Vynlarion Adrynar Highcrest VII

Vynlarion Adrynar Highcrest VII is the patriarch of House Highcrest and a Paladin healer. Adrynar is his family's administrative leader, but the substantive leader of the house is his famous father, Vynlarion Highcrest VI. He is both a Blood Knight Captain and a knight of the Argent Crusade, which had led to a great deal of cpmplications in his recent life. A gentle soul who is loathed to fight unless necessary, Adrynar struggles to find peace in a world drowning in blood.

Childhood
Adrynar was born into privilege most Quel'dorei could never imagine. His family had ruled over the Sin'Redar Province, an mountain valley rich with smithing ores and precious metals in eastern Quel'Thalas, for millennia.

With a father famous for battle and trade and a mother renowned for her fire magic and beauty, Adrynar felt great pressure to succeed as his parents had from an early age.

As a young child, he was showered with attention and was never wanting for anything material. However for reasons of trade, battle or nobility, Adrynar went months without seeing his parents. Thus, for the first few years of his life, he was under the care of the family's nannies and magisters.

To the Magistrate's dismay, yet another Highcrest did not exhibit any significant magical abilities, and thus to Vynlarion's delight, Adrynar would likely follow in his father's footsteps. To this end he was sent to train with his eccentric great-granduncle Varinal, a master armsman, to become an elven knight.

Adrynar was a kind child who, although was not shy, did not rise to confrontation often and felt uncomfortable around his father, who's grand displays of regality and righteous anger left him feeling at times scared of his father. As such, he felt closer to his mother who's infallible kindness proved to be an emotional rock in a sea of his father's intensity.

Headmaster Varinal
After seven years of being the only child he knew, Adrynar grappled with his great-grand uncle Varinal's academy. There he met countless children his own age and older, all of whom came from all walks of life. Unlike the prestigious Falthrien Academy that magisters attended, Varinal's school, known as Brightblade Academy, took in students from all walks of elven life and was even known to take on the occasional human student, though such was rare.

Adrynar had never met Varinal, and was shocked to find what a foul mouthed drunkard he was, given that he was the grandson of the famed Vynlarion Highcrest the Fourth. However, if the boy had expected to be given preferential treatment due to his relation to the headmaster, he was wrong.

There in the dusty courtyards, Adrynar found himself wholly unwelcome by his peers. Varinal had a penchant for taking on students down on their luck, and so most of his students found Adrynar to be the embodiment of what they hated: the privileged, pampered life they could never have. These students from the unseen side of Thalassian society openly told Adrynar of their disdain for who he was and what he represented.

For the gentle-hearted Adrynar, their hatred was deeply hurtful. As a consequence, during his first month at the academy, he attempted to leave. When Varinal found out he had left, he tracked down the boy and found him lost in the woods of central Quel'Thalas.

It was there, miserable and defeated, that Varinal uttered the words that would stay with Adrynar for life: "Don't run because they hate you; stay so you can prove them wrong." It would become something of a mantra for the boy as he grew up: many would see him as nothing but someone who had never known hardship, and though it would be easier to leave in the face of strife, he knew he had to say and prove to not only them, but also himself, that he was worth it.

With Varinal's encouragement, Adrynar returned to Brightblade Academy with a renewed vigour. He would show his peers that kindness was not a weakness, and that, regardless of one's upbringing, all were capable of bravery and strength.

Tal'theran
Despite having made great personal progress to discover his inner strength, Adrynar lacked the skills his father had supposedly had at his age. Battle did not come easily, and by his third year he was falling further and further behind his peers. Discouraged, he left for home when Headmaster Varinal called for a month-long break.

Adrynar had not been home in years and, although his parents had visited, he returned a different person. No longer a small child, he had grown to look like a fusion of his parents: he had his father's golden hair, his mother's eyes, his father's stubbornness and his mother's kindness.

Much to his shock, there was another youth in the Highcrest manor. Adrynar had heard of him: an orphan with unheard of magical fonts of power, but had never met him. Shortly after he arrived, the stranger introduced himself as Tal'theran.

The strange boy was two years Adrynar's senior and had long crimson hair and eyes that sparkled with mischief. He was confident and fun - two things the young Highcrest boy felt he was not. Yet despite their differences, high-born and low-born children became fast friends. They travelled the Sin'Redar Province, exploring all its hidden caves, the villages in the centre of the valley and met the miners who had laboured in the name of Highcrest success.

Adrynar had never dared go against his father's word, despite the man being nothing if not loving and rather intense, but found himself propelled into shenanigans with his new friend. Tal'theran seemed only too keen to go on their harebrained adventures, and even when they fled from Amani Trolls that had found them wandering too close to Zul'Aman, the mage apprentice did not hold it against Adrynar, who had insisted they learn what trolls were like.

It was there that Adrynar learned the heartbreaking truth of Tal'theran's years before being brought in as his father's ward. Living largely on copper coins and in constant fear of Murder Row vagrants and callous city guards, the former wishing to steal from him and the latter wishing to toss him from the city. One night while fleeing from the trolls they had aggrivated, Tal'theran broke down and admitted his darkest secret: in those years he wanted nothing more than to die.

Adrynar felt his understanding of the world fall apart. He had met the underprivileged, the ignored and hated of society in Brightblade Academy, but never had he heard what they went through. His kind heart broken, Adrynar pledged to Tal'theran that he would always be his friend, and for as long as they were friends, he would never again wish for death.