Role

Chapter 1

Sekhmette never knew the love of a mother. And for that, perhaps he was
fortunate - at least, from what he saw, from his point of view, such a thing
was more liability than asset, judging by his father's tortured grief after
the death in childbirth of the man's mother.

But rage and abuse, now -- those he knew in spades, having received no small
share of each, mostly by dint of being the nearest convenient outlet for such
from the grief-stricken Maran that had sired him. Bearing resentment, for his
mother was supposed to take care of the child while he was out fighting evil,
his forced retirement brought out the darkest side of his father possible.
Succor and comfort were, predictably, in short supply, and where those failed
to be sown, weeds of neurotic obsequiousness soon took root instead, because
the only times when his father treated him well were when he was doing
Absolutely Everything expected of him - chores, servitude, and showing great
repentance for crime of being alive. The number one lesson, of course, was to
never look father in the face - for in Sekhmette's face were the features of
his mother, and that would drive his wrath to the fore immediately.

Bargains, greed, mutual self-serving gain -- ah, these, he understood. Being
bereft of love and lacking the experience of receiving it, these concepts
replaced the affection he longed for. The morality of the Maran was lost on
him, but the much more sensible appeals to greed and lust and envy: these, he
knew. Viewing any 'unjustified' expression of affection with suspicion, he
grew enamored with the transactional nature of conjuration, he joined the
guild and set his sights to join the Theran Empire, to become a tool too sharp
and valuable to be thrown away - to finally be valuable despite his deeply
ingrained sense of worthlessness.

His father once took him on a vacation to Ayr'Trinil, to drink with his old
friends. In one of the myriad bars, he was exposed to a conjurer of the Light.
In telling old war stories, they all laughed about the time the conjurer had
'lost control' of their angel, which proceeded to slaughter an entire
cell-block of evil Arial prisoners. Why was that just, he wondered? They were
all sitting, serving their sentences, in their proper places. The angel was
viewed as a 'funny story,' not a horror. To the Maran, the prisoners all
deserved death regardless of their crimes.. In this way, he became convinced
that the followers of Light were just as murderous as the evil his father
warned him against - two sides of a war, that was all. He would rather not
hide behind hypocrisy, but the story of bargaining with the outsiders had
grasped his imagination - he slipped a book from the elf's bag and began to
study in secret, at home, before setting out one day when he felt he was ready
to join the conjurer's guild, dreams of diabolic pacts in mind.