I have so many thoughts/questions/emotions about your Darius Lore. I love that Darius was essentially mentored not just by an individual but that individual’s entire found family/polycule. The fact that Darius lost all of them nearly all at once, completely helpless to do anything about it, and just had to continue on as if it hadn’t happened. As if he didn’t know what happened. For decades. And being the only one to know the truth and being constantly bombarded with the propaganda and lies that say otherwise. And if he gets himself killed, all that dies with him.
Also, just out of curiosity, GG started mentoring Darius around the end of high school (according to wwaitsoatl) so about 17ish? (Correct me if I’m wrong) About what age range was Darius when everything eventually came crumbling down? What about when he eventually rose to be a coven head? Does Eber know any part of this/ has intuited enough from their own experience and what they’ve they now know of Darius to have some idea (even if it might be somewhat incorrect?)
Apologies for the rambling lol
yeah the mentorship started when darius was 17 iirc -- or thereabouts. i'm Awful with concrete timelines. in keeping with being awful with concrete timelines, i THINK the story would span around 4ish years, but i don't have firm ages/times.
(i may already be contradicting my own canon here, i truly Do Not Remember)
you can assume that All The Awful Shit goes down when darius is 21 or 22ish. mentor is about 5 years older, so he'd be in his mid-to-late twenties when he died. same goes for daphne and cayden.
that leaves time for darius to find out about what's going on, meet the polycule/family and gain their trust, start n maintain his reckless experiments with magic, have all the shit go down with the palistrom groves, learn cayden's techniques for faking sigils.... there's a LOT that happens.
darius is already fairly highly ranking in the abomination coven before his mentor is murdered -- prev GG encouraged him to join the abomination coven rather than the emperor's coven, because the emperor's coven is a nightmare. (this was before darius knew anything about any of the shit happening behind the scenes.)
it's not long after his mentor's murder that the prior head of the abomination coven """voluntarily resigns""" and darius is "encouraged" to replace him. belos still doesn't trust him but also gramps LOVES to make people's lives miserable, bc he's a petty bitch. and bc he was almost certainly jealous of darius taking up so much of his mentor's attention.
so darius gets the lilith treatment. congrats on your prestigious position :) you're so powerful and competent :) You Live And Bleed And Die In Hell :)
eber Almost Certainly knows that darius's mentor was murdered, through intuition if nothing else. and he also knows what darius knows about faking sigils. darius doesn't talk about the specifics of his past or his grief, but he has shared his most useful tools for skirting empire regulations.
eber knows that darius must have learned that from Someone. and eber also knows that if that Someone was still alive, darius would have introduced them at some point.
