#Rafael Istrati Wolff

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Vampires of the Istrati Clan

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like ashes staining your garb

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Any information about Fortuna? I know you don't draw them too often, but I always really liked their design and they seem like an interesting character.

Oh he’s my most dear disaster child to be honest, and I should really draw him more often. Working on him and his dad’s story part is still a thing I need to work on. I think this is going to be much, so I’m going to apologize for the length of this text beforehand, gahaha. Born in the year 1120 as the child to a skilled alchemist, Gabriel Amecke, Fori’s life went wrong from the very first day on. Gabriel was fascinated by dragons and the way they change the face of the land with their steps, their movement. Morbidly fascinated, to say, as he started to more and more wonder about finding ways to contain the magical essence of a dragon, killing them without the need to use the sword of the respective dragonand thus removing the danger of the magical radiation from a dragon. And to his luck, he lived near one - Behemoth, a living forest, giant, monstrous, and calm. 

Noticing the alchemists research a wild god named Duredhel approached him in the woods, promising him his support, as the dragon had been a thorn in his eye for long.  Together they found a way to kill the dragon, or so they thought - as the experiment failed.  Behemoth, now reduced to a somewhat undead husk of his former self, started to taint the region with his blood spilling out of the countless wounds his body had suffered. The change was slow, but over the course of barely three years the area was not able to be inhabited anymore. Cecilia, his wife, already figured out what was going on, and put him in front of an ultimatum - face the dragon once more and try to fix his mistakes (even tho she was aware it would end in his useless death) or take their child, Fori, then 4 years old, and leave.  The choice was clear for Gabriel, so he traveled north to Bacharach with Fori.  Many people were put in front of the same question as well - stay, and try to survive, or escape.  Soon everyone who suspected something, or figured out his work as well, was either dead or scattered through the lands. Everything seemed clear for a fresh start, as an alchemist was always welcome in many cities, providing important work. But the past was already starting to catch up.  Gabriel, growing older, and damaged by the magical radiation Behemoth and his death put on him, raised his child to be his apprentice in the laboratory.  There was a reason Gabriel traveled north, tho, as a friend of his, a surgeon lived in that very town.  When Fortuna was born, he was blind damaged by the magic Cecilia was put in front of unknowingly, but together with the help of said surgeon, Gabriel tried to restore his son’s sight. And it worked! For once, one of his riskiest endeavours worked out.  The years passed, and went rather peacefully. Fori grew into a rather skilled alchemist as well, but barely understanding anything about his past. It was nebulous to him. There were key moments, he knew of his former blindness and that he had to tell no one of it, he knew of Duredhel, he knew of his mother having left him - but that was it. Gabriel still worked closely with the surgeon together, providing medical equipemt and tinctures, and it came to happen that one day the surgeon had a new apprentice - a young man named Rafael. His two older sisters were already learning under the same trade by the same person.  Fortuna and Rafael became good friends, working together and during time Fori learned that Rafael was actually a mage, something he tried to keep hidden as being able to use magic was seen as dangerous in their society. As his family became aware of it as well, he was sent to leave and his sisters, the only part of his family that would still treat him well took him in. Now with Rafael learning under the very same person that Gabriel went to for help and being a close friend to Fortuna and his father, the mage started to uncover, slowly, just how deep rabbit hole went.  The two stayed friends, never the less, Rafael fully understanding that he knew too much, but their town started to notice that the man was a mage in truth, and became wary of him. Gabriel, now fearing about both his secret and Rafael’s life helped him to flee, and thus he traveled east, leaving behind his former life, in search for a new place to be. A year later, Gabriel finally succumbed to his wounds and damaged body, and died.  Fori, now having lost both his best friend and his father, then started to uncover his past as well realising the damage his father’s work did to Behemoth, as well as an old friend reconnecting with him - Duredhel. In short, the story of Gabriel is about a coward who tried to atone for his grave mistakes the wrong way, and the story of Fortuna is that of a child being born into a life worse than he deserved, with problems to mend that were not his.

And as another little funfact, yes that Rafael is the one who would later become part of the vampire clan of the Istrati. 

Gods I wrote way too much but the second I get going, man. The year numbers btw do not correlate to real world, Skinda has a different way of setting time, and many regions have different year zeros. 

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HOLY FUCK YOUR PAGES OF BOOK OF THE SUN????? AMAZING I AM JUST,,,,,IN AWE THAT IS AMONG THE BEST ART I HAVE SEEN IN AGES HOLY CRAP (ALSO IF ITS FOR A BOOK OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT IT BECAUSE IM IN LOVE WITH IT ALREADY) LOVE YOU AND YOUR ART

THANK YOU SENDING LOTS OF LOVE TO YOU AS WELL At this point I’m never sure how to answer whether the BotS pages are for an actual book, because the entire thing, as I imagine it, is just such a monster of worldbuilding and lore, my heart yells I need to do it and how fun that project will be, my brain goes “dude holy fucking shit”. The Book of the Sun is a centuries old book written by the Istrati vampires about their own clan, as well as other events that massively influenced their society, be it the local mortalkind of vampire society involving other clans. It is written by many different clan members over the course of the centuries, starting from the very founders of the clan in the year -839 when they became independent from their mother clan until the point where the only vampires left are the three adoptive sons of the last High Lady, after she died at the hand of a wild god nearly 1500 years later. Due to that, and this is what I still want to tackle with that project, there are also different kinds of art styles, ways things are written, drawn, etc, in it.  The black-golden pages are a constant in it, nearly everyone who gets to add a page to the book creates one of them, but there are also more traditional ones, with black ink or similar. The three adoptive sons (Rafael Istrati Wolff, Jarek Istrati Sekerak, Vasil Istrati Zaharias) of said High Lady (Eleonora Istrati Buzarnescu) are also the characters I basically write, think, do most about.  tl,dr: My mind goes wild every 5 seconds I stand still and creates even more lore for this world