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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talinthas" data-source="post: 1931273" data-attributes="member: 10339">Talinthas Shadeslayn (dragonlance character) Male Silvanesti elf Rogue/Shadow dancer (align TN) Age- well over 500 years old.  Tal is a rather reclusive and quiet sort, being one of the few mortals to live through three ages of Krynn. Born approximatly 100 years before the fall of Istar and the Cataclysm, he has seen the gods leave, return, leave again, and return again. He posseses the sort of hardened cynicism that only one tired of life could manage.  He was the child of an illicit relationship between a Silvanesti noblewoman and her Kagonesti house servant, and was abandoned near a human village on the plains to the west of the elven homelands. Tal was left in a wicker basket with but two possesions, a copper amulet bearing the rose of Majere, and a note instructing the plainsmen that found him to bob his ears and raise him as a human child.  Soon, he was found by a scout and brought back to the village, and taken to the chieftan, who handed the child to the only resident who could read the elven script in the message, the tribe's lead hunter. He took the child in, and in a ceremony attended only by the chief, swore to keep the child's heritage a secret until his death, at which time the letter would be shared to the child.  Thus did Tal grow up learning the ways of a plainsmen scout, as he was never quite as big or strong as the other boys, but much sneakier and quieter. He spent about 30 years training in the ways of the scout, but eventually it was noticed that he was much younger seeming than his contemporaries and tended to mature much slower. This talk was suppressed by the chief of the village for about 10 years, when it finally became clear that Tal looked like he could have been the child of his younger brother, who was nearing his 40th year.   At this point, Talinthas demanded to know the truth, and his adopted father, seeing no other choice in the matter, relented and shared the letter of origin. Immediatly afterwards, the venerable hunter killed himself, as per the condition set during the ceremony years past. Out of shame, Tal left his home of half a century and went wandering the world, with only the medallion to remind him of his birth parents, and his hunter's dagger, bestowed upon him when he became a full fledged member of the tribe after his right of passage ceremony.  In the course of his wanderings, he returned to Silvanesti, only to find that his birth father had been killed at the hands of his maternal grandfather, and that his mother had been cloistered in a nunnary dedicated to austerity. Tal was turned away by his maternal family, and banished from the elven homelands as a dark elf, merely for trying to discover who he was.   It was at this time that the Gods turned their back on Krynn. Tal, having lost sight of his life, was aimlessly ambling northwards towards Istar, and saw the fiery mountain fall from the sky and annihliate the landscape. Watching the destruction of the world as he knew it completely shattered any grip on sanity that this elf had. The next 20 years were spent in a haze, as Talinthas became more and more withdrawn and desolate.  It was at this time that he began to attract the shadows. The cataclysm caused death on such a massive scale that the souls of the innocent and guilty alike could not be separated and sent to their divine abode quickly enough. Coupled with the complete withdrawl of divine presence, and the lack of final rites, these souls became the restless dead of krynn. Talinthas, with his blasted mind and empty soul, started to attract the attention of these ghosts and shadows. Some of the more aggresive spirits possesed Tal, and started him down the path of the Shadow Dancer.  The next few hundred years passed quickly, as Tal started to regain his senses and adapted to his new symbiotic relationship with these shades that hovered around him. He searched others who were similarly affected by incredibly mind altering events, and helped them to cope with their empty souls, starting a loose group of Shadow Dancers through Ansalon. Somewhere in there, he managed to get married a few times, and father a child or two.  Fast forwards to the War of the Lance. Tal, now in his 450th year or so, is a venerable old elf with massive control over the spirits and shadows that reside within him. Years of having been hunted as an evil necromancer and other such misunderstandings have left him hardened and wary of strangers. The return of the gods has not brought him the joy that it has brought to the masses, for the newly indocrinated clergy find him to be an abomination, and try to free the spirits trapped within him by any means necessary. The shadow dancers withdraw from the public light and hide from Gods and man alike.  Fast forwards another 30 years or so, to the cusp of the chaos war. With minions of chaos wreaking havoc on the realms of mortals and spirits, Tal was forced to fight for the survival of his shadow dancers, and was nearly destroyed once again by a Shadow wight, at the southern edge of the Blood sea of Istar, where 392 years before a young elf witnessed the destruction of the ancient world.  Shadow wights completely erase every living thing they touch, and force them into a state of non being, deleted from even the memories of those that knew the victims. Tal, having been buffered by the symbiotic spirts, managed to survive by shunting his shadow soul into the wight, leaving a living, but empty husk.  Once again, the retreat of the Gods was his saving grace, as the souls of the dead were completely unable to escape the mortal plane. Tal's shell, empty of all but the smallest spark of his soul, became a nexus of mystical energy. He lay there, on the beach of the Desolation, while the waters of the newly calmed blood sea threatened to take him away. There he was found by Dauroth, an Ogre Mage looking for a suitable subject to test a new magical form on. The hollow shell, coursing with just enough life and residual energy to keep functioning, was the perfect fit.  Dauroth took Tal, now known as the Shadeslayn, and proceeded to subject the elf to a ceremony granted to the ogre in a vision from his evil goddess, Takhisis. Tal's body was charged with Spiritual energy and mystic forces, and combined with scores of ghosts and spirits who were tied to the mortal plane. The newly fused shadow soul inhabited the body of the elf, and returned to a form of unlife never seen before. Talinthas Shadeslayn was faster, smarter, and stronger than the elf he had once been. Dauroth the Ogre Mage was stunned by his sucess, and immediatly took a sample of Tal's blood. Discovering that this blood held the magical properties needed to force this magical enhancement, Dauroth took it upon himself to endure the ceremony and transform into the Ogre Titan of legend. It was in the recovery time from this process that the multi spirit of the Shadeslayn decided to take initiative and escaped the prison of Dauroth's laboratory along the shores of the Blood Sea.   A struggle of wills ensued, but eventually the true soul of Talinthas asserted victory and regained command. The Shadeslayn went and recovered the remenants of his Shadow Dancers, and went into hiding, lest the Ogre Titans find him and completely drain him of his blood. His whereabouts are currently unknown, though he is thought to be in the north east part of Ansalon, biding his time and gathering souls to him.  Appearance- Tal is an elf of about 5'5. The many soul drains and transfers he has endured have left him rather emaciated looking, with almost porcelin white, thinly stretched skin. However, following the ceremony by Dauroth, he has started to look a little more lively, with a fuller face and a shade darker skin. This change has been slow to come though, as his body has had five hundred years of abuse thrust upon it.   His hair is caught in a shoulder length pony tail, bound by an ornate clasp in the style of the tribe of his upbringing. However, it is notable that there are two streaks of molten silver hair that start at his eyebrows and go back to the end of his hair length.  His ears are raggedly cut at the tips, a symbol of his childhood, and his eyes, once a startling hazel/green, are now completely silver, with black irises and small red pupils. When he opens his mouth, his teeth are fanged, but as he never smiles, people hardly notice.  Around his neck is a battered coppery-green medallion impressed with the image of a Rose and Mantis, symbols of the God Majere, and only relic of Tal's birth. His clothing reflects his profession, and is black leather meant to blend in with shadows and appear completely unobtrusive from his coat to his thick hunting boots.  Around his waist are an assortment of pouches and packs, and two weapon holsters. One holds a blessed mace of disruption, granted to him by Majere during the Chaos war, and the other holding an ancient hunting knife dating to pre cataclysm tribes of the Plains of Dust.  However, these are all mundane things, for that which makes the Shadeslayn most noticable are the omnipresent shadows and spirits that dwell around him. Those who are Spiritually inclined, or dabble in Necromancy, can see that there are always shades and spirts in orbit around Tal, the way an electron orbits a nucleus. At times of trouble, Tal can gather these spirits and expel them in a damaging blast towards his enemies. Whenever the Shadeslayn walks into an area, all incorporeal undead, restless spirits, and lost souls are immediatly attracted to his presence, so this orbit is continually renewed. When normal, untalented people are around him, they get the eerie feeling that they are being watched, or feel a ghostly wind down their backs, or hear a faint whistle of haunted air. When clerics attempt to determine the presence of undead, Tal glows like a beacon to them.  For the most part though, the Shadeslayn is an elf in his 500th year of his existance, with much of that time spent in extreme pain and anguish. As such, his life view is bleak and dark, and he tends not to associate with people as much. The soul ceremonies have granted him a form of immortality, which the tired mind of Tal craves not at all. Some sages have likened it to the curse of Lord Soth, but worse, as Tal had done nothing to deserve this fate but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  With the end of the War of Souls near, and the freeing of the trapped spirits, only time will tell what happens to the elf without a soul.   ------ Yeah, it's a repeat, but i really like this character =) --  Awesome battle moment- Sending my shadows to fight off Shadow wights while taking on their Daemonlord Leader.  The rest of my party had failed saves and were slowly being drained away, and i had to sac a lot of magic items to pull us out of that one.  It was really cinematic, though.  And the battle mat looked awesome, as me and the daemon lord basically played chess with shadows and stuff =)</blockquote>

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