Darieth Ariessus was a Caelradin member of the wealthy Ariessus family of Elgaard and one of the founding members of the reforged Brass Blades. His attempt to discover what had happened to his missing brother Relvan Ariessus helped set in motion the contract that brought the older Brass Blades into conflict with Luther Mortanas.
House Ariessus
The Ariessus family came to the Physical Universe from Caelra roughly a century and a half before the Brass Blades’ conflict with Mortanas in the early 8750s SE. Family tradition held that their ancestors had been forced out because others in Caelra feared their power, though Darieth was not among the relatives entrusted with the full history behind that claim. In Elgaard the family became prosperous merchants and accumulated enough wealth and influence to function much like a minor noble house.
Darieth was the youngest son of the family. After his father’s death, his older brother Relvan became head of the household and was introduced to private family business that had previously been kept from the younger generation. Relvan was deeply disturbed by what he learned. He went to confront or investigate Luther Mortanas and failed to return.
Darieth asked older relatives, including his uncle Iradan, to act, but the family refused. Convinced that something had happened to Relvan, Darieth turned outside the household for help.
The Mortanas Contract
Through Brenton Woolfe, Darieth arranged for the Brass Blades to find or plant evidence tying Mortanas to Relvan’s disappearance. The plan was intended to force official scrutiny onto a man the Ariessus family would not openly challenge. Instead, Mortanas retaliated with overwhelming violence. The Brass Bastion was burned and most of the Blades involved in the job were killed. The Ariessus household was also attacked and largely destroyed.
Darieth fled to Trinswood, believing that Relvan might still be alive but that much of the rest of his family was dead. There he crossed paths with the surviving Blades, Davrek Valzorwyn and Phelps, during the lycanthrope attack that brought the new company together.
Back in Elgaard, Darieth and the Blades investigated the abandoned Ariessus home and learned more about the family’s dealings with Mortanas. Those dealings included harvesting motes of shadow from Shadowmere Cavern. At Shadowmere, Darieth encountered a being connected to an old pact affecting his family. The pact was severed, and the shadow-touched powers Darieth had previously wielded disappeared with it. The Blades never established the being’s identity or the full history of the pact.
Relvan and Odravos
The Blades eventually found that Relvan had survived but had been made a vampire by Mortanas. Their search for a cure led them to the Iron City on the Second Depth of Vharath. There they discovered records showing that Mortanas had been trafficking stolen mortal souls into Vharath for centuries.
Darieth negotiated with Azradel, chamberlain to Vezhuran, the Master of Appointments, for a means to save his brother. In exchange for Relvan’s cure, Darieth surrendered the eventual claim to his own soul and accepted future infernal service. Azradel provided the services of an Elder Succubus capable of separating the supernatural condition sustaining Relvan’s vampirism, and Relvan was restored.
The bargain saved Darieth’s brother, but it left Darieth personally bound to consequences that would outlast the immediate crisis. The cure therefore resolved the goal that had first drawn him into the conflict with Mortanas without freeing him from the cost of that conflict.
Later Adventures
Darieth remained with the Brass Blades through the wars surrounding the Djozanates of the Kenai Mountains, the expedition to Gorneduhr and Terl’Narquel, the journey through the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga, the conflict with the Cult of the Stars, and the Harrowing. During the defense of Entwood, he and Tusky operated the Fist of Beskatel while the rest of the company fought elsewhere in the city.
After the Harrowing, Darieth married and founded an orphanage in Rose Mortanas’ honor on the grounds of Mortanas’s former castle in eastern Tadrium. The choice tied the end of his adventuring career to one of the people most harmed by Mortanas’s bargains and gave a new purpose to a place that had been central to them.