Backstory

Ash Grym was born in a world trying to heal but festering with leftover corruption. His obsession with death is not born of malice, but of a tragic accident. At the young age of 20—a mere child in Elven terms—Ash attempted to use a magical artifact to cure a wasting sickness afflicting his parents. Instead of channeling vitality, the corrupted crystal channeled necromantic entropy, instantly withering them to dust before his eyes.

Branded a kinslayer and exiled from his conclave, Ash wandered the scarred landscapes of Coia. He sought out the very things others fled: the "unnatural creatures" and "interlopers" left coming through the gates, hoping to understand the mechanics of the soul and the reversal of entropy. He has become a scavenger of forbidden lore, digging through the ruins of Coia.

Though he is an outcast, he maintains a tether to his humanity through his younger sister, Inara. He believes his presence corrupts, so he watches her from afar, sending anonymous coins earned from his grisly trade as a spirit-medium and corpse-tender to keep her safe from the poverty that plagues the continent.

He is an anti-hero in the truest sense; he wields the foulest magic of the enemy to achieve a goal of pure love: the resurrection of his parents to undo his childhood sin.