The Snow Reyn Veseris Hashrim was born 39 years ago in the village of Kushventh to his parents Berem and Zyfel, the youngest of three children (his brother Yeforr six years older than him and his sister Aariq three years older), his father supporting the family by working as an accountant for the Demorei Trading Consortium, a “trading monopoly” had positioned itself as the sole source of traded goods and authority in the whole Mowb Valley region. Neither very poor nor very rich, Veseris grew up in a more or less normal family, and was close to all of them.
Berem and Zyfel did their best to raise their children equally with as little favoritism as possible, but Yeforr was always on the border of insubordination and was constantly stubborn and rebellious, leading to his parents to focus much of their efforts on him as opposed to the younger two. Aariq primarily tried to stay out of the way and concentrate on her own childhood and subsequent friends, but Veseris was one who mostly tagged alongside his parents. He was never the most outgoing of individuals, and when he did try to interact with children his own age he found himself very awkward socially; whenever on the rare occasions where he opened his mouth, he always seemed to be ridiculed in some way or another by his peers. As a result he quickly learned to keep his mouth shut if he didn’t have anything of real substance to say, and subsequently he learned how to listen to others, to gauge them. He had his own small group of friends that he spent his free time with, although he was generally the quiet one out of the bunch.
Meanwhile, Yeforr’s antics seemed only to grow worse as he grew older. It seemed no topic or issue was safe from his scathing rebuke, including the Consortium that his father worked for, decrying its trading policies with Kushventh and other villages and how it would horde supplies or grains in time of need, or how it would often intimidate villages into accepting its deals. His parents began to seriously worry about his wellbeing if he continued to be so vocal; they made it a point never to play favorites, but their concern for Yeforr’s future caused them to spend an ever increasing amount of time dealing with him or simply obsessing about him. Aariq resented how the family was becoming increasingly centered around her older brother at her expense, but Veseris said little.
Eventually Yeforr’s mouth was opened one too many times, and the Consortium began to exert oft times “distasteful” pressure on Berem at his work to try and reign in his son. This had its own effects, but there was very little that he could do in this regard as Yeforr was increasingly belligerent and acting on his own. The situation escalated until one day Yeforr’s eccentric crusade met a wall of Consortium hired muscle head on.
Despite Beram and Zyfel’s pleas for their son, the Consortium simply wasn’t going to put up with this juvenile pest any longer. For two years he was “borrowed” for hard physical labor, and suffered a great deal more informally. When he finally returned home he was a broken young man, terrified at crossing any sort of authority and almost never laughing again.
Yeforr’s will might have been broken, but he was not the one most deeply affected by the incident. Berem, having seen his son crushed and broken by his own morally questionable employers, grew dark and brooding. He began doctoring books, draining money away (sometimes just making it disappear altogether without even collecting it himself, just to spite the Consortium). Contacts were even made with rival trading groups from outside the Valley, and confidential information was handed to them, sometimes even information that led to Consortium traders or carriages being raided by bandits.
Veseris, now on the verge of adulthood himself, was blissfully unaware of what his father was undertaking, until one day he happened upon a mysterious note that was between his father and some individual Veseris did not know of. He had no clue as to the true subject of the note and suspected it was nothing, but decided that he could indulge his curiosity for this one tiny instance. The note mentioned a rendezvous between Berem and the individual in question at a forest glen some hours away. Veseris decided to see what was going on, although he truly believed it was trivial, only that some small youthful part of him that loved excitement held the slightest possibility that it was anything of true consequence. He was not prepared for what he discovered.
That night he finally learned the truth of what his father’s true business was, and it was a prospect that deeply troubled Veseris. He decided against confronting his father directly, as that could prove troublesome. More to the point, he simply didn’t know what he could say or if it would even dissuade him from his goals, because Veseris had long ago realized that although the Consortium’s de facto rule over Kushventh and the Valley was not perfect, it was certainly better than any alternative he had seen; there was no hunger, everyone was taken care of. Heck, they even provided healers to the sick. Were their monopoly and their (admittedly sometimes heavy-handed) regulations and quotas truly so bad when they received so much? Why place it in jeopardy? So, instead, two days later, he had his own secret meeting when he contacted the Consortium, informing them of his father’s activities. For several days afterward, nothing happened, and Berem’s quiet work continued. Veseris was uncertain about everything. Had he been seeing things that night? Was that meeting, however unlikely it seemed, all part of some bizarre joke that his father had played on… someone? But then, finally, a week later it occurred.
The Consortium came suddenly. Apparently they had been quietly observing Berem in the intervening time to confirm Veseris’ suspicions and attempt to figure out the extent of how badly they had been compromised. This patience paid off as every almost every Reyn Berem had conspired with was captured, and subject to Consortium justice. Among the accountant’s accusers was non other than Veseris. The elder snow Reyn was too shocked for words when he learned that it had been his own son that had betrayed him, but after the shock subsided it was replaced by burning anger, and he said that he disowned him. The rest of Veseris’ family, including his extended relatives, were equally taken aback, and they repeatedly berated and questioned him as to how he could possibly betray his father. Once she learned the truth, Zyfel could not bring herself to talk to her son, and she never spoke to him again after the revelation. Aariq was equally offended, and beside a few hateful comments all she would do was to endlessly glare at her brother. None of them had ever expected to be betrayed by Veseris of all people. But it was Yeforr who took it the hardest. He threatened to kill Veseris and when ever they met Yeforr would scream at him incessantly. His extended family members could barely look at him. After the “trial” Berem was summarily executed.
Everyone tried to gauge Veseris’s reaction, tried to figure out what was going on in his head. But he remained stony and passionless, and did not respond to questions or accusations from his family or friends.
After his familial schism, Veseris went off to make his own life. The Consortium offered him a job with their traders, and he accepted. Driven by ambition, adventure, or a desperate desire to leave his hometown, no one could say for sure.
Out in the wider world Veseris served under an oft flamboyant but intensely focused Red Reyn named Ardik. Here he became one of the elder Reyn’s favorites, along with one other individual that Ardik felt had potential, another Red Reyn named Chuth. The two quickly grew used to each other, and throughout their travels with Ardik the two began to see each other as the brother they never truly had.
Seven years later Veseris and Chuth were sent on a mission of mediation; to arbitrate a trade dispute with the Keshmerit Tribes, a far flung, loose confederation of Gray Reyn almost on the edge of the explored world. As the Consortium had been branching out and expanding rapidly through this region, primarily via “intimidating” means (i.e. hiring mercenaries to attack and coerce most villages and tribes into falling in line), aggressive action was a distinct and even an easy fall back in the event that negotiations should fail. However, at the time there seems to have been sort of a power struggle between two Consortium higher ups with jurisdiction in the area, Gad and Vuclar, who had different plans for the Keshmerit. Vulcar argued for a “reworking” of the trade agreements to keep friendly relations with the Tribes while slowly developing de facto authority, while Gad proposed that the Consortium should simply attack the underdeveloped primitives and bring them under their heel and be done with it. At first, that was all that there appeared to be, but as Veseris examined the situation more closely, he came to realize that this battle was for favor with Consortium’s highest leaders, the Council of Eight, said council having recently grown a vacancy. Whoever won came out on top of this Keshmerit dispute was likely to gain leverage enough to fill the empty Council seat in question. Veseris respected both Reyn as competent leaders, but he felt that Vuclar was often headstrong and easily insulted, a foreboding combination of traits for a potential Councilor. Sharing his findings with Chuth, he discovered that his friend was skeptical of his arguments to break the negotiations so that Gad could move his proposed course of action forward, that slowly working behind the scenes with the Keshmerit would be a far more efficient use of resources than what Gad was proposing. Veseris attempted to argue that it was irrelevant as in the long run, Gad was a far wiser choice for a Councilor than the impetuous Vuclar, but Chuth would hear none of it. This continued for some time as the disagreement between the two caused the negotiations to stall, causing unwanted attention from all sides.
The pressure kept building, but Veseris, despite his best efforts, could not persuade Chuth to reconsider his position. Criticism continued to build, until one day when Chuth was stripped of his position and arrested by the Consortium, charged with treason. In what would turn out to be an extremely controversial trial, Chuth was accused of conspiring with the Keshmerit to preserve their Tribes in return for substantial bribes. The trial became a notoriety throughout almost the entirety of the Consortium’s lands, and many came to believe that the evidence was rigged against Chuth. Veseris once again testified against someone he was close to, and like the previous time the ruling was the same: guilty. In an impassioned speech after he was declared guilty Chuth declared his innocence to the last, staring Veseris angrily straight in the eye, who stared back in a blank an expression as ever. He was executed later that same day. The controversy of the incident never was truly resolved. In any case, Vuclar was discredited in the fallout of the, and Gad’s proposal of attack went through, and after a quick campaign he ascended to the position of Councilor.
Veseris afterward turned down offers of special treatment from Gad, even ones of promotion. Some swear it was out of guilt, other say it was to defuse suspicion that he was the one who was in someone else’s pocket during the Keshmerit scandal. He stopped speaking with his mentor Ardik, and has been devoting less and less time to his actual work for the Consortium, focusing more on strange sojourns that he refuses to explain later on, occasionally for months at a time. It is of note that in the aftermath that rumors have flown of the Snow Reyn’s intense expenditure of time on researching darker magics, energies and rituals that normally only the power hungry or the insane tend to devote their attention to. Though in addition he has focused calming, centering-of-being magics.
An employee of the Consortium, he has training in wielding knives, but prefers that only for surprise or "ending a conflict." Traditionally he eschews most armor or protection but travels in a dull unassuming gray cape.
