User:Joshmaul/Lianis Darkfrost

"'Never indulge your morals over your practicals.'"
 * - Magister Lianis Darkfrost

Magister Lianis Darkfrost is a cryomancer in the service of the ren'dorei of the Telogrus Rift, having defected from Quel'Thalas at the behest of his sworn matriarch, Lady Tavira Nightswan. Since her death at the hands of a vengeful Nightborne arcanist, he has been a "lone wolf", fighting his enemies as he sees fit.

Biography
Lianis' origins are largely unknown even to himself; he knows only that he was born in Silvermoon, and that he was abandoned in infancy on the doorstep of House Brightswan, a family of sorcerers. He was fostered by Hendar, son of Lord Aladar, the house's aging patriarch; both he and his father recognized, as Lianis grew into adolescence, that the boy possessed magical talents. Just after Lianis completed his initial Magister's training, Lord Aladar died, and Hendar became lord of House Brightswan. Lianis offered the new lord his service as gratitude for raising him, and - much to his surprise - Lord Hendar named the young Magister his chief advisor. It was Lianis who arranged the wedding between Hendar and a noblewoman named Lintalia Kethlir, and it was Lianis who oversaw the education of their three children - their sons, Valnir and Aldan, and their daughter, Tavira. While Valnir and Aldan were both suited more to Farstrider training than Magister training, Tavira showed signs of magical talent - but even in the beginning, that talent would take a far darker turn, particularly after Lady Lintalia died from a fever some years before the opening of the Dark Portal.

Lord Hendar and both of his sons were killed by the Horde during the Second War, leaving Tavira as head of House Brightswan. Lianis remained at her side as she coped with her grief, hoping to ensure the continued survival of the family by arranging for Tavira's marriage to her lover Menarian Talashar, an up-and-coming Magister in his own right. The wedding plans were disrupted by the coming of the Scourge, which left Quel'Thalas in ruins; Tavira and Lianis were forced to hide in a ruined estate south of Tranquillien in order to survive.

When Lor'themar Theron was named Regent of Quel'Thalas by Prince Kael'thas and tasked with rebuilding, Tavira - by this point having taken up the dark arts as a warlock - was outraged when the new leadership elected to join the very Horde that had all but annihilated her family. Though he tried to restrain her public outbursts of rage as best he could on the one hand, on the other, Lianis understood and agreed with her feelings, believing (as she did) that if they were in the business of bowing before people who had despoiled their lands, they would have been better off submitting to Arthas.

During the war against the Legion, Tavira refused to align herself with the Council of the Black Harvest, the gathering of Azeroth's warlocks, because it included members of the Horde (notwithstanding that she was technically one herself). Lianis was much more pragmatic, offering his services to the Kirin Tor without hesitation, and serving during the campaign on Argus. By this point, any hope of a marriage between Tavira and Menarian had faded; Tavira had embraced the darkness and spoke openly and hatefully against the Horde, while Menarian had become more pious (a surprising trait for a mage, who would usually be targeted as a "heretic" by zealous priests) after the restoration of the Sunwell, and was determined to maintain Quel'Thalas' allegiance to the Horde.

After the war ended, Tavira disappeared from Silvermoon, having left to join Magister Umbric in his search for the fabled Telogrus Rift. When she re-emerged, she and all the others who had followed Umbric had been transformed by the power of the Void, and had aligned themselves with Alleria Windrunner and the Alliance. Tavira sent word to Lianis and all of her surviving retainers to join her at Telogrus, where she offered them the chance to embrace the "new beginning" that the Void offered. Though concerned about the effects the Void energy would have on them, Lianis and the others all agreed without hesitation.

To symbolize their transformation, Tavira and her servants rechristened themselves as "House Nightswan". Tavira suggested, as a symbol of his own "rebirth" as well as the powers he wielded, that Lianis take "Darkfrost" as his name, as he had never had a family name of his own, and he agreed. In time, however, though he desired an end to the Horde just as much as she did, Lianis began to distance himself from Tavira as she became both petty and cruel not only to Horde prisoners (typically torturing them before killing them - not for intelligence, but just for her sheer pleasure), but to any naysayers in the Alliance as well. He felt that she was being controlled by the power of the Void, rather than controlling it herself; he suspected her long use of dark magic had made her more suseptible to corruption than it did him.

Thus when the Nightborne arcanist Randarel Vendross challenged Tavira to a wizard's duel, Lianis knew that it could only end in pain. He had no idea just how much so; the duel turned into a battle when Forsaken zealots sought to kill both combatants and those they brought with them as an entourage. When Tavira was mortally wounded by a Dark Iron warlock from the Council of the Black Harvest, seeking to resurrect his fallen master, Lianis sorrowfully abandoned her to her fate, taking only her broken spellstaff to deliver to her detractors in the Alliance as proof of demise.

With Tavira gone and her family line dead with her, Lianis finds himself in an unenviable position: Beholden to (and protected by) no one, having to find his own way in a world that fears and hates him. Yet as with so many other things, he rises to the challenge...