally trapped him just as the aelfir thought he was about to escape. He then tortured the high elf until dawn, leaving his broken, lifeless body hanging in front of the building in the morning light.

The biggest mistake that the Magister made was that he did not care about avoiding detection nearly as much as the boy cared about succeeding. Not that the Magister was negligent, or not taking his role seriously, but simply that the boy had nothing but his ambition to become a part of the Ministry. It burned within him, gave his life meaning, was the lens through which he understood everything else in the world. Thus, while the Magister gave good sport, the boy was single-minded, entirely focused with all of his being on tracking down his quarry, and drew deep on reserves he was not even aware of.

The boy had few enemies (mainly as he hadn't had much time to make any), but there was one group of drow that he hated, and that had hated him and his brother, back in his old life. This was a rival gang of six other poor drow children that lived in the same area as the boy's family, when he had one. He and his brother and another pair of drow youths had banded together to stand up to these neighbourhood bullies, and a long, slow-burning war had dragged on ever since; even after the boy disappeared, his brother and the other children continued the fight. In one particularly nasty confrontation, where all of the children had improvised weapons of some kind, the boy had destroyed one of the eyes of the ringleader of the other gang, Soriost, with a broken glass bottle. When charged with completing this rite, the boy knew he must face this aspect of his lost past.
The boy found his old one-eyed enemy easily, and discovered that where Soriost had once been a tall, strong, and clever lad for his age, since his injury he had become something of a wretch. His prospects looked poor, and his durance was likely to be as horrible as possible.

The boy kept watch over the one-eyed boy for the full month, attempting in all ways to make life better for him. In the end, he approached Soriost, presenting him with a bag of sten and an alternative to the terrible durance that loomed ahead of him. The boy had organised for Soriost to study with Parinya the Vermissian. It would require Soriost fleeing his life, much the way the boy had, and not serving any durance, but the boy was sure Parinya could keep Soriost hidden and safe until he was well-prepared enough to go his own way. The boy then left Soriost with his own decision to make. He has since enquired discreetly, and found out that Soriost did indeed take up the offer, going into hiding and studying the way of the Vermissian Sages.

The boy studied with a Vermissian sage named Parinya, and lived with her in the Vermissian Vault for that time. Parinya was a complete recluse, and during his time with her he didn't leave the Vault at all, although they did travel a lot within the Vault. In addition to the obscure bits of knowledge that the boy picked up while researching with Parinya, his time in the mind-bending spaces of the Vaults taught him of the illusion that is reality, and just how much it can be bent, if not broken. However, the understanding that reality is an illusion did not make the Ministry's struggle seem less necessary; if anything, it hammered home just how important it is to strive for what one values. In the end, while he enjoyed the time, he was glad to return to the "real" world of Spire once more, as brutal and imperfect as it was.

The boy's successful completion of the Rite of Grace (the last rite he completed) actually paved the way for his durance, and has given him his current name and identity, as well as his moniker within the Ministry. His target for this rite was a younger son of a powerful drow family, Talimat, that traces its descent from House Aliquam in the Home Nations. The Talimat drow have completely thrown their lot in with the high elves and follow all of their customs, including wearing the veil at all times, even around their closest kin. The Ministry consider them the worst form of traitors against their own kind.
Young Thusiax Talimat was kidnapped by Crimson Vigilantes five weeks before he was due to begin his durance. Fortunately, the cell of Vigilantes was uncovered and destroyed before they could finish torturing and killing the lad. However, though the overjoyed parents did not notice, the Thusiax that returned was not a descendant of House Aliquam, but a son of Derelictus, the boy who was no one.

In reality, the Vigilantes were manipulated by the Ministry into kidnapping the lad, and Thusiax was in fact killed and replaced by the boy. The commoner drow then served his durance in place of the original Thusiax. While he has appropriated the life of Thusiax Talimat permanently, he is known by his Ministry contacts as Kourkash, which is the name of a bird that knocks eggs out of other birds' nests and replaces them with its own.