Errai Vespertine

Appearance
Errai is a pale gray tiefling who looks as if all of the vitality and color was drained out of him. His hair is long and curly, ash-gray fading to the faintest hint of desaturated red at the ends. Dark gray horns curl up and forward out of his hair, and he has the typical tiefling tail. His eyes are a flat, single-color dark gray, and he wears a bit of a scruff of ash-gray beard most of the time. He's neither fit nor plump nor thin, though wandering on his own for the past few months hasn't been particularly kind to his physique, and he's somewhat undernourished and weak, physically speaking.

Powers
Warlock Magic

Errai's pact with the Archfey known as Vassili has given him magic abilities he doesn't fully understand. At first, his magic developed to enhance his own existing talents: he can Detect Magic at will, send short Messages, and Charm People into giving him information.

As time went on, Vassili "gifted" him with more dangerous, painful spells: his Eldritch Blast attack, a spectral skeletal Chill Touch that prevents creatures from healing, a black beam of Enfeeblement that saps a creature's strength. Vassili wants him to hurt, drain, and consume living things, and though Errai fights against using these abilities, the Archfey's will is far stronger than Errai's own.

Vassili's Vassal

Errai wears a ring from his Archfey patron shaped like an ouroboros, which allows him to cast a Minor Illusion. If he is badly startled, extremely frightened, or deeply angered, Errai can instinctively draw on the Fey Presence of his patron to either terrify or enthrall the people around him as a self-defense mechanism.

Talents
Tiefling

As a tiefling, Errai is naturally resistant to fire, can speak the Infernal language, and can see in the dark. If he is attacked, Errai can lash back verbally using the disturbing and incomprehensible Infernal language to psychically rebuke an intelligent assailant.

Investigator

As a former City Watch Investigator, Errai has a good eye for both law enforcement and criminal activity. He can easily spot places where criminals likely congregate and what probably goes on there, and he knows the usual procedures of Watch members and command, and can ingratiate himself with them.

Empathy

This is not any kind of psychic ability, but a predilection Errai was born with. He can empathize with other people very closely, and spending time in their presence tends to cause him to mimic their traits. He can follow the clues in nearly any given scene and trace back what must have happened. Errai is extremely perceptive and insightful when it comes to people. That does not mean he likes people. Quite the contrary -- his deep insight into the mortal condition has pushed him away from developing close relationships with anyone.

Other

Errai isn't bad at drawing, particularly maps and diagrams that require logical layout and process-based thought. He is good with words, pen, and ink, and could as easily work as a scribe or a teacher, if he trusted himself to do so.

Interests
Mysteries, puzzles, anything that takes time and effort to figure out. Errai also prefers animals to people since animals don't have the complex motivations that entangles Errai's empathic talent. Otherwise, his time in the Feywild with Vassili has drained the fun out of most anything he might have once enjoyed -- namely reading books and working with his hands.

History
The Vespertine family lit Neverwinter's lamps when the sun sank low in the sky. Errai's mother and father tried to live within the world, but civilization is not always kind to those born with horns and tails. Errai watched his parents and older sister struggle in a world that would just as soon ignore them, and he felt the rejection deeply. He seemed to feel everything deeply. Sometimes he couldn't stop feeling. Errai grew up quiet, observant, and troubled by any injustice, the plight of any person who slipped through the cracks of fortune or fate.

Guided by a desire to help the innocent, Errai joined the City Watch as an adult, enrolling in a new training regimen that favored his keen mind over his mediocre physicality. As an Investigator, Errai saw the worst of the city's violence and victimization. He had the uncanny ability to, as the Commander of the new investigatory squad put it, "walk a mile in anyone's shoes." Witness, victim, even perpetrator -- give Errai an hour at any crime scene and he could tell you exactly what was going through someone's mind at the time it happened.

Errai had been an Investigator for several years when a shocking new wave of brutality crept almost invisibly through the city: people were dying, but parts of the bodies were missing. Lacking any kind of medical knowledge, Errai was partnered with a local volunteer physician, Vassili. At each new scene of horror, Errai leaned on Vassili's analytical detachment as he was consumed by his overwhelming empathy. It was Vassili who helped him understand why the victims were not whole, and held him up when Errai thought he would drown in the horror of it. By the time Errai was willing to truly see where all of the clues were leading him, it was too late. He wouldn't call what he felt for Vassili love, but he couldn't accuse the man of these crimes. Then, at the very moment Errai was begging Vassili to run for his life, his friend showed him an even darker face.

The creature that was not quite Vassili was beautiful, terrible, terrifying, and unthinkable. They did run, yes, but not for their lives. The Archfey who had been masquerading as a human physician in order to toy with mortals and consume their flesh stole Errai away to his home realm. Still under his spell, Errai agreed to a contract he barely understood, if only it meant Vassili would not abandon him.

When he returned to the material plane, Errai found himself irrevocably bound to the Archfey (who he still called Vassili, never learning the creature's true name), imbued with abilities he'd never had, and almost completely drained of everything that had once given him vitality. He knew at once the mistake he'd made. Two years had passed on this plane since last he'd walked it, and he was too changed, too broken, to return to the Watch.

Months have passed, and Errai has heard next to nothing from the creature-who-wasn't-Vassili except vague and confusing dreams, or whispers and mocking laughter half-heard at night. Only the magic that he now, somehow, knows how to wield seems to be Vassili's legacy. Errai carries a book, bound in a leather he doesn't want to think about with pages too thick to be paper, in which new magics appear as if gifted to him from across the planes. Despite everything he knows, he misses achingly the man he thought he might have loved, and still carries the guilt of the crimes he never brought to justice.