Eldmar/Backstory3
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The Modern Eldmar
Over the five or so years since his exaltation, Eldmar has been involved in a number of highly dangerous and occasionally high profile situations. It all began on the fateful day whilst journeying from Celeron back to his home, Eldmar came across a man being attacked by a Nemisary, the servant of an unknown Death Lord. Eldmar immediately rode in to assist the traveller, but before he could reach him, the man unleashed a torrent of arrows killing the Nemisary. In order to do what he had, Eldmar knew that he had to be some sort of supernatural being, and as the man turned to face Eldmar, the mark of a Solar Dawn caste shone dimly on his forehead. Eldmar quickly and briefly lit up his caste mark to put the stranger at his ease. There were many dark nights afterwards when Eldmar wished he had simply killed the other Exalt. If he only knew the trouble that the stranger would cause – hindsight is a wonderful thing. Instead Eldmar offered Katarn – the warriors’ name – the hospitality of his home, and so the troubles began.
Whilst travelling back to the ranch house the pair came across a wandering hermit – Kavor, dressed in the robes of the immaculate priesthood. Dragon Blooded are held in high regard in Marukan, and although the immaculate faith is not the official religion of the country, the priests are still respected. Eldmar extended the hospitality of his home to the monk because to have not done so would have been considered a social faux pas. During the night there was another attack by forces of the mysterious Death Lord, during which all three men were forced to use their Solar gifts in order to thwart the attack. This promoted a long discussion as to what they were going to do. Eventually they decided to travel around randomly to try to throw off any further pursuit before returning to the ranch. Finally they reached the ranch house and there was a small celebration for the honoured guests. They remained there for a while trying to decide what if anything they were going to do – perhaps continue their lives separately or perhaps work together as a team.
They decided to remain together for a while and began to travel the scavenger lands looking for wrongs to right, along the way they met up with a Luna Full Moon called Jax and they decided to work together as a group. They came across the remains of a caravan that had been attacked and decimated by bandits, and while searching around for clues they found an old blacksmith heading back to a nearby village. The PC’s agreed to escort him there, and when they got there found that barbarians had been attacking the village as well. They offered their services to help defend the village from another attack, and sure enough that very night the raiders came back. The fight was relatively short; a few villagers died but almost all of the raiders did, the survivors fleeing back into the forest. Eldmar, Kavor, Katarn and Jax followed them, finally they came to the bandits lair, an old deserted building deep within the trees, a Luna had made her home there, and with her humans and beast men were attacking the near by villages. Another much more fierce fight commenced, which almost went badly wrong when a Wyld beast popped its head up to join the fray, but finally the PC’s were victorious and the barbarian threat was eliminated. The goods that had been taken from the village were returned and the party claimed everything else as spoils. The building appeared to be ancient – perhaps First Age but they were unable to gain access to it, and had neither the resources nor the skills to repair such a large building and so they moved on.
Whilst trying to decide what to do next, they heard news of atrocities being committed in a place called Gundersford, located within the area known as the Hundred Kingdoms. Duke Gundar had died in unusual circumstances and his son had inherited the title. He hired a large band of mercenaries, and raised the taxes to unsustainable levels. The new Duke became rich, whilst his people were starving. Those that could not pay, or broke one of his many new laws were imprisoned and tortured. Whole villages were being terrorised by the mercenary forces. Eldmar along with Katarn and Father Kavor – a Zenith caste, decided to go to Gundersford and investigate the matter further. They had many adventures along the way; several of Grey Falls militia were killed when they tried to take the three men in to the city for questioning. An earlier practical joke had gone badly wrong and had resulted in Kavor’s anima banner erupting into the night sky. Soldiers were dispatched in all directions to locate the anathema, unfortunately this particularly unprepared group ran smack bang into one of the patrols, and had to fight their way out of trouble.
Finally they arrived in Gundersford after several close calls with border guards and customs officers. They began to discretely investigate the rumours and found some substance to them. Whilst camping in a wooded copse on the outskirts of one village, they noticed that makeshift fortifications had been erected around the village. That night a large party of mercenary cavalry approached the village demanding taxes that the headman refused to pay, the mercenary leader drew his blade and killed the headman, instructing the village that they would return the following night to collect what they were owed or many more would die. The decision was made; the four of them would have to intervene. They set up an ambush on the edge of the trees; the road leading to the village was within bow shot range. The plan was simple, Eldmar would unleash Death of Obsidian Butterflies at the charging cavalry, and Katarn’s arrows would strike down any that survived. The arrows – as it turned out – were not necessary.
The villagers hailed them as heroes, now the party now had a base to operate from in Gundersford. They began a very successful campaign of hit and run guerrilla warfare against the Duke’s men. Ultimately with over 70% of the mercenaries killed, and with no idea of who was so successfully performing the ambushes, many of the remaining mercenaries fled. Only the most loyal and elite of the troops remained. After decimating the mercenary army, the next step was to take the fight directly to the Duke. The group travelled into the capital city Gunder separately; and scouted out the area to determine where and how they were going to get access to the Duke’s castle. They eventually settled on a night attack from the roof of the castle.
They gained access to the roof by utilising climbing skills and athletics charms, once there they proceeded to the rooftop door, which they then forced, open to gain entry. They fought a pitched battle through the castle against the Duke’s bodyguard – which consisted of elite beast men with heavy armour and weaponry. The fight was a close run thing because of the sheer numbers of defenders, the four of them were outnumbered more than four to one, and with only two warriors in the group things became hairy. Finally they came upon the Duke himself, he had barricaded himself within one of the castle strong rooms, Eldmar came up with the suggestion of taking oil from the many lanterns and pouring it through the crack at the bottom of the door. Hopefully with the threat of suffocation or burning alive the Duke would surrender to face justice. He didn’t so they lit the oil, unfortunately inside the strong room were a number of highly flammable objects including books, tapestries, rolls of silk etc which turned the room into a raging inferno.
The Duke had already escaped the room through a hidden passageway, emerging elsewhere within the castle but was unable to escape as Eldmar and Katarn had destroyed the mechanism for lowering the drawbridge. A cat and mouse chase ensued, finally ending with the capture and death of the Duke. The four exalts hung around long enough to help the townsfolk set up a new ruling council and restore order to the land before making their escape. Unknown to the others, Katarn had kept the decapitated head of the dead Duke and frequently abused it. Eventually he tired of it, but rather than bury it he simply threw it into some bushes. Thus was born a very angry and hungry ghost.
Around this time the party decided to move up into the north-eastern forest. They received a message from a Fey Lord asking for help with a problem. They travelled to his manse to discuss the matter with him. The Lord was fairly reasonable for a Fey, he only captured and fed upon criminals, he was neighbouring with another Lord who was not so nice however, and wished to expand his territory. A deal was struck where the party would bring down the neighbour and his forces. The first Fey would then move into the larger territory of his neighbour and the party would take over his old territory. The battle was quite fierce and involved fighting a number of Wyld beasts, but the party was ultimately victorious.
The group then moved south, below the great river there were rumours of a barbarian uprising taking place, and they set forth to investigate. They visited many of the south eastern towns and cities, hearing much in the way of rumour pointing blame at the Arkzecki but little fact; so after Eldmar found someone to teach him the language of the barbarians, they set out into the wilderness. It was not long before they found the proof they needed. They were attacked by a group of Arkzecki raiders, which proved no difficulty for the exalts – until the shaman set loose a pack of blood apes which made things much less enjoyable for the hero’s. The battle ended in victory and a thorough search revealed some interesting information about the Arkzecki such as they sacrificed people to summon demons and that they were a cannibalistic people. Moving deeper into their territory, the exalts found an Arkzecki caravan which they attacked and through questioning the captives discovered their immanent plans to march on the southern towns and cities. The group returned with haste to Largyn and then on to the Scavenger Land council at Great Falls to pass on the information. The signed parchment on which everything was written was supposed to be taken into the council chambers but was somehow found on the floor by a care taker. Thankfully he had enough intelligence to realise its importance and pass the parchment onto the council which then acted on it. Military units were dispatched to the south, including detachments from Lookshy, Meleville, Marukan, Great Falls, Grey Forks and Thorns. Some how along the way, several members of the group managed to indet themselves to an official from Meleville called Sir Remus Aurelius. In order to pay off this debt the group signed on as his aides and thus the anathema went to war alongside the dragon blooded of Lookshy. To say that Eldmar was unimpressed when he found out is an understatement (I missed several sessions at this time). They were stationed in Largyn; Sir Remus was in charge of the south East wall. Eldmar a cavalryman of Marukan, stuck in a walled city surrounded by miles of plains and not a cavalry unit in sight, how frustrating!
The Arkzecki siege was long and drawn out. They made several frontal assaults on the walls that cost them dearly. Eldmar used Death of Obsidian butterflies to great effect on the advancing lines of the enemy. Then they tried tunnelling in under the walls but the use of summoned Earth elementals soon put them off. Finally they tried to use elemental magic to cause lightning storms to keep the defenders of the walls, but again Air elementals soon brought that to an end. Finally they dug nice long lines of trenches and put little wooden roofs over them to keep out the arrows, but it didn’t stop a few unstoppable fountain of the depths spells’ from reeking havoc on their forces. This is when things began to get really interesting.
There was a major clash of interests and personalities between Eldmar and Sir Remus, resulting in Eldmar leaving the walls and retiring to the cities main hospital with the rank of surgeon captain. Things were much busier on the hospital wards, much more so than on the walls, at least there you had an off duty period. Things came to a head when Eldmar diagnosed an outbreak of cholera. It spread fairly quickly but thankfully due to the early discovery of the disease, its effects were limited by a number of countermeasures. Sir Remus along with Katarn and Kavor investigated the matter and tracked the origin of the disease to a large water well. The Arkzecki had summoned a spirit of disease, which had entered into the city and proceeded to poison the well. They fought and killed the spirit, and thankfully the epidemic burned itself out, shortly afterwards Eldmar returned to defend the wall. During one attack Katarn activated an obvious solar charm fighting multiple attackers who had breached the outer wall. This caused many problems but was finally dealt with by explaining him away as being God blooded. General Parmenion, who lead the massed armies defending Largyn, requested a private meeting to discuss the fact that Sir Remus had 2 Godblooded (one a powerful sorcerer) in his party. He was informed that the party was actually Solar Exalts, and that they were there to defend the city. The final offensive when it came was costly to both sides; the wall defended by Sir Remus was intentionally allowed to be breached. A second defensive wall had been built for the defenders to fall back to, and when a large number of the barbarians were between the walls, several stockpiles of strategically placed fire dust were ignited causing massive devastation. There were many casualties on both sides but finally the Arkzecki were driven off, their numbers decimated. The mixed force of soldiers remained within Largyn for a short while to ensure its safety, but the units soon began to return to their own countries.
Eldmar and the others left Largyn and moved back to the scavenger lands. During this time Katarn went Crazy and suggested they sell Eldmar’s children into prostitution to ease the parties money problems. Obviously Eldmar was not overly happy with this and demanded an apology or else, the apology was not forthcoming and Katarn paid the ultimate price. They decided to separate for a while, Sir Remus went off on a private mission which ended up with him gaining a whole load of new artefacts for the party, whist Eldmar and Kavor went into the mountains to explore. They found an abandoned building that turned out to be a manse owned by Eldmar’s first incarnation Salamar. Although whilst doing so they had a run in with a sidereal assassin and a group of immaculate monks from the Wyld hunt.
The party then met up again and went back to the area of the hundred kingdoms. There had been rumour of a giant Wyld mutated-beast attacking travellers in the area and so they decided to go and find out more about it. The party hired on as caravan guards where they met up with another Solar called Sideblade; who had also hired on as a guard to try and track down the beast and after a successful run in with a band of bandits, they made contact with the beast. They drove off its attack – Eldmar leaning the valuable lesson that breath weapons cannot be blocked irrespective of how big the shield you use, and then tracked it back to its lair and defeated it. When they attempted to collect the bounty on the beast, they discovered news relating to a pirate gang that had been operating all along the great river. They had made attacks, predominantly against the guild, but many innocents had been killed. The party decided to investigate further and deal with the new threat.
During this investigation Sideblade, an ex-pirate himself, did a superb job of infiltrating the pirate band and gathering information. When he discovered their next intended target the party of exalts decided to set up an ambush, unfortunately it went badly wrong when the pirates used weather controlling magic to augment and hide their attack. None the less the attack was foiled and significant losses were inflicted on the pirates. The pirates fled to Nexus down the great river; the party followed them using one of Eldmar’s transport spells. From there they travelled without Eldmar out into the ocean, to a mobile island on which the pirates had made their home. The pirate force was defeated, and the underworld manse within the island was destroyed when Jax caused an essence cannon to overload and explode. The damage done was tremendous and caused the island to start violently thrashing. They then discovered that the island was actually a leviathan that was afloat on the surface of the ocean. Eldmar returned to his home during this time for the birth of his third child. He remained at home in Marukan for some months, until the others came back to join them.
Whilst resting at Eldmar’s’ home an Abyssal Exalted from the Thorns came to pass on a message, and managed to offend Lord Remus, who then killed her. In response to this the Mask of Winters used either Void or Solar circle Sorcery to destroy Eldmar’s’ home, killing all the people inside. Thankfully all Eldmar’s’ family and the party were out of the house at the time. Several complaints were made to the council about this, and Eldmar demanded an apology and reparations from Thorns, which were not initially forthcoming. This resulted in Eldmar personally threatening war against Thorns and thus reparations were made. Eldmar was called up into active service with the Marukan army and sent to accompany Lord Remus on a mission. They travelled towards the south west, passed Paragon to the Lap and then onto Gem. They had many adventures along the way, including Remus having to duel with the dragon blooded officer that was second in command of the garrison at the Lap, something to do with a social faux pas at a large party where he accused the D.B. of being corrupt. From Gem they acquired some orichalcum, and a whole load of smuggled gemstones (with a huge profit) before leaving again for the Lap.
There was a rumour of a large manse to the south of Gem and they decided to go and investigate. They worked their way through the desert, into the territory of a local Luna, who challenged Remus and Jax to a duel. Following which they made their way into the volcanic mountain range. They had to sneak passed a number of dragon blooded who were scouting out the area, and with Jax’s help determined that an entire legion was camped close to them. The legion was a renegade one that was officially disbanded due to cost cutting exercises in the Realm. Rather than going quietly however they took all their equipment into the southern desert to carve out a kingdom for themselves. Eldmar summoned the spirit of the volcano that the manse was inside and made a deal with it to help hide them from sight, it was happy to obey a command to make a smoke screen, and merrily started spewing forth volcanic ash and small amounts of lava. They entered the volcano and used a combination of wit and combat abilities managed to gain access to the manse. The manse itself is a very powerful level 5 manse, with many wonders inside including an essence cannon and a Royal warstrider, as well as several other potent artifacts, workshops and libraries. The ghost of the First Age ruler of this area inhabited the manse; a solar called Emperor Fireblood. He agreed to let them attune to the manse and use its facilities if they agreed to perform a task for him in return. They agreed, and began to plan how to accomplish the task that had been set for them – defend An-teng from imminent invasion by The First and Forsaken Lion.
The first thing was to travel to An-teng and meet up with an ancient First Age spirit called The Golden Lord, this fitted in with their plans anyway as Eldmar had just finished constructing some artifacts which had to be activated in either Yu-Shan or the Underworld. Even though An-teng is under the control of the Realm, the natives still venerated the Golden Lord, who was left alone by the Realm. They travelled by sea from the Lap; but the boat was attacked by Siaka; spirits loyal to the band of pirates that the party had previously attacked. It was only Eldmar’s use of magic that prevented the ship from sinking after the hull was breached and the ocean water flooded into the lower decks. After making landfall in An-teng, they proceeded to the temple of the Golden Lord. Eldmar went to visit several temples and shrines in the city including the local immaculate temple. He was given access to their library, but it was a trap, the sidereal abbot and his dragonblooded acolytes trapped him in the basement and attacked. Eldmar killed several of the mortal monks and two of the dragonblooded; he also severely wounded another dragonblooded and the sidereal. They fled in disarray and Eldmar made his escape, which turned out to be a monumental error of judgement that resulted in dozens of innocents being killed or maimed. Eldmar fled into the wilderness, unwilling to face up to what he had just done. He travelled towards a shadowland, with the intention of activating his artifacts in the underworld rather than face the Golden Lord.
Jax was sent after Eldmar, to deliver him up to the Golden Lord, who then punished Eldmar for what he had done. Then they were taken to Yu-Shan where the artifacts were finished. The plan was that the Golden Lord would amass his forces near the borders of An-teng, where it was believed that The First and Forsaken Lion had hidden some of his troops. Eldmar and the other exalts would travel to Sijan as they had discovered that an ancient device had been buried with its First Age creator, a device capable of mimicking a Solar Sorcery spell that would return a shadowland back to Creation. After arriving at Sijan Eldmar began conducting extensive research into the tombs and practices of the Sijanese funeral guild, and was somehow swayed into picking up and studying a book called The Bone Treatise, the underworld version of The White Treatise. Remus and Kavor explored the city to get a feel for the layout and then organised a force of renegade dragon blooded to attempt to enter a tomb as a distraction. The plan was simple – Eldmar learnt and then taught the party the rites used by the funeral guild, and Remus and Kavor obtained original sets of uniform of the correct rank. At Eldmar’s suggestion they attended the temple of the Unconquered Sun and led a service in his honour, with the aim of asking the US to temporarily redeploy the Celestial Lion guarding the tomb. This resulted in the temple being altered from dirty old stone into a golden metal suspiciously similar to orichalcum, a full pardon for Eldmar’s crimes in An-teng and the celestial lion being sent to protect the parties main manse.
Then at the correct time they entered into the Valley of the Tombs, when the distraction happened they entered into the tomb. The tomb was protected by dozens of traps, including demons of the first and second circles and finally in the burial chamber itself a fetitch demon. Somehow the party survived and claimed the artifact before fleeing with it back to An-teng, using Eldmar’s magic. The plan was to activate the device within the shadowland to destroy it and thus The First and Forsaken Lion’s method of bringing his main forces into An-teng. All went to plan, but the struggle in the shadowland was of monumental proportions. The surrounding countryside was pulverised by the magic of The First and Forsaken Lion. He even sent in his Hecatonhire to try to prevent the activation of the device, but he failed and the shadowland was no more. With the threat of the Death Lord over, Eldmar was forced to first explain why he was trying to learn necromancy, second why he was carrying a book made from human skin and thirdly why he had lied about it. The book was ultimately destroyed.
The Wyld hunt were present in An-teng in massive numbers at this point and a hasty retreat to the manse in Gem was the decided upon. Once more using Eldmar’s transportation magic, the party travelled through the dreamscape and awoke in their manse. They informed Emperor Fireblood of all that had occurred and then after a brief foray to Gem and back they left the south to return to the scavenger lands. They flew quickly using Eldmar’s celestial magic planning on going to Meleville via Eldmar’s home in Marukan. As they entered into the Scavenger Lands they were intercepted by a squad of Lookshy Dragon blooded in some sort of essence powered flying craft – something that the party did not know existed. Through misunderstanding the situation, Lord Remus summoned both his daiklave and his orichalcum articulated plate and thus the Lookshy warriors forced the party to land. After confirming their identities and intentions they were escorted back to Eldmar’s home.
On arriving home Eldmar discovered several of the elders of the Silver Pact waiting for him. They reminded him of the deal he had made with them many moons earlier, which was to be taken into the Pact and trained as a No Moon sorcerer. Eldmar had performed and passed many of the tests they had set him, but the final test was to single handedly kill five dragon blooded and present their heads to the Pact. He killed two, but then Lord Remus found out about it and made him swear an oath not to continue. The Pact elders had come to tell Eldmar that he had 24 days to either complete the final trial or die trying. If he reneged on the deal he would be considered an outcast and he would lose his Luna wife and children, Eldmar had no choice but to do as he had been asked. Lord Remus and Kavor left to travel to Meleville whilst the Luna - Jax and Eldmar made their plans.
The two moved to Celeron, using the spell Disguise of the new face to alter their appearance in case things went wrong. Eldmar tracked an outcaste D.B. to his lodgings in the city; the plan was to take him quietly and unawares so that the next targets could be taken down also. Things went badly wrong from the start however, and after killing the D.B. Eldmar was forced to flee the city. The Wyld Hunt and troops from Lookshy were in the area so Eldmar hurriedly chose two more random targets and killed them. Unfortunately they were prominent officials in the ruling council of the country and so an arrest warrant was issued. Eldmar fled back into the forest to the Silver Pact, but was tracked down by Typhoon, assisted by Kavor. Typhoon ordered Eldmar to surrender to justice and stand trial for his crimes, but Eldmar had no intention of being paraded around the land and so came out to do battle with the Deathnight. Typhoon had an ace up his sleeve however; he held an item that was capable of opening a rift in creation through which Juggernaut and the forces of The Mask of Winters could emerge and destroy the forest and the Silver Pact. Faced with the destruction of his family and his tribe, Eldmar used the fact that Typhoon was distracted by his gloating to fall upon his own sword and bring the matter to a close. Eldmar’s spark left to reincarnate in another less corrupt and more suitable incarnation.
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