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I am extremely here for this, I've been missing 4E. I'll need a little time to mull over a character and backstory. Tentatively looking at a Bard carving out freedom and reputation for himself on a harsh world, or a couple of more complicated things I'll need a little time to put together.
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Nov 22, 2017 08:34
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Sathain, bearer of a terrible secret Half-Elf Battlemind  Orokos sheet and the PDF. Sathain changes faces and assumed names often. As an agent of the Lords of the Land Within the Wind, he goes from place to place, performing tasks and seeking information. Most commonly, when he is among humans, he appears as a human of middling height, with stern features, close-cropped brown hair, rough stubble, and a crooked smile that makes those on the receiving end feel like they're one of the few to get it out of him. Among the Eladrin, he wears his true form: tall, lean, whipcord over bone, with eyes and hair as grey as steel. Of all of those special agents of the Elders who have been burdened with the knowledge of the terrible secret of the Mirage, he is the one whose sense of humor and ability to take joy in life is the least diminished. Though he has bouts of melancholy, he has succumbed to them less than his brethren. He has lost everything he knows, but he seeks to make up for it as best as he can in the bloody desert. --- Know then before you die, O defiler, that The Land Within the Wind is dying. It is beyond dying; it draws its last breaths. It has been true since the Green Age ended. At first, it was a slow and unnoticed illness, like a cancer, withering the Land at the edges. Then, it was a shocking discovery--a terrible debate--an accepted crsis. Over the years, the crisis became a grim inevitability: the Land fading away, becoming desert or salt flat or dessicated jungle, peeling away from Athas and being lost to nothingness. Every year, the desert encroached a little more on the lush and verdant Land, and every year, all efforts to counteract it failed. When the Mirage was first devised, many of the Eladrin rejected the idea. It would only be a painful reminder of what they had lost, dissenters said. It would be worse than fading away, some complained. The Mirage was not built. But they all knew it could be, and how it could be done. The inventor of the Mirage did not live to see his idea implemented, but the idea never quite seemed to die. It found at least one powerful proponent in every generation. It took centuries before it was put into effect, but eventually, there was simply not enough green left to do anything else. There were no options, no alternatives. They looked out onto the salt and silt and sand that had once been the Land Within the Wind and, clustered around one of their last oases, one by one they agreed to the idea. The most powerful psions among the Eladrin joined their minds and built the Mirage. Out of memory and heartache and their own life-force they spun everything they had lost: shining oases, spiral towers, jungles full of life and color, ancient forests, babbling brooks. It could be touched, and smelled, and seen, and loved. It could be hidden from the rest of Athas, protected, untouched. In the Mirage, the Eladrin could live their lives, keep their traditions, remember their past and the Green Age lost to them. It was not real. There are still a few areas of true life within the Land--a single Oasis here, a small copse of trees there--but only the Elders know which ones they are. The Mirage they guard is inviolate and inviolable: the oases they keep travelers away from through illusory veils and mind-tricks and murder are not real. There is no water to drink, there are no flowers to smell, there is no sound of bird or beast. Though you may believe you are draining life from the Land, defiler, you can not truly do so. There is no might to drain. There is only cold psionic might spun into a pattern so convincing that it fools the mind and sustains or destroys the body. For their elders, the greatest minds among them, it is worse than that. Eladrin who live long enough, are strong enough, hone their minds enough inevitably stop succumbing to the Mirage. It becomes a ghost-image, a shadow-play, stops affecting them. They can no longer drink its illusory water and feel their thirst slake; can no longer run their hands through the fur of a great cat or watch a majestic roc soar through the sky. They sustain themselves with their own psionic power, and with scraps of food brought in secret from beyond the Land--and they sustain the Mirage. They do not tell the young. That decision, too, was controversial, but it was decided long ago that letting Eladrin be born with knowledge of the secret would make all their lives hollow, devoid of joy and pride. So each Eladrin learns that the Land and the traditions of their people is inviolate, that they have held on to the greatness of the Green Age, that though the world encroaches on and threatens the Land, there is a solid core within it that has remained undisturbed for thousands of years. They never think to question it: the truth of it is all around them. And when they grow old enough and strong enough, if they do not die by violence or by accident, they grow in power until the veil one day lifts from their eyes, taking what was the reality of centuries with it. They lose the rivers, the grass meadows, the flowering vines, the sound of birdsong. They lose the belief in their people's purpose, the meaning and goal of their lives. They know everything they have been taught for centuries is a lie. What Athas lost over centuries, they lose in a single terrible instant. In exchange, they gain only a cold, grim duty, for as long as they can endure it, and there was never a heartbreak in the world as great as each Eladrin Elder experiences when they awaken to the truth and either release their hold on life or commit themselves to a sterile, empty life of powering the Mirage, of recreating the Land Within the Wind that has been lost. Some of them remove their hearts from their chest. The Lords of the Land Within the Wind--the Veiled Prince, the Windrider, She Who Waits In Darkness, those who rule but are not Elders--they shoulder their duties and make their plans. They plan to protect the oases, to disrupt the plans of sorcerer-kings, to allow select individuals into the Land Within the Wind to learn from the Eladrin. They dispatch assassins, post watchers, sow rumors, make bargains, and they do not know that it is all for nothing, about nothing. The Eladrin stand guard over nothing, protect nothing, secret away nothing. They fight for nothing and they die for nothing. They are trapped in a cycle of illusion and sorrow, the young never to understand the melancholy of their Elders until one day, suddenly, they share it, the Elders doomed to know that only a scattered handful of spots boast the true verdant Life that once covered the Land Within the Wind--and that those, too, will only stand as long as they guard them. If the Elders surrender to sorrow, if they let the secret slip out, if they disrupt the cycle, then what little remains will be lost. I am one of the few besides the Elders who knows the Great Secret, the ultimate lie at the heart of the recreated truth of the Land Within the Wind, and I have been given a great task. Because my father was not one of the People--he was an outsider who had enough respect for the land to be allowed in--I can pass for one of the men of Athas. I travel the world, keeping the Land Within the Wind safe from the machinations of defilers and sorcerer-kings, but I have a purpose above that: to find a way to make the mirage real. The Mirage is a wonder to rival any accomplishment achieved by the wizards of old; it is so close to life! Perhaps another source of power yet undiscovered would make it truly real. Or perhaps there is a way to restore life to the Land Within the Wind, true life, to replace the Mirage's illusory splendor with something true. I and those like me seek it, because without it, even the Mirage will last only as long as our last oasis, and then it will be gone, and then we will, and Athas will never know. Do not misunderstand me, defiler. I am not so solemn and sorrow-bound as this, usually. I am not an Elder; the Mirage seems real enough to me, and the knowledge that it is not holds only modest sway over the input of my senses, day to day. I can still appreciate its beauty. But here and now, before you die, I can speak my heart on the matter. I can try to make you understand the tragedy of the people you sought to plunder. I can tell you that behind my humor and my charm, behind my smile, my heart is broken, and I have to hope that something on Athas remains that can make it whole. --- How did you come to reach paragon? What are your most notable exploits? I pride myself on not being recognized for them, but the most daring thing I got away with was impersonating a templar and stealing a tome that was too close to the truth of various locations in the Land Within the Wind from the Sorcerer-King's vault. I laid waste to the templar himself and his servants when they returned early, while I as on my way out. Hamanu fumes about it still! But he is looking for a man who never existed; I made sure of that. I have done other things, too. I have fought in the Arena of Draj in another guise, and lived to tell the tale, and escaped from the pens (along with the woman I went in to rescue). I have gained acceptance in an elven tribe by helping them succeed in a daring heist. I have lied to one of the Mind Lords, mind to mind, and been believed. How Daclamitus hear of you? Why did you respond to his request? You have it wrong, friend. I contacted him. We have our eyes on many of those who seek to restore Athas, both the foolishly hopeful ones and the insane. Too many of them, in the past, have decided they can do it by bringing The Land Within the Wind crashing down upon Athas to revitalize it. (If only they knew!) Daclamitus, of all them, has the most promise. What is one thing you would like to see change for the better on Athas? I would find a way to break the tragic cycle of my people. The Mirage must be made real--or else some other, even less likely thing must be found. e: So that turned out super bleak. The character's not all bleak all the time, but once I started figuring out the Eladrin I couldn't stop. LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Nov 24, 2017 11:24
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OK, I think I'm entirely done. With that take on the Eladrin, I kind of want to do a Dark Sun novel about a guy who finds out about the Feywild/Land Within the Wind, decides that the Eladrin are selfish assholes who need to share and spends time trying to merge the Feywild and the rest of Athas (under the assumption that all that green will shape the ecosystem into something more vibrant), and eventually learns the Eladrin's terrible secret and has to try to find a solution. e: not entirely done, forgot to answer the questions. I'll do that tomorrow. LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 12:34
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pre:Sathain HP: 97/97 (BV:49) AC: 29 Passive Insight: 17 THP: 0 Fort: 26 Passive Perception: 15 Surges: 14/15 (V:24) Ref: 25 Vision: Low-Light Initiative: +8 Will: 27 Action Points: 1 Power Points: 9/9 Speed: 5 Power Cards At Will Encounter Daily Eldritch Strike [ ] Adept's Insight [ ] Living Fortress Battlemind's Demand [ ] Persistent Harrier [ ] Nightmare Vortex Mind Spike [ ] Dimension Slide [ ] Shattered Time Concussive Spike [ ] Rebounding Dance Lightning Rush [ ] Deliverance of Faith Lodestone Lure [ ] Fast Talk Thought Projection Item Hand of the Mage - Prestidigitation, Mage Hand (AW) Hat of Disguise - Disguise Self (AW) [ ] Shield of Eyes - don't grant CA when flanked UEMNT (D) Deep-Pockets Cloak - draw or store an item from the cloak(AW, 1/round) Passives Hat of Disguise: +5 to Bluff to pass myself off as someone else Shield of Eyes: +2 AC vs OAs (+6 vs AC, +4 F/R/W total) Quicksilver Dance: +4 to all defenses vs OAs (+6 AC, +4 F/R/W total) Quicksilver Action: spend AP, shift CHA (4) before taking action Superior Will: Save vs stun/daze at start of turn even if not save ends. Flail Expertise: when I hit with a melee attack using a flail and the attack lets me slide the target, knock them prone instead Dragging Flail: whenever I use a filail to knock an enemy prone, also slide them 1 square Rushing Cleats: increase the push or slide effect of any close or weapon attack by 1 +1 Flail of Winds: increase all forced movement by 1 square Hindering Shield: whenever I pull, push, or slide a creature with an attack while using a shield, slow that creature USMNT -on slide (Eldritch Strike): knock prone, slide 3, slow -on push: push +2 squares, slow - Concussive Spike: push 7, slow -on pull: slow - Lodestone Lure: pull 2 (no aug)/5 (aug 1 or 2) and slow. If aug 2, also knock prone + slide 3 Triggers Enemy shifts away from me: Blurred Step (Harrying Step) - teleport to best square adjacent to them Lightning Rush: non minion enemy within 5 attacks an ally. Always Augment 1 or 2. -1 if the attack hits them by 3 or less (to make them miss), 2 otherwise (keep my standard action) -UNLESS it would be obviously better for me to lock down a target I'm engaging Any OA: Eldritch Strike, baby!! Prone, slide 3 (put me between them and whoever they were moving to), slow LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Dec 3, 2017 11:33
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