Past Lives
[Insert bit here about common themes and personality traits between past lives.]
Aldous Arcansur Burns
Race: Human
Sex: Male
PoB: Zeltiva
Title: Priest of Zulrav
Gnosis: +3 Stormwarden, +2 Lykata, -1 Vexation
Info: HD approved, see SS.
There is a distinct difference between those who knew Aldous and those who knew of him. The latter would recognize a man of a great outward tranquility, a buffeting presence as he moved, resembling humid winds pregnant with the promise of warm and thunderless storms on the horizon. They saw a man of both distant kindness and harmless obsession, a man who would play games with his children in the city streets one day and dive into an elaborate research project the next, a man they came to respect only abstractedly in the same way they could only vaguely understand the depth of the sea.
Those who knew him were few and far between, and Aldous had preferred it that way. Those who knew him knew of his suffering, of the burden he carried in his bleeding heart and blackened veins, of the consequences one faced when a mortal's righteousness interfered with a god's machinations. He was starry-eyed with the ideals of youth when he'd drawn the ire of Krysus, interrupting an attempted murder at the hands of one of her prized followers. Aldous was left permanently crippled by the experience in two ways: a partially paralyzed left arm from the spat with the would-be killer, and the subsequent curse of Vexation that Krysus bestowed upon him as retribution for the slight.
Aldous, who had previously shown so much passion and promise as both a devout Stormwarden and young University professor, grew quietly bitter at this development. With a innately calm disposition and philosophical nature, he adopted no obvious outward displays of his newfound personal torture besides withdrawing into himself. Such was no odd practice for him -- he was often known to relapse into quietude when pondering over his research or conversing with the salty winds that blew in off of Mathew's Bay -- but when he showed no signs of returning from his internal alienation, his personal relationships suffered, especially that with his wife, though she was the first to learn of his affliction and did everything within her power to ease her husband's anguish and ensure that his bond with their children did not strain as far as their marriage did.
He spent the next many years attempting to fight against the curse, poring over volume after volume of any knowledge there was to be had on his divinely-imposed condition, only pausing when the vexed pain grew too great and demanded release. He was disturbingly careful when carrying out that which the curse demanded of him, and with his sharp mind predation came more easily than he ever would have wanted to believe. He had been a kind man once. Stern, perhaps, but always gentle, even serene despite the tempests that so loved his company. Inflicting harm upon others was not in his nature. That was perhaps the greatest torture of the curse.
Eventually, in some swing of fate, Aldous was contacted by members of the Cytali who wished to enlist his assistance in their missions through his use of Lykata. From this sprang a taut but beneficial relationship between he and the group, wherein he would occasionally be called upon to locate lost chavi. After some time, he came to glean some obscure knowledge of the Ruv'na and the peculiar magics they utilized to disrupt one's connection to the divine (*this requires permission from the HD*). Upon this discovery, he launched himself into research with a renewed fervor, determined to find a way to "cure" himself of his Vexation. But his efforts were thereafter fruitless.
Having grown old, Aldous gave up hope. In a fit of despair that had been long-coming, he told his family -- his children, grandchildren, and wife who had remained by his side throughout the hardships -- goodbye, sailing off in a small boat, alone, into the outer oceans where he made one final stand of defiance against Krysus. On the third day of the curse's unheeded progression, with skin split and bleeding and debilitating spasms of pain seizing his bones, Aldous conjured a hurricane upon himself borne of every ounce of rage, regret, and sorrow that had built within him throughout his life. With his final breath he sent a prayer to Zulrav before smothering himself in his god's relentless embrace.
Etaine Askara
Race: Human
Sex: Female
PoB: Kenash
Title: Niece to Banjemin Askara the Fifth
Gnosis: +1 Luminance
Info: WIP [general: a highly empathetic though sickly dynasty girl with a particular but secretive interest in the plight of slavery]
Kelrin Evrith
While Kelrin is not one of Marion's past lives, the memories of his life share Marion's headspace as if they were her own.
On the 45th of Summer, 515 AV, a strange and almost otherworldly encounter on the beaches of Riverfall led Marion to inherit the memories of the deceased Inarta man, essentially forcing a whole other lifetime of experiences into her psyche.
[The following is a WIP and subject to change until completion of the attainment thread.]
Kelrin, born in Wind Reach, took to medicine early and was an exceptional apprentice in the Avora caste, along with being an avid falconer. He very well may have grown to be a highly respected individual and contributor to Inartan society, had he not been afflicted with a particularly strong sense of wanderlust from a young age. He often dreamed of the sky, and of what other lands it touched, what faraway places Syna and Leth watched over. He had barely outgrown boyhood when he worked himself up to leave Mt. Skyinarta, making his way to Syliras as the cultural hub of the eastern world. There, to fit local customs and formalities, he adopted the surname Evrith, based off the name of the man who had been his mentor in Wind Reach.
The fortress city was ill-suited to him, with its high and confining ceilings cutting him off from the sky he, like all his people, so adored. But outside, with Sylira's rolling valleys an sweeping plains, he felt he could see from one edge of the horizon to the other. He loved it with a sense of wonder he could scarcely comprehend.
Still, he would have been prepared to move on to another city with fewer barriers between him and the world above, had he not met Venira. She was a fire in a sea of city-dwellers who seemed content to flow with the expected uniformity of the knights. She was his eagle in the storm. Fierce, powerful, daring, limitless in her passion, and yet reserved, controlled, capable of holding her own reigns. She was simultaneously nothing the Inartan women had ever quite been and nothing he had expected the easterners capable of being. They married young and happy, and remained that way for many years. Kelrin was glad to remain in Syliras, so long as it was where she happened to be. And when he secured steady employment as a doctor at the Soothing Waters, they set about starting their own family under the shadow of those walls that had previously seemed so restricting.
The pair bore a son, Liske, the light of Kelrin's life, and Kelrin could not imagine why his brethren in the west would ever want to turn over the great responsibilities and joys of raising a child. They often hunted together, bonding under the wide sky and piercing gazes of their falcons while Kelrin watched Liske grow from a bumbling tot to a young man in his own right.
And then everything was ripped from him, leaving a hole wider than the void in his soul. Venira and Liske had gone on an outing to the Mithryn Outpost, one that was only supposed to last a couple days. They never came back.
Kidnapped by slavers, the knights had explained. The knights who were supposed to have protected them.
What, he thought, was the point of all those walls when they couldn't the most important things?
He spent the next eight years of his life pursuing his lost family across Mizahar, and those years would end up being his last. He had tracked them to Cyphrus, finally hot on their trail, but died before he ever reached them.
The memory of his death is extremely fuzzy, almost entirely unreadable -- all Marion can see is that that is wasn't an easy death, and was most likely violent.
Aldous Burns
Race: Human
Sex: Male
PoB: Zeltiva
Title: Priest of Zulrav
Gnosis: +3 Stormwarden, +2 Lykata, -1 Vexation
Info: HD approved, see SS.
There is a distinct difference between those who knew Aldous and those who knew of him. The latter would recognize a man of a great outward tranquility, a buffeting presence as he moved, resembling humid winds pregnant with the promise of warm and thunderless storms on the horizon. They saw a man of both distant kindness and harmless obsession, a man who would play games with his children in the city streets one day and dive into an elaborate research project the next, a man they came to respect only abstractedly in the same way they could only vaguely understand the depth of the sea.
Those who knew him were few and far between, and Aldous had preferred it that way. Those who knew him knew of his suffering, of the burden he carried in his bleeding heart and blackened veins, of the consequences one faced when a mortal's righteousness interfered with a god's machinations. He was starry-eyed with the ideals of youth when he'd drawn the ire of Krysus, interrupting an attempted murder at the hands of one of her prized followers. Aldous was left permanently crippled by the experience in two ways: a partially paralyzed left arm from the spat with the would-be killer, and the subsequent curse of Vexation that Krysus bestowed upon him as retribution for the slight.
Aldous, who had previously shown so much passion and promise as both a devout Stormwarden and young University professor, grew quietly bitter at this development. With a innately calm disposition and philosophical nature, he adopted no obvious outward displays of his newfound personal torture besides withdrawing into himself. Such was no odd practice for him -- he was often known to relapse into quietude when pondering over his research or conversing with the salty winds that blew in off of Mathew's Bay -- but when he showed no signs of returning from his internal alienation, his personal relationships suffered, especially that with his wife, though she was the first to learn of his affliction and did everything within her power to ease her husband's anguish and ensure that his bond with their children did not strain as far as their marriage did.
He spent the next many years attempting to fight against the curse, poring over volume after volume of any knowledge there was to be had on his divinely-imposed condition, only pausing when the vexed pain grew too great and demanded release. He was disturbingly careful when carrying out that which the curse demanded of him, and with his sharp mind predation came more easily than he ever would have wanted to believe. He had been a kind man once. Stern, perhaps, but always gentle, even serene despite the tempests that so loved his company. Inflicting harm upon others was not in his nature. That was perhaps the greatest torture of the curse.
Eventually, in some swing of fate, Aldous was contacted by members of the Cytali who wished to enlist his assistance in their missions through his use of Lykata. From this sprang a taut but beneficial relationship between he and the group, wherein he would occasionally be called upon to locate lost chavi. After some time, he came to glean some obscure knowledge of the Ruv'na and the peculiar magics they utilized to disrupt one's connection to the divine (*this requires permission from the HD*). Upon this discovery, he launched himself into research with a renewed fervor, determined to find a way to "cure" himself of his Vexation. But his efforts were thereafter fruitless.
Having grown old, Aldous gave up hope. In a fit of despair that had been long-coming, he told his family -- his children, grandchildren, and wife who had remained by his side throughout the hardships -- goodbye, sailing off in a small boat, alone, into the outer oceans where he made one final stand of defiance against Krysus. On the third day of the curse's unheeded progression, with skin split and bleeding and debilitating spasms of pain seizing his bones, Aldous conjured a hurricane upon himself borne of every ounce of rage, regret, and sorrow that had built within him throughout his life. With his final breath he sent a prayer to Zulrav before smothering himself in his god's relentless embrace.
Etaine Askara
Race: Human
Sex: Female
PoB: Kenash
Title: Niece to Banjemin Askara the Fifth
Gnosis: +1 Luminance
Info: WIP [general: a highly empathetic though sickly dynasty girl with a particular but secretive interest in the plight of slavery]
Kelrin Evrith
While Kelrin is not one of Marion's past lives, the memories of his life share Marion's headspace as if they were her own.
On the 45th of Summer, 515 AV, a strange and almost otherworldly encounter on the beaches of Riverfall led Marion to inherit the memories of the deceased Inarta man, essentially forcing a whole other lifetime of experiences into her psyche.
[The following is a WIP and subject to change until completion of the attainment thread.]
Kelrin, born in Wind Reach, took to medicine early and was an exceptional apprentice in the Avora caste, along with being an avid falconer. He very well may have grown to be a highly respected individual and contributor to Inartan society, had he not been afflicted with a particularly strong sense of wanderlust from a young age. He often dreamed of the sky, and of what other lands it touched, what faraway places Syna and Leth watched over. He had barely outgrown boyhood when he worked himself up to leave Mt. Skyinarta, making his way to Syliras as the cultural hub of the eastern world. There, to fit local customs and formalities, he adopted the surname Evrith, based off the name of the man who had been his mentor in Wind Reach.
The fortress city was ill-suited to him, with its high and confining ceilings cutting him off from the sky he, like all his people, so adored. But outside, with Sylira's rolling valleys an sweeping plains, he felt he could see from one edge of the horizon to the other. He loved it with a sense of wonder he could scarcely comprehend.
Still, he would have been prepared to move on to another city with fewer barriers between him and the world above, had he not met Venira. She was a fire in a sea of city-dwellers who seemed content to flow with the expected uniformity of the knights. She was his eagle in the storm. Fierce, powerful, daring, limitless in her passion, and yet reserved, controlled, capable of holding her own reigns. She was simultaneously nothing the Inartan women had ever quite been and nothing he had expected the easterners capable of being. They married young and happy, and remained that way for many years. Kelrin was glad to remain in Syliras, so long as it was where she happened to be. And when he secured steady employment as a doctor at the Soothing Waters, they set about starting their own family under the shadow of those walls that had previously seemed so restricting.
The pair bore a son, Liske, the light of Kelrin's life, and Kelrin could not imagine why his brethren in the west would ever want to turn over the great responsibilities and joys of raising a child. They often hunted together, bonding under the wide sky and piercing gazes of their falcons while Kelrin watched Liske grow from a bumbling tot to a young man in his own right.
And then everything was ripped from him, leaving a hole wider than the void in his soul. Venira and Liske had gone on an outing to the Mithryn Outpost, one that was only supposed to last a couple days. They never came back.
Kidnapped by slavers, the knights had explained. The knights who were supposed to have protected them.
What, he thought, was the point of all those walls when they couldn't the most important things?
He spent the next eight years of his life pursuing his lost family across Mizahar, and those years would end up being his last. He had tracked them to Cyphrus, finally hot on their trail, but died before he ever reached them.
The memory of his death is extremely fuzzy, almost entirely unreadable -- all Marion can see is that that is wasn't an easy death, and was most likely violent.
