Sylanis Vezalias

Dossier
Sylanis is also a very powerful biotic, rivaling even an asari matriarch if he exerts himself enough. Possessing an experimental L2 implant, Sylanis is able to channel much more dark energy than normally feasible by other L2 biotics, but at the cost of his own health. He is able to inflict massive damage to his surroundings, but in doing so, can unintentionally injure himself.

His biotics are volatile and unstable, much like Sylanis himself. Hostility, aggression and violence are a big part of how Sylanis comes across to others. He is arrogant, and comes across as having something of a superiority complex. In his old eclipse gang, Sylanis was known for being callous, cynical and disrespectful of others. He also fights dirty. If he sees an opening in his opponents stance, he will take it; and he isn't above cheap shots, or attacking from behind. As one may imagine, these traits didn't exactly make him popular amongst the general population. Though Sylanis may exhibit many traits of a sociopath, he isn't one. He tries to acts cold and apathetic, often acting as if he is above others; however it is more of a self-defense mechanism than his true personality. He has been betrayed many times in the past, and has found that a cold and hostile exterior will drive others away. While he is usually not sociable as a person, he can occasionally be witty. Sylanis can come up with some fairly creative insults on the spot, and isn't afraid to spit them out. He can have a surprising amount of snark in his deadpan delivery as well.

History
Deep in the bowels of Omega station, where poverty ran almost as deep as the illegal eezo trade, Viteria Vezalias worked the streets as both an escort and an eezo drug mule. In 2152, she gave birth to her first child, unaware that one of the eezo packages she had smuggled inside of her had burst, exposing the fetus to the element. While she gave her boy a name, that was the first and last thing he ever received from her. She continued to work as if the child didn’t exist, all to feed her drug habit.

The boy, Sylanis, essentially raised himself for the first portion of his life, with little effort put in by his mother. Though he was still thankful to her for providing him food, and some twisted semblance of love, that all quickly turned to hatred when she sold him to a krogan drug lord for five pounds of hallex.

He wasn't sure what the krogan's intentions were for him, but he knew they weren't good. The krogan kept him locked up in a small cage along with several other children. He would use them as a form of free labour to clean his warehouse, or, when he was particularly angry, he would take his frustrations out upon them in the form of beatings. These other children, either turians or salarians, were Omegas rejects; forgotten and abandoned - but the krogan was a different story. He was ancient, even by krogan standards, and had been alive since the genophage. It had changed him, not just physically, but mentally as well. What was once a proud battlemaster slowly shriveled away into a twisted creature, only out for revenge. Now, on his final few decades, the krogan sat upon his throne, selling drugs and torturing the ancestors of those he blamed for his misery.

The young Sylanis despised the krogan, and spent many of his waking hours plotting every possible scenario in which the krogan would meet his demise. It was like this for three full years, until he finally started reaching adolescence. This was around the time that his biotic talents started to develop. Though they were weak, they made all the difference. Sylanis would often practice with his biotics when he was left alone. They got stronger, month by month, and one day, he tested them on the lock to his cage. The tiny mass effect field he created disengaged the lock, and he was finally free. Shocked at first, he quickly regained his senses and fled the compound. While the other child that was in his cage became free as well, the others were not so lucky. Sylanis had no connection to them, and therefore he didnt think twice about fleeing from that place without looking back. Sylanis ran into the streets of Omega where he snuck aboard a shuttle destined to the farthest away district possible.

For the next ten years, he scrounged the Kima district’s streets and dumpsters, salvaging any items or parts and selling them to merchants for a cheap price. He earned just enough credits to scrape by, but many days he would go hungry. Eventually, the salvaging turned into stealing. Though he knew this was wrong, he was desperate. Soon enough, any remorse he had over stealing, disappeared.

The more he stole, the better he got, and the better he got, the more money he had. Though he still classified as a drifter, he finally slept in hotels more often than he slept in the streets. The hotels were dingy and grimy, but it was still a roof over his head. It was still a place he could relax for at least a few hours of his life.

One day, he stole from the wrong person. Though he didn’t know it at the time, the asari he stole credits from was a high ranking member of the eclipse gang. An intelligent woman, she took notice of the young turian attempting to stealthily relieve her of her belongings. The asari thought it was humorous at first, and quickly got the upper hand as several of her own men grabbed Sylanis and held him down. Though she planned to beat the petty thief within an inch of his life, she got quite the surprise when Sylanis escaped the guards hold with a weak, but unexpected burst of biotic energy. The guards were almost instantly back upon the young turian, knocking out a few teeth in the process, but the asari was more than a little curious. A turian outcast with biotic potential? There were endless possibilities waiting to be explored.

As her men were done with the turian, the asari introduced herself as Eres T’kevos, an asari matron, and one of the members of Eclipses inner circle. Sylanis recognized the name right away, as she had something of a ruthless reputation on the streets. He half expected to be executed right then and there, but instead, T’kevos offered him a deal. Join Eclipse. Work for them, and he wouldn’t have to steal another single credit again.

With the chance to turn his life around, Sylanis accepted the deal, even though something in his gut screamed that there was something terrible in store for him.

He was around the age of 15 when he first officially started to run with Eclipse. His missions were boring, usually being a simple guard duty for something that really didn’t need to be guarded. In reality, T’kevos was only trying to gain Sylanis’s trust as she worked on her much more involved plan with him.

Several months after being accepted into the organization, Sylanis was approached by T’kevos again. She said that she had something special planned for him; something that would make him one of the strongest and most important people in the organization. Sylanis believed her. He trusted the woman with everything, and accepted her offer without even asking for the details. Afraid to disappoint the one person who actually saw potential in him, he said nothing as she explained what she wanted to do.

T’kevos was a scientist, her intelligence and problem solving skills rivalling even a salarians. For the past several decades, she had been developing a prototype biotic implant. Working off the model of the old L2, she created something that she said would amplify biotic powers significantly greater than anything else on the market. However, she just needed a test subject. Someone “brave enough” to do this for her. Sylanis, unwilling to let the woman down, accepted wholeheartedly. T’kevos then began the procedure.

What she didn't tell him was the cost of the implant. Not the cost in credits, but rather, the physical toll on the body. The implant was experimental, that was for sure. With the side effects that T’kevos was projecting, no company with even a sliver of a moral compass would even consider helping her. That meant, she needed test subjects to try it out on, but the problem was; she was unwilling to test on any other asari. T’kevos was something of an elitist, believing that the asari were the superior race in the galaxy. With the new implant working, she believed that she could make the asari rise up and stand out from the others with their biotic power alone…. She was delusional, of course. While she was correct about the implant being able to amplify much more biotic power than the others, she didn’t take into account the detrimental effects it would have on the body. The more dark energy that the implant allowed its user to channel, the greater the cost.

When Sylanis awoke from his surgery, he was already plagued by migraines. Though T’kevos told him that it would pass, the pain was almost unbearable. He was bedridden for the majority of that week, and all the while, T’kevos was running tests. She was dissatisfied with the way his body was reacting to the implant, but chalked it up to be from his “inferior turian blood”. Finally, frustrated from waiting around so long, the asari finally loaded Sylanis up with an unhealthy amount of painkillers and set him loose on his very first true mission.

This mission was very much unlike his guard duties prior. This was an assassination; and truth be told, he was terrified. He had never killed a person before, and with his health being shaky at best, Sylanis seriously doubted his own ability to get the job done at all. Still, he did not wish to disappoint, so he took the arsenal that was given to him, and went on his way.

He found his target eventually at a bar in one of the middle class districts. While Sylanis had pictured the man to be a gruff krogan brute and the epitome of evil, he was truly quite the opposite. The man was a turian, cleanly dressed in a simple outfit. The dark colony markings that ran down his face matched the warm brown to his eyes, and most of all? He looked kind. As Sylanis approached, hands trembling and eyes wide in fear, the man actually asked if he was alright. Their eyes were locked for what seemed like eternity, until T’kevos voice echoed throughout Sylanis’s thoughts.

“Don’t disappoint me.”

Sylanis grabbed the gun, aimed, and fired. The bullet penetrated the man's forehead and blasted out the other side, along with part of his skull. Sylanis was out the door and sprinting down the back alleyways before many people even knew what happened. Eventually, he was out of breath and collapsed in an alley a good distance away from the bar. When he realized what he had just done, his legs simply failed him. He collapsed onto the ground only held up by his shaking arms as he expelled the contents of his stomach onto the alleyway floor.

This was it. There was no going back from this.

Hours later, he slowly made his way back to the Eclipse hideout. T’kevos was there to greet him, and Sylanis heard for the first time in his life how proud someone was of him. Though this didn't erase the guilt he felt over taking the man's life, it did make him feel that maybe he somehow set upon the right path.

While his skill grew, his morality fell. Soon enough, he hardly even flinched while taking a life. Over the course of several years, Sylanis racked up a fairly high kill count with his assassinations. He also joined in advanced biotic training for members of the eclipse. Though usually only reserved for their asari members, Sylanis’s skills were more than enough to warrant his acceptance into the program.

Word on the street soon picked up the name, “The Ghost of Kima District,” in reference to Sylanis’s pale appearance and his rare ability to biotically “blink”, or teleport from one place to another. He became something of a myth in the districts of Omega he frequented, though nobody could put a name to the face.

While his biotics became much stronger, and surpassed what a regular turian biotic could normally handle, they came at a cost. Sylanis is plagued with debilitating migraines, suffers from occasional bouts of tremors, and his heart has developed an arrhythmia due to the overexertion that the implant caused. His life expectancy became significantly shorter, though T’kevos made sure to omit this fact upon his examinations.

Though he had made a life for himself now, the past still haunted him. Particularly, the krogan who tormented him in his younger years. It finally reached a boiling point when Sylanis vowed to himself that he would find the man again, and murder him. Soon enough, it came to be.

The krogan had not moved from his old hideout. He still sat upon his throne selling red sand to the highest bidder, and still had children in the warehouse, doing the work that nobody else would. Sylanis waited until he was alone before he struck. The krogan put up an excellent fight, and Sylanis found himself calling more and more upon his biotic abilities to get himself out alive. They were both wounded and exhausted when Sylanis decided to go all out. Though he had never attempted to channel this much dark energy before, he thought that there was no better time to try. It was nearly a fatal mistake. His modified implant allowed massive quantities of energy to be channeled through him at such an alarming amount he was nearly unable to stop. The biotic meltdown resulted in an explosion that vapourized the krogan, some of their surroundings,  and nearly Sylanis himself. He fell unconscious before the destruction could have gone beyond that.

Weeks later, he awoke in one of Omega’s medical wards. He was told that they discovered his body after a fire broke out in a warehouse, along with the corpses of several others. He was suffering from a cerebral hemorrhage when they found him, and without their treatment, he would have likely died. The medical staff asked questions, to which Sylanis gave them the silent treatment. He then made a quick exit a few days later when there was talk of getting authorities involved.

Sylanis made his way back to the Eclipse hideout where T’kevos was impatiently waiting for his return. He explained to her what had happened, and instead of being furious with him, she was actually quite pleased. She wanted to know every single detail about what the implant had done, and how it had worked out for him. Despite the desperate need of rest he was in, he sat down and explained every single detail to her.

T’kevos and Sylanis grew closer after that, and the asari almost turned into something of a motherly figure for him, despite her only true interests lying with the implant. She had grown more powerful in the Eclipse inner circle as well, thanks to the work of her biotic research, and she ended up working directly under the founder, Jona Sederis.

After getting the word out about the of these enhanced implants, Sederis sent the pair to the Citadel to meet a potential investor into T’kevos’s work. Sylanis was to act as her bodyguard, and was also there to help showcase their “product”. When they finally got to the meeting point however, it was revealed to be a setup.

Members of the blue suns had managed to intercept the message, and executed the original investors before they arrived. Now as T’kevos and Sylanis were cornered and outnumbered, they had to fight their way out. While the duo both had an impressive biotic skillset, they were eventually overpowered by sheer mass and cut off from each other. T’kevos had a bounty on her head that they wished to collect, but Sylanis they did not need.

Though the incident with the Krogan was nearly a month prior, Sylanis was still feeling the effects of the biotic meltdown, and his attacks were weaker than they normally were. One of the batarian members pulled out a knife, and as Sylanis was held down to the ground, he was stabbed multiple times in the head. The only reason he was able to escape the assailants was his ability to biotically blink. He essentially teleported from the grasp of the men, and was able to flee on foot down the alleyways.

Terrified, in agony, and blinded by his own blood, Sylanis ran. He ran until he had cornered himself in an alley nearly a mile away, and he sat there for a good few hours trying to stem the bleeding.

T’kevos was lucky. Instead of being kidnapped by the blue suns, she was arrested by several off-duty C-sec guards that had happened to hear the commotion. Eventually they recognized her as wanted in Citadel space, and she was arrested along with the members of the blue suns gang. After finding out that Sylanis fled the scene and left her for dead, T’kevos was furious. During T’kevos’s incarceration, Jona Sederis, the head of Eclipse, was able to pull a few strings due to a few favours owed, and the blame of the entire incident was transferred to Sylanis. Instead of getting time behind bars, T’kevos got off with a warning.

Meanwhile, knowing that he would likely bleed out sooner rather than later, Sylanis made the decision to kidnap a doctor. Dr. Lucina Noctiva was taken at gunpoint after her shift was over, and she was lead back into an old eclipse safe house where she sutured Sylanis’s face back together. Lacking the proper equipment, the stitches were haphazard, but still functional. He disappeared soon after, but not before Lucina was able to get a message out to the police as to his location.

After a thorough search of the area, Sylanis was eventually found and arrested. Special inhibitor restraints were put on him to make sure he wasn’t able to simply blink away as he had done so many times. After a trial, he was found guilty of the original crime of trafficking illegal goods, along with additional counts of murder that carried over from his time on Omega. Sylanis was incarcerated and was supposed to serve his sentence out in a high security prison on Palaven; or rather, he was supposed to have been. The transit drivers were paid by the Blue Suns gang to "mix up" several prisoners during a transfer, and Sylanis, among a few others, landed themselves in the Blue Suns-run Purgatory jail.

Two years, he spent in there. Most of his time was in isolation due to the inhibitor restraints put upon him and the sedative they pumped through his veins, so time eventually became meaningless. It wasn't until the year 2185 that he finally encountered some more action.

One minute, he was attached to the inhibitor as he had been for the past two years, but the next minute -- freedom. The inhibitor shut down, and the door to his cell opened. It was a dream come true, and Sylanis wasted no time in seizing the moment. He fled from his cell, running down the corridors and occasionally blinking away when someone got too close. That’s when he realized how bad things had gotten.

The entire station was in chaos, and he immediately began searching for an escape route. While there were no obvious ways out, Sylanis was able to locate a small cargo shuttle in the maintenance bay. He wasted no time in taking it for himself, departing the Purgatory station and flying as far away as the shuttle would take him.

Sylanis was lucky; the cargo shuttle contained enough food and water to last a single person for years. Unfortunately, he lasted only about a week before he was going nearly stir-crazy from the lack of stimulation. At least back in the jail, he was sedated. But now? He had to find something else to do.

After scouring the slightly-less-legal side of the extranet on an omni-device he had found in the shuttle, Sylanis found his next job. A salarian scientist by the name of “Garan Herix” was looking for a discreet, yet efficient protection service. Sylanis immediately took interest, and soon after, he was hired.

For several months, he followed Herix everywhere, protecting him from anyone who dared to make an attempt on his life. There were a few who tried, but only one who came close to succeeding.

She was an asari assassin, contracted by an unknown organization to take back one of the items Herix had apparently stolen from them. She was young, but ruthless and didn’t hold back. Unfortunately for her, neither did Sylanis.

She had staked the pair for quite some time, waiting in the shadows for the perfect opportunity to strike. Unfortunately, she waited too long, and just as she made a move to lob off Herix’s head, Sylanis saw her from the corner of his eye. The shockwave he fired off at the last minute knocked her off balance just enough so that the tip of her sword only grazed Herix’s cheek. While the salarian scuttled off to safety, the duel began.

Their skills were evenly matched, perhaps even more so favoured on her side. It was their abilities that turned the tide of the fight. While Sylanis was careful not to overexert himself, he did make well timed usage of his blinking ability. The fight went on for several minutes of the woman missing her mark as he simply vanished. Her attacks became more and more reckless until Sylanis was able to disarm her sword with another shockwave. Acting swiftly, he took the sword for himself, and in a span of two quick moves, he blinked behind the now panicked asari and plunged the blade into her back.

Her death wasn’t instantaneous, but Sylanis cut what little of her time remained down when he used her own move against her and cleaved off her head with her very own weapon. Finally, it was over. The battle was a good boost in confidence for the man, and he kept the sword, along with the disciple shotgun she ignorantly left holstered.

Herix raised his pay after that incident, and the coming months mostly consisted of Sylanis transporting the Doctor to wherever he needed to go in the stolen cargo shuttle; now their defacto ship aptly named “The Viteria”. Things were looking up for the second time in his life.

But when did things ever go right for him?

The Reapers attacked, but Herix was prepared for it. With Sylanis still at his heels, they turned their ship around back towards Omega. The salarian had apparently been planning for this all along, and had the start of some sort of bunker hidden away in the station. Before they could reach their destination however, their ship was struck by a rogue beam which disabled the drive core. Herix was already aboard the one and only escape pod and ready to eject, but Sylanis was back in the engine room desperately trying to bring it back to life.

The ship, as rusty and insignificant as it was, had grown on him. It was the only semblance of a home he had ever had, and there was no way he would simply leave it there.

Fires started to form, polluting the air with smoke, yet still Sylanis refused to leave. Eventually Herix, having his one goal in mind, released the escape pod and set it on a course to Omega; leaving Sylanis behind in the burning husk of the Viteria.

After an explosion in the drive core, it went blank for Sylanis, and what happened after could either be classified as extremely lucky, or extremely unlucky.

Passing by the wreckage of the Viteria was a Reaper scout ship. Thorough as they are, several servitors were sent inside to scan the wreckage for organics. Sylanis was discovered. Unconscious, he was still alive, but fading quickly. Seeing his potential to become a marauder, the servitors quickly packaged his body away in a pod and sent him in a transport carrier to one of their hidden artificers.

It was only by chance that he was placed in the same room as none other than General Caltaneus, and even more so that his pod was opened in the first place by the organization known as RIFT. He was confused, injured and disoriented, but he was able to hold his own in battle well enough that RIFT allowed him to return to their ship alongside the crew.

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous. On the contrary, he was terrified of what the future held for him - but RIFT was the best hope for the galaxy. Even though Sylanis didn’t feel like he owed the galaxy anything, he couldn’t simply stand by and watch it burn.