BelovedOfAnguish
Beloved of Anguish
Background
Copyright Lynn Ayres 2004
Beloved of Anguish is the sole survivor of Heir to the Fallen King's assault on his home city, Maras. She was raised from a certain, horrible death in the chaos of Maras' destruction, and molded by the Prefect himself into a necromancer and sorceror. To her horror, the Beloved was given to the Heir as his counterpart and companion. Whether summoning demons or binding ghosts, raising zombies or crafting the engines of Death's war, the Beloved is the army for him to lead. Her life was and is an agony, and there will be no release from it. On the day when the Heir finishes what he began in Maras and kills its last survivor, the Beloved will go not into the sweet embrace of Oblivion, but into the torment of Soul Mirror. The Beloved is giving Creation the release she is denied.
Adela was a slave in Maras when Heir to the Fallen King returned to make a reckoning with the authors of his father's coup and the entire city, guilty by association. She was thirty-five, a slave from birth with all of the misery that was her inheritance. She was torn away from her parents at a young age, and sold many times throughout her life. She bore eight living children, but could not keep any of them for longer than a few years. She had to steal knowledge like it was bread, learning to read in the darkness of closets. Ask Adela whether it was better to be beautiful or intelligent, and she would answer that either was a curse, for she had been both: but at least beauty faded. Adela's lovely face and light step doomed her to successive pregnancies, but her mind was like a sword that only grew sharper: the awareness of her situation cut her, and it did not free her. The education that Adela was forbidden, when discovered, only buried her deeper in slavery. She was a domestic servant who could birth babies as well as care for them, rebuild the range instead of manage the fire, balance the household accounts and teach the children to read. What need was there to hire a tutor, to pay for the midwife, to send for the handyman, or to buy more maids if Adela could do it all? She was too valuable to ever escape her toil.
And yet Adela was known to be as kind as she was indispensible. Her gentle hands were as credited for healing as the splint she made to reset a broken bone. She accepted her own plight, but fiercly resisted injustice on the behalf of others. Her inability to control herself in the face of suffering could make life as hard for her as anything else. It was a rare day that she was not in disgrace with her masters. Another person could have become bitter, but Adela never stopped loving, even if hope had long since been abandoned. A few months before the end of Maras, she gave birth to a son that was immediately taken from her to prevent him from distracting her from her duties. To keep her milk from going to waste, she was given one of the household's infants to nurse. She wept for her lost son, but she loved the other baby just the same.
When Heir to the Fallen King came back to Maras, he brought hell with him. The usurpation of the King had barely registered for Adela; she was only a slave, buried in a slave's never ending work. There was panic in the streets when the army of the dead surrounded the city; panic turned to horror after the Heir killed his father's murderers. It was the Prince. It was a demon in the shape of the Prince. It was the Prince's vengeful ghost, come back to visit ruin upon his city. Escape was impossible: those who fled were cut down by the waiting army ringing the city. And still, they ran. Mobs fled through the streets before the Heir's carnage. Adela hid; she took the infant she was nursing and she hid within the walls of her deserted household. She stayed in the cramped crawlspace through the long hours of the day, through the smell of her own sweat and the baby's crying. She heard the screams surging before the Heir's progress like a wave. Finally, there was quiet. Finally, he was upon her. Finally, she ran. In her terror, Adela dropped the baby in his path; the moment it took him to kill the child was another heartbeat Adela lived. Another heartbeat, and no more. Adela was cut down by a single slash of Soul Mirror.
Adela was dead, and yet she did not die. With her wound, she could not live, and yet she tried. She saw what Soul Mirror did; she felt the sword sucking at her breath, tugging at her heart with the promise of an eternity of torment. There would be no peace for Adela, no rest, no final reward: she would go into the sword when she died. Every breath that she took was a moment between her and Soul Mirror. So she tried. She tried so hard. She bound an impossible wound with trembling, blood-slick hands; she held pressure on it until her arms cramped and her vision darkened. She lay in her agony until the only sound in the dead city was the gasping of her own breath, the fading thunder of her dying heart. She prayed to every god she could name, and to many she could not. In the final moment, it was the Prefect of Eternal Solitude and Relinquished Souls that caught her soul before it fell.
Beloved of Anguish did not come easily to Abyssal exaltation. She did not renounce her past; she did not stop caring. She did not lose her fundamental kindness, or her just soul. She lost only her destiny: ask Adela and she would have told you she never owned it. Faced with a choice between unending torment in Soul Mirror, or life in the service of Oblivion and the Prefect of Eternal Solitude and Relinquished Souls, the Beloved chose life. In a moment of ultimate weakness, she made a mistake that the good in Adela may never be able to regret. To face the injustice of her fate and admit that she should have died and gone into the sword, to be imprisoned and finally destroyed forevermore, instead of exalted as Beloved of Anguish – it would be too much to ask of the Incarna themselves. The Beloved may never be able to do it.
And so she believed. Beloved of Anguish took the second breath that Adela could not. When the Prefect whispered that he would give her the power to end in others the pain that tormented her, she murmured her gratitude to the flies swarming over her maimed body. When he sent ghosts to drag her out of Maras' wreckage, she called them her brothers. And when they brought her into the presence of the Prefect, she bowed her head to her Master. She did not question him when he closed her wound, but did not heal it. She devoted herself utterly to the study he laid before her, becoming a Necromantic prodigy. The Beloved bent the limbs of the fallen into monstrous war engines as assiduously as she had set broken bones in another lifetime. She learned to send waves of the restless dead against the living, not without mercy, but feeling her heart break with it. Like a good slave, she obeyed her Master in everything. When he called her into his audience a year after her exaltation, a year after Maras fell, she came without hesitation. She saw Heir to the Fallen King standing next to the Prefect, and her heart convulsed in terror. She could barely hear the words through the blood rushing in her ears. The Beloved was a gift to the Heir: a servant, a bodyguard, a weapon. Even as a helpless mortal slave, she never felt such despair.
In fact, Beloved of Anguish is a brilliant ploy to harness Heir to the Fallen King and defend the Prefect from his enemies among the Deathlords. She has been trained as the Heir's counterpart: the sorcerous might behind his iron fist, the engine of destruction for him to lead into battle. In time, another Abyssal might have grown as proficient in these arts as the Beloved. But only the last survivor of Maras could walk beside the Heir. When the Prefect exalted Heir to the Fallen King and promised him his reckoning in the destruction of his city, the Prefect was not blind to what the future held. When a man has lived for revenge, what does he have left when he finds it? What is service promised, to a man who would have been King? When the Prefect exalted the Beloved, he left the Heir's revenge incomplete: he gave the Heir a reason for living. A reason for killing. As long as the Heir obeys the Prefect and spares the Beloved, he will exist as an unstoppable expression of Oblivion. At the same time, when the Prefect gave the Beloved to the Heir, he ensured that the woman least suited to be an Abyssal would never betray him. A word from the Prefect, an uncertain look, and the Heir would kill the Beloved. The Prefect can teach her the secrets of Necromancy and Sorcery without fearing that she will ever try to use them against him. The Beloved is the chain around the Heir's throat; the Heir is the dagger at the Beloved's heart.
Beloved of Anguish' life is defined by pain and fear. The wound that Soul Mirror dealt her has never healed, and it hurts her every day. In Creation, when Soul Mirror is unsheathed, and when the Beloved is in distress, it bleeds. When the Beloved dies by any hand, by any means, Soul Mirror will claim the debt it is owed from her. She is doomed to go into the sword. Beloved of Anguish believes without question that Heir to the Fallen King will kill her, tomorrow or at the end of Creation. She knows it. She does not even consider trying to kill him first. With his father dead and every drop of royal blood extinguished but his own, the Heir is her King. The most the Beloved has contemplated is a way of destroying Soul Mirror, and even that she believes is futile. She is owed to the sword. It is her doom. Every step the Beloved takes, she walks in fear: fear of the unknown, and fear of the inevitable. For Beloved of Anguish, courage is not the absence of fear: it is the determination that forces her to walk across her own coals.
Beloved of Anguish hates and fears Heir to the Fallen King; at the same and time, she is awed and fascinated by him. As her King, she has struggled to forgive him for what he has done and will do to her. As her tormentor, she has fought just to keep from screaming when he walks into a room. She wards and defends him with her sorceries; she also depends on him utterly to protect her in battle. She follows him around for fear of what he may decide when he is alone; she longs to run from him, if only she could get a far enough head start.
In a moment of weakness, Heir to the Fallen King offered himself to the Beloved for a night. In a moment of courage, she took him. They will open in your game a few months after the Beloved was given to the Heir, and a week or so after that night. The Beloved no longer knows what to believe about Oblivion; she is only certain that living is pain, and the Heir is her own death, her own King.
Stats
Name: Beloved of Anguish Concept: Slave
Player: Lynn Nature: Visionary
Caste: Daybreak Anima: Swarm of Flies
-- ATTRIBUTES --
Strength * Charisma ** Perception ***
Dexterity **** Manipulation ** Intelligence *****
Stamina ** Appearance ***** Wits ***
-- ABILITIES --
Archery +Endurance ** +Craft (Necro.) ***
Brawl Performance +Investigation
Martial Arts +Presence ** +Lore ***
+Melee **** Resistance +Medicine ***
Thrown Survival * +Occult ****
Athletics Bureaucracy Languages
+Awareness *** +Linguistics ** Riverspeak (Native)
+Dodge *** Ride High Realm
Larceny Sail Low Realm
Stealth Socialize
-- BACKGROUNDS -- -- CHARMS --
Artifact *** Essence Engorgement Technique [Endurance]
Liege **** Essence Engorgement Technique
Manse ** Essence Engorgement Technique
Necromancy ***** Flesh-Mending Discipline [Medicine]
Resources ** Flitting Shadow Form [Dodge]
Shadowlands Circle [Occult]
Labyrinth Circle
-- VIRTUES -- Terrestrial Circle
Compassion **** Celestial Circle
Conviction ***
Temperance * -- Spells --
Valor *** Walking War Machine [Necromancy]
Arisen Legion
-- OTHER -- Onyx Countermagic
Willpower 9 Imbue Oblivion’s Amalgam
Essence **** Ivory Razor Forest
Essence Pool 21/48 Summon Ghost
Committed 12 Reaping the Fallen
Blood Feast 30 Demon of the First Circle [Sorcery]
Demon of the Second Circle
Infallible Messenger
Swift Spirit of Winged Transformation
Magma Kraken
Internal Flame
-- COMBAT --
Base Initiative: 7
Dodge Pool: 7
Soak: 13L/13B
Health Levels: -0, -1, -1, -2, -2, -4, Incap
Attacks:
Bare Fist Speed 7 Accuracy 4 Damage 1B Defense 4
Kick Speed 4 Accuracy 3 Damage 3B Defense 3
Equipment: Aegis of the Guilty, Soulsteel Corset, 2 Hearthstones (Jewel of the Merciful Heart)
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