Zuriel

Partner: Keshet Best Friends: Renly, Jude Relatives: Betzalel Elemental Alignment: Shadow Alignment: Neutral Good MBTI Type: INTJ Theme Song: Artificial Light Name meaning: Hebrew צוריאל. "The lord is my rock."

Pronouns: He/Him/His Role: Cursebreaker Likes: Scarves, pies and cakes, pop music Dislikes: Whispering, seafood, hospitals Hobbies: Baking and cake decorating, knitting Hoard: Jewelry, especially rings "There are other forces at work in this world besides the will of evil."

A beloved professor and Home's resident cursebreaker, Zuriel is a clever Shadow-born historian and archaeologist. He and his little brother Betzalel escaped from Dark Sclera society as hatchlings, and as a young adult Zuriel bounced around Light, breaking curses and acting as a Shade hunter. Selfless to the extreme, he cares deeply about using his talents to help other dragons, and his kind, friendly, and funny demeanour quickly endear him to most dragons he meets.

- Biography
Born to one of the all-Dark-Sclera Clans dotting Sornieth, Zuriel is unique in that he was actually banished from Dark Sclera society when he was young. While most Dark Sclera dragons demonstrate extremely prodigious magical ability, he was born with severe magical deficiency. He managed to take his little brother Betzalel with him and get out. The brothers moved to neighbouring Light territory when Zuriel was a young dragon and Betzalel was still a hatchling, meaning Zuriel had to grow up fast. He was never expected to live very long, as dragons with chronic magical deficiencies rarely do, but survive he did, although he's always been small for his age. Now, with the help of weekly magical therapy, he is healthier as an adult than he ever was as a hatchling but is still prone to sudden and severe illness. Despite these circumstances, he distinguished himself as an extremely talented and skilled scholar, earning his degrees from some of Light's most prestigious universities. Being a curse-breaker is a dangerous line of work, requiring mastery of history, archaeology, languages, and curse-breakers must be able to think quickly under pressure and problem-solve well.

- Life at Home
In Light, especially as the shadowy borders of the Hewn City edge ever further outward, most businesses feel it necessary to employ curse-breakers to rid the surrounding area of any jinxes, hexes, and curses, and Zuriel is thrilled to perform this duty for Home. A dragon with a good nose for trouble, he's excellent at sniffing out any curses in the local areas and also keeps an eye out for Shade infestations (although those are usually above his pay grade). As a Light cursebreaker, he is an expert of Light languages, modern and ancient, Light history, and archaeology, and his passion in these subjects is clear when he teaches. He tends to teach advanced classes, as his younger students can easily become frustrated with the high expectations of his classes. Curse-breaking is a dangerous field, and that is especially so when a cursebreaker is magically deficient. Thanks to magical therapy, Zuriel has enough stores of magic to accomplish extremely basic non-elemental magical feats; he can reliably perform magic such as curse-deflections and jinx-dispelling, although he always becomes very sick afterwards. Because of this, his curse-breaking methods rely much more on problem-solving, finding and solving puzzles, and thinking outside the box - skills he works hard to impart to his students.

- Relationships
Zuriel's easygoing and friendly personality makes him easy to get along with, both for his students and his colleagues on the faculty board. He is typically laid-back and has a good-natured disposition, and his students and colleagues almost universally find him agreeable and funny. His classes are very popular and always fill up quickly, and Home's aspiring young cursebreakers absolutely adore him. He is very close with his little brother, Betzalel, who he essentially raised, and the brothers would do anything for each other. Zuriel's husband, Keshet, is one of the head magic professors on the faculty board and most often the one to administer Zuriel's magical treatments. Unlike many of Home's other professors, Zuriel is loathe to take students along with him on jobs due to the danger of what he does. He is careful to expose his students to curses only in extremely controlled environments. Instead, Zuriel usually takes his husband and brother on jobs with him for backup, and the three make a pretty good team, although Zuriel constantly worries that his magical deficiency will wind up getting Kes or Betzalel hurt and he is a bit overly reckless on his own part to compensate.

- Personality
Patient, soft-spoken, and well-spoken, Zuriel is known around Home for being generally easy-going and friendly. Zuriel's classes are marked by his remarkably gentle teaching style; he can always find something to praise about a student's questions or work, and his reluctance to speak badly about students makes him a very popular professor. His reputation for brilliance is well-known; many of his students have stories about how he'll deflect praise by saying he "only really speaks one language fluently" but can read a text written entirely in some ancient dialect perfectly fluently and translate as he goes. He has a well-known tendency to deflect praise, rarely accepting awards or compliments and always finding some way to ascribe his success to some other factor. Cursebreaking is still dangerous, though, and his family and friends on the faculty board often become frustrated with him when he fails to look after himself properly on a job. As a cursebreaker, Zuriel is surprisingly known for being absolutely relentless and merciless, and he's been known to go without sleep for days so he could track down a Shade infestation and destroy it. Another reason he rarely takes students along is because he knows cursebreaking requires a dragon to be merciless, and he hates for his students, who love him for his gentle and forgiving nature, to see him like that. When he's not on the job, though, Zuriel can be counted on to be a friendly face and reliable friend, always ready with a bad joke or to provide a shoulder to cry on.

Partner

Friend

Brother

TRIVIA Zuriel's favourite hobby is knitting. Thanks to a sickly childhood, he has a fear of hospitals (and especially needles). He uses hearing aids.