Adaskan
Adaskan was born to a poor couple living in the slums of the great Bazaar. Despite being frail and sickly, born to poverty and to neglectful parents, he survived his early years and learned early the meaning of survival no matter what. That is why he understood when his parents had to flee Bazaar due to an impossible debt they’d accumulated, and why he understood when he one day woke up in a house empty of all but himself, no more than a loveless husk of what might once have been. He understood, but he never forgave.
As a young teen Adaskan took to the streets, he knew no-one would grant him shelter in return for nothing, so he created his own. The slums of Bazaar did not lack for children like him, and with a quiet but fervent fire slowly growing from meek embers in his heart, he brought many of them together. Soon he was known as the lead of a pack of children forgotten or forsaken by the world, this Jackal Pack valued survival over all else, and in it everyone was given a place to call their own, a place that was stolen from each of them when they needed it most.
The Jackals name eventually proved to be their undoing. It was not the fat, uncaring authorities of Bazaar that would bring about their fall, they could always be bribed. The threat came from shady figures in red who whispered and lied, and promised Adaskan’s pack things they’d never dreamed of, inducting them into a new gang as spies, little ears and eyes in the crowd. This new group called themselves the Crimson Jackals, and claimed the Pack’s name an insult to them, and so the Jackal Pack was the first of Bazaar’s gangs to disappear and be replaced by more clad in crimson.
Adaskan himself disappeared, the remains of his Pack also vanishing or joining those in red. Most thought they simply gave up and fled, but the sinister truth in the undercrofts of Bazaar was far crueler. Adaskan and his loyal were taken to a Crimson Jackal prison complex deep within the crypts under the city, a place with little hope, and little light. The only light Adaskan saw in the coming year was fire, and the brand of his captors, and the only words in his ears were those same lies and promises that his Pack had heard and followed.
However the flame within him never left. As it sputtered, almost cinders, fate gave it a breath of sweet air, and like a phoenix reborn it roused into an inferno. One day just as his tormentor was finishing up his twisted work, he stumbled and the brand poked into Adaskan’s binds. The rope caught fire and spread to him, blood like oil as it ate the fiber and flesh with ravenous hunger, joined by the hunger for survival glimmering in Adaskan’s eyes as he broke free and embraced the man in front of him. As his foe screamed and burned, Adaskan felt little pain, he had been burned plenty and he knew the fire in him was much stronger, much brighter. Once it was over, Adaskan walked, every step took his everything, but like a living torch he clawed his way out of the complex, and no one dared touch him.
Once he was outside, the flames flickered and slowly died. He fell to his knees and though his body was charred and broken, his soul and spirit were more alive than ever. A year after his escape, few even among the Crimson Jackals remember his name, most believing no-one could survive such a thing. But when bodies in red begin to appear in the desert, bearing the mark of one of their own brands shaped into the letter A, rumors begin to spread of a vengeful wraith clad in rags and the furs of jackals who hunts the now-prominent Crimsons on a vendetta for a life he had lost.