Orison
09-27-08, 10:16 PM
I sincerely apologize for the length of this. Like really. I maybe got a little bit carried away.
“A true ruler is as moral as a hurricane – empty, but for the force of his gale.”
Davian Orison
Human
Early Twenties
Hazel eyes
Dark hair
5’6”, 185 pounds
Pre-History
Seventy-eight years ago…
Uthur, a young noble of comparatively little importance, is given blessings by the kingship in Knife’s Edge to found a fiefdom nestled in the eastern mountain ranges just south of Berevar. He is given little in the way of state resources for the task, generally seen as suicidal, but Uthur is charismatic and idealistic. Though he can offer little substantially, the force of his personality convinces key nobles and large groups of explorers and colonists to donate to or participate in the colonization of so distant and inhospitable a place.
Soon the host of Uthur winds its way through frozen mountain passes, and with but a few casualties sets its roots at the feet of the bald Halfort Mountain to the east and the gloomy Mount Osborn to the west. North lay the vast frozen lake, and beyond that the artic reaches of Berevar. It is Uthur’s declaration that his new fief, here founded in the valley called Zandig, would be the first bastion of The Sway and Salvar – a wall between the civilized south and the savage north.
The living is hard, but fruitful. Though very little of the land is arable and though the growing season is short, Uthur’s farmers are vigilant and efficient. Every spring a fresh band of hardy pioneers trickles through the mountain passes, and Uthur’s domain thrives. Some said in those days that the summers were longer and warmer with every passing year, as if the elements themselves bowed to Uthur’s wishes.
Within the first five years a church and keep are finished, and within the first fifteen a basic cathedral is constructed. Still, the fief is not without growing pains.
Sixty-three years ago…
Uthur’s original band of knights, though honorable and skilled, are becoming fewer, taken most often against the fierce beasts that came out of the mountains to make meals out of Uthur’s people. A militia is trained to supplement the army proper, but it is clear that a larger, trained force is necessary.
When spring comes, Uthur himself leads a sizable contingent south to seek aid from other nobles. When he arrives in the neighboring fief, called Grance, Uthur is told that the region is at war with its easterly neighbor, and the upstanding vassal of Grance is in sore need of aid. Uthur supplies that aid despite being largely outnumbered, and amazingly fights off the invaders. Hard living in the mountains had forged Uthur’s knights into superior warriors, each one worth three southern knights.
This so impresses the fief’s vassal – Leo von Grance – that he offers up a third of his standing army to return north with Uthur, under the stipulation that Zandig might come to Grance’s aid in the future. Uthur agrees, and an alliance is forged.
This alliance is further solidified when Uthur becomes smitten with Leo’s beautiful ward, the Lady Gwenhyfar Maldegba von Grance, and the two are married before returning north together. The people of Zandig rejoice, having doubled the size of their standing army and gained a lady of the realm in a single season.
That winter was the mildest ever known in Zandig, a fact attributed to the arrival of the pious, giving, and infinitely kind Gwenhyfar, lovingly dubbed The White Lady. The people would have further reason for joy, as in the following spring a massive force appears from the southern pass, flying the colors of Grance’s enemy. These colors are ceremonially lowered, and replaced with Zandig’s. These are knights who had witnessed the superior fighting prowess of Uthur’s knights, and they pledge themselves to his service in order to become equally hardy.
Uthur might have turned them away, for he is wary of their intentions, but Lady Gwenhyfar is reportedly moved by the petition of their Head Knight, a giant and exotic warrior named Thesys Azurius. Uthur consents at the pleading of his wife, and it is not long before Azurius is Uthur’s greatest knight, advisor, and friend.
Fifty years ago…
Though Zandig is prosperous compared to most of its southern counterparts, it is yet under constant siege by the various monsters, beasts, and peoples of the savage north. Though every year brings a higher population and greater yields from smaller farms, the passing seasons also bring attacks by feral draves, roaming giants, hungry ogres, giantkin raids, and finally the organized malignance of a tribe of direlings.
Uthur, bludgeoned by administrative duties, entrusts increasingly more military power to Azurius, who leads campaigns to hunt down the many enemies of the fief. In time, Azurius would begin requesting larger rations and better gear for his soldiers, requests which Uthur universally consents to. He is so burdened by his duties that Uthur does not see the strain Azurius’ demands place upon his people. For the first time, the people of Zandig begin to grumble.
It is in these years that the first reports of the ravenous undead begin to be heard. Graveyards are pillaged and people traveling to and from Zandig are found butchered on the road or, worse, disappear only to be sighted as walking corpses later. Gwenhyfar boldly travels to desecrated holy ground with the clergy, and the people are impressed with her devotion to the land’s purity.
Forty-five years ago…
Despite consuming a great percentage of the fiefdom’s resources, Uthur’s knights are becoming a haggard bunch. Their numbers are greatly diminished, and none have returned to their homelands as it was agreed they would. Uthur’s neighbors begin to threaten to cut off already-sparse trade. Furthermore, the people of Zandig are on the verge of riot, and petitions to the land’s lord are heard from sunup to sundown daily.
Lady Gwenhyfar is greatly distressed by the presence of the undead in the kingdom. It is historically noted that when addressing her people, Gwenhyfar speaks to the defense of Thesys Azurius – not to her husband. Perhaps it is this tension between husband and wife that motivates Uthur to give a grand commandment: Azurius would lead the army deep into the mountains to find the source of the living dead, and to route the ever-greater threat of the direlings.
The people are placated, despite the great wealth of resources needed to fund the army’s excursion. Thesys Azurius rides at the head of the army into the mountains and daily sends back news of his great feats and reports of victory and success. One last bright period is known in Zandig.
Azurius rides into the village at Zandig alone after three and a half months away and declares his mission a wild success. He is so ecstatic with the news, he reports, that he rode ahead of the main army to deliver news of Zandig’s victory to Uthur personally. The lord of the land is relieved and declares the day a local holiday, and arranges a tremendous feast in the people’s honor.
During the feast a certain pair of Uthur’s loyal knights (whose names are lost to history) notice that neither Azurius nor Lady Gwenhyfar is present. Shockingly, they uncover and report an affair between the two to Uthur. Before he can issue any orders, it is reported to him that Azurius has escaped Zandig and flees to the north.
Gwenhyfar is confronted and, weeping, claims that Azurius has violated her and the trust of Zandig’s people. Uthur is enraged, crushed and disgusted with his wife, and orders her locked in her chambers. There is a tremendous outcry against this, and Uthur’s home guard is faced with riots and other acts of violent sedition.
Uthur sends messengers out into the mountains with orders for his army to return immediately, and spies are sent out in search of Thesys Azurius.
Forty-four years ago…
A band of direlings – the largest ever seen in Zandig – attacks Uthur’s keep in the dead of the winter night. They burn the original church and a number of farms. When Uthur’s home guard rides out to confront them they flee, and are pursued into the wilderness. In the meantime, a second smaller force assaults the keep, led by Thesys Azurius himself. Gwenhyfar is abducted, and the direlings escape with minimal losses back into the mountains. A second wave of scouts is sent out by an enraged Uthur, bearing orders for his knights to return immediately. There is still no response, and a large portion of the scouts do not return.
In the spring, Uthur commands half of his home guard out into the mountains to search for any sign of his lost wife, lost army, or the traitor knight. A week later, Azurius appears at the head of a massive direling force, and the remaining home guard rides out to meet them. The fighting is bloody and intense. Uthur, seeing his folly, desperately calls for the return of his forces.
The last known letter written by Lord Uthur of Zandig speaks of his overwhelming joy when first he beheld a host of knights charging from a mountain pass – the expeditionary half of his home guard, combined with his army, missing for fourteen months.
Uthur did not write of the immense fear and pain that came immediately after, but those in his court did. Though this second army is indeed his lost host, it is not riding to Uthur’s aid as it first appeared. As they ride closer, scouts realize the force is led by a pale lady upon a snowy horse, and that every knight is dead and living on his horse.
There have been few massacres in Salvar’s history that ended so bloodily.
Forty years ago…
The liege lords of Knife’s Edge order Glance and her neighbors to send scouts north to discern the fate of Zandig, which has been silent for some five years. The news reaches Knife’s Edge that Zandig is no more. Its keep is held by an army of the dead, led by the dread knight Thesys Azurius, who marches at the behest of one Lady Maldegba, who in turn calls herself the White Queen.
The next forty years are marked by varying degrees of conflict in the region. Knights of Glance and other fiefs, eager for glory, ride into Zandig and never return. Tribes of direlings ride suddenly from the mountains and raid the countryside, and then flee back into the misty mountain ranges. Once or twice, freshly-built towers are discovered where once the borders of Zandig were marked, manned by the undead. The lands of Zandig are never reclaimed, though they are technically still a part of Salvar.
History
The birth of Davian Orison was a story Thesys Azurius told differently every time, but there are themes in the story that show up more often than not. The gist of that collective story is as such:
An allied band of the southern nations marched into Zandig, as they are wont to do, and Azurius marched out to crush them at the head of his lady’s undead army. This he did, as he always did, and every man who fell bolstered the undead horde. The battle was a particularly bloody one, with heavy losses for the southern forces.
Thesys found himself wandering amongst the bodies after the battle was won. The snow was red for as far as eyes could see, a sea of blood with a thousand dark, broken bodies floating in it. The sky was black, but snowflakes drifted against its backdrop like sluggish falling stars.
Amidst the viscera and twisted metal, the dread knight came across a small, shivering ball of life. It was a woman, bleeding not from any wound given by sword or spear, but of man nine months earlier. In her arms, still connected to her by shriveled flesh, was a mewling babe. She turned her weary, hate-filled eyes up to Azurius and said a name before he drove his sword into her chest. As her arms went limp, her child tumbled into the snow, and Thesys bent down to gather it up in his huge steel hands.
Thesys’ heart had been dead for longer than many men live, and he felt nothing for anything but his beloved Lady. So it bothered him not at all to crush the newborn in his hand, which he began to do. Something stopped him, though, something in how the babe screamed – not in pain or fear, but rage.
The dread knight was intrigued by this and, feeling generous, mused that he would carry the child back to Zandig. If it survived the journey, swaddled only in frigid steel, he would present the infant as a gift to Lady Maldegba.
As it was, the baby survived, and Maldegba adopted it as her own child. It was given the name its true mother spoke with her dying breath: Davian Orison.
---
Gwenhyfar Maldegba and Thesys Azurius are cruel monsters and made cruel, monstrous parents. They demanded power and strength from their adoptive son from a young age. They subjected him to training often indistinguishable from torture. They motivated him not with love, but with hate. As a babe he drank ice from the Witch’s teat, and as a boy he drank blood drawn by Azurius’ fist. At first he was a wretch, broken, with death as an omnipresent friend.
And then he grew strong.
From Maldegba he learned the art of manipulating life and death, and ice and blood were his bread and wine. From Azurius he learned the art of the sword, and fear and death were his allies. His education was harsh, but full – he learned to slaughter and kill and become one with the coldest winter night, but so too did he learn of politics and civilization and language.
At fifteen he performed his first assassination, and by eighteen had performed dozens more.
Then civil war broke out in Salvar. No one remembered the threat Zandig presented. The invasions stopped. It was the distraction Maldegba had waited for. She would marshal her forces and push suddenly south, clearing the southern fiefs one after the other, her army growing progressively more powerful until all of Salvar was one great nation of the living dead.
Davian was sent north to gather the various direling and giantkin tribes loyal to Maldegba, but he was not long into his mission before he received a vision from his adoptive mother. A circle of Salvic wizards had sensed the threat Maldegba posed, and using powerful magics, she said, they decimated the undead horde and destroyed the keep at Zandig.
Orison was commanded to go south, to travel the world and garner power.
For the first time in his short life, Davian was free – but alone. He was deep in the frozen wild of Berevar without friends and with few provisions, and the journey south would be lethal at best.
Without question he turned his back on the North Star, and plunged forth.
Appearance
A short, hard life of constant martial training, combined with a natural hardiness, has forged Orison’s body into a powerful tool – and it looks the part. He is stout, thick of limb, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and narrow of waist. There is something inherently brutish to him, which makes his natural speed and great dexterity difficult to anticipate.
His countenance is youthful but not boyish, aided by his tendency to remain fastidiously clean-shaven. His hair is likewise kept close-cropped, in a perpetual state of just growing back a week or two after being shaven away: a widow’s peak giving way to little more than five o’clock shadow. His thick eyebrows and large, intense eyes give him an air of brooding darkness, and he appears focused and unfriendly by default. He carries himself with a complete sort of confidence, chin up and chest out and back straight, with a quick, purposeful step and apathetic attitude toward danger, no matter how grave.
He has a collection of small scars spread across his body, with the most noticeable network visible on the backs of his hands, at the base of his palms, and on the upper faces of his forearms. A lifetime in the far northern reaches of Salvar has left him with a clear, pale complexion, with a strange, sometimes-visible pale blue tinge.
Personality
Davian is a complex creature, both wrought with understandable psychological scars and, amazingly, mentally competent. He has never experienced any sort of healthy connectivity to another sentient being, but he understands the phenomena as much as it is possible to understand it without experiencing it firsthand. He struggles with self-loathing and sees nothing in himself but unrealized potential, every deed marred by some perceived flaw or failure, and yet he sees himself as being superior to most. He understands the different values of peoples across Althanas, but does not feel bound to any moral code – he is lawless but for whim, amoral but not necessarily immoral, and therefore, in a way, neutral.
In general, Davian seems to be terse but not rude or unpleasant. He is capable of normal polite conversation, but it is difficult not to notice a sort of stiffness in his personality, especially in matters of delicate importance – as if he has to stop and think about the proper emotional response.
Skills
Martial Skills
Short Blade – Below Average
Davian carries this weapon with him because it is a quicker, more personal tool, and can be drawn quickly and silently. It is perfect for assassination, execution, or pure utility, but he has received no training in its use.
Rune Blade/Bastard Sword/Two-handed sword – Above Average
Davian has received extensive training in the use of the ornate “rune sword” given to him as a child, long before he could lift it. The techniques employed in the use of this weapon are not unlike those one would use when wielding a two-handed or hand-and-a-half or “bastard” sword. Though he is far from a flawless swordsman, Orison is experienced and capable against many kinds of combatant.
Intrinsic Physical Superiority - Passive
The boy wouldn’t have survived his childhood if he weren’t somehow special. Even beyond his Olympian level of physical fitness, Orison is stronger, faster, and tougher than he ought to be. The grueling nature of his recent travels have significantly weakened him, however, rendering him no faster or stronger than the average human being of his size and athletic level. He’s still able to endure a little more than a normal man, but Davian has limits and he’s close to them. Assuming he survives, he should recover more of this innate physical advantage.
Supernatural Skills
Sense the Wyrd/Blade Barrier - Passive
One of the first edicts Maldegba gave to Davian was that he may never wear any armor tougher than leather over his vital organs. This ensured that he would use her necromantic teachings to develop a unique relationship with the strands of fate, life, and death. How he does it is something of a mystery, but Orison is able to sense possible ways in which he could die mere seconds before they happen. This manifests itself in the ability to sense hidden danger or parry attacks with astounding speed and accuracy.
Note that this is not true precognition, and it does not ensure that Davian is in any way invincible. It is more accurate to say that he has an extra second-and-a-half at most to react, reflexively, to an incoming attack. Also note that this has no effect on his physical speed: Davian may be aware that an arrow is about to strike him and where, but he probably won’t be able to do much about it.
Manipulate Life - Passive
Davian naturally has powers vaguely related to necromancy and an inherent understanding of the art, but he is currently too physically and mentally exhausted to make much of them. In time he will regain these abilities. It is worth noting his familiarity with the black arts here, though, as even if he is not using it he will recognize the marks of necromancy.
Mysterious Origins – Passive
Not a skill as much as an oddity, Davian Orison is, for all magical intents and purposes, dead. Or at least mostly dead. Though he is very much physically alive, spells and rituals which have influence over the living mind and body have a reduced effect when cast upon Orison, and spells which are traditionally used on or against the dead, dying, or undead effect him just as surely as they would a corpse. That is to say, an embalming cantrip is more likely to act like a healing spell for Davian than an actual healing spell. A spell meant to turn the undead away will fill him with the overwhelming psychological need to run away from the caster. This means nothing for those spells which affect the living and dead the same way – for example, a fireball is a fireball, and it will hurt whether one is living or dead.
Thesys Azurius used to muse that this meant Orison was supposed to be dead. “The firmament probably figures you’re as good as dead, so it might as well treat you as if you’re already dead,” he used to say, and then he would shrug and say, “You’ll probably die tomorrow.”
Equipment
Clothing
Davian was dressed in dark, resilient leathers and cloaks when he set out on his final mission. The fierce winds, deadly pitfalls, and ravenous beasts of Berevar and the wild north of Salvar have rendered those original garments into a tattered collection of rags and leather wrappings. Orison is covered in these dark brown, skintight wrappings about the chest, which have been so savaged that they offer no more protection from weapons than strips of wool. The shorn remains of a black cloak serve as a makeshift scarf, and the unrecognizable remains of a second cloak are wrapped around his waist. A thick, hardy pair of leather trousers survived the journey and he still wears them, as well as a pair of finely crafted, fur-lined leather boots.
The Straight Blade
A simple, finely crafted steel blade, as straight as the name implies. Its hilt is perhaps five inches, its blade about eight inches. It has no cross-guard and the blade is thin, making it a poor choice for combat. However, it is sharp and can be drawn from its sheath quickly and silently, making it ideal for sudden strikes and assassinations.
Orison will draw his straight blade in combat only as a last resort, as it’s liable to chip or snap if it meets another weapon or armor directly. It is kept in its sheath along the small of Davian’s back.
The Rune Sword
For now, Davian’s rune sword is indistinguishable from any other ornate, high-class steel longsword. Like Orison, however, the rune sword is marked by a unique and unknown point of origin, and immense potential.
The weapon’s hilt is six and a half inches long, its blade perhaps another thirty-six. It is well-balanced but somewhat heavy at five pounds, and in good condition despite the handful of small nicks and notches along its edges. Its cross-guard is styled to vaguely resemble skeletal claws, and its pommel is inset with a tremendous violet gem, likely a high-grade amethyst.
Davian’s rune sword (thus called because it is meant to one day be etched with runes), is suspended from a baldric over the right shoulder. For whatever reason, another of Maldegba’s rules prevents Davian from ever properly sheathing the blade.
Familiar – Stuart the Ghoul
Ghouls are a ubiquitous factor when one combines dark magic and large numbers of the dead. Though they can be created directly through necromancy, it is far more common for ghouls to just spontaneously happen wherever the dead are gathered outside of sanctified ground – like, say, an undead army in Zandig.
Ghouls are monstrous undead creatures, generally mutated through the necromantic energies that permeate their bodies to become something inhuman and altogether new. They are simple, vicious, animalistic, and feral, and exist chiefly to consume flesh – generally that of the dead, but packs of ghouls have been known to ambush weak individuals or, more rarely, small groups of defenseless people. An individual ghoul is not much smarter than the most intelligent dog.
Stuart is no exception to these rules. Orison stumbled across the wretched creature in the arctic wastes of Berevar on his way south and it has taken to following him. Fatigued and a bit delirious, Orison named the ghoul and started talking to it to pass the time. Stuart hasn’t proven to be much of a conversationalist.
Though he ought to be capable of exhibiting some control over undead beings like Stuart, Davian is so utterly exhausted by his journey that he cannot command Stuart or any other undead creature to do anything. As such, Stuart basically has a mind of his own, and is disinclined to do anything useful whatsoever. Instead, he seems to exist for the sole purpose of sniffing out bits of rotting meat and making the people Davian meets uncomfortable.
“A true ruler is as moral as a hurricane – empty, but for the force of his gale.”
Davian Orison
Human
Early Twenties
Hazel eyes
Dark hair
5’6”, 185 pounds
Pre-History
Seventy-eight years ago…
Uthur, a young noble of comparatively little importance, is given blessings by the kingship in Knife’s Edge to found a fiefdom nestled in the eastern mountain ranges just south of Berevar. He is given little in the way of state resources for the task, generally seen as suicidal, but Uthur is charismatic and idealistic. Though he can offer little substantially, the force of his personality convinces key nobles and large groups of explorers and colonists to donate to or participate in the colonization of so distant and inhospitable a place.
Soon the host of Uthur winds its way through frozen mountain passes, and with but a few casualties sets its roots at the feet of the bald Halfort Mountain to the east and the gloomy Mount Osborn to the west. North lay the vast frozen lake, and beyond that the artic reaches of Berevar. It is Uthur’s declaration that his new fief, here founded in the valley called Zandig, would be the first bastion of The Sway and Salvar – a wall between the civilized south and the savage north.
The living is hard, but fruitful. Though very little of the land is arable and though the growing season is short, Uthur’s farmers are vigilant and efficient. Every spring a fresh band of hardy pioneers trickles through the mountain passes, and Uthur’s domain thrives. Some said in those days that the summers were longer and warmer with every passing year, as if the elements themselves bowed to Uthur’s wishes.
Within the first five years a church and keep are finished, and within the first fifteen a basic cathedral is constructed. Still, the fief is not without growing pains.
Sixty-three years ago…
Uthur’s original band of knights, though honorable and skilled, are becoming fewer, taken most often against the fierce beasts that came out of the mountains to make meals out of Uthur’s people. A militia is trained to supplement the army proper, but it is clear that a larger, trained force is necessary.
When spring comes, Uthur himself leads a sizable contingent south to seek aid from other nobles. When he arrives in the neighboring fief, called Grance, Uthur is told that the region is at war with its easterly neighbor, and the upstanding vassal of Grance is in sore need of aid. Uthur supplies that aid despite being largely outnumbered, and amazingly fights off the invaders. Hard living in the mountains had forged Uthur’s knights into superior warriors, each one worth three southern knights.
This so impresses the fief’s vassal – Leo von Grance – that he offers up a third of his standing army to return north with Uthur, under the stipulation that Zandig might come to Grance’s aid in the future. Uthur agrees, and an alliance is forged.
This alliance is further solidified when Uthur becomes smitten with Leo’s beautiful ward, the Lady Gwenhyfar Maldegba von Grance, and the two are married before returning north together. The people of Zandig rejoice, having doubled the size of their standing army and gained a lady of the realm in a single season.
That winter was the mildest ever known in Zandig, a fact attributed to the arrival of the pious, giving, and infinitely kind Gwenhyfar, lovingly dubbed The White Lady. The people would have further reason for joy, as in the following spring a massive force appears from the southern pass, flying the colors of Grance’s enemy. These colors are ceremonially lowered, and replaced with Zandig’s. These are knights who had witnessed the superior fighting prowess of Uthur’s knights, and they pledge themselves to his service in order to become equally hardy.
Uthur might have turned them away, for he is wary of their intentions, but Lady Gwenhyfar is reportedly moved by the petition of their Head Knight, a giant and exotic warrior named Thesys Azurius. Uthur consents at the pleading of his wife, and it is not long before Azurius is Uthur’s greatest knight, advisor, and friend.
Fifty years ago…
Though Zandig is prosperous compared to most of its southern counterparts, it is yet under constant siege by the various monsters, beasts, and peoples of the savage north. Though every year brings a higher population and greater yields from smaller farms, the passing seasons also bring attacks by feral draves, roaming giants, hungry ogres, giantkin raids, and finally the organized malignance of a tribe of direlings.
Uthur, bludgeoned by administrative duties, entrusts increasingly more military power to Azurius, who leads campaigns to hunt down the many enemies of the fief. In time, Azurius would begin requesting larger rations and better gear for his soldiers, requests which Uthur universally consents to. He is so burdened by his duties that Uthur does not see the strain Azurius’ demands place upon his people. For the first time, the people of Zandig begin to grumble.
It is in these years that the first reports of the ravenous undead begin to be heard. Graveyards are pillaged and people traveling to and from Zandig are found butchered on the road or, worse, disappear only to be sighted as walking corpses later. Gwenhyfar boldly travels to desecrated holy ground with the clergy, and the people are impressed with her devotion to the land’s purity.
Forty-five years ago…
Despite consuming a great percentage of the fiefdom’s resources, Uthur’s knights are becoming a haggard bunch. Their numbers are greatly diminished, and none have returned to their homelands as it was agreed they would. Uthur’s neighbors begin to threaten to cut off already-sparse trade. Furthermore, the people of Zandig are on the verge of riot, and petitions to the land’s lord are heard from sunup to sundown daily.
Lady Gwenhyfar is greatly distressed by the presence of the undead in the kingdom. It is historically noted that when addressing her people, Gwenhyfar speaks to the defense of Thesys Azurius – not to her husband. Perhaps it is this tension between husband and wife that motivates Uthur to give a grand commandment: Azurius would lead the army deep into the mountains to find the source of the living dead, and to route the ever-greater threat of the direlings.
The people are placated, despite the great wealth of resources needed to fund the army’s excursion. Thesys Azurius rides at the head of the army into the mountains and daily sends back news of his great feats and reports of victory and success. One last bright period is known in Zandig.
Azurius rides into the village at Zandig alone after three and a half months away and declares his mission a wild success. He is so ecstatic with the news, he reports, that he rode ahead of the main army to deliver news of Zandig’s victory to Uthur personally. The lord of the land is relieved and declares the day a local holiday, and arranges a tremendous feast in the people’s honor.
During the feast a certain pair of Uthur’s loyal knights (whose names are lost to history) notice that neither Azurius nor Lady Gwenhyfar is present. Shockingly, they uncover and report an affair between the two to Uthur. Before he can issue any orders, it is reported to him that Azurius has escaped Zandig and flees to the north.
Gwenhyfar is confronted and, weeping, claims that Azurius has violated her and the trust of Zandig’s people. Uthur is enraged, crushed and disgusted with his wife, and orders her locked in her chambers. There is a tremendous outcry against this, and Uthur’s home guard is faced with riots and other acts of violent sedition.
Uthur sends messengers out into the mountains with orders for his army to return immediately, and spies are sent out in search of Thesys Azurius.
Forty-four years ago…
A band of direlings – the largest ever seen in Zandig – attacks Uthur’s keep in the dead of the winter night. They burn the original church and a number of farms. When Uthur’s home guard rides out to confront them they flee, and are pursued into the wilderness. In the meantime, a second smaller force assaults the keep, led by Thesys Azurius himself. Gwenhyfar is abducted, and the direlings escape with minimal losses back into the mountains. A second wave of scouts is sent out by an enraged Uthur, bearing orders for his knights to return immediately. There is still no response, and a large portion of the scouts do not return.
In the spring, Uthur commands half of his home guard out into the mountains to search for any sign of his lost wife, lost army, or the traitor knight. A week later, Azurius appears at the head of a massive direling force, and the remaining home guard rides out to meet them. The fighting is bloody and intense. Uthur, seeing his folly, desperately calls for the return of his forces.
The last known letter written by Lord Uthur of Zandig speaks of his overwhelming joy when first he beheld a host of knights charging from a mountain pass – the expeditionary half of his home guard, combined with his army, missing for fourteen months.
Uthur did not write of the immense fear and pain that came immediately after, but those in his court did. Though this second army is indeed his lost host, it is not riding to Uthur’s aid as it first appeared. As they ride closer, scouts realize the force is led by a pale lady upon a snowy horse, and that every knight is dead and living on his horse.
There have been few massacres in Salvar’s history that ended so bloodily.
Forty years ago…
The liege lords of Knife’s Edge order Glance and her neighbors to send scouts north to discern the fate of Zandig, which has been silent for some five years. The news reaches Knife’s Edge that Zandig is no more. Its keep is held by an army of the dead, led by the dread knight Thesys Azurius, who marches at the behest of one Lady Maldegba, who in turn calls herself the White Queen.
The next forty years are marked by varying degrees of conflict in the region. Knights of Glance and other fiefs, eager for glory, ride into Zandig and never return. Tribes of direlings ride suddenly from the mountains and raid the countryside, and then flee back into the misty mountain ranges. Once or twice, freshly-built towers are discovered where once the borders of Zandig were marked, manned by the undead. The lands of Zandig are never reclaimed, though they are technically still a part of Salvar.
History
The birth of Davian Orison was a story Thesys Azurius told differently every time, but there are themes in the story that show up more often than not. The gist of that collective story is as such:
An allied band of the southern nations marched into Zandig, as they are wont to do, and Azurius marched out to crush them at the head of his lady’s undead army. This he did, as he always did, and every man who fell bolstered the undead horde. The battle was a particularly bloody one, with heavy losses for the southern forces.
Thesys found himself wandering amongst the bodies after the battle was won. The snow was red for as far as eyes could see, a sea of blood with a thousand dark, broken bodies floating in it. The sky was black, but snowflakes drifted against its backdrop like sluggish falling stars.
Amidst the viscera and twisted metal, the dread knight came across a small, shivering ball of life. It was a woman, bleeding not from any wound given by sword or spear, but of man nine months earlier. In her arms, still connected to her by shriveled flesh, was a mewling babe. She turned her weary, hate-filled eyes up to Azurius and said a name before he drove his sword into her chest. As her arms went limp, her child tumbled into the snow, and Thesys bent down to gather it up in his huge steel hands.
Thesys’ heart had been dead for longer than many men live, and he felt nothing for anything but his beloved Lady. So it bothered him not at all to crush the newborn in his hand, which he began to do. Something stopped him, though, something in how the babe screamed – not in pain or fear, but rage.
The dread knight was intrigued by this and, feeling generous, mused that he would carry the child back to Zandig. If it survived the journey, swaddled only in frigid steel, he would present the infant as a gift to Lady Maldegba.
As it was, the baby survived, and Maldegba adopted it as her own child. It was given the name its true mother spoke with her dying breath: Davian Orison.
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Gwenhyfar Maldegba and Thesys Azurius are cruel monsters and made cruel, monstrous parents. They demanded power and strength from their adoptive son from a young age. They subjected him to training often indistinguishable from torture. They motivated him not with love, but with hate. As a babe he drank ice from the Witch’s teat, and as a boy he drank blood drawn by Azurius’ fist. At first he was a wretch, broken, with death as an omnipresent friend.
And then he grew strong.
From Maldegba he learned the art of manipulating life and death, and ice and blood were his bread and wine. From Azurius he learned the art of the sword, and fear and death were his allies. His education was harsh, but full – he learned to slaughter and kill and become one with the coldest winter night, but so too did he learn of politics and civilization and language.
At fifteen he performed his first assassination, and by eighteen had performed dozens more.
Then civil war broke out in Salvar. No one remembered the threat Zandig presented. The invasions stopped. It was the distraction Maldegba had waited for. She would marshal her forces and push suddenly south, clearing the southern fiefs one after the other, her army growing progressively more powerful until all of Salvar was one great nation of the living dead.
Davian was sent north to gather the various direling and giantkin tribes loyal to Maldegba, but he was not long into his mission before he received a vision from his adoptive mother. A circle of Salvic wizards had sensed the threat Maldegba posed, and using powerful magics, she said, they decimated the undead horde and destroyed the keep at Zandig.
Orison was commanded to go south, to travel the world and garner power.
For the first time in his short life, Davian was free – but alone. He was deep in the frozen wild of Berevar without friends and with few provisions, and the journey south would be lethal at best.
Without question he turned his back on the North Star, and plunged forth.
Appearance
A short, hard life of constant martial training, combined with a natural hardiness, has forged Orison’s body into a powerful tool – and it looks the part. He is stout, thick of limb, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and narrow of waist. There is something inherently brutish to him, which makes his natural speed and great dexterity difficult to anticipate.
His countenance is youthful but not boyish, aided by his tendency to remain fastidiously clean-shaven. His hair is likewise kept close-cropped, in a perpetual state of just growing back a week or two after being shaven away: a widow’s peak giving way to little more than five o’clock shadow. His thick eyebrows and large, intense eyes give him an air of brooding darkness, and he appears focused and unfriendly by default. He carries himself with a complete sort of confidence, chin up and chest out and back straight, with a quick, purposeful step and apathetic attitude toward danger, no matter how grave.
He has a collection of small scars spread across his body, with the most noticeable network visible on the backs of his hands, at the base of his palms, and on the upper faces of his forearms. A lifetime in the far northern reaches of Salvar has left him with a clear, pale complexion, with a strange, sometimes-visible pale blue tinge.
Personality
Davian is a complex creature, both wrought with understandable psychological scars and, amazingly, mentally competent. He has never experienced any sort of healthy connectivity to another sentient being, but he understands the phenomena as much as it is possible to understand it without experiencing it firsthand. He struggles with self-loathing and sees nothing in himself but unrealized potential, every deed marred by some perceived flaw or failure, and yet he sees himself as being superior to most. He understands the different values of peoples across Althanas, but does not feel bound to any moral code – he is lawless but for whim, amoral but not necessarily immoral, and therefore, in a way, neutral.
In general, Davian seems to be terse but not rude or unpleasant. He is capable of normal polite conversation, but it is difficult not to notice a sort of stiffness in his personality, especially in matters of delicate importance – as if he has to stop and think about the proper emotional response.
Skills
Martial Skills
Short Blade – Below Average
Davian carries this weapon with him because it is a quicker, more personal tool, and can be drawn quickly and silently. It is perfect for assassination, execution, or pure utility, but he has received no training in its use.
Rune Blade/Bastard Sword/Two-handed sword – Above Average
Davian has received extensive training in the use of the ornate “rune sword” given to him as a child, long before he could lift it. The techniques employed in the use of this weapon are not unlike those one would use when wielding a two-handed or hand-and-a-half or “bastard” sword. Though he is far from a flawless swordsman, Orison is experienced and capable against many kinds of combatant.
Intrinsic Physical Superiority - Passive
The boy wouldn’t have survived his childhood if he weren’t somehow special. Even beyond his Olympian level of physical fitness, Orison is stronger, faster, and tougher than he ought to be. The grueling nature of his recent travels have significantly weakened him, however, rendering him no faster or stronger than the average human being of his size and athletic level. He’s still able to endure a little more than a normal man, but Davian has limits and he’s close to them. Assuming he survives, he should recover more of this innate physical advantage.
Supernatural Skills
Sense the Wyrd/Blade Barrier - Passive
One of the first edicts Maldegba gave to Davian was that he may never wear any armor tougher than leather over his vital organs. This ensured that he would use her necromantic teachings to develop a unique relationship with the strands of fate, life, and death. How he does it is something of a mystery, but Orison is able to sense possible ways in which he could die mere seconds before they happen. This manifests itself in the ability to sense hidden danger or parry attacks with astounding speed and accuracy.
Note that this is not true precognition, and it does not ensure that Davian is in any way invincible. It is more accurate to say that he has an extra second-and-a-half at most to react, reflexively, to an incoming attack. Also note that this has no effect on his physical speed: Davian may be aware that an arrow is about to strike him and where, but he probably won’t be able to do much about it.
Manipulate Life - Passive
Davian naturally has powers vaguely related to necromancy and an inherent understanding of the art, but he is currently too physically and mentally exhausted to make much of them. In time he will regain these abilities. It is worth noting his familiarity with the black arts here, though, as even if he is not using it he will recognize the marks of necromancy.
Mysterious Origins – Passive
Not a skill as much as an oddity, Davian Orison is, for all magical intents and purposes, dead. Or at least mostly dead. Though he is very much physically alive, spells and rituals which have influence over the living mind and body have a reduced effect when cast upon Orison, and spells which are traditionally used on or against the dead, dying, or undead effect him just as surely as they would a corpse. That is to say, an embalming cantrip is more likely to act like a healing spell for Davian than an actual healing spell. A spell meant to turn the undead away will fill him with the overwhelming psychological need to run away from the caster. This means nothing for those spells which affect the living and dead the same way – for example, a fireball is a fireball, and it will hurt whether one is living or dead.
Thesys Azurius used to muse that this meant Orison was supposed to be dead. “The firmament probably figures you’re as good as dead, so it might as well treat you as if you’re already dead,” he used to say, and then he would shrug and say, “You’ll probably die tomorrow.”
Equipment
Clothing
Davian was dressed in dark, resilient leathers and cloaks when he set out on his final mission. The fierce winds, deadly pitfalls, and ravenous beasts of Berevar and the wild north of Salvar have rendered those original garments into a tattered collection of rags and leather wrappings. Orison is covered in these dark brown, skintight wrappings about the chest, which have been so savaged that they offer no more protection from weapons than strips of wool. The shorn remains of a black cloak serve as a makeshift scarf, and the unrecognizable remains of a second cloak are wrapped around his waist. A thick, hardy pair of leather trousers survived the journey and he still wears them, as well as a pair of finely crafted, fur-lined leather boots.
The Straight Blade
A simple, finely crafted steel blade, as straight as the name implies. Its hilt is perhaps five inches, its blade about eight inches. It has no cross-guard and the blade is thin, making it a poor choice for combat. However, it is sharp and can be drawn from its sheath quickly and silently, making it ideal for sudden strikes and assassinations.
Orison will draw his straight blade in combat only as a last resort, as it’s liable to chip or snap if it meets another weapon or armor directly. It is kept in its sheath along the small of Davian’s back.
The Rune Sword
For now, Davian’s rune sword is indistinguishable from any other ornate, high-class steel longsword. Like Orison, however, the rune sword is marked by a unique and unknown point of origin, and immense potential.
The weapon’s hilt is six and a half inches long, its blade perhaps another thirty-six. It is well-balanced but somewhat heavy at five pounds, and in good condition despite the handful of small nicks and notches along its edges. Its cross-guard is styled to vaguely resemble skeletal claws, and its pommel is inset with a tremendous violet gem, likely a high-grade amethyst.
Davian’s rune sword (thus called because it is meant to one day be etched with runes), is suspended from a baldric over the right shoulder. For whatever reason, another of Maldegba’s rules prevents Davian from ever properly sheathing the blade.
Familiar – Stuart the Ghoul
Ghouls are a ubiquitous factor when one combines dark magic and large numbers of the dead. Though they can be created directly through necromancy, it is far more common for ghouls to just spontaneously happen wherever the dead are gathered outside of sanctified ground – like, say, an undead army in Zandig.
Ghouls are monstrous undead creatures, generally mutated through the necromantic energies that permeate their bodies to become something inhuman and altogether new. They are simple, vicious, animalistic, and feral, and exist chiefly to consume flesh – generally that of the dead, but packs of ghouls have been known to ambush weak individuals or, more rarely, small groups of defenseless people. An individual ghoul is not much smarter than the most intelligent dog.
Stuart is no exception to these rules. Orison stumbled across the wretched creature in the arctic wastes of Berevar on his way south and it has taken to following him. Fatigued and a bit delirious, Orison named the ghoul and started talking to it to pass the time. Stuart hasn’t proven to be much of a conversationalist.
Though he ought to be capable of exhibiting some control over undead beings like Stuart, Davian is so utterly exhausted by his journey that he cannot command Stuart or any other undead creature to do anything. As such, Stuart basically has a mind of his own, and is disinclined to do anything useful whatsoever. Instead, he seems to exist for the sole purpose of sniffing out bits of rotting meat and making the people Davian meets uncomfortable.