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irpnow · 4 years

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It’s been 9 months since Maeve awoke in a panic to the feeling of rain running down her face on the rocky red beach. The beach wasn’t really red, and it wasn’t raining, she now knew - an attempt to wipe her face dry had quickly revealed her own blood to be the cause of these impressions, profusely bleeding from a deep cut from cheekbone through eyebrow over her left eye. A clean cut, the jagged rocks and whatever journey had brought her here deemed innocent of dealing the only lasting scar she bore after the months had passed.

The familiar anger within her burned as she reviewed what pitiful little she knew. She was 28 - that she was sure of this worthless fact she greatly resented.. The many answers she sought and her useless mind held to this one, presenting it often to her as she implored for memories and missing pieces. An age and a name. These and a deep seething anger, barely suppressed and threatening to take over like it’s own living entity battling for control within her.

Whatever she asks, her mind stubbornly answers without fail - Maeve. 28.

Visits to fortune tellers and card readers are equally fruitless, with refunds given or apologies, or very occasionally volatile fear and a quick ejection from their presence.

She can only imagine they’ve shared the images her mind taunts her with in her sleep. Fire, blood, an infant in her arms and a child’s terrified pleading face speaking words she cannot hear, then a flash and the sound of her own maniacal laughter swimming around her as she looks at her own reflection, seeing her face but so distorted with the hysterical sound that the blood spattered across the figure almost seems appropriate. The reflection is undoubtedly her though, before whatever weapon had mutilated what she had to admit was a lovely face. Always ending the same way - she reaches out to silence her reflection, as it grins savagely and swiftly brings up a dark blade across her vision. Another flash and then lightening across the sky, choking and coughing as she is suddenly flailing in watery endlessness, her face searing in pain and her vision splotchy. An unseen force pushing her under the water and she feels her lungs bursting, simultaneously struggling to find life and longing to surrender to the rage bubbling up inside her. She gives in.

The first night she woke up and vomited in the abbey they had brought her to when she wandered into town, covered in blood and sand. “It’s just a dream. Who am I?”

Maeve. 28.

She wrestled back and forth that, and any night she failed to take sleeping draughts since with believing it was a terrible nightmare, her mind coping with the lapses by providing fictions - or believing that it was trying to reveal the truth she feared - that she was in fact a terrible murderous monster, and that she would awaken back into that identity any moment. A red monster of wrath, blood, fire and glee. She was dynamite set to explode and she was haunted by what would be unleashed when she did.

So she did what she could. She kept to herself, and focused on finding what answers she could, she trained in the training grounds to beat back the darkness deeper into her mind, her muscles growing alongside her exhaustion. Taking whatever sedating elixirs and herbs kept her slumbering brain suppressed and numbed the red flashing in her vision.

Red, her haunting nemesis. Fire, blood, anger, laughing mocking red staring back at her every opportunity it could and taunting her even in her own red hair and brown eyes that almost gleamed red when she dared pause at her reflection. “Am I crazy?” She asked herself, quietly. Without hesitation her mind replied.

Maeve. 28.

#pathfinder #dungeons and dragons #human #fighter #backstory #campaign #ftgio #irpnow #curse of the crimson throne

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irpnow · 4 years

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Tay’rethsh

Beneath an ornate hood, inky black eyes with depths of a million colored stars stare out at the town of Sandpoint. Seeing unnaturally well in the darkness, the creature channels all within her teifling being to seek out if this will be the location of her undoing. She knows she is being chased, and the one who seeks to find her is both a formidable foe and one fueled by a rage she knows well. Her own act of requital sparked theirs. By her own moral code, her actions were justified, her only failure a miscalculation of her opponent.

Her memories begin as a small child, screaming as her arms were branded by the mark of her slave trainer, the rage and fiery contempt she knew well enough to have called them her friends screaming alongside her. If only her companions would allow her to channel their power, she would have destroyed all around her then, even if it meant her own life as the price. They laughed at her screams, the slave trainer and the men holding her down, even the woman with the searing hot branding iron - all immune to the smells of burning flesh or the screams of the creatures they deemed as less than human. She does not have an age or a name, she has always lived here, purchased or stolen or bred to be a slave to profit her owners. “Freak” they tease her, telling her of the many hopeless paths her life will take, “Better learn to obey or we’ll chain you to a wall and sell you to the highest bidder every hour, and your beastly bastard babies will take your place here in our care.” “Creature, maybe you’ll get lucky and some lord will let you scrub his latrines and take the beatings for his heirs.” Always with laughs of delight at her anger, usually with whips just for the sake of watching her helplessness to escape them. She was not the only child, but there was no camaraderie in this place for it’s property, the only interactions they had were to compete or train each other. For such a cruel place, a great amount of care and staff were in place to assure none of it’s stock was ever in a situation to kill themselves, escape, and that all received enough to survive or compete with each other but not any more, and that they knew well their purpose to only ever be used by their future masters however pleased the purchaser.

She is seven, by her own determination, when she is thrown into the wagon to be taken from town to town with many other wares. She can remember how weak she was - four days without being fed and the same since an especially wicked whipping that despite her best efforts to hide their effectiveness, caused her to scream in pain as they threw her against the sturdy iron bars of the merchandise cart. The familiar faces flashed with satisfaction and joy at her agony one last time before returning to the dismal and dark warehouse - the only place she’d ever known. It was bright to her eyes, and the world seemed too big and open. The sky seemed to go on forever, She would later learn it was just early dawn, the sky continuing to brighten as the day waned on until she thought it would simply destroy them all - the first peaceful thought she recalled ever having. She was by far the youngest creature in the cart. Huge male half beasts with broken spirits and dead eyes, subdued and accepting of their fate sat around her. Females at various ages of puberty and every race and mix she could imagine, clearly being brought along for one fate alone, in a range of apathy to sobbing dread clung to the bars or crouched where they could. With a chill, Tay realized that she fit much closer with the second group than

the first, and suppressed the terror that threatened to rise up, refusing to give it space within her.

They traveled for more than a week, given enough terrible quality water and food to survive, filthy and covered in filth. They were cleaned and redressed like the cattle they were - cheaply but sanitarily enough to present goods deserving of a price. The females were brought out for display, her small child self with them, supplemented by extra hired guards to keep them from having thoughts of escape. She can remember vividly the men leering at each of them so openly she willed herself to either burst into flame or die. Her wish did not come true. She was presented third, and as she scanned the crowd she had been relieved at most seemed to be taking the moment to busy themselves, her childish frame or repulsive blue tiefling skin and horns unappealing to the buyers. Her hopes of delaying her fate were brief, however, as she saw a huge dark human man scrutinizing her with definite intent and assessment in his eyes. When she flicked her eyes away from him, she saw another man - possibly a Dhampir, if the imaginations of her childhood were true, with hungry eyes and nauseating aura. A half orc looked both terrifying and filthy, showed a high level of interest. Panic and hopelessness were pointless exercises Tay rarely indulged herself in, but this had been one exception. She does not remember how the bidding went, and even in the moment was so lost to her emotions she did not know which fate awaited her as the guards dragged her away to be paid for and transferred to her new owner.

The towering man was a blacksmith. She spent many of her first weeks at his shop hoping his huge bristling black beard would catch fire and then she would escarpe. The forge was oddly comforting, it’s great heat felt appropriate to the child of anger and rage. He talked as he worked, telling her of himself or what had happened in town. She crouched behind his large wagon, or large hammers and iron pots, trying to guess what doom this large man had for her. Tay knew better than to trust anyone, her training had included many lessons on what happens when you let your guard down and believed in kindness. She had scars both physical and emotional to prove it. So she waited, eating the food he set for her at his table when it was hours old and his back was turned, or drinking the water after he had consumed half of the pitcher himself. She slept as little as possible and watched him work. Eventually, her curiosity drew her closer to his work, prepared for new burns as her reward. They never came, and she began to learn his craft as the years went by, never letting him in and always awaiting the coming doom. He called her Tayr’eshth, and she accepted the name - she knew it was the right of every master to name his property. She became as skilled as her owner, taking over the fine craftsmanship of the more ornate or delicate pieces as he grew older. He often left her at the shop alone as he travelled to sell his wares, and frequently went to the mountain village two days’ ride away to bring items to a Wizard for their crafted wares. Tay’s long awaited reckoning came when she was twenty eight, twenty one years after her master had purchased her. He had gone to deliver one of their most intricate orders to the wizard the day before, and as evening fell she found one of the abyssal bloodiron throwing knives, perfectly balanced and forged with intricate ornate designs. The wizard had ordered five of them, as well as metal clips shaped like dragon’s claws. Tay set out as the sun set on a “borrowed” horse from a neighbor’s

stable, at top speed and determined to reach the owner she had begrudgingly grown fond of before the man could arrive without his full order. She reached him just as the distant city came into view, and explained her presence. “Tay” he said, “You should not have come. You must head back.” Tay’s rage seethed silently, and she smacked the stolen horse on his flank, sending the creature galloping toward the home he had come from. As she stared her master in the eyes, she watched a myriad of things flash through them. He was proud, and frightened, and angry, and sad, and somehow far away. He secured his own horse near a stream, and the two began on foot toward the city. As they walked, he told her a story, and after twenty one years together, it was a surprise for her to hear a new one. The old man told her of his mother, a woman whom he bore no resemblance to but whom had raised him alone. “Tay - she was a teifling. My mother had beautiful, glowing gold eyes and skin that was just red enough to not fool any human into accepting her as their own. I was twelve when they killed her. Her name...was Tayr’ethsh.” Tay walked silently, digesting the shift in her paradigm. He had given her his mother’s name. His mother was a freak like her. He had chosen her. Not as a slave, but as someone to care for and honor with his own mother’s name. Even as she was digesting it, they reached the city, the sky dark and the moon high above them. “Pull your hood forward” he whispered hastily, and she did, her cheeks flushing in shame at her beastly appearance.

She might’ve known that’s why he told her to leave. The inn lies at the entrance of town, and he knocks. After a few moments, the door opened to an unhappy face. “Kept us up waiting hours past when we were expectin’ ya. And who be this?” A voice that made Tay cringe and sink back further into her hood abrasively demanded. “My daughter” came the reply, startling and awaking unfamiliar emotions within her. “Come in then, and be quick with ya. Some of us like to sleep.” As they stepped into the light, Tay shrank into the hood and struggled to walk amongst the swimming of her mind and heart. They went up a staircase and found a small but tidy room behind a simple door, two beds that seemed clean and sufficient for a night’s sleep. “Tay, you must stay out of sight until we can leave. This town is not welcoming for any they do not understand.” Still reeling from the events of the evening, Tay took in his words as well as the peculiar art of strange dieties on walls, and simply said “I understand.” They slept, and when she awoke he had already left to meet the wizard. A note quickly scrawled explained as much, saying he would return for the full set of knives after delivering the clips and collecting payment. Tayr’ethsh hummed an old tune the man had hummed over the years, sorting out the words she would have for him when he returned. She heard a familiar laugh outside, and stole a peek out the curtains - he stood there, laughing at something a tall man beside him had said on the street below. The man’s eyes flicked up and his face quickly was overtaken with rage as he caught sight of her before she could disappear behind the fabric again. Yelling began, first the tall man and then her owner. No, her father. She had decided to call him that, allowing herself to see that had been his hope from the beginning. More voices joined the uproar, all raised and angry, and she struggled with what to do. The choice came to her quickly, and she grabbed the sheathed throwing knives and her hood, stepped into her boots and sprinted out the door and down the stairs. She pushed through the growing crowd and came up behind him, softly speaking his name as she reached him. “Resh’ta.” She was oblivious to the hush that the mob had taken as she approached him, her hood having been pulled down as she rushed to him, the townspeople taking on an angry silence. “Demon blooded freak” someone spat, and

Tay was five again and her scarred skin braced for fresh splitting. Resh’ta grabbed her by the upper arm firmly, pulling her out of her flashback and toward the edge of town. “We leave you and will not return!” He yelled, and tossed the bag of his freshly collected coin over the group on the far side of the townspeople. They turned, many rushing for the rather large smattering of coins that escape the bag on it’s impact, and Resh’ta pulled Tay into a run away from the town and toward his horse and their home. As they ran, Tay heard the sound of the air breaking at what seemed like the same moment it hit him. She turned, in horror, to see him fall on his face. A single arrow protruded from his back. Her relief was palpable - one arrow, it might be bad but he could be saved. “Resh’ta get up!” she commanded. He didn’t respond, and she went to him and tried to help him. “Resh’ta. Father! Get up, we have to keep moving.” As she lifted his mass, he did not respond. His skin was quickly taking on an awful color and he felt unnaturally cold. Tay continued to try and lift and drag him, scanning the road they’d come from for the attacker, but none of the townspeople were visible anymore. She could not lift him. In desperation she looked at the arrow, tearing away the clothing around it only to see a spreading blackness from the arrow across the skin. Her old friends rage and anger swelled within her as she felt for his pulse. He was dead. She grieved for three days in the woods, singing over his body and feeding her hunger for revenge.

She danced with her lifelong friends, rage and flaming anger, and they used his horse to bring him to the center of town, and then burned the town to the ground as they slept, watching to assure there were no escapees as the flames danced in her eyes. His glorious burial was the only gift she could give to him, even her opening her heart to him happening too late for him to know. After the ashes had cooled, she walked through the ashes, cursing the ground and the parted souls of her father’s murderers. A shocked gasp echoed across the rubble, and her eyes caught a teenage boy - quickly followed by the blade of her throwing knife. She rushed to her victim, who was dying much more slowly than her father had. “Why are you here?” she’d demanded. “The wizard needed some of his scrolls.” the boy said, clear voiced despite his clear pain. As she looked him over and weighed the full impact of his words. The wizard was alive. The whole damned reason her father came to this wretched and hateful place. Her eyes caught familiar metalwork on the boy’s belt. “Your belt - my father made those clips.” Her black pool eyes flashed, as he paled. “Where is the wizard?” she asked him, determined to hunt down the final piece to complete the sacrifice Resh’ta’s death demanded. The boy showed shocking strength and determination, grabbing the knife that impaled him and pushing it further in, finalizing his fate. Tay let out an angry cry, ripping the belt off the boy and mounting her father’s horse, urging him into a gallop in the direction the boy had come from.

She searched for a year before any progress was made, wearing the belt and the last knives her father and she had created before his death. She did not find the wizard in the next city, or any of her travels. She learned to disguise herself - true, her horns, nigh-sky eyes, and blue skin set her firmly as a teifling, but she still managed to portray separate identities, to melt into shadows and become so unnoticable that she may as well have been invisible. She learned of the wizard, well known and employed for their crafting abilities throughout the region. It

seemed the harder she searched for the survivor, the less was known of them. She discovered that they had trained in teleportation, but that the escape had been coincidental more than magical. The wizard, following the exile of Tay and her father from town, had gone to finish crafting the very belt she now wore, obtaining the leather and then using some sort of crafting magic on it. She was in a large city, acting as a beggar when she overheard the reason for her difficulty in locating the wizard. She had assumed, wrongly, that she had been seeking a man, when in fact the wizard was a woman. The diners at the table near where she was “begging” were discussing the wizard, and her new quest - to find the teifling who had murdered her apprentice. Tay lingered, hoping they would reveal more about the wizard’s location or identity, but the conversation shifted away and never returned. In the following months, Tay discovered small pieces here and there, the only truly useful information being that she had left her knife in her victim, and that the wizard now carried it in hopes of using it to locate Tay.

For the first time, Tay found herself identifying with someone. Her enemy was also the only being she had understood in as long as she could remember. The moral code that she carried weighed those she had killed a fair tribute for what she had lost, and now she was being hunted to repay such a debt. And so Tay shifted her methods, and decided to await being found. She joined The Circum de Tenebris (Circus of Darkness) to give the game more interest. The constantly moving group introduced new skills to her repertoire as she prepared for the battle that would determine her end or her new beginning. Until then, she amused herself in learning acrobatics, and experimenting with new weapons, finding that any manner of whip seemed to respond to her well but still preferring throwing knives and stars. The travel fascinated her, having spent her entire life in very small worlds. The circus hosted many races and skills, all of which she studied with much interest - with the exception of the ancient teifling oracle. Whether that was because she was worried the seer would see the past she knew or deeper into her unknown beginnings even she didn’t know. She made up new stories for each inquiry into her life before the circus, and generally nobody cared. There were a large number of teiflings involved in the group, and she enjoyed adding the illusion that there were more by practicing her disguise skills and presenting as different people.

The girl with nothing to live for awaits her fate as the circus settles into the outskirts of Sandpoint, oblivious to the Oracle seeing her lost beginnings; an infant, hours old rushed in secrecy to the icy shore by her mother - filled with disgust and rage. A chance meeting by a slave trader along the way, making a more lucrative offer. A past the teifling will never know.

#pathfinder #teifling #bard #new player #dungeons and dragons #character #rise of the runelords #ftgio #girlparty #irpnow #critical role #fan

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