Erevis Cale

Erevis Cale is a fictional character in the Forgotten Realms series of books, which are published by Wizards of the Coast and based on the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. He is first introduced in the short story "Another Name For Dawn" (Dragon #277), and then appears in the short story "Resurrection" in the collection that formed the first part of the Sembia series, The Halls of Stormweather.

Erevis's story is told in the fantasy novels of Paul S. Kemp, including The Halls of Stormweather, Shadow's Witness, the Erevis Cale Trilogy, The Twilight War trilogy, and the most recent novel, The Godborn.

Appearance
Erevis was born as a human. He is described as being tall, slender, and pale skinned with a shaved bald head. He normally wears leather armor and wields a longsword. After Cale accepts the gift of the Fane of Shadows, he becomes a shade and his pale skin becomes dusky gray. Wisps of smoke leak from his body, and he is always sheathed in shadow. His eyes also undergo a transformation, with the whites of them changed into black and the pupils changed into yellow. They glow in certain twilight.

Personality
Erevis is usually quick to anger and is more than happy to act out of revenge. When first introduced, he was scornful of religion, but over the course of the book Shadow's Witness he found his faith in the god Mask. He is very faithful to his friends, though he frequently faces an internal struggle with his darker side.

Class
According to a post on his LiveJournal, Paul Kemp once judged Erevis's character levels as:

Shade – Rogue 6, Fighter 3, Cleric of Mask 11, Divine Agent 2.

He is also the Chosen of Mask, which gives him powerful abilities that have not yet been fully explored.

Skills and abilities
Erevis Cale was an extremely proficient rogue and assassin before his transformation into a shade. The abilities he has gained from being a Shade only function in areas of shadow or darkness; they include increased strength, the ability to heal rapidly, shadow walking (a form of short distance teleporting from shadow to shadow), and a regrown hand with superior strength that is only manifested in darkness. He can also create portals to the Plane of Shadow at his will. In addition to his Shade abilities, Erevis is a highly accomplished divine spellcaster. As the first chosen of Mask, he has access to Mask's full attention when casting spells, which has in the past bolstered his spells when facing uncommonly difficult enemies.

Weapons
Erevis's main weapon is a longsword called Weaveshear which can absorb magic spells. Weaveshear was only a slightly magical sword before Erevis sliced it through a rare and extremely powerful artifact, granting its absorbing effect.

Armor
Erevis has worn a suit of lightly enchanted leather armor throughout his travels.

Biography
Erevis Cale was originally trained as a thief and assassin by an organization called the Night Masks. However, when they were destroyed, he moved to Sembia and joined the Night Knives. This organization placed him in with the wealthy merchant Uskevren family as the head butler, a placement he created by murdering the previous butler, as a spy for potential thieving operations that may arise in the Uskevren estate. Because of the speed and intensity with which Erevis became friends with the patriarch of the Uskevren family, Thamalon, his loyalties split. He spent much of the decade that he worked for the Uskevren sending misinformation back to his guild and feeding them information about merchants other than the Uskevren themselves.

Before his newfound loyalty to Mask was formed, Erevis doubled as an assassin. The death of Thamalon marked the end of Erevis's service at the mansion, but not his loyalty to the rest of the family. He is especially protective of the second of Thamalon's children, with whom Erevis was once in love.

Erevis was once a primary rival of Drasek Riven for the attention of the leader of their assassins guild in Sembia. They both operated as the first and second Chosen of Mask, of which there were eventually be five. They have also been referred to as the right and left hands of Mask.

Erevis and Drasek completed a quest to steal back a portion of their god's essence, which was stolen by an evil half-god by the name of Kesson Rel (a previous Chosen of the now deceased god Mask)—bent on destroying all of Toril with the Shadowstorm—while at the same time attempting to stop the take over of all of Sembia by the Shadovar, an ancient race of Netherese dedicated to the worship of the goddess of the void, Shar.

Mask had stolen some power from Shar when he was born, and from that piece of Mask's, Kesson Rel stole a piece, and from that piece, Erevis Cale, Drasek Riven, and the shade Rivalen Tanthul split into three pieces amongst themselves. So in reality, they were only receiving a third of a piece of Shar's divinity, and that Shar and Mask's powers were the same.

Cale promised a portion of divine essence to both his god and to his adventuring companion's archdevil father, Mephistopheles. He made this arrangement in order to get back the missing half of Magadon's soul which was ripped from his friend's body. He was killed by Mephistopheles, when he made good on his promise. It is revealed in the end of the Twilight War series that Erevis had a son, which Mask had transported to the future to save, for reasons known only to himself.

Reception
In a review of the novel Midnight's Mask, Don D'Ammassa described Erevis Cale as "a man tormented by questions of right and wrong."

Novels

 * Sembia: Gateway to the Realms
 * Resurrection (novella by Paul S. Kemp in The Halls of Stormweather, edited by Philip Athans, February 2007, 978-0-7869-4244-2)
 * Shadow's Witness (Paul S. Kemp, April 2007, 978-0-7869-4244-2)


 * The Erevis Cale Trilogy
 * Twilight Falling (Paul S. Kemp, July 2003, 0-7869-2998-7)
 * Dawn of Night (Paul S. Kemp, June 2004, 0-7869-3225-2)
 * Midnight's Mask (Paul S. Kemp, November 2005, 0-7869-3643-6)


 * The Twilight War
 * Shadowbred (Paul S. Kemp, November 2006, 0-7869-4077-8)
 * Shadowstorm (Paul S. Kemp, September 2007, 978-0-7869-4304-3)
 * Shadowrealm (Paul S. Kemp, December 2008, 978-0-7869-4863-5)


 * The Sundering
 * The Godborn (Paul S. Kemp, October 2013, 0-7869-6373-5)


 * Short stories
 * "Another Name for Dawn" (short story by Paul S. Kemp originally published in Dragon #277, November 2000; now available as a free PDF download on Paul S. Kemp's Web site here)
 * "And All the Sinners, Saints" (short story by Paul S. Kemp originally published in Dragon #297, July 2002; also included in the July 2003 edition of Twilight Falling, the June 2004 edition of Dawn of Night, and the June 2010 The Erevis Cale Trilogy omnibus)
 * "Soulbound" (short story by Paul S. Kemp originally published in the anthology Realms of the Dragons, edited by Philip Athans, October 2004, 0-7869-3394-1; also included in the November 2005 edition of Midnight's Mask and the June 2010 The Erevis Cale Trilogy omnibus): Although Erevis Cale is not included or even mentioned, this story ties into The Twilight War trilogy.
 * "Continuum" (short story by Paul S. Kemp originally published in the anthology Realms of War, edited by Philip Athens, January 2008, 0-7869-4934-1; now available for free on Paul S. Kemp's Web site here): Erevis Cale is mentioned only.