( Originally played May 13, 2006 )

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( Originally played May 5 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 28 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 19 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 18 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 18 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 17 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 14 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 13 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 13 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 13 2006 )

Marked.

Marked for tragedy.

Marked for travesty.

Marked for betrayal.

Marked in the brimstone depths of cataclysmic hatred.

My fears for my companions' safety were not ill-founded. No sooner had we found a suitable place to rest than to have it all shattered and scattered into another nightmare in the waking. I went looking for information, and found more of it than I care to think about.

Five men occupied a table near us at the inn. We ate our meals -- Kaomi I'll mention took to wrapping herself 'round several pitchers of mead, and I admit I was severely tempted to do the same, but myself and alcohol... we've become disacquainted bedfellows of late. -- The men were three barbarians, sellswords I would learn, and two humans of the names Nearon and Tethin. Names I won't soon forget.

I played them what I perceived as a friendly game of cards, hoping to garner information. And then the man called Nearon offered to shake my hand in farewell. The touch filled me with an anxious torment, and I felt him stir in likewise recognition. I knew this man. Now I feel like such a fool for not recalling him, when he is as real to me as Kaomi or Kayula.

Nearon was a defiler working for Malavasith; one of her fieldmen with a habit of hiring mercenaries to execute his assignments. I say was because at the end of the night his blood was most prominently splattered on the front of my clothing, and he lies dead and mutilated now. Even before I recalled who he was, I knew we had to leave. I urged Kayula to wake Kaomi, and grant her for trying, but it was mostly useless, and too little too late. As I stood guard at her room, a shadowed figure emerged before me. I only had the chance to raise my arms in self defense as she slashed into them.

The woman would later sink her daggers deep into Kaomi's back, letting her fall in a crumpled heap on the floor, barely alive.

The battle that followed was furious and heated. Kayula and I disposed of nearly every man, and I remember an intense wash of perverse satisfaction at watching Nearon spasm in death throes. But the masked woman slipped away again, and we all heard Lily's muffled cries. The other human, Tethin, got away, and that was enough to set him ... and to set me, into a rage. I barely remember my actions as I kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked, defiling Nearon's lifeless body in intense frustration until I could be pulled away.

I'm marked.

And those that fall with me will suffer my stigma.

( Originally played Apr 12 2006 )

( Originally played Apr 11 2006 )

( /ooc summary )

Going to use these as an in character summary of events.



How is it I can dream without ever once closing my eyes?

Hellish nightmares, of a more wicked caliber than before. These ones are full of vast darkness, stretching from the brutal smirk on his face, to the blood dripping from his gauntlet. The bastion of light that once seemed to mercifully grant a moon to these dream-envisioned nights has faded into nothing now, not even a dull flicker.

I know why. She’s gone. Physically, she’s been gone for a little over a week now, but I suspect there’s more to it than the absence of her presence. Something else is gone with her, and my sanity is taking its agonizingly slow descent in a likewise manner.

I should tell Kaomi. I should tell her everything, really. But after what happened today, I fear telling her my dreads concerning her sister would be nothing short of heartbreaking. As I write this in haste, it’s the morning after a tempest, and I refer not only to the storm that’s hit Antonica, though I wish that were the case.

Frontanletus was murdered. Just saying that, though, it sounds so distant and informal. The fact that he ceases to exist is a far more sobering reality. Kaomi saw it. Well, I actually don’t know how much of it she saw, but she said it was a Teir’Dal woman, slipping a dagger through his throat. I caught a glimpse of her, after Kaomi’s scream of horror. It’s not her. I don’t know who it is, but I know, it’s not her.

We said we’d set out that night, but the storm prevented it, and the agreement was that we would leave first thing in the morning – Kaomi, Kayula, and I. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure what sort of suspended reality I was in when Lily was taken; some sort of damnable realm between waking and sleeping, where only fools openly traverse. I wasn’t fast enough, or perhaps it’s even my very existence that contributed, but Lily’s been taken, and it’s yet another intolerable, unforgivable crime to fit to my grave.

We’re leaving soon, for the Commonlands, in hopes of following a blind lead. Yet I wonder if I’m not just trying to get myself out of this city; get him out of this city. False hopes, broken dreams, and idle promises. That’s all it ever is, he assures me. With one dead and two captured… I’m beginning to believe him.

Originally played Apr 09 2006

Originally played Apr 09 2006

Originally played Apr 08 2006

Originally played Apr 08 2006

Used as a summary for Valinar, but it works fine as a summary of what's happened before the game. A prologue of sorts.

Valinar was not always known as such. In fact, for the last 28 years, he’s been known as Corrin. Once a boy scraping by on the streets of Freeport, he got his ‘break’ when an older boy named Thadrius took him in and taught him the ropes of proper cunning and thievery. He made his life as a pickpocket and conman, mostly, though Thadrius was always better at it. Thadrius, in fact, began to acquire everything Corrin wanted, including a bored young noble named Lyandra.

Jealous and spiteful, Corrin concocted a plan to ‘teach Thadrius a lesson’. The intent was to get him caught, let him spend a night in jail, and then laugh about it the next day. Unfortunately, things did not pan out in that manner. Betraying his best friend and the man who was like a brother to him, Corrin drove Thadrius away and was left alone with his own guilt and resentment.

It wasn’t very long after that Corrin was ‘discovered’ by an attractive dark elf enchantress calling herself Malavasith. She told him everything he wanted to hear. That Thadrius was the one in the wrong and had betrayed him and left him alone. That he could be strong, without that extra weight pulling him down. She poisoned his mind with her coercions until he became little more than a dutiful pet. She bade he train as an assassin, and train he did. After some time, she gifted her favorite little lackey with dual curved blades of immense power, as well as the rank of Commander.

Corrin grew increasingly arrogant and careless. Something in the blades seemed to empower him toward absolute hatred. Indeed, Malavasith had concocted a rather ingenious plan. The blades were the collected shards from the blade of an ancient Teir’Dal shadowknight named Xervitis, a man of such caliber that he challenged Cazic Thule himself and refused to die, binding his own tainted soul to his blade. Her intent was always to have the shadowknight’s power manifested in some being with a strong destiny, the likes of which she felt in Corrin.

When she sent him on mission to assault Qeynos, she knew it would be his ‘last’. His arrogance only aided in his downfall as he gave tirade through the Commonlands, outraged that his company was not allowed to freely pass on the roads. Their plundering of a small fishing village served to push back their supplies by a few days, and Corrin had to tow his troops to a re-supply spot; a small island off of Antonica. There they were ambushed by a Qeynosian force. Corrin was enraged, but it became pointedly clear that his army was outnumbered and overpowered. He resolved instead to take out as many poor souls as possible, if he was going to meet his end.

His bloody conquest directed him toward a lone priestess, weakened from healing fallen comrades, guarded by a froglok paladin. It was as good an end as any, he reasoned, and prepared to fight, showing them a duelist’s courtesy. But they never matched blows. As the tower collapsed about them, Corrin was struck on the back of the head by falling mortar, the life beginning to seep out of him.

Necromantic energy from his blade began to consume him, claiming him in Xervitis’ name just as Malavasith always wanted. But there was one thing she did not expect. The templar, Amirie Starguide, put herself inbetween the ritual, using her own life force to delay and push back the spread of the toxic spells. She brought the man back to the temples of Qeynos, where the priests discovered his mind had been badly damaged either from the head trauma, or the ritual itself. They decided to learn as much as they could from him, and gave him a new identity under the harmless name of Valinar. Amirie would be assigned to keep close vigil over him in the name of Qeynos and the hope of finally besting Malavasith once and for all by using her former Commander against her.

Of course, it is all proving to be more than she or the Temple can handle alone. Through some untold wonder, Amirie managed to get herself caught in Malavasith’s plan, binding herself between Corrin and the spirit of Xervitis. So strongly that every night she shares the man called Valinar’s dreams – dreams that are very obviously his memories slowly crawling back.

She made noble attempt at hiding him from himself, but the questions of the confused man played to her sense of guilt. He was beginning to feel things that seemed strange to him. Intense bouts of hatred and surges of power. Surges that would lead him to engage in a nearly lethal battle with the froglok paladin Frontanletus in a duel meant only at first to recover his own tarnished honor. Amirie was not shocked by his admission that he had felt… different; murderous, even. Confronted with an internal battle, she slowly told him about himself and the measures she and the Temple had taken to give him a second chance.

Valinar was no longer, however, only Amirie’s problem. In bringing him back into the world, she had introduced him to her sister, who from the beginning seemed to take a profound interest in the mysterious man who reminded her so much of their human father, a treasure hunting ranger of Tunare. While Valinar at first seemed to act playfully flirtatious around Amirie, she did everything in her power to nearly push him toward Kaomi, after first saying he should stay away from her. Though nothing more than a physical attraction (and Kaomi’s underlying plan to get close to the man to find out exactly how he was involved with her sister), their ‘relationship’ and Valinar’s life came to a wreck one morning in Eldarr Grove when Xervitis possessively took over, hoping to use Kaomi’s fear and overpower her, making Valinar nearly strike her.

It was a catalyst, and one Amirie seemed to be waiting for. Though Valinar managed to stop his own actions, she had him arrested. But in shaking off Xervitis, Valinar had unwittingly helped the presence jump from himself to Amirie through the nature of their bond. She regarded her sister with a cold, heartless warning, telling her not to meddle in the affairs of adults. Shortly after, Valinar was ‘escorted’ to the dungeons and Amirie set off with Frontanletus in search of Malavasith.

One week later, Frontanletus returned, severely wounded, with word of Amirie’s capture. Knowing Valinar would be her only source for answers, Kaomi secured the writ for his release, making him tell her everything he knows about what’s happened to Amirie, as well as posing difficult questions over the nature of his affections toward her sister.

At present, Valinar is still being closely watched by armed guards as Kaomi returns to the Temple to tell them of her progress and to request a small team backing the effort of finding and restoring her sister to Qeynos.

In the meantime… Amirie is in the hands of a powerful enchantress who sees the opportunity for having both a skilled templar and the assassin she is bonded to on her side, both with Xervitis’ shared power. Arrogant does not begin to describe the Teir’Dal woman, who would challenge the Gods themselves if given the chance in hopes of replacing them. Amirie’s vulnerable state of jealousy, repression, and tarnished faith currently make her a very easy target…