Animus Aurelius (Maratus Kultainen) is the father of Taulius. He is a smooth talking, unflappable networker. Seemingly immune to the insults of some and the praise of others, he is an unending fount of charm, wit, and conversation. At least, that’s when conducting business. In social settings, he wears this mask with skill, but in private he is much more vulnerable. Very sensitive and often down. He loves his family, and shows them great care when he is not off on various business ventures, but his public resilience wears on him, and his home is the only place where he can let down his guard enough to recover.
He views elven culture is something that the empire will eventually learn to accept of even embrace in time. He considers it to be important, especially in private. He justifies his activities as a peddler of Elven artifacts as a way in which he is spreading the influence of the history of his people, but deep down he knows that he spends much more time ignoring and pretending his culture doesn’t exist and isn’t important than he does advocating its virtues. This hypocrisy weighs on him, and he regularly struggles with inner feelings of shame and cowardice. Shame that he cares more about pleasing the empire than standing up for what he believes, and cowardice for not being able to change for years.
Watching this internal struggle within his father is one of the main reasons Taulius struggles to feel at home in the empire. He is bold enough to be an elf… but he questions whether it is actually worth it if both of his parents were to afraid to champion their beliefs themselves. He wants to be proud of his heritage, but has been unintentionally trained that it isn’t something that is good to be proud of.
While they are not a wealthy family by any stretch, they are definitely in the middle merchant class. Despite this respectable, but unimpressive socio-economic status, Animus is surprisingly well known and well connected amongst the upper crust of society, his primary clientele. His business model is that of an agent, or middle man. He has connections to the treasure hunting/adventuring community, and connections amongst the high society collectors in the empire. When they want an artifact, he will reach out to his contacts and either find one that is available, or commission parties to go and collect one. He also regularly does some speculative artifact collection as he interacts with the treasure hunters. He takes pride in his ability to guess what artifacts will interest particular clients he has worked with before, even if they aren’t actively seeking out new items.