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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 3732651" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #406b] Origins II[/PLAIN]"Aye, lad! Well spoken!" Karak heartily agreed. Taking the cup from Ayremac and passing it to Morier without himself taking a sip, he fixed Anania with an appraising eye. "I reckon that our newest elf be a good place ta start!" Morier took the Goblet and filled it with water."No, Karak. I've been as tight-lipped as anyone around here and since it was my idea, I'll tell my story first," the albino said and caused the cup to fill with spiced wine. He drank deeply from the Goblet - one more brace of liquid courage to steel himself, "But if we're to do this, then here are the rules: no interrupting, no pity and no self-pity." He cracked a small smile adding, "And Karak... for the gods' sake, no crying."Huzair laughed and blew smoke into the night sky. Karak just crossed his arms and scowled. Morier took a deep breath and began."It's probably not that hard to imagine from the very beginning that a newborn as pasty-white as I am isn't the most welcome addition to a drow household," he explained, holding his hand up toward the fire so that the shadow it cast fell across his face. "I don't know if they kept me around as long as they did out of denial or fear or just plain spite. But whatever the reason, it was too long." His eyes flickered briefly to Anania, but if the admission of his heritage troubled her in any way it didn't show on her face."The most vivid memories I have of being in that house are of my..." he paused, shifting uneasily for a moment or two before taking another gulp of wine and passing the cup to Ixin. "Well... my father, I suppose I have to call him that, as much as it makes my skin crawl to use the title on him. He was as viscious a being as I have ever encountered. I think he spent about as much time trying to beat the color into me as he did trying to beat it out of my mother. Every time it became too much for her to watch and she tried to stop him, he'd turn his fury on her... so finally she just stopped trying to protect me, at least while he was around.""A very few times when he wasn't around, I can remember her coming into the room and tidying things up with an almost pleasant manner about her. Rarely ever saying a word, but trying in her own way to show me that the evil wasn't all her doing," he said, marveling at the bitter taste this tale left in his mouth. "I think she just wanted me to know that. Not that it mattered.""I couldn't really tell you with any great deal of accuracy how old I am, because the time with them could have been 200 moons, it could have been 2000... it seemed like a lifetime," the eldritch warrior sighed. "I can remember the strange sense of relief I felt when I realized that they had decided to take me to the surface - to the edge of the Darkwood to leave me to be eaten by bugbears. It still rings in my mind how matter-of-factly my father explained it to her, right there in front of me." He shook his head and smiled sardonically."And I suppose that but for Angwyn ap-Llewellyn trolling about the edge of the Darkwood looking for who-knows-what, that's what would have happened. Thats' what they say happens to every Drow child that wanders too far from home," he explained. "Knowing him today, I still have no idea what made him decide to save me. Here's this hermit who wants nothing to do with anyone except Malcom the Druid-who-is-even-crazier-than-him, who suddenly decides he needs to raise an abandoned albino Drow. I know he brought me to an orphanage, and I know that they were prepared to keep me there, but then he came back the very same evening and was ready to bring me home.""Sometimes I wonder if it was some sort of experiment, some wild idea that he and Malcolm cooked up to see what they could teach this "blank slate". But the both proved to be very kind people... the only real "parents" I've known," the albino mused. "Living with a couple of near-hermits doesn't make a guy a lot of friends, at least not many his own age, so I was always around adults there. MY father's adventurer friends and fellow semi-hermits." "There was a half-chagmat kid... Ledare would have known him... supposed to be some hideous freak. He wasn't as bad as everyone in town made him out to be but I suppose I'm not the greatest judge," Morier chuckled darkly. "He was more messed up than I was, so I thought he was great." "And of course," he nodded in Huzair's direction. "Trouble with a capital T over there... got me into more fights than any other twelve people I know. I think he used to do it just to entertain himself... knew he could get me to knock the snot out of someone on a moment's notice, or just as often get the snot knocked out of me as quickly. But those stories are for a different night..." His eyes widened as he smiled and his voice trailed off for a moment."Anyway, ap-Llewellyn didn't like that I tried to fight with everyone and everything I came across in those days, and figured that if he couldn't make a mage out of me, then maybe Looney Old Arwold Wyverneye could make me into a Ranger or something," he continued. "But he wasn't much older than I was, he was the most short-tempered teacher ever, and he was determined to make me an archer for some odd reason. Couldn't seem to understand that from the first moment I held one, I knew I was meant to have a blade in my hand. I don't think an Eldritch Warrior is something you can learn to be or learn not to be, I think it's something that you've always been... an extension of what you are inside, when battle is the only thing that makes everything clear. You just need someone to help you refine what's already there. In my case that was Leomarcus Darkeyes.""He's the one who finally helped me control my constant search for a fight. Helped me understand that fighting and hatred are a bad combination for an Eldritch Warrior, that the more you hate your opponent in battle, the greater his advantage." He looked at Shamalin, reminding her with a glance of the conversation they had had when last they'd sparred. "'The lightning doesn't hate the tree,' he used to say 'it has no feeling for it whatsoever, that is the ultimate advantage.' ""He made me understand that when you fight to destroy something you hate, that the clarity an Eldritch Warrior finds in battle becomes cloudy, and when you fight to protect something you love, the same holds true. I believe that that is the thing that helped me through the Grove of Renewal. It was me and the Grove, no emotions, no feelings... just a test," he said and snorted laughter at the memory. "I sat in the Walk of Air, arguing with Ledare and Feln, trying to convince Ledare to leave me there to die, and trying to talk Feln out of making me use his body as some sort of macabre sleeping bag, but knowing that if they would go and leave me on my own, that I could make it.""And you did," Ixin said, breaking the 'no interruptions' rule that Morier had set down at the beginning. She seemed lost in memory, staring sullenly into the fire. Morier nodded, understanding that she meant: you did it while I died."I did. But it wasn't something that I could have done without the experiences that led me to the Grove," he said, patting Ixin's knee reassuringly. "I spent a lot of time wandering from adventure to adventure with no real vested interest in what I was fighting. But somehow I've ended up here, now, trying in vain to keep you all at arm's length. Trying with even less success not to hate Aphyx and the vile filth that do her bidding. Trying to sort out how I can continue to do this and not let my mind be clouded by the fact that you are all the greatest friends I've had in my lifetime."He let the words settle, glad that he'd said them but no less unnerved by their significance. He broke the silence by adding, "Except for you Karak. I've never really liked you that much."Karak mused a bit over that, his mouth making several aborted comments before he stopped, puzzled some more, then finally asked simply, "Why?"</blockquote>

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