July 13, 2004
Annoymous Backstory
My beginnings, secret as they are for reasons obvious and not, I have designed to reveal to you. Why? I, myself, am unsure. Perhaps it is as simple as the desire to tell a story which has not been told for centuries, lest it leave my own memory, like an article lost in a cluttered drawer.
So let us open the drawer:
The exact year of my birth - my first birth - I cannot tell you. There is no record of it to rely on. Indeed, much the story I have pieced together from varying sources: annals and historians, village tales and bards'. I can tell you that it occurred in the dead of winter, in the last decades of the 15th century, in the hills of Shining, now called Eshek, in Uol. What brought my Idoean mother to such a distant land at that particular period of history can never be declared with any real accuracy. But I have theories, based on what I know of my father. His name was Arill of the Red Hand, a minor footnote in Circe's brief history of man, noted for a particular event which becomes the backdrop for my life.
According to Circe, there was rare interaction between the intelligencia of Idos and the petty human kings of the West through the Tyen Empire at its earliest stages. The Tyen Imperial Consul Dhesle had in his court an Elven concubine - unnamed by Circe, but noted for her skill in the arcane arts. She traveled with him to Eshek the previous summer on a diplomatic mission, an exchange of knowledge. There was a murder in the house of Arill, and (naturally) the Tyen was blamed. A deal was cut: Dhesle was allowed to withdraw to Llyaue to prepare his case with the consulate there in exchange for a hostage, his Elven wife - a common practice amongst the Skrel'eth and Humans at the time. My theory is that the exotic beauty of the Idoean proved too tempting to Arill, and I was conceived. The repercussions would have been disastrous, so Dhesle was delayed until the spring, months after my birth, the case was dropped, and my mother was sent back. I cannot give you by birth name, having sworn against speaking or writing it; it shall remain in that drawer, but it is not forgotten.
I know nothing in person of my father, having been raised at a distance from him in the house of his steward. Seari were, of course, unheard of; my salvation lay in my physique. I was easily passed off has a human boy, if not an eccentric one. I was raised amongst four siblings, all much older than myself. I grew up knowing whom my father was.
Arill, five years later, was lost to war with the Skrel'eth. He drowned with his broken ship, and was never recovered, nor properly buried. Due wrath, I think, for his atrocities. Circe agrees. I and my adopted family were lost to the beurocracy of the civil strife that followed, a hostage myself in the houses of rival lords and Skrel'reth until I was ten. I can recall very little from that time but a great feeling of instability. That ended when my brilliance was acknowledged by one lord or another, and I was sent to the Ferim, an academy for upcoming generals and statesmen. My life was absorbed by study: history, philosophy and law, and all things martial. Began I also my infatuation with magic, at that time. I was brilliant, but lonely. And violently ambitious. Cunning became my solution to my lack of size. I remember being terribly feared by pupils and teachers alike, thanks to a series of threats and pranks. I had powerful patrons, and could not be touched. I had no interest in the opposite sex, until my Sire.
I completed my studies and became an aid to a particular consulate-general on the southern coast of Aartiru, then the frontier, in lew of a seat on the Senate. It was there that I participated in my first battle; an uprising of slaves. I won rank and medals, sat in seats of judgment, even at the green age of eighteen.
One of the criminals brought before me was of (how can I say it?) the most terrible beauty I have yet to still see. It was a dangerous, ominous beauty, devoid of all decency, all ethics, and terrible to look upon. I was, of course, captured, bound with chains that I admit can never be broken. So was her design, her plan.
The name she used then is unimportant; it was an alias, discarded like dirty clothes after an age. I would learn to do the same. Her true name is also not important; my Sire was lost to history and lives on only in my mind. Thus I feel possessive of it, and will not share. What is of import is that she was Kindred, but rogue, having lost the respect of her Clan. Even at war with them, and all Kindred, whom she felt had lost their way. She was a Prophet, and I inherited her separatist mantle. It happened thus:
While awaiting her sentence for her part in the revolt, she escaped into the wilderness. Bound was I already, and I followed. I told myself that I was hunting her, that I would bring her to justice. Even then I knew why I left: she had marked me, somehow, called me, and like a dog I searched for
my Master in the wooded hills. My siring came quickly, followed by my renaming, and my True Education. Now, I the War Bringer - not Consul-Aid, but Priest of the Hunters, Immortal Angel of Destruction. I was a god, and deity ran in my veins - perhaps a false god, but one none the less.
The Mystery of our kind was pounded into my soul; she shaped me like a blade (I was to be her blade) with fire and pressure - and love. A most selfish love, cruel and consuming. Two centuries of history passed. In much of it were we involved, shaping the world of mortals to our design. And a secret history of the Kindred rolled on, also, like a scroll. Until I was ready. Until she had determined I was ready.
I was bound by her commands.
On the peak of Mount Zarsibus, overlooking all of Viroth, she made me swear an Oath: to never use my birthname, fealty to all her ideals, loyalty to the True Faith, to consider myself holy and reject the comforts of mortality, and other things I cannot mention. When I was done, she knelt before me, and bade me kill her.
I refused. She commanded me with all her power, and the choice was no longer mine. I have no clearer memory than her demise, her parts flying below me, off the cliff, through the wet wind. So was her intent. Her blood became cement that still I cannot break, a web I am yet entangled in, though I have made it my home.
It was an evil trick, and effective. Her head was still smiling as it was lost in the fog.
Time moves slowly for me, now: a kind of senility, I think. The mind still grows old, even if the body does not. We were not meant to be immortal, these bodies, and the years pile on like lead. Many more things occurred between then and now, of course, more toying with mortal history, more wars amongst the Kindred over ideology - all my secret accomplishments, as I said, whispers in the subterranean dark. Ask me about some of them, and I will tell you; most shall remain secrets, though, to touch only on immortal ears.
Posted by ShadowSiege at July 13, 2004 09:24 PM