Minalan Visitor
Joined: 29 Nov 2012 Posts: 11
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2012 12:00 am Post subject: The Origins of Minalan the Red |
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My name is Minalan Zhalfast, and I am currently very drunk. Otherwise I would never imagine indulging in this sort of auto-biographical idiocy. So, where shall I begin? First off I never drink, as I don't like to lose control of my one asset – an extraordinarily sharp mind. That and the morning-after consequences aren't all that pleasant either. In this case however, I blame that cursed drunken bard Judas for passing me a bottle when I was in one of my rare elated moods. “Here, celebrate!” he said. Yeah. Sure. Remind me to turn him back into a woman tomorrow morning, after I put all of this to pen in my journal.
I’ll spare you my usual vituperative, and start at the beginning. By birth I am technically a noble, I am a viscount 12, meaning that I am 12th in line to inherit from my parents. Actually I think that’s 13 now with the arrival of my latest nephew, but at this point, who cares? It will never happen, and there is no possible way I would ever consider fulfilling any official obligations even if I did. I was the last born to the good Lord and Lady Zhalfast, a very mistaken pregnancy made far too late in life of my mother. Thus mine was a troublesome birth, leaving my mother in helpless convalescence for months, and me with a clubbed left foot for all of my troubles. Before you ask, yes, my parents are both still alive. They haven’t been killed by orcs, or captured by marauding daemons. We don’t speak much, but last I heard they were busy doting on their new grandchildren.
Thus far, the only "positive" of my bottom-rung and threadbare nobility was the expensive private education that I received. I absorbed everything I was taught like a sponge, from literature to mathematics, astronomy, cartography, ciphering, and even alchemy. Quiet study has always been my one passion in life, to the exclusion of everything else – especially any sort of contact with the rest of the ruling aristocracy. I learned early that nobody really wants to dance with a cripple at a ball, not when “Sir Sterling, the Handsome and Dashing Knight” was available. The official state dinners were a tedious bore, especially after I was forbidden from sharpening my very creative invective on all of the invited guests. There was no way I could expect to compete in any kind of official tournament. While the clumsy healers did their best to correct my instep, it was never quite right. I corrected it to the best of my ability much later in life, however I still walk with a limp when I begin to tire.
When I was ten, I took a test to enter the Sage’s Academy program at the Lyceum in Moonglow. Being a particularly proficient taker of tests, I passed and was accepted easily. I think my parents were happy to get rid of me, especially after I foiled their bumbling attempts at both an arranged marriage, and a mind-numbing job in Britain. I had no desire to marry the vapid daughter of some merchant that wants a noble son-in-law (at any cost apparently, to have even considered a crippled wretch like me). Nor did I intend to slave away my existence as a nameless and faceless functionary in the royal pecuniary office. Instead, I studied what was most interesting to me: sorcery. I found that not only was I good at it, I was more than talented enough to make up for my obvious physical deficiency.
I studied magic for a decade before being inducted into a conclave of wizards, the Council of High Magi. There, I was given the red robes I still wear today, as both head sage of the order and in honor of the knowledge that I still tirelessly seek. It was truly the high point of my life. Together we worked sorceries that are unimaginable by today’s standards. We forged artifacts of great power, visited the far corners of the world, and delved the darkest corners of it in search of new knowledge and powerful artifacts. Time and chaos together however, conspired against us. An internal civil war broke out. I don’t even remember all of the details as to why, but the reasons were purely political. I tried to maintain calm, I worked hard to keep the peace, and I did my best to reach an accord. The hotter heads in the conclave prevailed in the end. We turned on one another and used all of our accumulated power to destroy eachother. The knowledge we gained was mostly lost, and the great towers we inhabited were reduced to smoking craters. Nothing but blackened ruins remained of our once great settlement. What of the great and powerful artifacts we had constructed or found? All of them were lost or destroyed, as we gleefully unleashed them on one another in an orgy of hate, vengeance, and destruction. We were fools, all of us, and I lost everything that ever mattered to me in those months. I am still plagued by night terrors, forever living in the shadows of the terrible deeds that we did to one another.
All that I have left is ambition, a burning desire to rebuild that knowledge and the great power that was lost. You could say that I am obsessed with anything magical or supernatural. I am fascinated by the potent war magic employed by the Dark Order. The augury and divination of the gypsy witches is captivating. I’ve been closely studying the high sorcery employed by Renthar. Simply put, I intend to become one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. I have zero interest in temporal power; I don’t care for money, dirt, or the peasants that crawl on their bellies to toil away at it. Instead, it appears that I spend my days chasing a phantasm, the forlorn ghost of a dead past, yearning to re-live all of the time-gilded memories of the one time in my life that I was happy. Down beneath it all however, there is a much more sinister purpose. |
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