Sebastian Pravus
Description
Dark brown hair, nearly always charmingly disheveled, hides just enough of his sky blue eyes to lend a touch of mystery, even if they sparke with wickedness from time to time. His aristocratic features are finely lined with a strong jaw, and straight nose, arched brows, and lips that curve easily into a wry smirk or a rakishly boyish smile. He has a slender yet athletic form, and his hands bear a few minor imperfections due to the work that he does with them, marking him as some manner of artisan.
Personality
Sebastian waxes and wanes from moments of inspired brilliance to profoundly disinterested lethargic ambivalence. Seemingly erratic, he will obtain a new obsession and pursue that inspiration with a sort of single-minded devotion and intensity. During these periods, he will work obsessively until he has created the vision that drove him, before once more retreating to his general malaise. The artist seems to show the same sort of obsessiveness over people, finding an object of interest and searching for something within that individual, and manipulating them with a deft hand, always searching for something and not quite finding it. He has a cruel faculty for it. No matter how many have been told to avoid getting entangled with the Pravus Lord, he seems to rarely be lacking for attention, or a trail of broken individuals left behind who mutter about his inconsistency and madness. And yet, there are those who have grown close enough to Sebastian to know that there is more to the man than meets the eye, or the reputation.
Background
Born just twenty minutes after his sister Juliana, a fact which she rarely lets him forget, Sebastian had the life of wealth and privilege any young lord could come to expect in Setarco. As he grew into a life of opulent but dull comfort, he felt listless and was left craving intellectual stimulation and deeper sensations, and discovered he had two passions. He enjoyed the act of creating artistically, controlling a piece and molding it into haunting works to evoke precisely the right emotions from precisely the right people. Perhaps even more than that first passion, he was intrigued so deeply by what motivated people that saw his art. What made them experience joy, sorrow, wonder, or rage. He studied their quirks, their dreams and goals, and how to manipulate and evoke precisely the right response with his art... and then his words... and then his actions. They were art, after all, and so many could be so much better if they were clay under his hands. Inevitably, in many cases, he'd be captivated with some commoner woman and see what it took for her to not just love him, but worship him, before casting her away as another experiment. His callousness had the family spending a small fortune to keep covering up these dramatic scandals of broken individuals left in his wake, as well as moving him from one southern court to the next until the pressure had died down some. As such, he spent a good deal of his time outside of major cities, and while his sister often accompanied him, he would often return to his first passion in art. He would never consider himself a master, but the passion and drive was still there, and soon he'd be attracting the interest of individuals with the most interesting flaws that could be sliced away with a word. And so it would begin again. After the last scandal in Setarco, he was sent to Arx, where perhaps his talents would serve the family well, if he could just be controlled.
Upon arriving in Arx, Sebastian found the same patterns repeating, and eventually he returned to Setarco for a time, to his studio and to his sculpting, but something had changed. He withdrew from his usual social circles and rumors that the periods of darkness and brooding had grown more frequent. Some other obsession had taken the Pravus Lord, and eventually he gave away all of his sculptures, his work shifting to painting images that he claimed came from dreams and nightmares, dark works that contrasted sharply with those he might have been asked to create by others. Then the call came from Belladonna Pravus to return to Arx. His sister, Juliana, had already traveled ahead of him, and when he put the finishing touches on his last piece, he let go everything from his studio in Setarco, and made his way to Arx for perhaps a new beginning. Quiet. In the time since his return to Arx, certainly he has been seen at social events, rumored to have participated in the retaking of Luciva, and continues to produce art. However, no word of further scandal seems to have followed him. Has he finally been controlled? Has he merely become more subtle and refined since his arrival? Or is it only a matter of time?
