"Necromancy is only branded as heretical because men who claim they have conquered their demons are frightened of their own demise. It is not evil. In fact it is good. It gives the gift of life. And it can take life from murderers and traitors, who no longer deserve it.”
Aliases: The Blood Wolf of Windhelm.
Race: Breton.
Age: 34.
Birth Sign: The Mage.
Motto: Patience is a virtue.
Alignment: Neutral Evil.
⚚ Appearance ⚚
Height: 5'11''.
Weight: 68kg.
Scars, etc: Small blisters between two fingers of his right hand, a result of mishandling the decursing of a relic in his youth.
Voice: A combination of remoteness, light indifference and vulnerability.
Clothing: Comfortable in light, flowing and long blue and black hooded robes with gold trim. Owns a pair of brown leather glove for handling poisonous herbs, and a warm fur cloak and hood for cold, stormy weather.
Weapons: A sheathed dagger for self-defence.
Supplies: Most are stored in his rucksack, its pouches and attached flasks, or his horse's saddle. He always carries with him a waterskin, boiled, with a bottle of milk to settle his stomach. Bread, cheese and preserved meat and fish are eaten when local plants are unavailable. He carries two sets of clothes in case of wet weather, and a fur or leather camping kit, depending on the environment. Other possessions include his healing potions, elixirs and antidotes, and five soul gems tied in a pouch.
All in all, Vincent seems a dignified young man with elegant black hair, blue eyes and some killer cheekbones. He's quite light-skinned, his complexion clear and smooth, and lean as a deer. He's of average height but could do with eating a few good meals. His piercing blue eyes are rather deceptive and give the kind impression of concern and acceptance all at once.
⚚ Background ⚚
Birth Date: 27th of Rain's Hand, 4E 167.
Birth Place: Skingrad.
Religion: Worships Vaermina the Dreamweaver, whose influence he spreads simply by accomplishing his goals. He respects Julianos as a god of wisdom and learning, along with the Elven deity Magnus, the god of magic.
Residence: The Grey Quarter, Windhelm.
Political Affiliations: He claims to believe in the liberation of Skyrim, when amongst Nords in Windhelm, but only because it allows him to operate without attracting their organised attention. He would gladly trade all of Skyrim for knowledge, if he could.
Occupation: Healer.
Organisations or Factions: The College of Whispers.
Favourite Food and Drink: Chicken dumplings and hot wine spiced with canis root.
Interests: Book-collecting, soap-making and reading.
Flaws: Impatience. Vincent showed hostility toward the Synod, who obstructed him, frustrated him and delayed his goals. He fears being unable to squeeze the maximum value out of every second of his life, and acts as if his survival depends upon the accomplishment of as many of his goals as possible, as quickly as possible. Impatience incited the murder of Erandur, who stood in his way, and will lead to him becoming one of the most dangerous necromancers in Tamriel.
Parents: Marceau and Alaina Cassel. Alaina was a member of the Synod and a respected sorceress who specialised in teaching the school of Destruction. Marceau was the second son of a noble High Rock family who resettled in Cyrodiil due to political intrigue. He refused to serve his oldest brother, Robert, the future lord, with whom he had a fraught relationship, and was exiled after the assassin he hired was killed.
Family: Vincent is an unacknowledged member of the Cassels, a noble family famous for their blood lineage. His father, who showed more magical talent than his brother, was sent to the School of Julianos to get an education in the laws of magic to unsuccessfully avert a succession crisis. His uncle, Robert, was trained as a warrior and leader to follow in his father's footsteps.
Relationships: Currently single. He is uninterested in sex and relationships and shows no sexual attraction to either gender, although he uses both sex and love to get what he wants. He orchestrated a dalliance with a College master's daughter to get access to her father's library. His rhetorical skills, learned from his master, have put him on good footing with several merchants, namely Bothela, Lucan Valerius and Belethor, who gets rid of things he couldn't anywhere else. He has little to no respect for his old master, Alcimus, and the two are no longer speaking. His choices have strained his relationship with his mother and his father.
Education: Studied healing with Alcimus Valus, an Imperial member of the Synod. He was tutored in related subjects; how to decurse artefacts and dispel Soul Gems. He learned how to craft elixirs, and how to calm the wounded and wild animals that made the surrounding countryside their home. Healing also brings with it a need to take a more active opposition to monsters and malefactors; he was taught how to create lightning and how to vanish by terrifying a wolf to run the other way. Out of necessity, he received a good education in survivalist training and cartography. He also received tuition in horse riding to get around to places quicker. It's important to reach people when they're in trouble.
Combat Training: Knows how to properly fight with magic, but not how to use a sword. Experienced in repulsing the undead.
Magic: He is a proficient sorcerer, notably in the Restoration, Illusion and Conjuration schools. As with many in the College of Whispers he is a skilled necromancer. He is capable of communing with the souls of mortal dead and takes great delight in summoning the spirits of former enemies into his service. He has some experience of defending himself with Destruction magic, preferring to use the heart-stopping power of lightning against whoever sees through his lies. He is also quite knowledgeable of enchanted weapons and armor, and the value of his creations can burn a hole in your pocket.
Necromancy: He publicly maintains that rogue necromancers who attack isolated villages and kidnap travellers are a threat to entire communities, and are better killed than forgiven. When their actions threaten his research and carefully-kept reputation, he will take a direct approach and neutralise their threat with extreme prejudice.
⚚ Personality ⚚
Imagine, if you will, that quiet and awkward bar patron who sits in the corner in the same chair every evening. You've seen him before. The alluring, magical one who always seems to invite himself in your conversations, who is hauntingly familiar. The companion you never knew you had, who is something of a mystery. The quiet introvert who reveals himself in bits and pieces - and hides the dark side of his nature.
Beneath the mysterious, illusive exterior beats the heart of a psychic, a dreamer, a hidden enemy and a traitor. Vincent may appear kind and gentle, but he will visit his drinking partner that same night and steal their dreams and replace them with nightmares, and show he's a dangerous guy to know. Within his true persona there is full acceptance of the dark part of himself that he feared and was unprepared to face till it grew full and wild, and even more frightening, under the influence of Vaermina's nightmares and her charming voice. He is fearless to explain that Vaermina shed light on the fact that he had everything to gain; not money or revenge or such foolish things, but knowledge and power. He does not seek to harm the innocent, but he will if they get in his way; he can kill in a moment of need, and do so cleanly and without reservation.
Vincent will go to great lengths to improve his magic and his knowledge, but his imagination leads him to blur the line between what is acceptable and what is not. He dreams and aims high, and simply does not view good and evil as important - he is driven solely by a need to get to the bottom of things. He will sometimes force his hand and get what he wants the hard way. Other times, he will entreat his patron for her help and guidance. It may be days after he's unable to sleep after her visit that he makes sense of something magical, and embraces the dark, fathoms its illusions and accepts Vaermina's guidance.
The contrast between Vincent's true feelings and desires and the behaviour and opinions he displays in public means his true motives are kept hidden. He could hire a mercenary for protection in ruins and tombs where he seeks hidden knowledge, but they will generally never become his friend or companion, and they'll even be sacrificed if the situation calls for it. He is very attuned to moods and feelings, although he sometimes misinterprets these due to his propensity for fantasy and flights of imagination. He is also very passionate and expressive, and is positively explosive when roused to anger. He is impulsive and prone to making rash decisions that may lead to a mess of problems. He is also generous to a fault, sensuous and filled with an inexplicable sense of magnetism be it sexual or otherwise. He loves being deep in thought about life's mysteries, but is generally disillusioned with life in general.
⚚ Backstory ⚚
Vincent was born in Skingrad on the 27th of Rain's Hand, 4E 167. He was an academically gifted and delicate child, who was teased for his timidity and nerves. Aliana would comfort her son by taking him to the Great Chapel of Julianos to pray. As Vincent grew older, Marceau taught him what it meant to have power and what it took to have it; that nobody would give power to him and that he would just have to take it. And it was for this reason that he taught his son the basics of magic.
Marceau was an extremely capable teacher who worked his son to the bone to make him understand that magic could be dangerous, and to never depend on his name and the fact his mother's rank gave him a position of privilege. He found his father tough and found him interesting, and tried to please him by studying hard. Alaina noticed her son's efforts and called on Alcimus Valus, her associate within the Synod, who was an experienced healer, to become Vincent's master. Her reasoning was that a man who fought disease and illness automatically demanded the respect of his community, and she knew her son wanted people to notice him.
Vincent's parents sent him to live with his master in the Imperial City, when he was 17. Being far away from his family was tough, but he was kept busy by learning how to decurse the foulest artefacts and Soul Gems. He liked to picnic under the statues and trees of the arboretum, watch ships pick up and drop off goods and witness the spectacle of gladiator combat. The healing of both gladiator teams were something Vincent and his master were responsible for, for a while. Till the apprenticeship was over some years later. Alcimus was a gentle and encouraging teacher, but not an interesting one. It was for that reason he put his father's lesson of taking power into practice, and took to learning from other members of the Synod, jumping between each of them as his goals changed.
The amount of knowledge was hard, but Vincent wanted to take in all that was around him. He started to amass a treasure-trove of heretical books, soul gems and scrolls. He raised theoretical questions about life's mysteries. He began to think of necromancy as the gift of life, and thought he possessed an unparalleled sense of right and wrong. He pushed to see more, to learn more, and buckled under the Synod's ban on conjuration and necromancy. He began to see guilds as tools to advance his own needs, at worst obstacles in his way. He became highly critical of Alcimus, who he felt knew less than he did. He came to see necromancy as the natural 'dark side' to restoration and his betrayal of his master and the Synod to study it a necessary evil.
He approached the College of Whispers, who accepted him with open arms, especially when he was willing to gift them what he had learned about their political enemy. His relationship with Alcimus fractured as a result; he was expelled from the Synod and his master's home, and to this day the two no longer speak. He instead found kinship among like-minded mages in the College, and developed his skills over the years through co-operative and collaborative research. His knowledge and experience brought with them privilege and status, and expeditions became his favourite excuse for travelling around the continent to learn; he went out believing he could achieve recognition and take the power his father had driven him to seek. Eventually, his research into Potema and the Ritual Stone led him on a "grand tour" of Skyrim, where he would have dealings with the College of Winterhold.
⚚ Skyrim ⚚
Vincent immersed himself in Winterhold's isolation and studied with discipline, unrestricted in his freedom. He became known in The Frozen Hearth as that fancy Breton who wants spice in his wine. Had it not been for the constant itch of wanderlust, he would have stayed for the year. The journey across the mountains was harsh, but his furs and flames kept him warm on the road to Windhelm. He rented an apartment and set up business as a healer and alchemist, and offered respite to any travellers who came his way, funding his research into the abandoned ruins that littered the landscape. He was very unwelcome of company and never brought friends home.
Eventually, he was unsatisfied with what little information the locals offered, and decided to head west through the mountains and north to Dawnstar, intending to stop by on his way to Solitude, the home of the Wolf Queen. Had it not been for the nightmares, he would have been on his way. During one quiet night, he woke up in horrible pain. He stopped sleeping and started suffering evil omens of his fate; to either be forgotten, or to be executed after becoming every bit as diabolical as the Wolf Queen he studied. The insomnia drove him mad; he got two hours sleep, and at other times no sleep for weeks. He stopped visiting the inn; every hushed whisper and knock at the door would cycle his mood up to excitement, down to dread - or boil his rage - with no stability in between. Nothing gave him the proper, sweet sleep he craved.
Every twitch and spasm, every shift in shadows on the wall, had him questioning his beliefs, even his hold on reality. His mind was torn apart and it even felt as though it existed outside his body. For months he suffered till enough was enough, and he allied with a Priest of Mara, Erandur, to confront the problem. But Erandur should have watched his back closer, because Vaermina was whispering into Vincent's ear. Her gentle voice was divine relief from madness, and he found himself enticed by it like the man lost at night who is attracted to the moon. His fascination with the staff that had stolen his dreams sealed the priest's fate. His sudden explosion of violence was out of character and completely unexpected. He was unable to distinguish between the miasma and the reality he had existed in hours before. But, it is important to say that he felt no sense of relief nor curiosity, and merely acted with detachment. The priest had simply gotten in his way. Had Erandur even been real? Or had he been a part of his nightmare?
Queen Potema, the Glenmoril witches, and the Butcher of Windhelm. Even the Augur of Dunlain's over-zealous pursuit of knowledge. Before meeting the Daedric prince, Vincent was disgusted by their horrible examples even as he was undeniably compelled and fascinated by them. Now as much as she reveals to her disciple visions of death and torture so profound, does he create a legacy like those he was once disgusted by.
⚚ Motivation ⚚
Self-Interest
Vincent is out for himself, pure and simple. He is always driven by self-interest, even in cases of altruism. He desires knowledge and desires pleasure. Allegiances are based on power and knowledge, and the money to acquire both, which makes him quite receptive to bribes. If there is a quick and easy way to gain knowledge, whether it be legal, questionable, or obviously illegal, he'll take advantage of it. If betraying friends, family, community and country will further his agenda, he'll do it. If he must lie to advance himself, he'll involve a third party and make them responsible. It matters not who gets caught in the middle, as long as he comes out smelling like a rose.
"Necromancy is only branded as heretical because men who claim they have conquered their demons are frightened of their own demise. It is not evil. In fact it is good. It gives the gift of life. And it can take life from murderers and traitors, who no longer deserve it.”
Aliases: The Blood Wolf of Windhelm.
Race: Breton.
Age: 34.
Birth Sign: The Mage.
Motto: Patience is a virtue.
Alignment: Neutral Evil.
⚚ Appearance ⚚
Height: 5'11''.
Weight: 68kg.
Scars, etc: Small blisters between two fingers of his right hand, a result of mishandling the decursing of a relic in his youth.
Voice: A combination of remoteness, light indifference and vulnerability.
Clothing: Comfortable in light, flowing and long blue and black hooded robes with gold trim. Owns a pair of brown leather glove for handling poisonous herbs, and a warm fur cloak and hood for cold, stormy weather.
Weapons: A sheathed dagger for self-defence.
Supplies: Most are stored in his rucksack, its pouches and attached flasks, or his horse's saddle. He always carries with him a waterskin, boiled, with a bottle of milk to settle his stomach. Bread, cheese and preserved meat and fish are eaten when local plants are unavailable. He carries two sets of clothes in case of wet weather, and a fur or leather camping kit, depending on the environment. Other possessions include his healing potions, elixirs and antidotes, and five soul gems tied in a pouch.
All in all, Vincent seems a dignified young man with elegant black hair, blue eyes and some killer cheekbones. He's quite light-skinned, his complexion clear and smooth, and lean as a deer. He's of average height but could do with eating a few good meals. His piercing blue eyes are rather deceptive and give the kind impression of concern and acceptance all at once.
⚚ Background ⚚
Birth Date: 27th of Rain's Hand, 4E 167.
Birth Place: Skingrad.
Religion: Worships Vaermina the Dreamweaver, whose influence he spreads simply by accomplishing his goals. He respects Julianos as a god of wisdom and learning, along with the Elven deity Magnus, the god of magic.
Residence: The Grey Quarter, Windhelm.
Political Affiliations: He claims to believe in the liberation of Skyrim, when amongst Nords in Windhelm, but only because it allows him to operate without attracting their organised attention. He would gladly trade all of Skyrim for knowledge, if he could.
Occupation: Healer.
Organisations or Factions: The College of Whispers.
Favourite Food and Drink: Chicken dumplings and hot wine spiced with canis root.
Interests: Book-collecting, soap-making and reading.
Flaws: Impatience. Vincent showed hostility toward the Synod, who obstructed him, frustrated him and delayed his goals. He fears being unable to squeeze the maximum value out of every second of his life, and acts as if his survival depends upon the accomplishment of as many of his goals as possible, as quickly as possible. Impatience incited the murder of Erandur, who stood in his way, and will lead to him becoming one of the most dangerous necromancers in Tamriel.
Parents: Marceau and Alaina Cassel. Alaina was a member of the Synod and a respected sorceress who specialised in teaching the school of Destruction. Marceau was the second son of a noble High Rock family who resettled in Cyrodiil due to political intrigue. He refused to serve his oldest brother, Robert, the future lord, with whom he had a fraught relationship, and was exiled after the assassin he hired was killed.
Family: Vincent is an unacknowledged member of the Cassels, a noble family famous for their blood lineage. His father, who showed more magical talent than his brother, was sent to the School of Julianos to get an education in the laws of magic to unsuccessfully avert a succession crisis. His uncle, Robert, was trained as a warrior and leader to follow in his father's footsteps.
Relationships: Currently single. He is uninterested in sex and relationships and shows no sexual attraction to either gender, although he uses both sex and love to get what he wants. He orchestrated a dalliance with a College master's daughter to get access to her father's library. His rhetorical skills, learned from his master, have put him on good footing with several merchants, namely Bothela, Lucan Valerius and Belethor, who gets rid of things he couldn't anywhere else. He has little to no respect for his old master, Alcimus, and the two are no longer speaking. His choices have strained his relationship with his mother and his father.
Education: Studied healing with Alcimus Valus, an Imperial member of the Synod. He was tutored in related subjects; how to decurse artefacts and dispel Soul Gems. He learned how to craft elixirs, and how to calm the wounded and wild animals that made the surrounding countryside their home. Healing also brings with it a need to take a more active opposition to monsters and malefactors; he was taught how to create lightning and how to vanish by terrifying a wolf to run the other way. Out of necessity, he received a good education in survivalist training and cartography. He also received tuition in horse riding to get around to places quicker. It's important to reach people when they're in trouble.
Combat Training: Knows how to properly fight with magic, but not how to use a sword. Experienced in repulsing the undead.
Magic: He is a proficient sorcerer, notably in the Restoration, Illusion and Conjuration schools. As with many in the College of Whispers he is a skilled necromancer. He is capable of communing with the souls of mortal dead and takes great delight in summoning the spirits of former enemies into his service. He has some experience of defending himself with Destruction magic, preferring to use the heart-stopping power of lightning against whoever sees through his lies. He is also quite knowledgeable of enchanted weapons and armor, and the value of his creations can burn a hole in your pocket.
Necromancy: He publicly maintains that rogue necromancers who attack isolated villages and kidnap travellers are a threat to entire communities, and are better killed than forgiven. When their actions threaten his research and carefully-kept reputation, he will take a direct approach and neutralise their threat with extreme prejudice.
⚚ Personality ⚚
Imagine, if you will, that quiet and awkward bar patron who sits in the corner in the same chair every evening. You've seen him before. The alluring, magical one who always seems to invite himself in your conversations, who is hauntingly familiar. The companion you never knew you had, who is something of a mystery. The quiet introvert who reveals himself in bits and pieces - and hides the dark side of his nature.
Beneath the mysterious, illusive exterior beats the heart of a psychic, a dreamer, a hidden enemy and a traitor. Vincent may appear kind and gentle, but he will visit his drinking partner that same night and steal their dreams and replace them with nightmares, and show he's a dangerous guy to know. Within his true persona there is full acceptance of the dark part of himself that he feared and was unprepared to face till it grew full and wild, and even more frightening, under the influence of Vaermina's nightmares and her charming voice. He is fearless to explain that Vaermina shed light on the fact that he had everything to gain; not money or revenge or such foolish things, but knowledge and power. He does not seek to harm the innocent, but he will if they get in his way; he can kill in a moment of need, and do so cleanly and without reservation.
Vincent will go to great lengths to improve his magic and his knowledge, but his imagination leads him to blur the line between what is acceptable and what is not. He dreams and aims high, and simply does not view good and evil as important - he is driven solely by a need to get to the bottom of things. He will sometimes force his hand and get what he wants the hard way. Other times, he will entreat his patron for her help and guidance. It may be days after he's unable to sleep after her visit that he makes sense of something magical, and embraces the dark, fathoms its illusions and accepts Vaermina's guidance.
The contrast between Vincent's true feelings and desires and the behaviour and opinions he displays in public means his true motives are kept hidden. He could hire a mercenary for protection in ruins and tombs where he seeks hidden knowledge, but they will generally never become his friend or companion, and they'll even be sacrificed if the situation calls for it. He is very attuned to moods and feelings, although he sometimes misinterprets these due to his propensity for fantasy and flights of imagination. He is also very passionate and expressive, and is positively explosive when roused to anger. He is impulsive and prone to making rash decisions that may lead to a mess of problems. He is also generous to a fault, sensuous and filled with an inexplicable sense of magnetism be it sexual or otherwise. He loves being deep in thought about life's mysteries, but is generally disillusioned with life in general.
⚚ Backstory ⚚
Vincent was born in Skingrad on the 27th of Rain's Hand, 4E 167. He was an academically gifted and delicate child, who was teased for his timidity and nerves. Aliana would comfort her son by taking him to the Great Chapel of Julianos to pray. As Vincent grew older, Marceau taught him what it meant to have power and what it took to have it; that nobody would give power to him and that he would just have to take it. And it was for this reason that he taught his son the basics of magic.
Marceau was an extremely capable teacher who worked his son to the bone to make him understand that magic could be dangerous, and to never depend on his name and the fact his mother's rank gave him a position of privilege. He found his father tough and found him interesting, and tried to please him by studying hard. Alaina noticed her son's efforts and called on Alcimus Valus, her associate within the Synod, who was an experienced healer, to become Vincent's master. Her reasoning was that a man who fought disease and illness automatically demanded the respect of his community, and she knew her son wanted people to notice him.
Vincent's parents sent him to live with his master in the Imperial City, when he was 17. Being far away from his family was tough, but he was kept busy by learning how to decurse the foulest artefacts and Soul Gems. He liked to picnic under the statues and trees of the arboretum, watch ships pick up and drop off goods and witness the spectacle of gladiator combat. The healing of both gladiator teams were something Vincent and his master were responsible for, for a while. Till the apprenticeship was over some years later. Alcimus was a gentle and encouraging teacher, but not an interesting one. It was for that reason he put his father's lesson of taking power into practice, and took to learning from other members of the Synod, jumping between each of them as his goals changed.
The amount of knowledge was hard, but Vincent wanted to take in all that was around him. He started to amass a treasure-trove of heretical books, soul gems and scrolls. He raised theoretical questions about life's mysteries. He began to think of necromancy as the gift of life, and thought he possessed an unparalleled sense of right and wrong. He pushed to see more, to learn more, and buckled under the Synod's ban on conjuration and necromancy. He began to see guilds as tools to advance his own needs, at worst obstacles in his way. He became highly critical of Alcimus, who he felt knew less than he did. He came to see necromancy as the natural 'dark side' to restoration and his betrayal of his master and the Synod to study it a necessary evil.
He approached the College of Whispers, who accepted him with open arms, especially when he was willing to gift them what he had learned about their political enemy. His relationship with Alcimus fractured as a result; he was expelled from the Synod and his master's home, and to this day the two no longer speak. He instead found kinship among like-minded mages in the College, and developed his skills over the years through co-operative and collaborative research. His knowledge and experience brought with them privilege and status, and expeditions became his favourite excuse for travelling around the continent to learn; he went out believing he could achieve recognition and take the power his father had driven him to seek. Eventually, his research into Potema and the Ritual Stone led him on a "grand tour" of Skyrim, where he would have dealings with the College of Winterhold.
⚚ Skyrim ⚚
Vincent immersed himself in Winterhold's isolation and studied with discipline, unrestricted in his freedom. He became known in The Frozen Hearth as that fancy Breton who wants spice in his wine. Had it not been for the constant itch of wanderlust, he would have stayed for the year. The journey across the mountains was harsh, but his furs and flames kept him warm on the road to Windhelm. He rented an apartment and set up business as a healer and alchemist, and offered respite to any travellers who came his way, funding his research into the abandoned ruins that littered the landscape. He was very unwelcome of company and never brought friends home.
Eventually, he was unsatisfied with what little information the locals offered, and decided to head west through the mountains and north to Dawnstar, intending to stop by on his way to Solitude, the home of the Wolf Queen. Had it not been for the nightmares, he would have been on his way. During one quiet night, he woke up in horrible pain. He stopped sleeping and started suffering evil omens of his fate; to either be forgotten, or to be executed after becoming every bit as diabolical as the Wolf Queen he studied. The insomnia drove him mad; he got two hours sleep, and at other times no sleep for weeks. He stopped visiting the inn; every hushed whisper and knock at the door would cycle his mood up to excitement, down to dread - or boil his rage - with no stability in between. Nothing gave him the proper, sweet sleep he craved.
Every twitch and spasm, every shift in shadows on the wall, had him questioning his beliefs, even his hold on reality. His mind was torn apart and it even felt as though it existed outside his body. For months he suffered till enough was enough, and he allied with a Priest of Mara, Erandur, to confront the problem. But Erandur should have watched his back closer, because Vaermina was whispering into Vincent's ear. Her gentle voice was divine relief from madness, and he found himself enticed by it like the man lost at night who is attracted to the moon. His fascination with the staff that had stolen his dreams sealed the priest's fate. His sudden explosion of violence was out of character and completely unexpected. He was unable to distinguish between the miasma and the reality he had existed in hours before. But, it is important to say that he felt no sense of relief nor curiosity, and merely acted with detachment. The priest had simply gotten in his way. Had Erandur even been real? Or had he been a part of his nightmare?
Queen Potema, the Glenmoril witches, and the Butcher of Windhelm. Even the Augur of Dunlain's over-zealous pursuit of knowledge. Before meeting the Daedric prince, Vincent was disgusted by their horrible examples even as he was undeniably compelled and fascinated by them. Now as much as she reveals to her disciple visions of death and torture so profound, does he create a legacy like those he was once disgusted by.
⚚ Motivation ⚚
Self-Interest
Vincent is out for himself, pure and simple. He is always driven by self-interest, even in cases of altruism. He desires knowledge and desires pleasure. Allegiances are based on power and knowledge, and the money to acquire both, which makes him quite receptive to bribes. If there is a quick and easy way to gain knowledge, whether it be legal, questionable, or obviously illegal, he'll take advantage of it. If betraying friends, family, community and country will further his agenda, he'll do it. If he must lie to advance himself, he'll involve a third party and make them responsible. It matters not who gets caught in the middle, as long as he comes out smelling like a rose.
