How his family wished for the sun to be bred into their very bones, selecting and selecting and selecting generation after generation until light bled out, cracked from the seems and poors and dripped from their blood. Gold enough to match their god, gold enough to bring glory and hope into their deteriorating lives. Greed always breeds greed, and left in the hands of those hopeful starving, it created monsters captivated by riches and beauty.

And they created beauty.
Tall and graceful and ever so deadly, they just never thought it would have a brain to use with it.

Arching skyward, antlers veined with liquid gold thrum and sing, glinting in the sun, unshakable and daunting. To look to him is to see a crown already placed upon his pale head. White locks are oft tied back from the wind, but it knocks them loose into a frenzy of creams curling through the markets as a white flag, a banner to rally behind, one that would never (could never) give up. These toy with his dark and handsome face, a diamond of white about its center, and radiating streams of white like gods crying over it all. Golden eyes are sharp and witty, they catch everything in the night and in the day. Full of laughter and fire and brimstone, full of mirth and mercy and compassion, full of a life that cannot be snuffed out under the uncaring hand of an uncaring ruler. A strong, dappled body holds him tall and proud, carries him smoothly from home to home, from hidden passage to hidden passage. He is the dust from which all of Solterra came and from which it will all return. A beautiful array of browns interruped by golden scars (he never would say what they were from) and white stripes near his leonine tail.

Golden bangles adorn his left foreleg, a golden piercing upon his nostril, and golden hoops and studs in his left ear (two) and one in his right (a stud).

I have known hunger enough to live and to die.

Toaru is, at his heart, a good man. He strives for those who cannot strive for themselves and will fend for those who are defenseless. Children are brought under his wing, a small huddle taught to survive under the careful tending of their shepherd. But he does not leave them as docile lambs, he teaches his children how to fight and how to grow, how to care and what to know. They are sent into the city, into the world, ready to claw their way into proper society tooth and nail until they no longer must struggle simply to sleep sound and safe, to eat and be warm.

He is a thief both for emotions and goods. Stealing, while not acceptable at its core, is a necessity for survival. Independence was hard earned, molding him into a creature that does not know how to rely on another. Every plot and plan is kept close to his breast, entertaining others only so much that it will benefit him in the long run and help his gang of urchins grow into something more. And there is a cruelty from such an unpleasant upbringing; while it taught him self reliance and selflessness for those less fortunate, it also put within his heart the seeds of mistrust, of an utter lack of faith in the ruling class that should reach down a hand and help those who fall up, but turn a blind eye. The caste system, the steps it takes to move into a better life, it is all complete and utter rubbish.

He is a savior and he is selfish, treasuring the lives of those children who are not pretty enough so they are left on the streets, the slaves that are not quite good enough so they are beaten and discarded, those who would otherwise die. These bonds forged, those that are more familial than his family ever was, last for weeks and months and years without ever a word exchanged once they are out in the world. Always, he remembers his little fledglings as they take flight, and he remembers his dream of a free Solterra where there is no hunger and no fear from within the city walls.

Politics of other courts do not concern him, and he does not yearn for an ocean to sail upon nor a city to rule. His aspirations are close to home, his heart hidden in the desert with the Teryr roaming over and around it. A Son of Solterra, Toaru will live and die gladly in the sands if it means he could nourish a nation so that it is less horrid than the one that deprived him.

Zolin - the boy king. He was a monster without remorse or regret. A tyrant run amok among a court forced into servitude and fear, remnants of those horrors still left in corridors of memory tucked carefully into shadow once more. And how he loved his pretty things. Concubines enough to fill the entire court, to lavish in riches as Nobles do their slaves, to assert his dominance and power and simply tell the world that he could have, and would have, whatever it was he desired.

Zolin…the boy king… He loved his pretty things and pretty people, distractions from his own natural lack of beauty. The Irellis family were long under the hand of the King and his Crown. They reveled at the power, the beauty of it all. They let themselves be absorbed into the nobility so easily years and years ago. Once, they may have been related to opportunistic merchants during those initial wars. A family able to provide immediate and necessary support to help turn the tides. (He does not know if they ever did, all their libraries are lost.) But, even that was forgotten as they integrated themselves so firmly into the roots - like a rot - of the higher echelon until they climbed to the very tip of their trees and could bask in the sun their King would provide.

They were always so lovely and vain, the Irellis, and Zolin adored his pretty subjects. He was fond of them as only a selfish beast could be - possessively, secreting them away and then parading them at parties. Toaru’s family would entertain the child, and when his wars started, they would entertain him further to secure their place at his side. The Child Soldiers…

Toaru only remembers brief moments of theirs - orphans ferreted through the expansive villa until they could be taken to Zolin’s battlegrounds and raised into perfect submission and subservience. These are flashes he knows and cannot claim. They happened to another boy, another being…

For Zolin fell, killed in his chambers in his sleep, and left Solterra to pick up the pieces of their fragmented sun, their damaged home. The Irellis…their fate was not as kind. Stripped of their lands, their servants, their titles - all but their names - they were left to a life of destitution and a slow death if they could not adapt. He was young, so young, when his family fell from grace. His mother, Solis burn her wretched soul, tried so very hard to earn a living through her youngest son. Loaning him out for a year, then two, to the overlords of the underbelly of the city, letting pretty girls borrow him for their strange parties as an even stranger pet, he was dressed up and beat down. Used and toyed with and thrown back, dirty with only a few coins to show, to the grounds where his parents would wait. Their greed and hunger knew no bounds, grew and grew with their desperation until they were almost willing to let their own son die so they would survive.

These early years, Toaru began sneaking off whenever they would sleep. Too afraid to abandon that which he was taught was holy, necessary - a family to keep you sheltered, to keep you strong - and wonder the streets of Solterra. Always in shadow, always too ashamed to show his dirtied face to the denizens brave enough to promenade among the market. Fever appeared as though a dream in some dark back alley, her pretty face rising up from a cloud of dust (everything in his Hell is dust) and simply looking at him with those wide, calculating doe-eyes.

After a time, he would sneak off just to find her, and eventually Toaru would always find his way back to Fever. They would talk of everything and nothing - the substance of their conversations going everywhere but soul deep. She would never know of his faceted history, of his parents’ shame now resting heavily on his slender shoulders. A boy too young to be anything but a child, and left to the world too long to truly know the joy of childhood. A man then, almost, in the body not yet ready for that title.

Together they aged, too quickly, and every meeting was more of a risk until, at last, Toaru would leave his parents to their ill-begotten fate and surrender himself to the streets that held no love for an Irellis.

With Fever, he would plan a delicate future so that both would - could finally - disappear into the world as something other than what they were. A metamorphosis into adulthood, allowing them complete anonymity and peace at last. A meeting planned, a date set, and a rendezvous missed. The young stallion showed (he was four, she three, and both so ready for the world to take them at last), and his partner in crime never reared her pretty head again. Convinced something had happened; perhaps another gang kidnapped Fever, perhaps some lordling with his filthy paws had captured her, perhaps she’d abandoned him as all others do in the end, or worse yet…he did not thinks he was dead for months. Returning night after night for three moon cycles, until at last he could go back no longer and wait. There were children - the little ones he would adopt and feed and shelter in the Catacombs - who needed tending, those who would depend on him as he could never depend upon his own family.

Little things - loaves of bread, apples, a pie here and there - they were never really missed by those who made them. Some even, a sweet fawn with pretty lilac eyes, would offer up cakes or pastries for free. Sympathizers, really, to a war on those less fortunate. Those who were not lucky enough to bear the name Azhade, Ieshan, Sevetta or Hajakha. Every scrap that can be spared, he carries into the murky depths and brings to his huddled armies. Hungry eyes, scrawny limbs, struggling to survive like those skeletal faces of his youth he knew no better than to let be. Now…Toaru knows better, he knows the truth, and he is not giving away his shot at a better future, a brighter Solterra that shall burn as it has never burned before.

They will know prosperity out of poverty and he will guide them to the sun.

Parvus.
Golden blood that glows, glowing eyes. | not yet redeemed. to come later

Jezza
A Javan Leopard; she stands 4'6" long without her tail and 2'8" tall. Golden eyes not dissimilar to Toaru's own. Golden coat with black rosettes. | not obtained yet. To be purchased

3 ear piercings (two in left, one in right), anklets (front left), and one nose piercing.