Demetrius Farmourn

Demetrius was born on Stormbringer 20th in the year 1894 of the Age of Awakening. His parents were Lord Montgomery and Lady Francesca Farmourn and he had a twelve years older brother named Maximus.   He grew up on his parents' estate outside of a town named Vattencliff in the southwest of Eischland. While he was not going to inherit the estate, being the younger brother, he was still expected to undergo extensive tutoring and learn how to manage an estate. He was a constant disappointment to his parents as he kept sneaking away before his lessons to go spend time in nature. Demetrius also preferred spending time with the children of their servants to spending time with his own brother. Often he would run around with them outside in the woods and then come back with practically ruined clothes. His parents would punish him by sending him to bed without dinner or by locking him inside his room but it never deterred him for long.   When Demetrius was twenty years old he met a woman who was travelling by the estate. With her she had a beast companion and knew magic of a type that he had never seen before. He was utterly captivated and he offered her a place to stay and food for a few days in exchange for her teaching him how to get started and one day earn a beast companion of his own. He was already good at using a bow and he was an excellent rider as he would often go out hunting for food and furs together with a few of the lessees of the estate. The woman, Rachana, taught him about the fundamentals of being a ranger and about being as one with nature. She was also his first love but that was doomed to fail as she moved on after one month of teaching him.   Around the year 1917, Lord Montgomery and Lady Francesca began talking about finding a nice noble girl for Demetrius to marry. Demetrius had no intention of marrying at that age, especially not with someone chosen by his parents. Instead he came up with a plan to ask his parents if he could move to Wadesten and perhaps find a noblewoman to marry there. He had wanted to move away for years anyhow and once he was that far away his parents wouldn't be able to check whether he was actually making an effort to find a good match. They agreed and gave him enough money to buy a small but nice house in the better part of town.   As a new noble in Wadesten, Demetrius was a person of interest and was accordingly invited to many events and parties. He attended a lot of them thinking that it might be amusing, and if his parents reached out to any nobles there they would find out that he was socialising with the "right" circles. There were some brief flings here and there with girls, some noble and some not, but nothing that lasted. Either they didn't like his beast companion that he'd found during his travel to Wadesten, a bat named Hattie, or they weren't compatible in other ways.   In 1918 at a feast in Wadesten Castle Demetrius met Astraea Vandran and her husband Godfrey for the first time. Finding that they had similar interests and didn't consider themselves more important than others they became fast friends. Demetrius became like an uncle to their daughter, Elina, which he was a bit embarrassed about but it ultimately made him happy. They felt more like a family to him than his actual blood relations.   It was after a tragic fire in Astraea and Godfrey's home in the year 1926 - which ended Elina's life and almost took that of their barely one year old twin boys - that Demetrius' life took a real turn. Astraea, who was believed to be dead, sought him out and told him the truth about her career as a spy and asked for his help in systematically rooting out corruption and finding the people guilty of the fire and other crimes. Demetrius, loyalty unending for those he loved, gave up his entire life to go underground and help her.   He told Godfrey that he was going back home and would send letters made to look like they'd travelled far before they reached Godfrey, and intercepted the letters Godfrey sent him before they could be transported to the Farmourn estate. However, those were few and far between as Godfrey felt betrayed by the fact that Demetrius had left him right after he believed he'd lost his entire family in the fire. Demetrius felt awful about that but he had made the decision that Astraea would need him more, to save her from straying off the path she'd set for them and becoming too much of something she was not.   For years Demetrius helped Astraea to take over the criminal underground and turn them into a spy network that they called The Faithless where everyone else was unaware of the true purpose. He became "Deadeye" to everyone and kept an eyepatch on at all times as a part of his disguise. Whenever Astraea needed someone to travel outside of Wadesten to gather more information she would send Demetrius, but for safety those occasions were few and far between.   However, he still got leave to go visit his family at the Farmourn estate once every few years or so as to not raise suspicion back home. It was during one of those times that he found one of the kids of servants being treated badly by his brother and the rest of his family. The kid, named Lander, was skilled with a bow and Demetrius, not knowing what else to do, took Lander with him to Wadesten. Once there, Lander refused to live at an orphanage and insisted on following Demetrius around. Thus he became a new spy for The Faithless despite Demetrius' many misgivings of having taken a child with him from a bad situation into something arguably much worse. It certainly didn't help that Lander grew up to be pretty creepy. Demetrius who had previously wanted children of his own decided that he would be a terrible father and vowed never to attempt raising a child ever again.   Around that same time Astraea's twins, Noa and Aon, had stopped living at the orphanage where she had placed them and were living on the streets. She asked Demetrius to look out for them and he, who had believed all along that the twins were dead, was furious at her for not telling him and for taking the twins away from Godfrey. He tried to convince her to tell them the truth or at least let him do it but she was adamant that it had to be kept secret in order to keep them all safe. Demetrius was incredibly unhappy about this turn of events but while still trying to train Lander, and enlisting the help of some of the nicer members of The Faithless to help him do so, he kept close watch on the twins for years.   In 1943 Noa had a bad encounter with another member of The Faithless while Demetrius was out on another mission. Noa was forcefully enlisted to The Faithless and Demetrius was made his mentor. Having to train Noa and spend so much time with him without being able to tell him the truth about his mother and everything else was just about the most difficult thing that Demetrius had ever experienced. Slitting a man's throat was easier and filled with less guilt than having to keep such a big secret from someone he already thought of as a nephew. He vowed to protect Noa with his life and give him the best possible training to ensure he could protect himself.   Through a twist in events, Noa and Aon found out about the true identity of Astraea and what she was to them in late 1948. That marked another big change in Demetrius' life. He had to shed his Deadeye persona and once again become Lord Demetrius Farmourn in an important mission to free Wadesten from the cruel Duke Delmore Gildenstern. It was strange to be himself again for more than a few minutes or days few and far in between. He felt like he'd stopped living in 1926 to become someone else and now he had to resume as if time had never passed. It was like he was that thirty-two year old again except far more awkward and unpractised in the world of socialisation and nobility and with far more weight on his shoulders than he'd had back then.   Perhaps that was why he found himself falling in love with someone so much younger than he, but with more strength than he'd ever had - both physical and mental. Demetrius felt like a lecherous old man even though he knew that his feelings for Sonata were pure and he decided never to act on those feelings. However, with encouragement from a new friend, the firbolg druid Yelro, he did finally confess his feelings for her on Wisdombringer 24th of the year 1949. They spent some months in a sort of in between state of awkwardness, and there were a lot of other things going on at the same time, but eventually they came to have a more stable and secure relationship.   Demetrius would gladly lay down his life for any of his newfound family in addition to Astraea and Godfrey - especially Sonata, Aon, Noa and Chloe - but he was also determined to help them but stay alive if possible. He went with them on a few missions and adventures and would follow them to the end of the world if necessary.   One of the missions he took part in was to free Princess Ralenna Sarric who had been kidnapped and taken to Yraldrig. After the mission succeeded and the princess was returned home, he was offered a knighthood which he graciously declined, comfortable with a life where he got the least amount of attention from the public as possible. He was content to watch Sonata, Aon, Noa and Chloe be knighted for their part in the quest, feeling that they deserved more of the credit anyway.   During the calmer parts of 1949 and large part of 1950, Demetrius spent some time building up a homeless shelter in Sandholm where he had moved to when Sonata did. He wanted to create some of the same feeling in the shelter as had been created by The Faithless back in Wadesten. Not the organised crime or spying part, but the part where they all felt like a family and felt that they had a place no matter what they'd done in the past. He knew that many didn't like to go to the temples to ask for food or aid, fearing that they would be judged by the clergy for things they had done in order to survive. That was why he decided to create a safe place for people to go when they had no other place to turn. Eventually he found a few more people who helped him in running the shelter, keeping everything under control and funded, so that he could go more freely with Sonata and her group on their travels.