Arion’s personality from http://similarminds.com/cattell-16-factor.html
Arion’s results all hover around the middle of the score ranges and reflect a challenging part of his character design. As opposed to his deuteragonist/antagonist, Arion’s personality is straight forward and mild-mannered.
While he is often quite average, Arion tends to daydream of ideal worlds and stories with happy endings where strength can be found in the mundane. Though he is right about the ordinary rising to become extraordinary, he lacks the clear decisiveness and sharp judgement required to affect the flow of events.
His balanced traits lend themselves well to foil other, more polarized characters, highlighting the marked traits of the world around him without heavily skewing them towards the optimistic or pessimistic. The setback is that he often appears weak in comparison to the strong-willed characters of any story despite having the ability to be a pivotal player himself. As a thief turned mercenary, he is more suited to subtle strikes than bold strokes.
The center of his personality revolves around his emotional stability and ability to remain ‘himself’ under prolonged duress. He is keen on maintaining his sense of morality and world view but is driven to paranoia with the dissonance brought upon by his actions for survival. The mounting anxiety of his internal conflict erode at his stability, ultimately overcoming his better judgement as reflected above. It is this lapse that catalyzes events that lead to his failure as a ‘hero.’
Arion’s posture fell ever slightly as she declined his offer. Nevertheless, her refusal simply meant that she was an independent worker which was good, right? A deep breath suffused his lungs as Arion readjusted his sack, falling in line with her lead. The buckles of his armor and belts rustled lightly as he walked, reminding of his time in Piltover where even he felt lacking in leather. The thought was among the first memories Franky’s question had brought to mind.
“I’m not from Valoran,” He prefaced with a quick glance at the sky, “But I have been walking for a long time now. I got offshore for the first time in the Freljord, so it always be a special place for me--even if the cold cut through even the thickest furs. Yet, it was in Piltover that I finally began to do what I came here to do. Ya know, I’m... honestly surprised about how many women there are with golden eyes here...”
Arion chuckles meekly with another run of his hand through his hair. He hums still, thinking of something to continue. “But to visit? I traveled as far as ‘De-ma-cia?’ The city was so pretty and looked so clean! Yet... we both know that lookin’ says nothing about what’s really inside... I tried to avoid contact with their soldiers. I don’t really have a favorite place yet, Franky. I just... like meeting warm people in a warm place, ya know? Like you. It feels like home even if I don’t have one. What about you? Your turn to talk!”
The light of his memory grew in intensity as the Sun’s own dipped into the abyss of night. Another day had faded in this foreign land with strange phonetics and unruly magic. In his youth, there had been no such thing, nothing to bend the earth and sky save for the determination--or selfishness--of mankind. Yet, even with the fabric of reality torn beneath the hands of mages and those who controlled them, the world looked eerily similar to that which he had known. Desolation and apathy stood omnipresent in the shadow of prosperity and generosity.
Arion recalled the hollow sounds of his feet along sheet metal, interspersed with dense taps of toes upon the supporting girders below. The aimless wandering without the means or drive to attend grammar school had taken the future thief across the length of Stormhaven. Days spent in idle exploration had taken Arion into the beating heart of the city’s whirring hydroelectric facilities of which he knew little to the somber churches of the Maker of whom he knew less. It was in the latter that Arion had his first glimpse into the reality of the world in which they were all born, at least in hindsight.
“The doors were open to the home of the Maker” the priests had beckoned from one week to the next, eager to attract sheep from a flock following a different shepard: the unyielding throes of gold. The doctrine of the Maker was relegated to a role in antiquity in comparison to the holy books of business and finance, but there were those who still believed otherwise.
Starving, lethargic, and ill-informed, Arion had stumbled into the church in curiosity one day, stopping a moment to gaze at the facade before proceeding. The people spoke some measure of proof in regards to age as the carefully chiseled stone of the structure and its stained glass murals positioned just so were the hallmarks of precision and planning long since abandoned in an age of functionality.
Though a giant bell would toll the hour by some unseen mechanism of a cleric’s hand, it rang ever so softly with the swaying ocean wind. The hum pervaded the cathedral, magnified and soothing within its walls as the boy stepped tepidly into the unfamiliar environment. Above the low hum was the preacher’s voice to the handful of men and women scattered amongst an equally modest number of pews. He sat himself in the back by the door and listened with all the mustered attention that a ten winter child could offer.
The preacher wove intricate stories like a child’s fairytales of holy men and the deeds of saints. Men who followed the Maker’s guidance to deliver “sinners” from themselves--curiously wondering how there were only men. Lofty parables floated above his head in words that he imagined were from some foreign tongue. Yet, he was enraptured. Scarcely able to separate reality from idyllic fantasy, Arion found truth in the good of man and his salvation.
The god was ominpotent and peaceful in nature, and his was the way of “peace eternal and everlasting.” He created the world they knew and all the worlds they would never behold. Because he created everything, the Maker he was known. In his infinite wisdom, he left this earth to his beloved children as they endeavored to create as he did. There were, however, daemons among his children that sought to undo what he had imagined. They tempted his children into sin, to destruction of soul and decay of the flesh. These maleficent creatures sowed dissent and mislead good children with false beliefs. Their ancestors did not heed the Maker then but embraced these daemons, ending the world with fire and brimstone. Those who survived had been chosen by the Maker to rebuild the world in his design and would have their reward after shedding their mortal coils to ashes. The Maker would build them a home befitting their eternal desires for peace.
As even the most steadfast of followers began to droop their heads like fishing bait on the waves, the boy opened both his ears. His feet were quicker to the altar than when he had entered, brimming with curiosity at the preacher he felt so close with after the hour had passed. The outside world was bound by the rules of society where his parents instructed he “must never venture alone,” “must guard his word and heart,” and “must watch out for his own” among other sayings. Here, the house of the Maker was open and accepting, so Arion felt at liberty to ask questions of his burning desires.
Arion assumed that the priest, with his ready answers about the origin of good and evil, could enlighten him about what happened to his father after his untimely demise and of what would be done for his family that remained bound in the mortal struggle of survival. Though stated less eloquently, Arion spoke and was answered simply, “Have faith and the Maker will deliver in ways incomprehensible to your young mind.”
The boy believed as there was much that he did not know. Though he was supposed to be comforted, the gnawings of his stomach did not let his “soul” rest easy. Arion had thanked the man, but asked one more question before taking his leave in search for food. He asked about how the Maker, who had created all, could possibly be opposed by something that was his complete opposite? How could there be those that destroyed in his grand design? Not wanting to insult a god by calling such a paradox a mistake, Arion asked if that had been overlooked? The priest grew impatient at that moment, simply telling Arion that he was not a true believer of the Maker, that his faith was too weak to understand the reality of the world. Arion, dismissed with a wave, returned to the world wondering if that were true but never returned to that house of worship or any other.
To this day, Arion had found little reason to enter a holy structure, not because he despised the notion but because he had more pressing concerns. The life of his family had improved since those times, but not by the ways he had imagined in those blinder days. With blood, his own and that of many others, he had won his family’s independence and his own survival. He had bought his world with determination and his selfish desire for life.
The accomplishment had not felt like divine deliverance as onlookers claimed. He felt too dirty for that. There was nothing holy and serendipitous about what need be done. What was needed now, in this country, was redemption. Arion sought some way to make up for the wrongs he had done to ensure the righteous life of others dear to him. He thought magic would provide some spell, some ancient rune to right the wrongs of the world. He thought that a land filled with such power would create as the priest those years past had preached. Yet, all Arion found was the same rule of business and finance, that magic was simply a tool like all others. Where was divinity there? Was it simply the same power to destroy after all, cowing the weak and ignorant into belief?
Yet, perhaps he was wrong still about the nature of the Maker in his ambiguity. Perhaps the world ran as it should--and maybe--as it always had. Arion still felt too young to know. The toll of the towering, technological clock rang the evening hours with whirring gears to dispel evil thoughts even as night encroached.
The man donned cloak, cowl, and the taunting opal masque to become a different kind of seraph as he thought of a different theory. The Maker was like a craftsman and his clock. The intricate design had been laid that spun and ticked throughout all of time. An ultimate fate awaited when the hours had been spent and the minutes gone, but there was order amidst the cacophony. Every so often, there would a ringing loud and clear that would proudly declare what was to come. As whispers regarding the familiar “Sable Seraph” reached his ears, Arion thought that perhaps this was his destiny calling.
The towering figure barreled through the crowd and into the former courier's shoulder. His eyes widened in surprise as he mumbled an apology, an accent heavy in his warm voice. "Sorry... I didn't... see you there. I was too busy thinking... I think. Can I make it up to you, Miss...?"
The heavy, wooden box in her hands didn't lend itself well to the action of falling over. Its contents had protested and rattled as her shoulder met concrete pavement, but thankfully leather caught the worst of the edges of the container. An involuntary squeak of lost air had marked her collision with the ground, but she was on her feet and crouching not a moment later, biting back initial shock to recover the item she had been holding.
Fingers closed around the old sides of the box, and as she moved to stand and address the klutz who'd crashed into her, it lost all integrity as first the bottom fell from place, and then the sides collapsed in without the reinforcement. Clearly the owner of the box didn’t use the contents enough to think of them as very useful.
Notebooks, textbooks. Ruler and protractor. Maps and a sextant - among other things. It left her speechless as the items tumbled onto the pavement. The whole event was almost graceful in how much failure it seemed to put forth.
Bewildered, she looked up at the boy -man, who had failed to pay any sort of due attention to his surroundings. Why was he mumbling? Did he not have the confidence to apologise to any degree of actual meaning? She huffed up at him, but her eyes flickered back downards, lingered upon the calamity in front of her. She spoke only as she was retrieving the items into a pile.
"You-.. You can tell me what's so important that it'd make you hurry like that, and what's so interesting as to take your thoughts from what's... uh.. actually, you know... kinda going on around you."
The morning brought a brisk chill and, with it, a shuddering breath that raised the hairs on his neck. Arion pulled the thick scarf tighter about himself, almost regretting his choice in gloves as he watched numb fingers wiggle freely through the bracers. Indistinct mutterings of a lively crew and rousing passengers flitted from above and below the wooden deck. Quick and slow, the bodies brushed past him as the sails and anchors dropped.
Piltover, disembarking.
Phrases in tongues familiar and distant rang in his ears as he nodded his thanks, remembering to cast the crew a broad smile as his boots greeted the foreign soil. So long parted, his legs rooted themselves, refusing to move from the singular plot of land. In another minute, he gazed about the towering city with its strange machines and glimmering towers before taking ginger steps into the streets with nothing but the sack slung over his shoulder.
Bilgewater was an abysmal port, reminding him of the worst of Stormhaven’s lawlessness. What was Piltover to him now then Stormhaven’s best? The lights and tools lining the streets, inseparable from their users, were as foreign to him as they were in his city of birth. What was the exchange of one unknown for another after all?
He wondered where the wind would guide him as it furled his coat about him. There was no plan, no knowledge, nothing save for the single-minded desire to find what he had come to do.
Arion’s thoughts turned to the old masque that sat battered among his few worldly belongings, how melancholy its seemed to smile.
Piltover, arriving. The city of tomorrow was it? His brow knit ever slightly as he remembered the excited chatter of the beaming immigrants now seeking their own futures. Yet, here he was, looking for what was to come in what had come to pass.
A rueful smile, lopsided in his amusement, tugged at the lines of his lips before a rumble in his stomach anchored him back to reality.
“Hmm... Time to eat I guess. I wonder what gold can buy? Three pounds for meat maybe?” He laughed, crisp as the day. “It’s been a long time since I didn't know how to read the signs...
