(WIP, TW: mentions of suicide, nothing worse than in the Campaign/Player Guides)
History:
He was once Saruthan, child of Aurelia and lesser member of Her angelic host. He doesn’t have many specific memories from those days, whether through self-protective repression or the simple inability of a mortal form to hold onto divine perceptions but knows that it was an idyllic time for him. A time of glory, strength and belonging… at least until the gods went mad. Those memories are also dimmed, but still filled with a breathtaking whirl of anger, fear and confusion- until he opened his eyes to whole new and too-mortal world, lost and heart aching with the soul-deep knowledge that Aurelia was dead.
He discovered as he wandered that he wasn’t alone in that. He met other Downcast, huddled desolately with the other lost and broken creatures of a world that had once honored them. Even the children of the briefly-sane Aurelia hadn’t been spared. For a time, each new discovery brought comfort. But they also served as reminders of a life lost… and became new losses themselves as friends disappeared. Mostly they succumbed to the pervasive despair of lost divinity, but rumors quietly traded among them spoke of beings that preyed upon the remnants of divinity in their blood and bone. Saru stopped identifying himself to those suspected of being Downcast to his experienced eye, as most did to him. It just wasn’t safe anymore, particularly for Aurelia’s children. One particularly chilling story told of even the gods’ own clerics succumbing to this practice in their desperation to fuel their powers, though Saru could never confirm himself.
Things came to a head the night of yet another former friend’s death (Irin, they’d been in Aurelia’s host together) and Saru, as he now referred to himself, wandered out into the woods to lay down and die. If he was to die, he wanted to at least feed the gods’ creatures, not by mortal hands. And there, wrapped up in his pain and despair, he encountered a Lord and Lady of the Summer Court. They were leading a courtly dance amidst a host of glowing, other-worldly creatures, and it was in an instant so like the Angelic Host he wanted to weep. He stumbled toward them, entranced. And the Far knew buried power when they saw it, bidding him with lovely words to come to them. If he swore to their ruler, he could have this beauty back. Could have a home again. All the ugliness of mortal existence driven away with but a few well-chosen words.
The Fae spoke to something in Saru that remembered kind words, warm smiles and lost Glory. He forgot that even then, those smiles had sometimes hidden blades and ruthlessness toward those deemed Enemy behind them.
Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe that lurking danger beneath the shining veneer sang the familiar siren call of *home*, too hard to turn away from in his present state. For whatever reason, Saru took that offered hand, that promised shelter from the storms of the mortal world, and bent the knee for a new master.
In time, he would come to, if not regret the decision, than at least the haste with which he made it. But right then finding a place to belong gave him enough stability to at least try to figure out this mortal life he’d been stuck with. He didn’t do a particularly good job, mind you. “All roads lead to Altenheim” turned out to be true for him as well and the City of Joy had many things to lead even the most virtuous beings astray. Saru dove headlong into every pleasure he could find, anything that made him feel good and helped him forget about mortality for a while.
Saru’s Fey friends made no demands of him but to sing and dance and thwart any agents of the Winter Court he may find. And he loved the revels, at least at first. But then he slowly became aware of the children present and realized that his new friends didn’t simply make deals with lost and doomed souls like him, but actively lured and changed unknowing innocents. His protests became increasingly vocal until one night his Fey masters dropped their glamour to beat him bloody as a warning to let it go and be a good little servant. As he limped home, a woman fell into step with him. She was part of a monastic order that made it their business to teach people how to resist beings like the Fey, and they’d been watching him for a while. If he was willing to join their cause, they couldn’t reverse what had been done, but they could help him resist in the future- and save others. He accepted and his life changed again.
He still lived among the broken and beggared, but now he had a purpose; a healthier Way to be. It was friends in that Order who put him on the scent of another: The Society of the Occult. It’s entirely possible they’re trying to kill two birds with one stone by setting a Fey agent against other supernatural tyrants, but Saru is fine with that.
Personality:
Saru has a hint of softness to him; that touch of Aurelia’s divinity that gives his kind a reputation for easy prey. Or perhaps it is simply the innocence of an angel new to mortal life and is being chipped away by learning fast and hard. He has certainly learned to be more watchful and guarded to compensate, occasionally dancing on the line of cruelty once coming under sway of the Fey. He cares passionately about things and gives his all to any effort- whether that be defense of a friend, learning a new skill, or trying to seek relief from his new existence in all the vices the City of Joy has to offer.
Saruthan has a different perspective on the divine than most mortals, in that these beings were once coworkers of his. Maybe not equal, as *they* didn’t get tossed out for lack of power, but not all-powerful beings either. He’s seen them at their worst, sometimes outright mad and as fallible as any mortal. He’s seen the Arch-Seraphs lose *something* with the gods’ deaths, some indefinable spark or guiding star than has led them to stray from their true purpose and what they once were. He still approves of them more than not, but that margin is a lot thinner than it used to be.
To Saru, the emergence of new seraphs (where once the Arch-Seraphs couldn’t maintain the hosts they’d inherited) is evidence that godhood is simply the accumulation of applied belief, and that that belief can be transferred- the divine is not simply something that is, ineffable and not meant to be understood by mortals, but something that can also be made, earned. That’s not to say he has any interest in it himself, on either side, now that the worst of the traumatic loss has passed. That’s just not him anymore. He’s been there, done that, and now it’s time to move on to something new. You can’t go home again and he feels that he’s already learned to dance different steps, grown too big for that particular box. But the realization has interesting implications for his now-fellow mortals.
Also, perhaps, for any Eldritch Clerics wandering around Etharis- much more so than any poor soul accused of arcane heresy. Saru will take a dim view of these devoted doomsayers of destruction and seek to put them down whenever possible. It has nothing to do with religion in his mind; when you’re talking about beings that destroyed civilizations and *killed entire pantheons*, the last thing you want to do is give them even more power.
He strongly dislikes seeing religion abused by Seraphs who have lost their way and over-ambitious or deluded mortals. Saru also despises the Hearthkeepers of Aurelia in particular- he knows that the party line of Aurelia being asleep and not dead is a lie, or he wouldn’t be here now. And it burns him to his core to see how they’ve twisted Aurelia’s teachings-he *knows* the City of Joy and its willful, debauched ignorance is not the hearth she would have wanted.
He might have a passing envy of new Seraphs, but not because he wants to be one or thinks he has a right to it. He never earned his divinity, it was simply what he was- and now it’s not. It’s more a wistful sigh over what might have been had the gods not gone mad, and a hope that their story ends better than his has.