Grayson Shadowbrooke

Notes

• Gray Shadowbrooke was an apostate wizard who managed to destroy his phylactery and flee the Hightower in the company of his lover, Katyn Wainwright, a half elven teacher of alchemy.
• He was pursued relentlessly and was eventually brought to bear at the Shield Held High Inn on the road to the Great Weald while Katyn was in labor.
• He fought against the circle of wizards that were sent to collect him in an effort to draw them away from his wife and child, but he failed. The inn burned to the ground and he believed his wife and child dead. Though Katyn died in the blaze, the child was taken by the circle back to the Hightower and Gray escaped into the greenwood.
• Grayson the child was raised in the Hightower by a succession of nursemaids as something of a compensation for the loss of his father. Though he was treated poorly by many of the instructors and students within the circle, he was treated kindly by the old Grand Master of the school, Ganlin, who had been a mentor to his father.
• After several years of struggling with his mixed heritage and the stigma of his father in silence, Grayson eventually discovered his love for the outdoors, for the plants and the animals of the tamed Kingswood that verged on the Hightower. When his studies permitted it, he would leave the tower to wander the woods and fields alone, studying the animals and plants, as well as the farmers and the woodsmen. He grew quite adept at seeing without being seen and sketching his observations in his journal.
• The solace of nature gave him the peace he needed to focus his mind and after that his studies greatly improved. He decided to make a career out of his disadvantaged race and took up the study of the runestones and religion of the ancient fey-touched Cymry peoples.
• He also befriended Corvin, the master of the Tower's rookery, eventually aided the old wizard in his tending of the Tower's flights of messenger ravens. It was here that he "adopted" a raven chick, which he named Bran, the Cymry word for Raven.

Grayson is an academic first and foremost. He has a passion for learning, especially regarding local languages, history, and nature. He is precise, perhaps in some cases to the point of fussiness, but he isn't vain. He is deeply comfortable with the outdoors and deceptively strong, agile, and fit. He loves animals of all kinds, and will be hard pressed to restrain himself when he sees beasts abused without cause. He deeply believes in the need for law and tradition. His logical and analytical mind conceals a hidden creative side. He is gifted with drawing from life. He is loyal to the crown and to the law of Impiltur, almost to a fault.

My goal with Grayson is to explore the path of a wizard from novice to archmage. What it means to hold to tradition and when tradition shackles you. When to learn from the mistakes of the past and when to forge a new future. Finally, he needs to learn that no wizard stands alone for long, and without friends, even the mighty Soargar would have fallen.

As such, his low-level goal is to protect the Prince, to be his liason, guide, and teacher while learning all that he doesn't actually know about the world.

His mid-level goal should be to learn about himself, his father, and the dangers within the Hightower.

His epic goal is to integrate his dual nature, to learn to combine the human Art with the elven, to uncover the secrets of the past to stand strong for the future.