A Long But Important Bio
The elf you know as Rhys Ilinan, the Masked Mage, is a carefully constructed falsehood, a smoke screen. Rhys' real name is Folen Raloxina, of the now defunct House Raloxina. By all accounts, Folen's childhood was a happy and uneventful one. He showed great promise in the magical arts, for which his wealthy parents payed tutors to educate him. It is unknown whether he had any older siblings, but if he did it seems they didn't leave a noteworthy impression on Rhys.
However, one day long ago when Folen was barely old enough to be a squire, his house's claim over one of the many great Elven cities in the land was suddenly and successfully challenged by rival House Phixidor, costing his family their lives in a spectacular betrayal and military defeat. During the ensuing massacre, Yrlissa Phixidor, the young heiress of the Phixidor family and Folen's elder by half a decade, unexpectedly moved to show mercy to Folen, and she managed to convince her father to stay the hands of her family's forces. Perhaps her heart was swayed to spare the poor boy by her conscience, or by mindfulness of the goddess Ellenwe who she wished to emulate. Perhaps she calculated that the powerful novice making a impressive yet futile effort to defend himself in their rival's keep could be of some use later, with a shift in loyalty and a little cultivation. Perhaps the romantics are right, and love really does happen at first sight, overcoming all boundaries of blood and terror (even if this love is not initially, or ever, mutual). Perhaps, notorious as elves are for their instances of vice and decadence, she simply thought that the good-looking athletic youth would make a fine addition to their house's rumored collection, both as a living war trophy and as a servant to bear his masters' wine goblets and to warm their beds. Perhaps she was tired of watching her idiot father waste a disproportionate amount of men and mana to kill one annoying elf who might have been willing to surrender himself for a while now had he just been given the offer. The fact is, he was spared, and nobody knows for what purpose. Rhys was never told why he was saved, and Mistress Yrlissa never felt the need to explain herself to anyone but her father, who was also silent on the matter.
She ordered that, rather than being put to the sword or spell, Folen be merely enslaved. However, chains or threatened violence (however brutal or constant) would not suffice for one with strong magic blood forever, especially if Yrlissa wished to see his talent grow and be utilized in combat. He would need to be charmed, branded as a thrall. Folen was imprisoned in the deepest, most reinforced cell of the mighty Phixidor Keep, as a summons was sent around the land for expert practitioners of psychomancy, logomancy, and other related dark arts to craft a masterwork spell, binding Folen's life and will to the general will of the Phixidor clan. Though they received their experts, the spell itself proved to be rather difficult, as although the family was publicly the veritable emblem of unity in the region, too many secret agendas and rivalries lay hidden, such that the wizards and witches couldn't be certain that Folen would do anything at all when called upon, let alone guarantee anyone's safety from his wrath should he attempt escape or revenge. Yrlissa, herself an adept sorceress, proposed a solution which, although it was readily adapted and implemented by the team of magicians, proved to be somewhat subversive: as she was the heiress of the family as well as the one who saved his life, she reasoned, Folen should simply be bound to Yrlissa alone. The mages, desperate as they were for a breakthrough, agreed to modify the spell and keep the change in secret while they collected their coin and left the city. The spell was finally written and, in a tortuous process that involved branding charms, tattooing words and symbols , and chanting curses over the course many hours, was woven into Folen. By the end of it, wounded, broken, and begging for death, Folen Raloxina's fate was sealed as the lifelong thrall of Yrlissa Phixidor. All of this was done in the utmost secrecy, so as to not offend the greater Elven society which the Phixidors intended on dominating.
Years passed, the Phixidors consolidated and spread their influence, and Folmar grew, becoming a common sight as one of the Phixidors' many servants. Within a few years, the other Phixidors came to realize the open secret that Rhys was only Yrlissa's thrall and not that of the family, but there was little they could do about it. They didn't care to spend the absurd amount of coin needed to fix the spell, and Yrlissa was the heiress, after all. Folen had just finished his education alongside the other Phixidor children when Yrlissa, now a beautiful young woman, decided that she ought to instruct him to a greater degree than the others in the arcane arts and ordered that it be so, taking him away from his obligations as cup-bearer and making him a full-time student. Sometimes, expert magicians and philosophers traveled by, and would impart the latest in magic and scientific knowledge to them. Sometimes, Folen and Yrlissa would train, study, and practice as a pair, with Yrlissa's fine-tuned and refined experience pit against the extensive knowledge and natural, growing skill of Folen. Often, he would be studying and practicing alone. It was in these lone hours that Folen himself devised his own treachery: a spell meant to break the curse upon him so that he could escape and wreak havoc on the Phixidors without Yrlissa there to stop him. However, navigating the magical equations and webs of enchantments and devising a solution was a task that even the ancient wizards of legend would have struggled with, even if it did not have to be done entirely in secret and in Folen's free time. Naturally, even devising a preliminary baseline spell took him years. It was during this time that Folen developed a fascination and fixation with the magical technology of old, believing that it held the key to erasing his bonds and to annihilating his enemies.
It was also during this time that he developed something of a relationship with Yrlissa. While even Rhys never knew whether it ever turned into true love, Folen managed to slowly leave behind his hatred and fear of the heiress and Yrlissa discarded her disdain and her cold attitude towards her thrall, and the two young elves came to enjoy each other's company, even during the most trying hours of their training. Rumors of the happenings behind the study doors during their private sessions flew around the court to serve as amusement for Yrlissa and embarrassment for Folen at the nearly nightly banquets. While it is unclear whether the relationship was ever sexual like the gossipers believe, the two certainly showed strong respect towards each other in public, were found near each other constantly, and became something like best friends. Near the end, Folen's work on his escape spell noticeably slowed. The ghosts of his family didn't haunt him like they might have haunted others: it seems he had found someone to care for and to care for him, among the enemy. Yrlissa even gave him a gift, as a token of her appreciation for Folen: a silver amulet with a smoothed blue glass scrying gem. It's a possession he still wears, uses, and treasures to this day.
However, nothing lasts forever. While Folen experimented with magic and while he and Yrlissa trained, political alliances and loyalties shifted almost imperceptibly, and suddenly it was Yrlissa who was next on the kill list of the dominant members of the Phixidor family, trying to rob her of her controversial birthright. Yrlissa, who was no political novice, had advance warning of her family's betrayal and brought Folen with her as she and a large contingent of bodyguards attempted to flee to a friendly nearby city in the dead of night. Guards loyal to the other Phixidors caught wind of the escape, however, and a vicious battle ensued as the entourage reached the outer gates. In the chaos, Folen was separated from Yrlissa, and in a moment of recklessness he decided it would be the perfect time to attempt what he had been planning for so many years. He retrieved his notes and, praying to the twin gods for success, cast a crude prototype spell of liberation on himself. Although it is to this day somewhat unclear whether the spell succeeded or failed, the immediate side effects were devastating: temporary blindness, temporary deafness, complete disruption of balance and strength, and a white-hot pain spreading out from the pit of the stomach. Right as Folen began to recover from his own spell, a Phixidor soldier accosted him, slicing his face badly. Folen returned the favor with a lethal telekinetic bolt and quickly retreated by jumping into the moat, where he was able to make an escape from the city. During the flight he was injured by the moat's enchantments and his wound became infected, so he went to the closest neutral city and met with an apothecary, taking the assumed name Rhys Ilinan. The apothecary, having done all she could for his wounds, referred him to a maker of enchanted wears nearby, who she claimed could help ensure his health. The master enchanter, a elderly Nord, crafted him a mask of ivory and silver that would serve to both hide and slowly, carefully heal his wound, as well as mitigate the continuing side-effects of his freedom spell until Rhys could cast a spell correcting his mistakes. Rhys paid the master enchanter with a bag of gems he stole from his captors and took off across the country, as a wizard errant.
Decades passed in this way, with Rhys traveling the lands of Andor as a mysterious masked mage, doing good deeds which only the arcane could accomplish for the rewards of food, board, and coin. Throughout his travels, he also stopped by whatever ancient ruins he came upon, performing experiments and studying what old artifacts he could find in order to better understand the world and maybe, just maybe, to find something that would empower him to take revenge against the Phixidors and discover Yrlissa's whereabouts. The wound eventually healed, leaving behind a nasty scar, but Rhys elected to leave the mask on. He found it unlikely that the agents of the Phixidors would waste their time chasing about a ghostly masked magician when there were probably better leads. However, he always saw and heard things that convinced him that he was being followed, causing him to be increasingly paranoid. To make matters worse psychologically, he always felt in his heart of hearts that his spell had failed and that Yrlissa, his mistress, was somehow still alive and was calling to him, imperceptibly and inexorably leading him to her against his will for some unknown end. Eventually, he decided (or Yrlissa commanded him) to join the Crusaders, seeing as there was good steady flow of coin to be found, an alibi to travel the lands rootlessly without arousing the suspicions of guards or Phixidor agents, and a reasonable amount of bodyguard-like protection provided by having a few meathead teammates around him 24/7. Killing monsters and criminals would just some simple dirty work: thieves are scared off easily by lightning, and a nokken sulking in a pond is nothing a little ice spell can't handle, for example. So he joined, breezed through training quietly, and kept everything else about "Rhys Ilinan" a deep and dark secret, to serve as intrigue for the rest of the Crusaders and to pad himself with the stories that young knights would weave about the mysterious masked Elven mage. The rest is history.
