Atmei Zyrkoon

A University student who, at the age of 52, is selected to receive the essences of AE-I pair Panoptica and Omnipotei from Hero, the first human to bond with these arcane intelligences. Though the initial plan involves Hero transferring his own essence as part of the bestowal, this is disrupted by a sudden, devastating terrorist attack on the Temple of the Martial Aspect during the ceremony. As a result, Atmei is forced to figure out how to handle the AE-Is himself, while dealing with his grief over the master's annihilation. Skadikos/"Vandroiy" gives him a task soon after - to sail and find the rumored Visiru island-base in the southern seas, using Panoptica's abilities to track them down and discover their secret project - a project which may be behind the attack that killed Hero.

CHARACTER HISTORY

Atmei is a Ketrabi, the son of a long line of Imperial Battlemages. His father died with the Emperor while he was being born to a mother who raised him until the age of two, when she was killed in the Elven invasion. The reconstituted University, seeking out any children of the more powerful family lines (the ability to manipulate aether can be learned, but like any talent tends to run in the blood), learned of the fate of Zyrkoon and extracted him from one of the new boarding schools set up in the wake of the city's political rebirth under Skadikos/"Vandroiy". Instead of being trained for a menial or military job, he was educated in the ways of magic from an extremely young age. His promise was so great that Hero eventually took the boy under his wing and groomed him as a successor for the next half-century. The two established a mental bond that allowed Atmei to directly commune with Hero and "download" his knowledge, a dangerous but powerful setup that ran the risk of destroying Atmei's mind entirely, yet carried the promise of allowing him to attain the superhuman knowledge and arcane ability required to merge with the AE-I. (Hero, of course, barely survived his encounter with the Panopticon tower, but its mechanisms allowed Panoptica to slip into his mind without killing him. Without that technology, Hero was forced to take an even risker, but much slower approach with his protege.)