I know its not 40k but could you tell us about your elf? 👉👈 i havent been around long enough to know her story
oh geez, she's my most beloved trainwreck child barring one RPG character who I adored but only got to play for like 8 sessions. Aureth thank goodness has been my muse for 2 years now and it's a delight.
But by god, where to even begin. I guess the beginning.
So, Aureth is my RPG character. I say dnd because it's easiest but in reality, we're 2 years into a Genesys system, homebrew world. Our DM dropped a setting document in front of us with the various races, their connections, and general histories.
I picked Elf, and for Aureths character I decided to go out of my comfort zone. Usually, I like thinking up character motivation and backstory, it's my favorite bit other than the visual design, but I thought "Nah, our lovely DM went through all this trouble of making a huge deep setting, let's let him play."
So I said: she's got amnesia, the only thing I care about is that a)She fought in the war (don't worry we'll talk about the war) and b) she was a guard for a noble house.
Thats it, thats all I gave. DM was ok with it, he plotted. He got to really dig in the backstory angst I just didn't know it yet.
So here, 2 years into the campaign and Aureth FINALLY has a very rough timeline of her life, and it goes a little something like this:
Larien's birth circumstances are a bit of a mystery still. She did not hold her birth or family as important. It's implied she was a self-made woman, rising from poverty and nothing to lead the most renowned mercenary company in the elven lands. She was feared for her savagery and skill, and she would do anything for coin.
Until she met Ioelenna. A young upstart noble, born into a small and fragile elven family who it seemed was destined only to be consumed by another house. Until her mysterious mentor began teaching her, guiding her. Ioelenna marched on, beginning to grow and accumulating followers to her side.
And when Larien first laid eyes on her, the gods struck her with purpose. She was chosen as Inassa's hand, the embodiment of the god of protection. Walking the earth as one of Ioelenna's seven godtouched bodyguards, she was a scourge to anyone who stood in their path.
Larien was consumed utterly by her duty to Ioelenna. She abandoned her lover to follow Ioelenna, she pledged her mercenaries to the cause, she waged war at Ioelennas side, and she participated willingly in the Crusade against the humans.
The reasons for the war are controversial to this day. The crusade was, on the surface, a gambit to restore Elven supremacy over their once slaves. Ioelenna and her inner circle claimed it to be a just war, supported by the gods in order to 'save' the other races.
It should be noted that Larien was not concerned with the why. Only that her job was to protect Ioelenna and if that meant waging war then so be it. Her memories of the exacts concerning the Crusade and Ioelenna are, unfortunately, dodgy, and we as such have no definitive answers past historical and racist, though likely correct, hearsay.
What the myths concerning the elves say was that Inassa was not originally an elven god. They originally kept all the races under their guiding hand, until Shannar the elven God of Beauty stole their heart. After that, Inassa gave their gift only to the elves, and from their absence was born both death and necromancy. As such, all the other races die of age, but they can also practice necromancy and have their bodies used for such. Necromancy = the absence of Inassa and their protection. Elves find the practice abhorrent and their bodies can not be used for such magic.
Its likely this was the reasoning for the war, but we only have speculation. Human society revolves heavily around the use of necromancy for labor, but it causes political tensions between them and the elves to this day. This is cause for larger conflicts for the present day so have some setup.
While originally the crusade was a steamroll, with the humans unable to reinforce their lines using the much better trained and equipt elven hosts dead, eventually the momentum stalled. Ioelenna turned more to her mysterious mentor, and the lords who surrounded her began believing less and less in the campaign.
One lord, Ethran Andor, had sired a child with Ioelenna but kept their relationship and the parentage of the child a secret. The heir was raised publically by Ioelenna, but increasingly he grew more wary of her motives, both concerning the war and having the child.
As her mentor urged her to travel off without her guard, away from the front lines in search of a place of power belonging to the elves ancient empire, Andor hatched a plot of betrayal.
Ioelenna returned from the venture starved, delirious, and near death. The small company that had accompanied her on the mission was nowhere to be found, and her mysterious advisor was gone. The Seven Godly guards had discovered the plot, but Ioelenna did not move to leave or run.
Instead, she tasked Larien with on final duty: Take the Heir, protect her.
Larien was incensed to be sent away, but it was an order. So she too the heir and a small retinue, and fled the encampment as Ioelenna was beset upon by her council of lords.
Some sort of magic was used to cut the gods off from their chosen avatars, and Ioelenna and six of her circle were butchered. Andor carefully orchestrating the betrayal. He was, however, aware of Lariens desperate flight with the heir.
He gave chase, and eventually, the haggard soldiers of Ioelenna were run down and slaughtered to a man. Larien fought, but without the magic of the gods to keep her standing past what mortals were capable of, eventually, she fell.
Andor struck the killing blow, and Larien died upon the bloodsoaked forest floor.
There have been precious few answers about what actually happened. What we do know is that some force 1) stopped her from actually dying, something which should not be possible for the elves and 2) split her soul in half. It's assumed her flight either brought her outside the magic enough to allow for the gods in intervene or... something else did?
What we wouldn't figure out for a long, long time, was that Larien still lived, forever frozen in the bloody forest meadow. An endless, never changing tableau of defeat. Her prison and grave inside the mind of the other fragment which woke up, bruised and broken in the barn of a human family.
That was where Aureths memories started. Her 'birth' was one of pain, blood, of failed duty and betrayal.
Imagine waking up, your body shattered and broken to the absolute limits of what it can take (whoever brought her back didn't really help much past the bare minimum), and being surrounded by people whose language you don't speak.
She had a rough first few years. Adjusting, learning. The farmers were kind, they helped her recover in exchange for help around the farm. They taught her some Dispernian, but she was slow to pick up the language.
The war had ended upon Ioelenna's death, with Andor and his circle calling for peace and the humans in no position to refuse. From that defeat, the Dispernian state was solidified, run by a council of Necromancers and utilizing their magic to help rebuild the war-torn land.
But the anti-elven sentiment was high, and eventually, it was too dangerous for the farmers to keep Aureth on their land as life settled and cities returned.
She was forced out, and wandered for many years as a hermit. Scraping out a haggered existence on the fringes of Dispernian society, slowly moving East until she found a town that let her stay.
That town was Chardan, and there she stayed until the opening events of the campaign. She lived far outside the walls of the city in a self-built one-room cabin. She kept a horse and a small 'farm' (some herbs and veggies, a chicken or two when the winters weren't too bad...), and generally stayed out of the city affairs.
Eventually, she was offered citizenship in exchange for service in the town's guard, as they needed the trained help and she was already essentially doing the work. It was a tense few years of adjustment, lots of folks lost people in the war and Aureth couldn't hide the scars or her own training. It was obvious she fought, and she worked hard to try and show her admission into the town wasn't a mistake.
Around 200 years after Ioelenna's death, and Aureth being about 900 years old total at this point which is quite old by elven standards, the campaign proper begins. I'll do a part two for this post as it's already a behemoth and I'm not even at the actual campaign.
I gotta say though, unraveling this all over the course of the story has been an angsty delight. This is also the first time I've written it all out and wowie...
Huge props to my lovely DM who comes up with the shit. I just message him at like 2am with awful questions like "Will Aureths new god powers make her revenant dog explode if she gets too close?"
Edit: Part two continues to saga
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