#to try to change it is to dishonor marika and that is NOT happening

[joybivision]

I wouldn’t say my backstory for him is 100% fleshed out and it’s subject to a lot of changes depending on how I’m feeling. 

I see him and Devin as coming from a coastal town that’s in close enough proximity to the Lands Between to do some trade with travelling merchants and some of the larger settlements. His father was a fisherman who went missing at sea only a year after their birth, and his mother was a fish merchant who was a devout follower of the Golden Order, having been born in the Lands Between but long since left. They were very loosely tolerated because their mother was beloved by most for having a particularly kind and generous nature, but they almost never left the area immediately around their home due to the potential of retaliation, especially when times were difficult. Being a mama’s boy, Darian inherited her adoration for the Order, wanting something higher than himself to believe in. He saw much of himself and Devin in Malenia and Miquella as well; if they could exist and be born to divinity, then perhaps they had a chance to survive after all. 

Due to its closeness to Caelid, it wasn’t uncommon for occasional outbreaks of illness to occur in town due to contaminated water and fish, and his mother died of a lesser form of rotting sickness when he was ~9. Without anyone to protest their innocence, they were hounded from the village days later, and Darian decided that he was going to sail himself and Devin to Leyndell in the hopes of witnessing the Erdtree and seeking refuge in the most sacred of places. He made as far as the shores of Caelid before dying of illness and exhaustion at the doorstep of a camp net to the Bestial Sanctum. Devin was close behind him despite soldiers’ efforts to keep him alive. It is easily the memory that gives Darian the most shame and motivates him to work as fervently he does. A part of him worries that he chose to die and leave his brother like a coward, and he promises never to let this happen again. The twins reawakened as Tarnished, but it’s not completely clear what to do at first. Their curse should make them a threat and something that violates the tenets of life, but some interpret their miraculous pilgrimage as a clear sign of divine favor. Judgment was finally given over to Gurranq, given that they died practically right next to him, and he is a holy man with considerable authority. He gave them mercy and interpreted their single soul as akin to that of Marika and Radagon and their cursed nature to many of her own twinned progeny. They serve as caretakers of the Sanctum (and Gurranq, as his mind begins to crumble) for several years until they are old enough to begin training under the Order. Darian seeks to become a Hunter of the Dead, both having witnessed them regularly entering the temple to give Gurranq the spoils of their work and having developed a special hatred for Those Who Live in Death as they so cavalierly reject the Order that he had to fight tooth and nail to become part of. Though deathroot itself painfully makes him recall memories of home, he regards it as a form of penance for his curse (and for allowing Devin to die) and embraces the discomfort willingly. He gets along well with most other Hunters although their interactions tend to be rare, but he often struggles to connect with other Tarnished due to his nature, the dissatisfaction many take with the Golden Order, and his generally sharp demeanor.