Post by Angmor on Dec 12, 2010 19:18:37 GMT -5
[/blockquote]Name: Teiris Vorthain
Age: 19
Race: Human
Occupation: Fugitive
Allegiance: Himself
Other:
With the full power of the Broddring Empire at its disposal, fugitives of the Hand of Leona never stay running for long. The one and only thing that separates Teiris from the rest is his odd ability unwittingly given to him by the very captors who want him back; His eidetic memory.
Because of the Hand’s experiments into cognitive enhancement, Teiris now has the power to remember everything he has ever experienced with perfect clarity and recall. This is tremendously useful to a fugitive, allowing him to spot a face that appears once too often in a crowd, and to absorb new abilities and disciplines with incredible speed. This also allows him to piece together seemingly unconnected bits of information, splicing together outcomes very quickly.
While this is useful, Teiris considers this ability more of a cruse than a blessing. Because his recall is perfect, he is unable to shut out the terrifying and painful images of his past. His sleep is constantly haunted by nightmares of knife-edged clarity, and he has adapted to functioning with what little sleep he is able to glean because of it.Physical Description:
Having suffered many major shifts in the course of his life, Teiris’ outward appearance has been shaped by an unusual mix of extremes, potentially confusing any trying to pinpoint his exact background. Measuring at a less-than-imposing six feet, his bearing still possesses traces of the straight-backed posture drilled into him by his uncle. He has spent much time since his escape in trying to lose the habit, but he has never quite succeeded, sometimes straightening to his full height in moments of high concentration, marking as more than just a peasant.
Never possessing any kind of natural predestination toward strength, Teiris’ general build started out very slim, enhanced by his uncle’s mostly idle lifestyle, and then later by Teiris’ captivity at the Hand of Leona. However, since his escape, the hard life of the road has begun to sharpen his muscles, making his slender frame rather reminiscent of a good bowstring; taut and flexible. If his life had taken a more natural course, he would possess a natural olive complexion, but the lightless recesses of the Cathedral have rendered his skin more pale and drawn. Blood magic being what it is, most of his time in the cathedral was spent with at least one open wound on his body, leaving him with a variety of scars. The highest concentrations of these ropy marks lie on the inner side of his forearms, cutting across his skin in a horrendous lattice. The largest, a vaguely J-shaped mark of pale tissue, rests on his neck, starting just beneath the line of his jaw.
Set beneath a close-cut mop of brown hair, his face could once have been described as sharp-featured, capable of getting a second glance in a crowd. But, after the constant hunger and hopelessness of his captivity, his visage has been rendered gaunt and haggard. This, however, is usually totally overshadowed by his eyes.
Before his captivity, Teiris possessed light blue eyes. After undergoing the Hand’s experimentations, however, they were seemingly drained of color, being replaced with a dark, steel-grey tint. But even beyond this, these twin orbs are now entirely without emotion, offering no external clue as to what he might be thinking or feeling.
Dead eyes.
In the life of a fugitive, one cannot afford to be picky on fashion. While he does his best to wear whatever will attract the least attention in the area he is frequenting, Teiris will wear whatever he can buy, barter, steal, improvise, or otherwise acquire. It is no unknown for a city clothesline to be missing an article or two after he has gone by. Most often, he can be seen wearing a fairly well-fitting set of tunic and pants of some neutral color, such as grey or brown. Over this, a cheaply made cloak that has seen better days, though he prefers instead the mobility of a coat or jacket, when he can get one. Because of the distinguishing features of his scars, he has taken to wearing a pair of leather archer’s vambraces found discarded on the side of the road, along with a ragged brown scarf stolen from a passing caravan to hide the most noticeable of the old wounds from hostile eyes.
Beyond a few essentials, his unforgiving life does not allow much room for personal possessions. At any given time, Teiris entire life can be fit into a small satchel, ready to be moved at the first sign of a Paladin or bounty-hunter. Weapons too are much the same as his clothing; scrounged wherever he can get them. While he has had no formal training with a blade, his ability has allowed him to observe and apply several different tricks and techniques, which he has blended into his own unique style of fighting that relies greatly on speed, dexterity, and the element of surprise. Because of this, he by far prefers daggers or other small blades, anything that can be easily concealed and swift enough to bring down even a much more skilled opponent before they realize he is not as weak as he looks.Personality:
Even in early life, Teiris was never much of an extrovert. As a child he was ever quiet and unassuming, far preferring to observe from a distance than to be a center of attention. In such times when he was forced into human interaction, he found himself awkward and shy, unable to make sense of the social graces that most others take for granted. He possesses a very dry and subtle sense of humor, which often makes it difficult to tell if he is joking or not. Now, after the brutal experience of his captivity at the Hand of Leona, he has become downright distrustful of human beings. He is suspicious of the slightest kindness, and ever on the alert for betrayal. His uncle’s training for the field of nobility has turned out to be perfectly applicable for a life on the run, and Teiris has taken his relative’s favorite maxim wholly to heart;
Always know who you can trust, and that means no one.
While he does his best to keep up a veneer of toughness, inward reality is different. When it comes down to it, he is still very young, and ill-equipped to deal with the traumatic experiences of his past, which his eidetic memory assures will never leave him alone. In his weakest and most private moments, he can be seen for what he truly is; a lone youth, scared witless as he struggles to deal with a terrifying situation. Despite this however, the core of Teiris’ personality is made of an ironclad determination to never give up, no matter how hopeless things might seem. This often leads him into taking what many might think to be unnecessary risks, which usually lead him to be bruised and battered, but successful. It is for this reason alone that he has managed to avoid capture for so long.History:
In comparison with most of the events of his life, Teiris' birth was actually of surprisingly little consequence. His father was the blacksheep of the Vorthain house, had forsaken the family's wealth and connections in favor of a life of adventure, running off to become a mercenary. After a time, he fell in love with a beautiful female bounty-hunter, a woman who shared his desire for adventure.
An adventure that, they both agreed, had no room for a child.
Very soon after his birth, Teiris' father returned to the Vorthain house to leave the child in the care of his uncle. Tierce Vorthain, having no heir, was quite content take the boy and raise him as his own.
The house of Vorthain was an old and distinguished family, hailing from back before the Evacuation. In history past, the Vorthain shipping empire was one of the largest in Broddring, spanning three continents in its influence. But, much like Broddring itself, the organization became a mere shadow of what it once was, after the one-two blow of both the Evacuation and the Blue Divide. The House still survived, but as only a small monument to its former power, living on mostly in the memory of Tierce Vorthain. A very ruthless, calculating man, Tierce had his hard eyes on returning the house of Vorthain to its former glory, and saw the infant Teiris as a possible tool for doing just that.
For the first few years of his life, Teiris was raised by a nursemaid and a tutor, learning skills such as reading, writing, adding and balancing, and the rest of the discipline standard to a noble family. During this time, he was allowed to see very little of the life outside the family home, and his quiet nature prevented him from having any real friends. Is only true joy in life, unsurprisingly, was books. The Vorthain house boasted an extensive library for the time, and in his off hours, Teiris could most often be found in an overstuffed leather chair, his mind buried in the pages of a leatherbound volume. He read everything he could get his hands on, from epic poems to botany. For the most part, Tierce approved of his nephew’s scholarly tendencies, believing as he did that books helped to expand the mind. When Teiris turned eight, for the first time, his uncle began to spend several hours of every day with him. During these sessions, he began to be educated in the basics of running the family business. This did not mean, however, learning the best ways to strike deals, or the best times to send out caravans, although there was some of this, but the training mostly revolved around how to be faced with an opponent, and to outthink him. Teiris was faced with hour after hour of hypothetical scenarios and war games, stretching his mind to the absolute limit as he strove to please his uncle. Most of the time he failed. As he grew older, however, he began to more consistently navigate his uncle’s mazes. Soon, he began to enjoy this more than all of his other studies, and relished whatever time he could get. Despite this, though, he never really managed to summon up any love for his uncle. Their relationship was more of a business apprenticeship, which was exactly what Tierce had intended it to be from the beginning.
Unknown to his nephew at the time, Tierce had been secretly taking steps toward his dream of restoring the family name, cutting many deals and executing several operations of somewhat questionable legality. By the time Teiris was fourteen, the organization was most definitely on the rise, and it was not long before it began to attract attention.
The attention of the Hive.
Within Broddring, very few organizations could exist without tribute or at least the blessing of the Hive. In his pride, however, Tierce sought to build his organization without either, trusting that the comparatively small actions he was taking to go unnoticed until he was in a position to bargain. Needless to say, his activity was discovered. The Hive is a jealous god, and possessed centuries of experience swatting down upstarts like the house of Vorthain. Over the long years, their methods had become more subtle, and in the end, they decided on the least labor-intensive weapon in the arsenal;
Treason.
Over several months, agents of the Hive began to plant small but damning pieces of evidence that the Vorthain family had been allied with the elves during the war, passing information to the enemies of the Broddring kingdom in exchange for money and other favors. Eventually, all this made its way back to the authorities, and the natural paranoia of a post-war country did the rest. Teiris vividly remembers the hour when a squad of soldiers blasted through his home like a violent storm, dragging him half asleep from his bed and throwing him to the cold cobblestones outside. Almost believing it to be a dream, he resisted, pulling a sword from an unsuspecting guard and trying to put up some kind of fight. The last thing he remembered was a snarling face and something impossibly cold and hard striking him across the face, then blackness.
He awoke in a prison cell, all alone. For a long time, he simply could not accept what had happened, thinking that it had to be some kind of sick, fevered dream. But soon, it became clear that it was a nightmare, but there would be no waking up from this one. For three days he was left alone, with no sign of another living thing, and no news as to what had happened or why he was here. Finally, when he thought he was about to go mad, the key at last turned in the lock, and he was marched roughly away by yet more soldiers. At last, he received some news as to where he stood. One of the guards, a sadistically chatty type, happily informed him that his uncle had been executed for treason, his home burned to the ground, and his possessions confiscated. And, the kingdom being in its financial situation, it was decided that Teiris and the household servants would be sold into slavery to recoup the expense of the raid.
Standing chained the slave platform in the Tears was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced, being forced to watch as a screaming mob scrambled to put the lowest possible price on his life. At that time, he felt the flickering of an iron resolve hardening within him, the stirrings of a determination that that he would fight until he died rather than to ever be this helpless ever again. After a long bidding process, an old man stepped forward, quietly outbidding the rest of the crowd. While old enough to be grey-haired, it was easy to tell that the man was a fighter, seemingly suspended halfway between sage and warrior. If not for the circumstances, Teiris would have liked him right away. As he followed his new master away from the market, the man spoke to him, smiling slightly.
“My name is Rygier Tahn. I am a mercenary, along with my sons, and we are in need of a servant to handle our day to day needs, cooking and cleaning and the like. I am not a hard master, and you will be treated well, so long as you earn your keep. Any questions?”
After thinking for a moment, Teiris found that he did. “Why did you pick me?” He said. “There were plenty of other people up there better suited, and at a cheaper price. So why me?”
Rygier had nodded, smiling. “For both practical and sentimental reasons. From what I hear about you, you have nowhere else to go. I know what that’s like. And, it also means you won’t try to escape.”
And so, Teiris began his new life. Tahn, he quickly learned, was a very seasoned and successful mercenary in his day, and was now spending most of his time teaching his two sons the trade. For the next two years, Teiris served the trio, taking care of the mundane needs so that they would have more time devoted to training. He had to admit, after having his life overturned in a matter of days, it was not a bad situation. The work was hard, but not unbearable. He was given plenty of food, shelter, and even some small wages, which he mostly used to get the books he still craved. During those years, he often found himself watching Rygier and his sons go through their combat forms, nearly endless drills of attack, block, evade, grapple, thrust, and riposte. He asked once if he might one day be included in the training, but Tahn had merely turned to him, smiling that same enigmatic smile.
“You might.” He had said. “But I can tell your heart wouldn’t be in it. You just aren’t a fighter, not yet. Perhaps one day, you’ll get that fighting edge. But not yet.” And they left it at that.
For a while, it looked like his life would simply continue in this way. On reflection, Teiris admitted that he would have been content with that. But it was not to be. Two years later, his life was destined to take yet another turn.
By that time, Tahn and his sons had begun to take on paying jobs again, disappearing for a few days before returning tired but jubilant. After one such outing, however, they did not come back. Teiris waited, making sure everything was put in order for their arrival, but they still did not come, and although he never would find out why, they never would. The caravan they had been hired to guard had been set upon by bandits, and Tahn with his sons had been overwhelmed and killed. Teiris was once again alone. Very soon, the wood for the fires began to run low, and the food supplies became meager. With the harsh winter setting in, he was in a bad position and he knew it. After about a month, he abandoned hope of his master ever returning. This, he supposed, made him a free man, for all the cold comfort it gave him. Tahn had hit the mark squarely when he had said there was nowhere to go. Eventually, the situation grew so dire that he began to leave the house, roaming the streets of the Tears begging and looking for work.
Of course, at this particular point in time, a good forty percent of the population was out of work, and most of the rest were only just managing to support themselves and their families. For Teiris, a young lad of no exceptional strength or skills, work was nearly impossible to find. Begging also did not turn much profit, when every street was filled with such men and woman, most all of whom were more skilled at in them him. The ways of the streets had a harsh learning curve, and with the snows falling and winds blowing, many did not survive. One day, he returned cold and weary to the house of his master to find that it had been taken over by a street gang. He was beaten and thrown out, and the gang threatened to kill him if he ever came back. Without food, money, or shelter, and in the dead of a merciless winter, it seemed that his fate was sealed.
Not long after, his body ravaged by starvation and cold, he collapsed in the streets, never to rise again.
Or at least, so he thought.
Even now, his memories of that time are hazy and indistinct, fevered half-imaginings of a mind on the verge of death. Strong hands lifting him from the cold. A crowded, jostling space filled with hunched figures. Being helped into a warm, impossibly comfortable bed. Warm food given by a smiling young woman, all in white.
When he finally regained enough of his awareness to piece together a coherent thought, he found himself to be in warm, friendly room of burnished stone. To both sides, at least a dozen other men and woman like himself, people of the streets, looking as if they were barely clinging to life. Moving among them were several white-clad forms. Upon noticing his intent scrutiny, one of these approached him, turning out to be the same woman he had thought before to be a hallucination. Upon asking where he was, she happily informed him that he was within the Cathedral, brought here as a part of a mission of mercy by the Hand of Leona.
For the first time in what seemed an eternity, Teiris slept peacefully, not worrying about where his next meal would come from. He and the others did little to question the situation. If they had, they might have noticed the malevolent smiles of their attendants, or the fact that the door was always locked at night.
For the next several weeks, Teiris did little but eat and sleep, slowly but surely recovering his strength and wits. During that time, he did his best to ignore his attendant's constant chatter about the benefits of the journey. He had seen far too much of the adherents of the religion to even toy with idea of becoming a convert. Despite this, he quickly began to develop a relationship with the young woman he had first seen, a girl about his own age named Myrei. Attracted to his quiet strength and ready smile, and he by her beauty and openness, they almost instantly became fast friends, and would likely become more than that. Myrei spent as much time as she could with Teiris, exchanging stories and laughing. She told him of her past, as an orphaned child with no prospects, taken in by the cathedral much the same as he had been. Upon learning of the Voyage, she quickly adopted the dogma wholeheartedly, and took up a position manning the same mission of mercy that had rescued her. Even so, Teiris still refused to convert. He told her all of the things he had seen, of the nobles and rulers who used adherence to the Voyage of the Nine Moons as an excuse to rain cruelty on those under them. There could never be any resolution to these discussions, and Teiris quickly made it a point to avoid the subject.
Despite their differences, Their relationship continued to blossom. He was almost sorry when he was nearly recovered enough to leave that place. Still, he was determined to pursue the relationship, resolving to set himself up with some kind of stable existence that would provide some kind of future for the two of them. In those last days however, Myrei grew more quiet and moody, often forcefully pulling their conversation back to the Journey. She grew insistent, almost pleading with him to take up the faith. Uncomprehending, he still refused. Finally, the very night that Teiris was making plans to leave the Cathedral, Myrei drew him aside, and let him in on the truth.
The mission of mercy was not in reality so merciful. It was merely a ploy to gather the homeless and disenfranchised of humanity, the dregs of society for whom nobody cared, and try to convert them to the Nine Moons. Those who did not were taken. She did not know exactly where, but she did know that those who disappeared were never seen again. She implored him to leave, to get as far away from the Tears as he possibly could, and never come back. Before Teiris could even begin to process this, the door behind him burst open, and he felt the cold prick of a needle in the back of his neck. His last few seconds of consciousness was dominated by Myrei's horrified face, looking down at him right before she was seized by a hulking figure.
Then blackness.
If waking up in a cell is bad, waking up in a cage is infinitely worse. Teiris' first memories of that moment were of confusion and pain, doubled over in a space that was too small even for his slight frame, listening to the screams and cries filling the dimly lit expanse. Looking through the bars, he saw that he was in a long corridor or hallway, each side lined with cage doors exactly like his own.
And each one containing its own prisoner.
These were the unfortunates that Myrei had known about, the poor and destitute, of whom hundreds could simply vanish without causing the slightest stir.
The laboratory specimens of the Hand of Leona.
Although very few knew it at the time, The Voyage of the Nine Moons was declared Broddring's state religion for one reason alone; to provide the perfect cover for the kingdom's sanctioned experiments in Blood Magic. Deep in the catacombs of the Cathedral, the elusive oracles, assisted by their paladins, pursued this dark art, requiring a constant supply of human blood to fuel their arcane spells. Of all the things Teiris had to endure over the course of his life, this was by far the worst. Almost every other day, a Paladin would come down to the cages with a squad of soldiers, selecting a group of specimens that would best fit the request of his or her Oracle. Whenever Teiris was chosen, he soon learned to brace himself for some new form of physical or mental torture. Most often, he found himself chained to a wall, and a wound opened on his forearm with a sharp dagger. He would be forced to watch helplessly as his own blood was forcefully taken from his veins to be used by an impassive Oracle for some nefarious purpose.
For the next year, this more or less constituted his life. A dull, terrible fight for survival, crawling along one day at a time. With little else to do in the dark hours of the night, he began to calculate the average lifespan of a prisoner from what he could see from his cage. No matter how many times he added it up, one year was about the average. It was at that moment that the part of his personality that had stirred that day on the slave platform burst forth within him. He resolved then and there that, whatever happened, he would find a way to escape from this horrible place. And if he was to die, then he would die taking it.
As it happened, he would not have to wait long for his chance. For some time, one of the Oracles had been researching ways to use blood magic to greatly enhance the speed and power of a human mind, and was seeking out the smartest and best educated prisoners in order to test his theories. After reducing several prisoners to dead husks, Teiris was very soon called upon to undergo what the Oracle hoped was the refined version of the procedure. It was, but not in the way he had been expecting.
For Teiris, the memory holds only pain. Pain in every variety and form, every intensity, over every square inch of his body. He did not know who was or what he was, what he was doing or where he was going. Pain was the only reality. To this day, he does not know how long he was out, nor when the Oracle finally gave up and sent him back to his cage. He only knows that when he finally awoke, something was different.
While the procedure had not increased his cognitive abilities in any way, he suddenly found himself able to remember… everything. Every moment of his life, every past experience, everything he had ever seen and heard, all with a kind of knife-edged clarity that was almost painful. Most importantly, he was able to remember every lesson he had ever overheard from Tahn and his sons, three years of knowledge and training that he had never been able to recall before. Even more, he could remember every inch of the labyrinthine corridors of the cathedral undercroft that he had ever seen, including an isolated way to the surface.
Suddenly, he had the knowledge he needed to escape.
That very night, he was able to pick the lock on his cage, stealing silently away. He was able to avoid the loitering guards and sentries, finding his way to the catacombs exit. And he was able to find it within him to silently slit the throat of the lone sentry guarding it, before disappearing into them crowded underworld of the Tears.
In the six months since that night, Teiris has lived as a fugitive. The Hand almost immediately discovered his escape, and just as quickly leveled all their considerable resources and influence into getting him back, spinning the official to the Broddring authorities that he was an escaped slave and a murder, as it says on his wanted posters even today. By then, Teiris had slipped out of the Tears, and has proved himself a far more elusive catch than anyone would have anticipated, including himself. Today, he can be found roving from place to place, one step of the authorities, trusting no one, suspecting everything. He does not know how his journey will end, but he is determined that he will never go back to the Hand, one way, or another.
