(soft warnings for talks of fantasy religion, death, burial rights, etc)
My main ocs are based in a fantasy-esque environment; it isn't based off of one specific thing, (I kind of borrow ideas from lots of different places messily haha), but if you think of sort of Skyrim, Dungeons+Dragons/Baldurs Gate, that kind of setting, that's the general vibe!
Dread is my dark elf wizard - he's kind of an asshole lmao, he's got a lot of baggage but hides it behind a very 'gifted and talented child' type of ego where he was very bright and powerful for his age and has been striving to be the most revered wizard since (hes actually very burnt out but its fine its fine he's the best and everyone should know it its fine hes fine he has NO problems)
In the context of the lore/setting/worldbuilding, dark elves have different naming conventions depending on where they are from and how strictly they adhere to their religious beliefs - the main dark elf religion is that they as a race were shaped out of ashes and are in a cycle of death and rebirth, that the goddess of death takes the souls of the dead only after the bodies have been cremated. Dread's mother was a priestess and so took this all very seriously. Those particularly loyal to this goddess would have names that are somewhat more macabre and traditional - however she took it to quite the extreme and named her unwanted bastard son Dread; it's a very clear and open admission that he was unplanned, regretted, and unloved by her. His childhood was... difficult.
However the name very much feeds into his aesthetic - Dread is an adept spellcaster, particularly with conjuration magic. Conjuration magic is perhaps The Hardest magic to have any kind of skill in, as it takes decades of research to do basic things with it. Being able to create something means that you have to study it extensively. Say that, as a wizard, you want a familiar that is, let's say, a cat. You just want a little ghostly cat to follow you around and keep you company and be your companion. To do that, you would have to know all about cats. You would have to study in detail the way they act, the way they move, how things affect them, their insides and out, every little detail about their fur, their ears, their tails, so on and so forth etc etc etc. It would take a very long time of living around and looking at cats to be able to create a magical cat from thin air.
From a worryingly young age, Dread has had dead bodies follow him. Semi-cremated remains haunting him and protecting him, like his own skeletal guardians, smouldering and unalive, wisps of purple magical vapour in the shape of the deceased. Most people look at him and think that he is a necromancer, summoning the dead and tampering with bodies. He isn't.
(I thiiiiiink this is the most recent sketch I have of him - I need to rework it sometime haha)
