Character Profile: Derel

Name: Derel Haman Va’Rada, Daryl Heathrow (Modern AU)

Aliases/AKAs: The Shadow, Cuckoo Bird

Title(s): The Owl

Hair Colour: Black

Eye Colour: Yellow

Height: 205 cm

Weight: 113 kg

Build: Angular, lean

Distinguishing Marks: Moving wing tattoos on his back, retractable talons

Dick Size: Large

Relationships (Romantic and/or Sexual): Jesse son of Japheth (lover)

Family Relationships: Radnat Haman Te’Nola and Gyata Haman To’Voil (parents, deceased) 

Sexuality: Gay

Preferred Positions: Standing, holding his partner against a wall

Kinks: Bloodplay, shapeshifted sex, erotic literature

Orgies Attended: Divine Orgies

Bio: The only son of a small clan of moon gods, Derel was tasked with growing the clan when his parents were unable to have other children. He refused to do this, becoming estranged from his parents when he was quite young and leaving his home to travel the world and see it first-hand. As stories of Derel spread, he became associated with knowledge and foresight, which pleased him as it drew talented scholars and oracles to the temples that were constructed to him in various places, and he was able to benefit from their studies and knowledge. When the rampage of Nathen Jerrel De’Kerken began, Derel was among the first gods to identify it as a serious threat to their existence and to plan an appropriate countermeasure. Using powers he’d learned about in his travels, he rallied some friends of his, including a number of younger gods, to a plan that culminated at Thunder’s Falls and halted Nathen’s rampage—but ultimately triggered a longer, more destructive war, one that Derel wasn’t sure what to do about and ended up having to consult the most powerful oracle of his time to seek answers for. He got those answers, but they weren’t what he was expecting, and Derel ended up on a path he’d never predicted for himself on a crusade to save his species at any cost.

Notes: 

• During Derel’s travels, he visited most major human settlements, only a few times being recognized as a god, which he was proud of because he didn’t disguise himself with his shapeshifting power
• Because his medium is the moon, Derel once decided to visit there. He was unimpressed and never went back
• Derel maintained a lifelong friendship with Keden Nesek De’Jeren, an earth god who was cast out from his clan for impropriety. Keden was one of the only people Derel felt was an intellectual equal, and his disappearance during the Catechism War hit Derel harder than any other
• Derel’s mother was killed by Nathen a few years into his rampage. Derel’s father escaped, but was later killed at Thunder’s Falls
• Despite their two peoples having rarely been on good terms, Derel found he enjoyed the company of elves when he visited them
• Of all the scholarly pursuits, Derel had a deep interest in history, especially the cultures that had existed and disappeared before his
• Though he had always preferred to work alone, Derel became a leader for his faction during the Catechism Wars thanks to the perceptive strategies he used, all of which he attributed to his lover
• Though he had always preferred to live alone, Derel became inseparable from Jesse soon after they met
• Derel was never a fighter, preferring to use other people’s talents to his own advantage, but witnesses to his final battle with Cameron report that he fought fiercely before being brutally killed
• After his death, Derel stayed with Jesse for a few centuries, before his madness progressed to the point that he ceased believing Jesse was on his side and fled

Quotes:

• “I require a telling.”
• “I don’t intend to linger here all day. If you would undress, young man.”
• “I admit I did not…anticipate your oracle.”
• “Your gifts are wasted in this temple, delivering false prophecy to small humans of no importance. You are a talented young man. You would do better in my service—my direct service, not through a temple.”
• “Come. Tell me what the future will be.”
• “Time will tell, little thing.”
• “My victims are rarely granted reprieves, even of seconds. Be grateful for the little thing.”
• “Demons are merely the result of an inept child’s temper tantrum. I am something far greater.”
• “The king of what? Nothing of consequence. Do as I say, and you shall be a god.”
• “You must decide if you would rather have me for ally or foe.”
• “I am rescuing you from certain death, little king.”
• “Enough posturing from you two. That’s not how friends should behave.”
• “Forces begin to converge. A battle is coming. It will be advantageous for the two of you to be in the same place.”

Trivia:

• Clan Haman’s lands were in the southern end of what is now continental Aergyre. Derel visits them sometimes
• Derel had a lifelong fear of open water that he was never able to conquer
• Derel and Keden lost their virginity along with a third god named Ferin Yanat Ne’Mardon, when all three of them spent a week in the mountains together and got to experimenting
• Derel was struck by lightning three dozen times over his lifetime. This had nothing to do with his powers and was entirely coincidental
• Derel never really considered himself that similar to owls, but he displayed his wing tattoos proudly and wasn’t in charge of what humans called him
• Though he had casual sex with his friends and attended the occasional orgy with them, Derel had never had a consistent, permanent sexual partner before Jesse, and was surprised at how often he ended up wanting to have sex once he did
• Derel’s hold takes the form of an open-air manor surrounding a verdant garden with a heavy moon hanging overhead 
• Derel wrote a great many treatises outlining his historical discoveries, but nobody read them except Jesse
• As a young man, Derel invented a card game that he called Thief’s Gambit. Versions of it are still played in many cultures to this day, and it is especially popular among sailors
• No matter where he went after he met Jesse, Derel could never help himself from acquiring some trinket or souvenir for his lover

Modern AU: Modern Daryl was an assistant professor of classics at one of the local universities when, in the late fifties, his mother Gladys became the twenty-seventh victim of one Nathaniel Harkness, a deranged serial killer whose reign of terror ended then, only to restart when he escaped from prison. Daryl’s building was one of those bombed by Harkness during his final rampage, and though Daryl himself was not hurt in the blast, his colleagues report he was never the same after that. After Harkness’s death, Daryl began researching the occult practices Harkness had been rumoured to participate in, consulting a local medium a number of times before disappearing one day without a trace. His disappearance was deemed a scandalous affair rather than a crime, and was not investigated seriously. Daryl never had much of a social life outside of his study of ancient Semitic cultures, but his friends report that when he wasn’t working, he was interested in birdwatching, hiking, astronomy and baking.