Roman Marvarak

Roman Marvarak is one of the main characters in the Hidden World stories. Originally he was designed to be the primary antagonist through Hidden World: London's first chapter and waged war on the city and the Tutores Latet alike. The character was created and played by Mike Lewis in the Role Play.

Appearance
During Hidden World: London, Roman Marvarak appears in two different bodies due to the necessary destruction of his original "birthed" form.

Original body - Roman's original form was of a thin, medium height man of about twenty-five. He had a light complexion due to his tendency to only venture outside after the sun has set. His face was slightly hooked, like that of most dark warlocks, with a pointed chin, curved nose, and thin, pale lips. He bore no hair on his body due to the plethora of experiments he performed on himself, other marks of his experimentation include runic, seemingly random solid black tattoos that covered his entire body (including his face and bald head). He bore the scars of years of dueling and fighting against other warlocks and mythical creatures that he hunted for his dark experiments, these scars covered most of his body, many disrupting the tattoos on his pale skin. His eyes, a vibrant, green, were slightly sunken from lack of sleep and constant stress, but showed clearly the cleverness and intelligence he concealed beneath the black monk robes that he donned almost every day.

Current body - The body Roman inhabited after his escape from his imprisonment in hell that destroyed his original body was once an experiment of his own design, an attempt to create a Frankenstein creature capable of using magic. The attempt, like many of his early experiments, failed horribly and he shut the stitched up corpse away in a coffin and buried it in a local London graveyard under the name James Artwood. This body is taller than his last, at least six feet tall, and is rather thin and lanky, appearing to be about twenty-one years of age. Dirty blonde hair covers his head and hangs down over his ice blue eyes. His face is distinctly rounded with high cheekbones and a crook nose. This body, similar to his last, is extremely pale due to being buried for the better part of fifty years, though it is possible for him to have tanned up a bit over time, should Lucinda prove able to convince him to come out into the sunlight, that is. He bares stitching scars around all of his joints from where the Frankenstein body was sewn together, though the threads are long gone and the skin has joined together properly. He bares no tattoos in this new form, though sprouts a magical mark, as such is worn by all warlocks. His appears in the shape of a white ring around his neck, almost like a rope burn. He likes to claim this signifies the death sentence the Angels decided upon for him.

Backstory
Roman Marvarak's parents were both warlocks for the Tutores Latet, and he grew up with them stressing the importance of light magics and the need to stay away from the darker aspects of the warlock world. It was his curiosity that got the better of him, rather than dark intent as is the case with most dark warlocks at a young age. He didn't want to study only one form of magic and sought out information of all sorts: light, dark, blood, necromancy, natural, any magic he could find information on, he studied. It was the darker arts that intrigued him, however, and it was that which he studied until his virtuous parents found out about his passes into darker waters.

They forbade him from continuing on his current path and watched him twenty-four-seven for months to make sure he discontinued his research. Even at this young age Roman was calculating and clever. He found ways to study magic of his interest despite the constant supervision, though any larger scale experiments would have to be put on hold. It was at age ten that this supervision became absent. His parents were both killed in the line of duty, working for the Tutores Latet.

Roman was tossed to his uncle, also a warlock with the Tutores Latet, though far stricter than Marvarak's parents. While he did his best to keep the boy in check, he would escape from his supervision for hours at a time, sometimes longer if the man was called away to work. It was around the age of fifteen that Roman found a dark warlock to mentor him, along with a several other followers of dark magics. While he tried his best to keep his actions hidden from his uncle, it was not a secret meant to be kept. At the age of eighteen, Roman slayed the dark warlock he'd been following as well as all of his students after the man decided Marvarak was becoming too powerful to control and tried to execute him, it was this massacre that put the young man on the Tutores Latet radar.

Almost immediately after the killings, Roman's uncle was ordered to kill his nephew to prevent him from becoming more powerful. It was obvious to the order that he was gaining weight in the magical world and had to be stopped while he was still young. Again, it was not meant to be. Roman killed his uncle after he attacked him, a battle ensued that leveled a small Russian town and forced Roman to flee to the outskirts of London with the Tutores hot on his trail. Despite the city being a safehaven for the order, Roman felt it would be safer hiding in plain sight than just constantly running.

The warlock plagued the city for many years, claiming victims for his dark experiments, many of which involved souls. It was his goal to gain immortality and take revenge on the Tutores Latet for what they'd done to his life. It is around this time that the story of Hidden World: London unfolds.

[More information may be added later.]

Gaining Immortality
Roman gained immortality through wicked means, the theft and combination of souls to create a super-soul that would last over the millennia. He gave up that immortality shortly after gaining it, though, in an attempt to save a woman for which he once cared deeply. He fought against the master of Hell, Satan himself, and used every last scrap of his power to vanquish the dark lord. As his life drained away and his story neared its end, the woman he saved, an Angel, turned her back on him and retreated with her brethren back to the heavens. Stricken with pain, physical and mental, Roman lay helpless as the last of his life slipped away. It was then that Londain, the Ancient One, the man Roman called his greatest nemesis, offered him a deal. Serve out a sentence for his crimes as the vampire's personal assistant, and he would save his life.

To save Roman, Londain transferred trapped souls from his magic blade to the dying warlock. By mistake or not, an Angelic soul was placed within the man's body, granting him the immortality he desired more than anything, and sealing his fate to serve his two-thousand years sentence in its entirety.

London
During the events of Hidden World: London, Roman Marvarak's intent was to destroy the Tutores Latet, obliterate London, and gain immortality for himself. He took on several apprentices through the story, though all of them met tragic and violent ends over the course of the role play.

It began with Roman preying on innocents of London, killing people, stealing their souls, and turning them into Soulless, as he called them. They could function normally but had no thought, no emotion, and did as they were ordered by their master. This was the first case of Soul Magic being used by a human warlock and it had been thought an ability restricted to those of Angelic descent only. While at first it seemed as if a rogue necromancer was attacking people, it was soon realized that it was not something so simple after the lead investigator on the case, Ames, was attacked by a warlock wielding hellfire, an extremely difficult magic to master. After pursuing him for a time, Londain realized who it was, a talented warlock who had escaped Tutores assassins a hundred and twenty five years earlier in Russia.

Once he was made, Roman went ahead with his plans, a full on assault on the city. After making deals with demons and even the Dark Lord, Satan himself, he summons an army to attack the city, to attack the Tutores Latet. While his assault was successful, and neared destruction of the city, the Angels intervened and he had a slight change of heart. One angel in particular, a woman he'd loved in his youth and who had passed on, convinced him to stop his attack. While he had his army halt, The Devil felt this was a betrayal and attacked the angels himself. Roman fought the powerful demon and the rest is history (as told in the Gaining Immortality section above.)

It was because of this betrayal that he no longer felt compelled to destroy the Tutores Latet, and instead seeks revenge on the Angels, Heaven, God Him/Herself. He believes they are as corrupt as the humans, as corrupt as the hidden world, and wishes to see them removed from power.

Author's Note
While it was my (Roman's creator) intention to have him die at the end of this first chapter, Dylan (LordTomyh and the creator of Londain and the Hidden World series) saw fit to save him and keep him on into later chapters. This was not my original plan for the warlock, but he turned out to be one of the best characters I've ever created and my personal favorite and I was thankful when he was saved. (Though Roman is and always will be my best character, his successor, Ramsey Scott, a character I created for the later chapter Hidden World: Melbourne, is well on his way to becoming another of my favorites.)