Quaza Illay

UPDATES TO COME: Together, Quaza and Ozymandias the Withered, travel deep into the continent of Nieden and arrive in Silkovia, where Quaza, choosing to become a citizen, trains his young architectural skills with builds and landscaping projects throughout the city; the young nomad, on an excursion to the Kingdom of Aurora, meets Acerina Alastair; and, suddenly, in the dead of night, Quaza rises from his bed and gazes into the mirror to see...a girl?!

Maturity Warning: violence, blood, war, sexually explicit content, and other nastiness is included in this character's life story. Please, read at your own risk.

Quaza Illay is the famed nomad artisan and architect of Rathnir. From homeless child, to hermit, to slave, to explorer, Quaza has had quite the interesting life, and, throughout it, he has drawn many portraits and built many buildings.

Appearance
Quaza is certainly male, but is often mistaken to be a girl because of his long hair, pretty smile, seducing gaze, and overall dress. He wears common clothes; a white linen shirt, a pear of light grey turn-up shorts, and crimson red gladiator sandals; but they pinch and relax in all the wrong areas, thus disguising whether his body is even male or female. It doesn't help that his oversized linen top drapes heavily to one side of his torso, exposing his bare shoulder, collar region, and neck - which is a common effeminate way of dress. Those unsatisfied with simply accepting he's just a pretty young man insist he's a femboy. However, Quaza will always indubitably assert that he is not.

Personality
Kind, humble, a great conversationalist, team player, and agreeable are descriptions often used when referring to Quaza. These descriptions are accurate, but there’s definitely more to his character. Quaza, taking advantage of his pretty looks, can be quite flirty, vivacious, and even somewhat lewd, especially towards women and men he finds attractive. He’s bisexual. He doesn’t mind men every now and then, but he’s often seen with women as his partners. Like any person familiar with the dangers of the world, he can be distrustful of others. He’s been plenty lied to before and suffered consequences for his gullibility - consequences he never wants to suffer again. Despite being familiar with liars and traitors, he never became one himself. He’s an honest man, and he’s not afraid to give constructive criticism or provide hard facts when needed.

Artistic and Architectural Contributions to Rathnir (So Far...)

 * Portrait of the Young Dalatra Mosulia
 * Portrait of Ozymandias the Withered
 * Portrait of Entropy
 * Portrait of Segra
 * Portrait of Ayla Pendragon-Biron
 * Portrait of Aiko Caicuria-McSpiegel
 * The Lighthouse of Silkovia, Emirate of Najer
 * The Shrine of Divine, Silkovia, Emirate of Najer
 * Fort Splinky, Silkovia, Emirate of Najer

Childhood: Where It All Started
Quaza never knew his father nor his mother. His father was deceased - apparently, a casualty of war - and his mother was gone, too - unfortunately, a casualty of the boy’s arrival. The streets of … were his home, and the local city folk raised him from a baby to a boy. Some taught him how to read a little. Some taught him how to write. One generous miner even taught him how to craft tools. Quaza would always spend hours each day watching and admiring the builders construct new sites throughout the city. These moments inspired the boy's interest in architecture, and he would soon long to create his own buildings someday. The kind city folk who nurtured him were the people Quaza came to love like family.

He never really liked the rest of the city folk though, and he had a taste for adventure - so he stole. Pickpocketing and thieving one neighbor after another. Diamonds, emeralds, gold and silver: he collected all the prettiest rocks. For a while, Quaza got away with it; however, his wicked achievements would soon be brought to public light. Mentions became whispers, whispers became rumors, and rumors became songs sung all throughout the city, with lyrics describing urban legends of the spawn of beelzebub who came to steal wives’ necklaces and pillage husbands’ chests. These songs came to ring in the ears of justice. Eventually, the city guards, guided by detectives, unearthed the whereabouts of this so-called urban legend and dragged him through the streets in chains and shackles. Quaza was sobbing all the while. He was still a boy after all, and this was his first time ever being disciplined. He would hate authority from then on and vowed never to live in the city again. Many took pity on the orphan boy, but the realization that he was just a common thief soon wiped all the pity away. Now, not a soul in the world cared. Quaza would eventually escape his binds. The adventurous spirit within him was more powerful than the lust drive of a sex-dreprived husband, so chains and shackles could never hold him long. In his escape, he fled south to the archipelagos of Eisenland, taking refuge in the wilderness.

Paradise in the Tropics: Joyful Days in the Sun
He lived his most pleasurable days on the Eisenland islands - trodding joyfully through the meadows and prairies, hiking feverishly to the peaks of long dead ancient volcanoes, and reclining peacefully in the shadows of the forest woods and the palm trees. Fish, bread, and watermelon were his main sustenance. Sometimes, he delighted in cake, but since its ingredients were extremely rare, he couldn't steal them too often. His shelter suited his new hermit lifestyle in the tropics: a small sand shack with a roof constructed of wooden blocks and planks. It was an ugly building, for sure, but it was only his first. He would learn to improve the quality of his builds over the course of his adventurous nomadic life. However, this time of his life would see the production of numerous crude and simple buildings. These were simple, yet overall joyous times.

Kidnapping and Enslavement: Terrible, Traumatic Times
Pleasurable moments, unfortunately, never last forever and Quaza’s joyous days in the sun were abruptly ended by pirates. A barbarous crew of Tortugan pirates kidnapped him and forced him to serve as their slave, and, for many moons under their captivity, he suffered…[unspeakable torment].

Some seamen who were a little more sympathetic to the boy gave him the name Illay - a name combining the words “ill” and “lay,” symbolizing the sad irony of the boy’s existence at the time. Quaza begrudgingly accepted the name.

Escape out to Sea: Freedom, Freedom, Freedom
Nevertheless, like the city dungeons of …, iron binds, even slave shackles and cuffs, could not hold him. He managed to escape the pirates, but, unfortunately, not with his dignity intact. He was, at least, able to take some treasure with him: a couple of diamonds, some gold, a few iron ingots and, most importantly, a red journal, which he would travel with throughout all of his journies through Rathnir. Escaping by boat, he sailed far and further beyond those treacherous lands, to which he vowed to never return.

Heading north and east, he hopped from island to island and from sea to sea. Eventually, he reached the shores of what was once the widely-renowned Federation of Huitca. There he traversed the isle of Ocotlan and took pleasure in visiting many of its beautiful ancient cities – notably Aequalis, with its massive stone and turquoise walls; Erenova, with its comfortable streets and scenic views of the mountain peaks; and Tlahatl, the ruined capital.

Visiting the Ruins of Tlahatl: This Place Was Better Left Abandoned
Within the ruined capital’s empty walls and its abandoned streets, Quaza found a home. A desolate place, it was, but it was also a sanctuary where the boy could finally be left alone. However, the nightmares wouldn’t leave him be when the nighttime came. He experienced terrible visions of a dark being:

Terrible nightmares, of Entropy and…events of the past, soon drove him to abandon the ruins, like the others who came and left before him.

He would sail east, where he would soon reach the shores of Bardonia.

Port Solanaria, Bardonia: A Whole New World
he streets were narrow, yet quaint. The buildings were squat, yet comfortable. The settlement was small, yet extremely lively. This was Port Solanaria, and it was Quaza’s first taste of Bardonia. It had left a good impression. The people were quite friendly, despite him being a stranger, and though he scarcely trusted anyone, they found no ill will towards him. Even one of the city guards, whose job it was to suspect every stranger, and even some of the citizens, merely confronted Quaza to teach him how to say a few words and greetings in Bardonian, after quickly and easily identifying that the boy was foreign and quite ignorant of the local lingua franca. Quaza found the place itself to be quite peaceful. The harbor was especially so, and, during the first evening of his stay, he watched the sunset descend into the horizon while reclining atop the bowsprit of a small caravel docked just along the boardwalk. He reckoned he would remember that swirly orange sky forever thanks to being in this town. It was here that Quaza began to fall in love with life, again. A part of him was moved to forgive the past, so long as his future was as beautiful as that sunset, and as lively as this town.

There was another stranger in town that day who would later spy Quaza producing sketches of the local townsfolk. He noticed the drawings were mostly portrait sketches of the pretty girls and gorgeous men that walked by. These, like most citizens of the town, were people he could never properly meet without chasing away out of fright before any proper introductions were made. His withered face and the fact he was literally a living skeleton absolutely terrified every mortal face that gazed upon him - everyone, except Quaza. The boy had seen much more horrific creatures before, so, compared to those, Ozymandias the Withered man was quite beautiful. The young artisan was the first human being brave enough to receive the withered man’s name and answer with his own in return. Though Ozy, as Quaza liked to call him, was often extremely reserved and never spoke much, almost to the point of saying less than ten sentences a day, at times, was so intrigued with the boy’s talent that he began delivering soliloquy after soliloquy - with some questions in between. The withered stranger highly regarded Quaza’s work as he looked through the numerous sketches of his red journal. Quaza was hesitant, however, to allow him to see certain pages, which held either bad, embarrassing, or explicit drawings. He only allowed a few of his writings to be read, as well. The book, despite carrying “masterpieces,” as Ozy once described, was an extremely personal possession. Whatever experiences and internal reflections Quaza experienced would no doubt be described within the pages of that red journal - many of which the boy wanted to keep private. Ozymandias had been proven, though, that the boy was skilled - skilled enough to produce his portrait, and, thus, Quaza was then given his first commission.

[Stay tuned. There will be more to come very soon!]