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Message: <blockquote data-quote="munchlord" data-source="post: 3700689" data-attributes="member: 48076">sorry for the slow update, my connection died...HomeDragor was waiting outside the largest building in town. It was made from pine wood, in large heavy planks running vertically from the ground to the roof, two stories above ground. He was in Koughas, an elven town in the mountains. It was made from wooden huts and houses build on a fairly flat plateau in the mountains. By now, near the hour of dawn, only two buildings were not dark. The town hall, the building in front of Dragor, and the militia head quarters. The latter was one of the few stone buildings in Koughas. It was placed at the western edge of the town, guarding the entrance to the town with a grey display of might, and watchful eyes at the windows. The few lights in the city did not fool Dragor though; his ears caught the soft sound of leather sliding across moss and he saw shadows moving in deeper shadows near the edges of the town and in the forest beyond. The area was filled with a network of elven sentinels, watching for the smallest sign of dark elves. Dragor had noticed this when he arrived with the warriors that found him in the forest earlier that night. Now he waited in the shadows outside of the town hall. The leader of the elves, that had brought him to the home of his ancestors, was talking with the leaders of the city. Some time had passed when the leader of the elven scouts emerged from the town hall.“The council wants to see you”He said with a voice like that of a businessman.Dragor walked through the door into the hall. It was a simple room with unpainted wooden walls and benches at the walls. In the other end of the room was a plain featureless wooden door. Dragor walked through the door into the council chamber. The council chamber was undecorated as well, cheap and functional. On both sides of Dragor, benches were standing in rows to watch a half circle of 11 chairs placed in the far end of the room. The benches were empty, but that was not the case for the chairs. In each chair sat an elf in dark clothes. The whole hall was lit only by a handful of torches and a single fireplace.“Dark clothes seem to be the national clothing of my ancestral home… If so then I am well equipped in clothes”This though was the first to run through Dragor’s mind. He walked towards the chairs, stopping next to the last row of benches.“So you are the so called escaped slave? You don’t look like a slave, and I don’t recognize you. If you disappeared before I became a council member, you’d be older.”One of the elves spoke. He was one of the younger in the council, with black hair reaching the shoulders and a scar across the brow.“The dark elves tried to make me one of them, make me think like them, they failed. When I was taken captive I was still unborn. I was born in a slave encampment. When I was 30 they killed my parents and I was taken in by a dark elven family. They tried to raise me to become a dark elf, but the memory of my murdered parents lived on and my hate for them grew with every day that passed.”Dragor tried to keep his voice completely controlled and to avoid showing signs of feelings. As he mentioned his parents’ death, the memory returned once again and a tear appeared in his eye. The same eye was alight with burning hate for the murderer.“So you were practically raised by dark elves?”Another one of the elven council said. His face was soft and smooth, not the face of a warrior. His eyes were filled with skepticism.“Most of my childhood was spent in the home of a dark elf yes, but my mother had thought me about right and wrong before her death. I follow what she told me, that is my honor code.”“What does that code say then?”“Be loyal to your friends and family. Do not kill without a proper reason, like the target being an evil man. Do not steal from those who are not your enemies. Do not leave justice undone.” The elven council looked at each other briefly, but the moment was gone again so quickly that you could easily think it was just your eyes that fooled you. Another one of the council members spoke this time. He was among the older men in the council. His hair was white as snow and his face was a pair of brown eyes in a web of wrinkles. Hi voice was surprisingly deep and strong his age considered.“What happened after you were raised by the dark elves?”“When I was full grown, I was levied into the military. When I had just finished my training, I was picked to enter the shades-““The Shades!”The entire council except one spoke at once, visibly surprised by what they had just been told. Some because they thought that the dark elves were smarter than what they appeared to be, some because they had to reconsider the trust he had earned in them.Then Dragor continued“I trained with an eagerness that they saw in only few recruits, not to kill kougans like the others, but to get the tools to become myself again and exert revenge upon my captors and later the killers of my parents. I became the favored pupil of Seresh, the leader of the shades. When my training was complete, in the night before I was to get assigned my first task, I carried out the first part of my plan. I snuck up to Seresh’s bedroom and killed him”“Wait a second”One of the council members said, disbelief oozing from him.“You say that you killed the leader of the shades, the third most infamous dark elf alive”“I know nothing of how infamous he was, but he is not alive any more.”“You can’t possibly have defeated Seresh in battle, not when having trouble with those hunting you”The young one who addressed him first was speaking again.“I never said anything about defeating him. I shot him with a poisoned blowgun dart when he slept”“And he didn’t see it coming?”“I don’t think he expected a shade to betray him, and anything lesser would not have reached him without awakening him so he was almost unguarded.”“All right, continue”A members of the council spoke now that had been silent since Dragor entered the room. His face was hidden by a piece of cloth, so that only the eyes were visible. Those eyes were filled with a hatred that ran even to that of Dragor, but it was freely shown, not slumbering most of the time, controlled and used for extra focus when needed. Rather the hate in these eyes was flaming and ever present. “I then left the camp, tricked the guards into thinking I was headed here on a mission. Unfortunately Seresh’s corpse was found shortly after my disappearance, and from there it took only little work to discover the one who did it. The dark elves took pursuit and hunted me down, had it not been for your patrol, I’d have been dead by now.”“And that was the end of your story? Do you really expect us to believe in you?”“That was the end my story indeed. Although I cannot claim that I have never told a lie, I swear upon the graves of my ancestors, to the ancient home of whom I have traveled now, that I have told no lie in this room and that I never will.”“Speaking of your ancestors, what is your family name?”“Shadowfury”“Impossible, the shadowfury family is dead”“It was the name of my parents, and do not draw my truthfulness to question, I swore an oath on their graves, for they are now to be counted among my ancestors as well.”“But every elf taken captive is sacrificed to the hellish associates of the dark elves in return for power.”“That is not the case, at least not at the start. Most are sacrificed when they cannot be used as slaves anymore, or when the dark elves are low on sacrifices”“Fine, you can leave Dragor. We will discuss your situation and let you know when we have reached a decision. You will wait outside of the council halls.”The masked elf saidDragor turned around and left without a word, waiting outside the doors for the decision of the council. In the meanwhile, he thought about the work he meant to do afterwards, a quest that would take hundreds of years.Finally, the door opened and the elven council emerged from the council hall. The masked elf spoke with a slight degree of solemnity in his voice.“The council has decided to allow you to stay in the city state of Koughas, but you may not use the name Shadowfury anymore. If you do so you will be expelled from the Koughas.”The young one from the council approached Dragor.“Was the killer of your family Seresh?”“No”“Was he then among those who hunted you?”“No”Now, the councilman smiled with scorn in his eyes and his voice when he spoke again.“Then you failed to honor your code, you left justice undone”The already grim face of Dragor turned even grimmer as anger swelled up into his mind. When he spoke, his voice was alarmingly cold.“My father thought me that if a task was too great for you to complete, you should leave and then return when you had the power to complete. The one who slew my parents was Dyrkhar, the dark elven grand marshal. I do intent to kill him, and anyone who tried to prevent it will find the afterlife much sooner than they expected”Dragor then turned his back to the councilman and left.A moth took air from the roof of the council hall. It had heard everything the council and Dragor had said through the chimney. While flying away in the early dawn, it thought.“Everything is going as expected, perfect”</blockquote>

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