Azzar

Azzar also known also as Red Quarterstaff Mage, Thief of Time or Lord of Cans is a human mage and wielder of magical quarterstaff. He’s the leader of The Order of the Red Quarterstaf f, as well as diplomat and painter. As the Quarterstaff Mage, he traveled through various different worlds with the mission given by the creator of quarterstaffs. He arrived at Rathnir which is officially his eighth world. He’s being recognized by the red symbol of his quarterstaff in a red circle on a black background (or with those two colors swapped).

Personality
Because of his soul being fragmented and trapped within quarterstaff (see: First World), his behavior and personality differs at random intervals. Azzar can be cunning, manipulative and methodical at one time, to be compassionate, emotional and nonassertive several days later.

Because azzarsprites share different parts of his memory, Azzar is forgetful, sometimes to the point of being completely oblivious of his past actions. He sometimes acts contradictory to himself.

Despite these differences, Azzar tries to use it to his advantage, adjusting his personality to the person he has contact with. That proved to make him a very skilled politician and leader (most of the time).

Abilities
For some reason Azzar doesn't age. Some speculate it could be explained by his soul's state, connected to his title "Thief of Time" or the fact he came from the world where time flows differently.

Red Mage is capable of using variety of light, fire and thunder spells. Every quarterstaff matches wielder's personality and Azzar's grants him short-ranged teleportation. Despite having wide range of spells, Azzar is considered to be the weakest quarterstaff mage.

Beside this, Azzar is talented in painting and bot constructing, although because of the Order's rules he cannot bring or make them in "mission" worlds, that are not technologicaly advanced.

Before the Order
Azzar was at first a small trader, working between several villages and cities in a world that hasn’t been yet specified. At some point he made friends with a person named Kirokofi but decided to move onto a new planet, when mass migration occurred, as the response of the slow deterioration of the planet.

Desteria
This world, also known as Desteria, at first appeared as very promising land, full of possibilities. Azzar got along with another traveler,  known by the name of Miragiks. They set up a base in the mountains and started accumulating more people. They soon fell into conflict with another group led by robot Enguvru, who threatened them and destroyed part of their base. He would later travel to plunder more locations for resources.

Order encounter
At that point Azzar and Miragiks made contact with three mages: Jasi306, j23cz and Tendintis (bronze, black and green mage respectively) that turned out to be members of the Quarterstaff Order. They revealed that this world was losing their water supplies by an unknown underground source. Of course, only few were aware of that impending doom.

The Order’s goal was to save various worlds from their global dangers, like endless wars, drastic climate changes or powerful necromancers, for example. Their members have the habit of choosing people from these words that are worthy of becoming one of them, to save their home world from destruction. Three mages saw potential in Miragiks and decided to train him in magic arcs. Azzar, being his closest friend, also learned a bit and got really interested in magic.

Miragiks was later invited to the Order’s headquarters on a different planet. There, they would present a new apprentice to other mages and the Order’s leader: ᚴ, that was already preparing a quarterstaff for him. Azzar tagged along but as soon as others stopped paying attention to him, he sneaked out, exploring the temple on his own. Driven by curiosity he stumbled upon a chamber where an unfinished quarterstaff was located.

Creating a magic quarterstaff requires a lot of skill, power and patience. During that time, many protective seals must be casted upon an object to properly contain their power. Each quarterstaff consists of a special crystal trapped within a shell. The first person’s soul that touches quarterstaff upon their creation, will create a special bond with that object, making that person its owner. In all other cases, the only person that is capable of creating quarterstaffs – ᚴ, became that owner and later “lend” those to other members, making sure nobody will pose a threat to him in the future.

Azzar decided to touch the quarterstaff that was not finished and didn’t have any bond. It tried to create multiple strong connections, trapping Azzar’s soul inside the crystal, dividing it into 19 instances and creating a pocket dimension to store them. Those soul instances are called “Azzarsprites” and together they form Azzar’s personality. Every sprite has their own identity with various characteristics and because at one time, only three sprites can determine Azzar, that causes him to have mood swings, complete changes of behavior or attitude in certain periods as well as having separate memory resources.

It’s easy to guess the Order was not happy with that incident  and hunted Azzar down, but ultimately decided to let him become a part of it. The process was not reversible and destroying his quarterstaff would result in the death of the user. Thus Azzar became Red Quarterstaff Mage. Because Desteria got their new mage, Miragiks was not given a quarterstaff and it was up to Azzar to resolve the problem. The might-have-been mage held a grudge against Azzar for what happened but decided to help and support him in his quest anyway.

First Mission
It was not specified what was the cause of the drought but it had something to do with a special machine created by jasi306 that required a certain power source and few mages to activate. Azzar suspected that the needed power source was in possession of some other groups in Desteria, thus started his attempts in conquering them. During that time, he allied with some interesting people like Mlekopol, Kanon, or Maxaxik. Unfortunately, even with the help of j23cz, he was unsuccessful in his quest and the world of Desteria became a barely habitable wasteland without much water left. Azzar however, was able to escape that world with a special one-use portal that is always given to quarterstaff mages, when they begin their new mission. It can only be opened for a short amount of time and usually only few people can get through. Given that, along with the Red Mage, his allies could abscond the desert planet as well.

Second World
To repent his failure, Azzar was sent to another mission. The Second World  suffered from monster infestation that threatened the existence of all intelligent life. While the fighting hordes of creatures proved to be fruitless. Azzar decided to focus on permanently securing the existing settlements rather than defeating the source of the problem. He was doing his best but wasn't very successful.

Similar to the previous world, Tendintis and Miragiks accompanied him, but had a different approach to the problem. They became good friends during that period, defeating giant beasts and dragons. They formed a special group of hunters (that included Berlix and Nexttj among others), managed to defeat many monster nests and discovered an ancient artifact of great power that naturally absorbs and amplifies certain types of surrounding essence. They planned to use that artifact to battle monsters faster than they can appear. Tendintis and Miragiks split up, the Green Mage venturing to find more recruits and localizing monster nests, as well as other artifacts, while Miragiks was left in a small town to guard the artifact. It turned out that when it absorbed positive essence, it scared off any negative essence (that monster in that world possessed) creating a giant shield of some sort. The village soon started rapidly growing in size when the inhabitants realized it’s a safe space. Miragiks was conflicted on what to do, since it was only a matter of time that the artifact would get moved somewhere else.

Azzar at that time was able to lead a certain group of people, with Dimitrij as his right hand, reinforcing cities and abandoning them once they fell. He had a grudge against Tendintis  for leaving him, but didn’t know anything about his actions. The news about “safe city” quickly got to him and he saw it as his opportunity to finally succeed.

He managed to convince and manipulate Miragiks into keeping the artifact longer inside the city and announced to the public it will remain there forever. Citizens quickly elevated Miragiks into the status of their ruler. Other hunters hearing this, tried to retrieve artifacts themselves, not being able to reach out to Miragiks because of Azzar. The Red Mage not knowing they were Miragiks’ friends saw them as enemies trying to doom the city and hunted them down. He used a series of robotic-like creatures he met along the way, that for some reason obeyed him automatically. Through the miscomunication and misunderstanding, they thought they're supposed to neutralize the threat by killing.

When Tendintis returned, he found his people dead or missing, his base destroyed and an artifact locked with Miragiks in a fortress in the middle of the city. He went mad once he found out that Azzar was behind this. What happened after Tendintis reached the palace is only known to few people but Green Mage has never been seen ever again.

Azzar rendered his mission a success and left the world, leaving devastated Miragiks as the king of the protected, city. Miragiks later met Ryrzard, who became his advisor and dear friend.

Third World
Not much is known about the third world - it was a much more advanced world under the threat of the incoming asteroid. It was a place where Azzar was referred to as Thief of Time for the first time.

During Azzar’s stay, he met IQuick, who had teached him how to construct mechanical creatures, similar to those that Azzar encountered in the previous world. Red Mage also stole some of his blueprints and projects that were used in next missions including certain flying machines. They encountered a bizarre, mechanical location called Omen Binder, but weren't able to investigate it more deeply, because of impending doom, which Azzar failed to prevent.

Azzar escaped that planet right before asteroid arrival, taking IQuick with him.

First intermission
After that, Thief of Time began travelling across worlds to find a suitable home for himself. He visited lands made of silicon and lava, floating purple cities that completely covered the entire moon, enormous archipelago worlds made of sponge-like material and many more. He messed with many of them, trying to set up his base, but wasn’t successful. He wasn’t always using the unfinished portals that he stole from Order’s headquarters - sometimes he was using special vessels to travel between worlds of short distance.

During one of those trips, Azzar’s vessel crashed into a deserted world - either by accident or by somebody that recognized Red Mage for his past deeds and decided to kill him. The planet was not only a complete wasteland but also infested with monsters. It would be the end for Azzar, who was out of portal crystals if not for an yet another expensive magic object he stole, that allowed him to summon the closest quarterstaff mage. It turned out to be none other than j23cz (that was not prepared for that and didn’t have portals either). Together they managed to abscond the planet after a long struggle, putting aside their differences. Finally, Azzar found a mesa-like looking planet covered in tall, spiky mountains and runes where he constructed his infamous tower. It is now his home, where he returns after every mission and  works on his personal projects. This is also a refugee for all people he had rescued from his “mission” worlds. Soon, the tower was guarded by a dozen bots constructed by Azzar. Some say he had a mysterious guest one day that provided him with a design of them.

Fourth world
Fourth world was dealing with a mad and powerful necromancer that roamed around that alien planet. At some point Azzar mentioned he posed as some kind of religious figure there and faced a massive rebellion. Again, not much is known about Azzar’s doings there but at the end the rest of the Order had to be involved to finish off the necromancer that consumed almost all life energy from the planet at that point. After that incident, the Order decided that mages are forbidden from performing necromancy on their “mission” worlds. Azzar’s tower got a new inhabitant that day, called Oracle Libby. The Fourth world fell dead silent with a few Azzar’s banners still hanging from the ruins.

Fifth World
The Fifth world faced constant and ferocious war on a planet without continents with rising water levels. That meant the conflict was mostly fought on ships and flying creatures. Some say that Azzar joined the wrong side of the conflict but either way, the war hasn’t stopped - it only grew more destructive and brought destruction of multiple settlements. At some point Red Mage was assassinated by his main military opponent but his unique connection with his quarterstaff saved his life. From that moment, he always carries a special-stylized knife with him.

Azzar lost his army and the war - he was forced to leave the fifth world empty-handed. Although the conflict continued and many islands were sunk, some say that their inhabitants managed to construct flying and underwater cities to finally taste peace after so many years.

Sixth World
The Sixth world was quite a unique one, although it started like the previous ones: Azzar created an organisation that revolved around him and with their help tried to solve current global problems. They managed to lock underground some powerful beings called titans that threatened that world. Instead of leaving, Azzar felt comfortable among his people and remained among his people, including Debliniak, Juleczka, TGaming, Sonic321, iZer0, Darti, Jaru, JB, Lord Masełko, Glacade and many others. They constructed a small castle and met another group led by Tesla - who soon became Azzar’s nemesis.

Meanwhile, titans became destroying the planet from the inside, but Azzar was too occupied with his petty rivalry to notice or acknowledge that until it was too late, and the planet became to crumble - massive tsunamis and earthquakes occured, while titans fed on the core. Planet’s gravity became unstable and erratic, creating floating islands. In the final confrontation, Azzar was able to defeat one of the titans, by concentrating all of his will into one of the azzarsprites for a limited time.

Second intermission
Because the sixth world became dangerous to live in, Azzar began searching on how to undo the damage. Once again, j23cz came with the solution. It turned out that the planet where Order’s Headquarters were located met the same fate a long, long time ago. Only small islands survived that often made a dive into high-pressure depths, to reemerge months later.

Black Mage has found a solution to restore big parts of land with a special magic gravitational resonator and keep them together on a safe height, but needed a lot of people to find and gather required resources - multiple resonators were required to reconstruct a decent portion of the planet. Azzar agreed on helping j23cz with his task and soon they managed to transfer part of the population into that world. Among these people were Ardebram, MaDragon, Corot, Tyton and Ryrzard, who was looking for the way of rescuing his city from the trap originaly made by Azzar in the second world.

Their plan was going well (for the most part), but before they could try to restore the sixth world, Azzar got a new mission. For this occasion, he brought most of the people from the sixth world with himself.

Seventh World
Next planet was yet another one facing endless conflict and aggressive extraction of natural resources. This mission wasn’t easy by any means, but Azzar was disliked by several mages that wanted to get rid of him, because of his failures and the way he acquired his quarterstaff. Red Mages also caused several arguments and divisions within the Order, weakening it greatly. Surprisingly, Azzar managed to gather around himself more people than ever before (like Tytan, Corot, SzerVi, Zbojcerz, Lisav and many more), despite initial difficulties and betrayal of some people from the previous world, expecting that this land would be ruined by the Red Mage as well. His faction managed to make solid alliances and construct a powerful castle. They almost became the most dominant organisation and had a chance winning and ending the war. Unfortunately, the last battle that could obstruct this goal was lost and most of the Azzar’s people were killed.

Demotivated and hopeless, Azzar abandoned that world, taking several people that survived, returning back to his tower. He still helped j23cz in his project, schemed against Tesla and worked on his new generation of bots. He even started training JB in magic arts as his apprentice to please the other mages. Azzar was aware that if he failed his next mission, he could face some serious punishment from the Order.

Eighth World (Rathnir)
Next world was not any different from the previous one, if not way harder. Endless war cycles roamed the land, false gods and destructive religions caused suffering and posed a major threat.

Not wanting to fail, Azzar brought with himself even more people from his other worlds. In response, Quarterstaff Order asked j23cz to keep an eye on the Red Mage, to make sure he won’t mess up this time. Unknowingly to Azzar, an Emerald Quarterstaff Mage also decided to oversee.

Beginnings
Azzar gathered his people and formed an organisation he called Order of The Red Quarterstaff, just to tease his Order. Starting company emerged in the mesa biome and marched north-east, led by JB. They set up a small settlement in the Simulami Empire, although Azzar underestimated local’s organisation and strength and his party was quickly kicked out from that region, suffering few casualties. From that moment Red Mage swore his revenge against Simulami’s leader, ZenoHUN - not because of people he lost, but because he had hurt his pride.

When most of the hope was lost, the Red Order was approached by Najer representative IronJaw, who was a governor of Central Najer at that time. Azzar accepted his offer to settle down in the northern part of Najer and began the construction of Campus Ordo.

Expansion
Despite his argument with Ryszard and protests from Pomjad, the Order began to thrive and Azzar started his journey on Najer’s hierarchy, receiving a title of Lord from IronJaw shortly before his death. Some people believed that Azzar was behind Jaw’s death, as he was the last one that met up with him and gave him a drink. Alexander Vikhrov began an investigation regarding that case, finding no direct evidence against Azzar so far. Whenever or not those claims were true, Azzar followed IronJaw’s legacy and eagerly offered shelter to any refugees that happened to land in Najer. Some of them settled in the abandoned city of Pomjad and joined the Order that grew stronger and stronger with each day.

The Red Mage decided to take a second apprentice and started teaching Sleepy, after noticing a lot of potential in him. Azzar also made friends with Nova Belis, finding its state of multiple entities merged into one, familiar to his own fate. He also grew very curious on subjects of soul preservation in this world and made several paintings of Nightwater Port and his people.

Some time later, the Order expanded on yet another city and Azzar was selected as the governor of Central Najer (Jake’adh) solidifying his position both in Najer and in the global arena. He used IQuick’s blueprints to make flying machines out of local materials.

He also had a serious argument with Ryrzard who started perceiving Azzar as a villain. He later fled to Lennox.

The Discovery
Somwhere around 40 AB, Azzar discovered a cluster of mysterious crystal near pyramid of Asri Vodon. Said crystals amplified the strength of the spells. Red Mage quickly recognized the type and potential of this discovery, stating it can be used for the creation of additional portable portals for him to go in and out of the world of Rathnir. He changes his mind when Nova tells him about the way the souls from Library of The Lost venture to afterlife - Azzar found their way of ascension somehow similar to souls from Najer. With the help of mysterious individual he obtains purified ice shards but for some reason changes his objective once again, this time opting on a complex spell which requires 6 ingredients. The true purpose and outcome of the spell is for now only known to him.

Collecting the ingredients
The first ingredient which is "to contain all that's gathered into one place" was strangely found within personal stash of JB.

For the next ingredient, Azzar recquired purified ice crystals, which were delivered by Miragiks. He also temporarly left second world, but instead of trying to find magic artefact to help his people, he ventured in search of Ryrzard. Taking advantage of his deteriorating mental healt, Azzar made a deal with him. He presumably asked for something more than just crystals, offering something greater in return. The second one was obtained by dangerous spell transfering all enchantments from Pomjad's Komtur - Egap Pie (whose species characterized with natural powerful enchantment of the body). The transfer resulted in the creation of highly enchanted purified ice shard and the unintended death of Egap. Azzar made sure the whole incident appeared as an accident.

After the post-resurrection of Minalwa'Juz, Azzar as a time player, detected the anomaly and attempted to kill him for breaking the time law and disrupting the timeline, but ultimately was convinced not to, since they both were working towards the same goal.

Some time later, both of them confronted a mysterious lizardfolk called Linja'uz that was supposedly trying to transfer several people from different timeline. When confronted and accused for breaking time law, he summoned his friend's projections instead, trying to defeat Azzar and Waju. Thanks to the their teamwork, they were able to defeat Linja, unfortunately destroying him in the process. The Red Mage obtained a book from this battle, which despite being written in an unknown language, had Order's symbol on the cover. Due to increased attacks of intertimeline creatures, Waju and Azzar decided to attempt connecting current timeline to a different, more safe one. After a while, Waju is send on a mission to alternative time where Azzar became the Emir, to retrieve a Silver Crown from Silver Crownlands period in exchange for Azzar's knife from fifth world. This trade of two important and significant items would solidify the connection between two timelines. However, Azzar planned to eliminate Waju as soon as Red Mage takes the Crown, which was the third ingredient he needed. This action was partially motivated by the pressure of Emerald Mage, that visited the world and was displeased seeing Azzar working with the time outlaw. In a subtle communication Azzar succesfully communicated with his alternative self and together killed Waju, tearing him between two realities with a time spell.

Soon later (95 AB), his keep was attacked by Miragiks, Alexander Vikhrov and Afxisi - Waju from an alternative timeline. Upon discovering that Azzar stood behind IronJaw's and Waju's deaths, they teamed together to topple down Azzar, deciding to face him in a direct confrontation. They defeated Order guards: JB, Sleepy and Lawón, eventually battling Azzar in his palace. Unfortunately for them, a deadly combination of azzarsprites gone active during the fight, resulting in the death of all three of them from Azzar's hands (except Miragiks was able to revive himself). After placing the survivor in a dungeon and releasing him after a while, making sure he will not threaten the Order plans, Azzar pondered on preventing such situations in a future.

Sibkea and Sigtuna crisis
Thanks to manipulating the footage and lack of evidence, Azzar managed to avoid any reprecussion for the murder of the ex-governor, except increasing number of people against the Order.

Eventually, Azzar learned that Alexander Vikhrov was being supported Gafa - goddess representing the water. To weaken the Vikhrov family (still opposing the Order) and to have revenge on Gafa, Red Mage called Dajciemumrzec and her crew to construct giant facility underneath Kozuke'jad in order to lower the levels of underground water reservoirs, resulting in a drought in the region. At the same time, Daj was supplying the settlement with food and water, becoming rich and expanding the facility. People eventually stopped worshipping Gafa, thinking she abandoned them, which also resulted in undermining Vikhrov's family status. A significant migration occured, where Sidel clan left teh town and settled in Sibkea and Silkovia, spreading anti-Order attitude initiated by Alexander many years ago. Soon, the settlement attampted to break away from the Order.

This change of citizen attitude caused the cancellation of Grand Najer Race, organized by Azzar to increase his popularity in the country and to achieve another ingredient: the piece of hair of the fastest land creature in rathnir. The tensions between Sidel clan, led by Soonsandbash and the Order increased in the following years, resulting in a military escalation, after receiving some confidential information. Sidel was challenged to honorary battle to prove they're strong enough to break away. Order was supported by the Valondor Pirates and the Army of Lunaris Empire. The armies clashed at Sidel Pass in 109 AB, resulting in a decivsive Order victory, regaining its control over Sibkea.