Taniriel Gortien grew up in a family that remembered the ancient magics—though usually only one Gortien every few generations could make it work. It was a closely guarded secret, though it has gotten out before. The Gortien family has had so many strange people and occurrences around them throughout the generations that their family name is often used as a curse in the town where Taniriel grew up, a small, superstitious town near Egorian called Golte. In Taniriel’s early years, he did all that he could to distance himself from this stigma. He participated in as many “normal” activities as he could, though at home he was still forced to study his families arcane history which skewed his idea of normalcy. One activity that Taniriel grew to love was dance. His fascination with dance began before he could remember. He always loved dancing at festivals, and did so as much as he could. But his 10th year is when this obsession was cemented. That year a bard came to the small town to celebrate Loyalty Day, and there Taniriel saw a dance like he’d never seen before. He began to aspire to such graceful movement and spent whatever time he could learning and practicing the dance.
Throughout all of this, Taniriel continued to study magic. But his parents were a little too enthusiastic about its teaching. They grew careless about hiding what they could do--which wasn't much--and the people of Golte were eventually stirred up against the Gortien family. In the middle of the night, a mob came to punish the Gortien family. In the heat of the moment, one of them ended up burning down the house, the family locked inside. Taniriel’s parents were able to use their magic to get him out, but they died as they did. Taniriel ran. He ran to Egorian and lived on the streets there for a few years before he was able to find acceptance in a local orphanage.
It was hard work in the orphanage and Taniriel was not able to take time to practice his dancing. Aside from that, with his parents death, he seemed to find a new desire to study what they had been trying to teach, though again he could not while at the orphanage.
As he grew, these desires grew in Taniriel as well. As soon as he was old enough to get out of the orphanage, he began looking for work, wherever he could find it, though he searched most often as a dancer in an inn, and was almost always turned down in that respect. He worked to support his study of dance, and when he began to find regular enough work, he began searching out those texts he could remember from his childhood. As he studied those texts, he found reference to others like them and began seeking those out. As he got to practicing, his measured movements from dancing helped him with the measured movements necessary for casting spells. It even helped him find a way to disguise those movements—though he still had not managed to make anything happen. He soon began to think of these arcane rituals as a simple hobby to connect him to his parents. But he enjoyed every moment of it.
Taniriel spent many years like this in Egorian. But by the age of 30, he had grown tired of this city. He moved on. By this time he could dance rather well, and was even often paid for it. He took this opportunity to find some of the more obscure texts he had heard of, deepening his study of the Arcane. One of these attempts—just over the age of 35—took him to some ancient ruins. There were many fascinating things there—Though Taniriel had no idea what most of them were, and he got caught up in examining them. As he was studying these strange things, Sir Nicolo Cosma came along surprising Taniriel. It didn’t take Taniriel long to realize that Sir Cosma knew what some of these strange items were. He spent the day listening to Sir Cosma lecture about these ruins, completely fascinated. It was night by the time that they ended their discussion and so they camped together for the night. That night, they were attacked by some wild goblins that considered these ruins as sacred ground. Taniriel’s skill with a sword was lacking, and he still believed his arcane training to be only myth . It was only through the amazing swordsmanship of Sir Cosma that they managed to escape. Taniriel traveled with Sir Cosma as far as the next town, and began some training with the sword. He was terrible at it, but he persevered. He began to add sword training to his repertoire whenever he could.
After 5 years of studying this way, he began to notice strange things. His practice with the sword began to unlock his arcane ability. As he began to realize this, he began studying both the sword and arcane magic almost feverishly. He began to create his own style of fighting that combined his dancing, his parent’s arcane training and the sword. He learned to combine these through long hours of arduous practice. He has not used this style in real battle yet. Nor does he ever plan to, but the combined flow of dance, battle and magic feels so good, that he cannot stop practicing.
