~Nephew of Arden Everan and an officer of Saobha's army.

~Xaphan, in his more temperate moments, is sedate but forthright. He is inherently devoted to his military occupation, and ardently loyal to his family and country, approaching these matters with reserved seriousness. This normally sober personality, though, is sometimes subdued by an underlying volatility. Triggered at unpredictable intervals, his mood jolts erratically to one extreme or another. Under mounting stress, Xaphan's lapses into immoderacy occur with more frequency, nearly masking his recognizable identity all together.
Although characteristically quiet and somewhat diffident, Xaphan occasionally becomes noticeably more withdrawn, almost apathetic. His moments of temporary unresponsiveness fluctuate with states of incoherent restlessness and intense fixation in which all of his typical behavior is inappropriately exaggerated. It doesn't go unnoticed that Xaphan is most susceptible to suggestion at these points, taking a ferocious interest in his pursuits. It's also at these times when, if agitated enough, Xaphan is likely to fly into a truculent and uncontrolled rage.
Arden has a paternal fondness for Xaphan and is understandably concerned with his apparently deteriorating mental state. He is, however, unsure of how to handle the situation. Finding that Xaphan is unwilling to acknowledge his inability to function with a clear head and, at the same time fearful that removing him authoritatively from his military command (the thing he focuses so fervently on) would only worsen his condition, Arden rationalizes that the best he can do is stand back and observe with a worried conscience.

~Up until the end of high school and the start of college a few years ago, Xaphan was something of an empty shell waiting for differentiation. I had spent a good deal of time experimenting and trying to intellectualize a personality for him, but I always ended up going down some clichéd villain path. With the inevitable, overwhelming stress that comes with college applications, interviews, graduation, and moving away from home, however, I stumbled upon Xaphan's new persona. He made a perfect outlet for all of the resulting mental exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, insomnia and so forth that, otherwise, would have served no purpose but to raise my blood pressure. My habitual reading on the subject of abnormal psychology helped me to streamline his character after most of the conceptualizing was done.
I took the name Xaphan from a mythological demon who eternally tends to the fires of Hell. I suppose there was some mental correlation between hellfire and insanity that appealed to me. The sound of the name and the spelling was so unique I couldn't resist. The surname, Orthanan, is completely made up.