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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Insight" data-source="post: 4804640" data-attributes="member: 11437">Aestii of the Five StormsAESTII - HUMAN MONK - UNALIGNEDIn Brief:Aestii of the Five Storms is a human monk in search of lost monastic orders he found listed on an ancient scroll.  Believing some ancient secret is hidden somewhere within one of these lost monasteries, Aestii's long-term goal is to find each of these places, hoping that the key to unlocking said secret may be found in one of them.Aestii had a master once, but that master was killed by unknown means while the boy was away.  Aestii also seeks to find his master's killers, though this is a secondary concern.Game Info:As a Monk (see the recent Playtest), I plan for Aestii to be a combination striker/controller, using slides, shifts, knocking enemies prone, etc, as opposed to raw damage.  He will be movement focused, shifting and jumping around the battlefield and causing mayhem.[sblock=Background, the Long Version]Not long ago, Aestiii was a simple son of a wheat farmer, living in some forgotten part of the world.  His life was simple and he wanted for little in this simple and unburdened existence.  When he was 16, Aestii's father sent to the boy into town to fetch supplies, as had become fairly commonplace since Aestii's father had grown weak and did not like to travel much.On the way to town, Aestii was set upon by bandits intent on robbing the farmer's son of all of his worldly possessions - all of 3 pieces of silver.  The bandits would have been successful, and likely would have killed the boy had it not been for the intervention of a kind stranger.  This stranger not only dispatched the villains, but also took the wounded boy back to a cave and nursed Aestii back to health.After a week, Aestii was physically ready to return home.  The stranger, who had become known to the boy as Finthelus, spoke of strange abilities and unarmed techniques for defeating one's enemies.  Finthelus saw in Aestii promise, and offered to train the boy to one day learn these abilities.  While this intrigued Aestii, the boy felt he had a duty to return home to help his family tend to their farm.  Finthelus warned Aestii not to return home, that he would possibly lose his only chance for true enlightenment, but duty called, and Aestii returned to the farm.What he returned to was devastation.  What Aestii would learn later was that the bandits were part of a much larger organization and one that did not care to be embarassed at the hands of some simple bumpkins.  Not knowing where to turn for revenge, the bandits took to attacking the local farms, including Aestii's farm.  The place was burned to the ground, his family dead, and the bandits who had done the foul deed still there!Aestii, full of rage and not really thinking straight, attacked the bandits, trying to use the techniques Finthelus has spoken of but never actually shown to the boy.  It was a disaster.  For the second time in the space of a week, Aestii's life hung in the balance, as he was no match for seven armed bandits and, once again, the stranger Finthelus arrived to save the day. The bandits defeated, Finthelus again took Aestii back to his cave.  Aestii, now with no family and nowhere else to turn, stayed with Finthelus until healed, at which point Finthelus took the young Aestii as his pupil, teaching the farmer's boy the art known as the Five Storms.Aestii's training involved not only unarmed arts and training in a few simple weapons, but also the expansion of the mind and the spirit.  Finthelus found that Aestii took quickly to simple physical tasks, but was still an infant when it came to thinking for himself and critical thinking.  Finthelus put Aestii through the paces, training and molding the boy into a fine student over the course of the next few years.The boy's thoughts, despite his gain in wisdom and thoughful introspection, always ran back to revenge against the bandits who slew his family and burned down the farm.  Despite Finthelus' many warnings, the boy was headstrong and made many attempts to track down the bandits responsible.  This led Aestii on many short trips around the countryside, against his master's wishes, in an effort to find out who had done him wrong.  It was on one of the longer forays into the wilderness, a trip which saw Aestii finally discover the bandits' hideout, that Aestii returned to Finthelus' cave to find the master dead.  There was no evidence left at the scene to explain to the boy what had happened.  Aestii searched and searched, but never learned the truth as to who killed Finthelus.What Aestii did find, however, was an ancient scroll that Finthelus had been hiding deep in the cave environs.  Initially, Aestii could not read the scroll, but he felt that it must have had some importance and so took it and the rest of his belongings and left the cave forever.During his many travels since, Aestii found someone, a kindly old Half-Elf sage named Dastran, who was able to translate the scroll into the common tongue.  The scroll contained clues as to the locations of many lost monasteries connected to this 'Five Storms' school in which Aestii had been trained.  Aestii learned that the monasteries had been part of some organization known as the 'Centered Breath', an group that had been lost to time some ages ago.Aestii now seeks to travel to the locations found on this scroll.  Some of the locations are fairly obvious, while others are obscured in arcane references that don't make sense on the modern map.  Aestii has dedicated himself to unlocking whatever secret the monasteries seem to be hiding, but for the moment, the young monk knows that he will need more experience in the world, and possibly allies willing to help him uncover these secret locations.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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