Aulrathdien Ar'dan Algistathas the Legend of the Battlefield, Wilderborne Witch-Hunter, Apprentice of the Hammer

Role

Chapter 12

Aulrathdien visited the shrine of his would-be patron god now and then, offering
his prayers and paying his respects. Though the dwarf-god deigned to speak to
him once, Aulrathdien was not given the impression that Thror held him in much
esteem.

But even the disdain of a god could not wear him down quickly after his long
years in the prisons of Evermoon Hollow. He continued his visits and his
prayers.

During one such visit, Aulrathdien spoke to a filthy dwarf who also lurked at
the outskirts of the shrine. The gully dwarf, Grudruk, revealed that he too
wished to train at the shrine as a smith but was unwelcome. In his own way, he
indicated the hammer and anvil, symbols of the dwarf lord. Grudruk said that he
was like the anvil, enduring beatings and scorn but still being unwilling to be
driven off.

Aulrathdien admitted that he would like to think that he had the same inner
strength to persevere in the face of hardship within him, but that it had been
so long since he had known true strife that he could not be sure. This being
the case, he allowed that he might be more akin to the hammer, seeking to bend
and shape others and the world to his vision.

Although Draugnir, the dwarven guardian of Thror's shrine clearly regarded the
gully dwarf as less than worthy of the name dwarf, Aulrathdien praised what he
saw as Grudruk's exemplary dwarflike qualities. Speaking further with the gully
dwarf about the nature of the forge and life's trials, the wood-elf was at the
end surprised that Grudruk declared Aulrathdien to be his friend. He scratched
at one of the elf's arms and bit the other in a strange show of affection before
scurrying off.

Aulrathdien felt faint, then sick as this bizarre wound began to fester.
Draugnir did him the courtesy of cleaning and bandaging the wounds, and when
Aulrathdien woke from his feverish sleep, he found the hammer and anvil of Thror
upon his forearms where the gully dwarf's wounds once were.

Aulrathdien is understandably still somewhat at a loss to explain these events.

Role

Chapter 11

Aulrathdien remained focused on the Commander's task to the exclusion of nearly
all else until he had claimed the ten skulls. Salyeris had said she would know
when he had completed the task and would give him permission to advance in his
guild, but he did not see her from some time and did not receive word from her.
He thought maybe he had miscounted or his kills were somehow unworthy, so his
obsession with reaping, as he saw it, wizards from the world continued.

Finally Aulrathdien did encounter Salyeris again and asked for her blessing,
which she granted. But it is natural that a thing in motion should remain so
until stopped, and so it was with Aulrathdien's murderous crusade. Having gotten
into the habit of prioritizing the hunt for mage skulls above any of his other
concerns whenever possible, that habit continued. He killed many and made
other kinds of progress but slowly, though he always did return to training and
seeking to unravel the mysteries of the Bladesong whenever he may.

Commanders and Drillmasters came and went and still his bloody work continued.
Years ran together and Aulrathdien gave little thought to anything else. Only
a single, awkward meeting with his Lord Thror, a god as disdainful of his
wood-elven nature as he had ever feared, lingered in his mind as an event of
significance in these years, and that is a story for another day. The reaping
was all to him.

And then one day the Destructor of Magic handed Aulrathien a terrifying belt
hung with ethereal mage-skulls, telling him that he had slain more wizards than
any and had earned a place of honor in the village.

This accolade does not cause Aulrathdien to relax or rest on his laurels
anything, it drives him harder, demands he prove himself constantly worthy of
his name. Even beginning to face wizards near to the fullness of their power,
people who arrogantly see the journeyman warrior as easy prey does not daunt
him. He is compelled to try to defy their expectations in the most violent way
possible. Whether anything can reawaken in him a desire for a less singular life
remains to be seen.

Role

Chapter 10

Aulrathdien's interactions with the people that he murdered were strained, at
best. Often they would rant about the Village of Battleragers, though he knew
little enough of it. Frequently they would cast aspersions on the state of his
soul or accuse him or sorcery himself. Some couldn't stop cursing at him or
denouncing the man they incorrectly understood him to be.

At no point did Aulrathdien himself sink to their level or deceive any of the
people he hunted about his intentions

Inevitably, though, he did research these Battleragers whose name seemed to be
on the tip of everyone's tongue. Perhaps these people would not live up to the
standard that Aulrathdien set for himself, but how could they? Not everyone had
the good breeding of a family working against magic since the days when the
elves were a single people. He decided that allying himself with these mage-
hunters would still be the best way to help the Cycle along. Should he live to
see a Spring of the Cycle, he would worry about what to do then.

Swearing an oath to the blacksmith Tahren and telling his story succinctly to
the Commander Salyeris, he found himself quickly invited among the Battleragers.
His first task was to claim the skulls of ten wizards. He would be required to
do this and then secure Salyeris' approval to further climb the ranks of the
warrior's guild. He set to the task of proving himself.

Role

Chapter 9

Slowly his fighting skill returned. He crawled back from the abyss of atrophy
that his long imprisonment had thrust him into. He trained with almost every
kind of weapon or combat technique he could, no matter how limited or irrelevant
to swordfighting.

During this time he worked exclusively alone. He was still distrustful of most
others, and he did not think any would-be companion would be patient with his
obsession with mastering obscure fighting techniques. Over time, he started to
think that it might suit him well to do the same indefinitely. Aulrathdien knew
that for reasons of honor or due to the demands of a code of parity or courage
of some kind, some legendary heroes had chosen to train ever in solitude, never
accepting companions to ease their burden. He was pleased with the results of
this method so far and decided to continue it for now. Although not his original
motivation he may come to decide this notion fits with his personal code of
honor as well.

Once satisfied that his general combat ability had returned to an acceptable
level once again, Aulrathdien dedicated himself to achieving a greater mastery
of swords. What other weapon could it be for a student of the ancient Bladesong?

Role

Chapter 8

It wasn't as easy as he thought it would be, or maybe he just wasn't as strong
as he thought he was. Unlike the docile guild-mages of the Hollow, it turned out
that mages in wider Thera expected brash warriors to try to murder them and
were much harder to surprise. His first skirmishes were a disaster. A
necromancer he sought to end slew him instead, and one of these strange hell-
knights appeared out of nowhere one day and swiftly beat him to death.

Maybe these kinds of magic were the most terrifying and they weren't taught in
Evermoon Hollow because the king wasn't as stupid as Aulrathdien had thought.
He thought about that a lot. He wondered if the king had thought his ideals not
incorrect after all but rather too dangerous to pursue.

At this point in his life his only enemies were practicioners of magic and the
ancestral enemies of the wood-elves such as orcs, creatures he did not even
truly see as people. Also, his focus was on mages specifically and not magic in
general, exactly. He did not himself drink any potions, but he was not above
selling those he found to fund his crusade. He gave little thought to whether
magic might have gone into the manufacture of any arms and armor he used, nor
did he hesitate to take such actions as fraudulently seeking a membership in the
Tower of Sorcery. As has been said, while Aulrathdien lived by a personal code
of honor, it was a very Theran one and influenced deeply by the moral pragmatism
of the wood-elven people as well. He did not see any contradiction in these
choices. When enough of the mages were dead, these things would sort themselves
out naturally.

He does not yet think of himself as an applicant of the Village. know much about
them, or attempt to live up to their code, though it seems likely his life will
trend in that direction.

He has heard a little about Thror, the God of Hardship, and feels drawn to what
he knows of Thror's dogma, although he also wonders if a dwarven god of the
forge could take an elf who prefers more natural weapons seriously.

PK Statistics

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Immortal Comments

Immortal Comments

Role

Chapter 1

In the dawning times of Thera, the legends claim, the elven race split into two
branches, with the high elves growing peerlessly intelligent and mastering the
arts of magic while the wood elves lingered in the forests and became the brawny
amoral nature-thugs of the surface-elven world.

But this version of the history leaves much unanswered. It doesn't explain how
or why a long-lived race of ethical super-geniuses split so cleanly and
completely into two. It doesn't account for why even today the wood-elves,
among the most intellectually gifted of all peoples produce no mages, when the
relatively idiotic fire giants and felar manage to produce significant workers
of magic. It doesn't even hint at how a subgroup of the legendarily moral elves
became more concerned with the cycles of nature than the place of goodness in
the world. Whatever the truth is, there must be much of the story the legends
leave out, much that even the perdurable elven peoples have long forgotten.

Aulrathdien believes he knows the truth of this secret history.

Role

Chapter 2

The short version of the story of the elven schism known to Aulrathdien goes
something like this:

The elves have always been a scholarly people, and the research of the sage
Ranaven explored the great cycles of the world. Thera's basic cycles of day and
night, sun and moon, seasons were well understood by this time, but Ranaven
theorized there were others to be discovered and deciphered, cycles more
mysterious and less obvious if no less real.

His studies lead him to postulate that the very force of magic in the world
was part of a long cycle set into motion by the Violet Spider at the dawn of
creation for purposes mortals could only guess at. From nothing, the force of
magic waxed in the world during what was akin to the season of Spring in its
cycle. The era in which the world was dominated by great wizards and the mages
of Order and Chaos fought with unimaginable powers was like the Summer of magic.
The time of Ranaven's life was during magic's Autumn, as its powers grew weaker
and the great feats of Order and Chaos at their height were no longer possible.
Soon should come magic's Winter, with it vanishing from the world entirely,
perhaps to be born again in a new Spring thereafter for whatever design the
Spider had set in motion.

In time Ranaven's experiments were able to demonstrate to the rest of the elven
nation that his beliefs were true beyond a reasonable doubt. How the elves
reacted to this news soon split the people.

Role

Chapter 3

The first group held that the the place of the elven people should be primarily
as an active force for good in the world. To this end they would sharpen their
skills with magic and hold back the tide of its cycle as best they could. Magic
was too powerful a tool for the Light, one that equalized the elves' physical
frailty relative to such foul, brutish creatures as orcs. Even if that were
not the case, the idea of wiping magic out of the rest of the world was
clearly anathema. It would require the loss of too much innocent life.

The second group felt that no good could ultimately come of fighting the tide.
Ranaven believed, but could not prove to the first group's satisfaction, that
the proper ebb and flow of the cycle would produce the greatest good for all.
To halt the passage of the cycle would be dangerous and should mortals somehow
force magic's Autumn back into Summer it could unmake the very world. Realizing
that this cycle of magic had been an important and dangerous part of the natural
world that they had been ignorant of, they resolved to live in greater harmony
with the natural world and see to it that the seasons of magic progressed as
intended, even if they should have to help it along.

These two groups, each well-intentioned in their way, found themselves totally
at odds, the drives of their beliefs completely opposed. The great elven civil
war began, and brother slew brother. In time the hostilities gradually died
down as the two nations of elves put down roots in different parts of the world.
Each kept their own version of the elven traditions and language, which grew in
different directions and soon enough became unrecognizable as sharing the same
root. As generations passed and what were now the high elves and the wood elves
came to have more pressing problems than each other, most even forgot what had
been learned about the cycle of magic and why they had fought at all.

One wood-elven secret society calling itself the Brotherhood of the Inscrutable
Equinox remembered.

Role

Chapter 4

It didn't take long from the split of the two elven races for the wood-elves to
start to lose both their original purpose and their ancestral traditions.
Even information that is valued enough to be passed from father to son can
mutate over time as each generation adds and subtracts based on their own
experiences. It is the most natural thing in the span of a society, and so it
may be ironic that it was this process was the very thing a secret society of
wood-elves formed to prevent.

Their purpose was twofold: first, work in secret to serve the turning of the
great cycle of magic even when others had forgotten, and second, to preserve
the ancient knowledge and traditions of the undivided elven race, including
their histories and knowledge of bladesong and softer arts alike, but notably
not including non-theoretical applications of magic.

In the first goal, they had mixed success over the ages. They were largely able
to prevent wood-elves from taking up the arcane arts again. Enough mysterious
deaths and freak building fires ensured that. On the other hand there were
several big marks of shame on their record, such as the eventual establishment
of wizard guilds in even the great city of Evermoon Hollow.

In the second goal they were as successful as anyone mortal could hope to be.
They did not preserve what they sought to preserve flawlessly, but did so much
better than other, less reactionary wood-elves. Still, they could not help but
mold the traditions into their image slowly over the ages, and so it was that
there came to be an order within the Equinox calling themselves the Knights of
Winter who were strictly schooled in the ancient bladesong fighting style.

The Knights of Winter were, in theory, a force held in reserve for the last all-
out war to wipe magic completely from Thera and turn the cycle to its lowest
ebb. They never saw open action, because despite themselves the Inscrutable
Equinox had picked up an unspoken third goal over the ages: Stay hidden and
don't rock the boat any more than you have to.

This is the story of a prospective Knight of Winter without either the sense to
understand that unspoken third goal or the patience to serve it.

Role

Chapter 5

Aulrathdien was a wood-elf born of a prestigious lineage. His father was the son
of a very old and powerful noble line, one that had endured since the days when
the elves were one people. His mother was a princess of Evermoon Hollow, the
fifth daughter of the king at that time with no hope of being in line for the
throne but a princess nonetheless.

Aulrathdien was inducted into the Brotherhood of the Inscrutable Equinox at a
young age, for his father and his father's father down through the ages had been
members. He demonstrated a remarkable ability to anticipate others in the
sparring ring and an almost as remarkable an ability to fail to understand his
peers outside of it. He had a natural magnetism that made him many friends
despite his relative obliviousness to the desires of others.

He spent decades training at fighting, immersing himself in the study of any
aspect of personal combat that his superiors or others were willing to teach
him. At first, this was simply because he had a knack for fighting and loved to
do it. Over time, this love of battle grew into a quest for perfection with it.
No matter how obscure the technique, he wanted to understand it, master it, and
learn to defeat it. In time this quest for technical mastery in turn grew into
a desire for greatness of the mind or soul as well. He found himself drawn to
the closest surviving wood-elf equivalents of the guild and code of paladins.
These, after so many generations apart, were things lacking in the benevolent
morality of the high elves or even their will to glorify something greater than
the self, but still put their stamp on Aulrathdien. He saw himself as more of
a champion or knight and less a soldier or thug. He wanted to achieve personal
greatness and a legendary reputation on the battlefield.

He felt destined for great things, and was ill inclined to wait in hopes that
the final war would naturally arrive in his lifetime. Rather, he wanted to do
everything he could to make certain it did. His solution to this problem was
as straightforward and as socially unacceptable as anything else in his life
thus far.

Role

Chapter 6

It was a late first snow one year that set him into motion. Seeing the seasons
inexorably turn stirred something in Aulrathdien that was anything but patient
and yearned to mold the world into what he knew it was supposed to be.

It must be understood that Aulrathdien had never really known a wizard. From
time to time a visiting wizard might be seen at a court function he attended,
or he might pass one of the mage guilds as he made his way around the Hollow,
but he had never so much as spoken to one. Magi were doubly foreign and
distinctly other to him, members of other races who offended by fighting the
turning of the great cycle.

It must also be understood that Aulrathdien had a very Theran sensibility about
honorable combat. That is to say as long as he came at an opponent alone without
the assistance of others, he regarded the fight as fair and proper.

His straightforward solution to the problem of mages fighting the tide of magic
was simply to start murdering them. Most he surprised and ran through in the
street. He made short work of the surprised wizards and concealed the evidence
of his crime with all the subtlety of a fire giant axeman, which is to say none
at all. His "vigilante" actions quickly won him a following among the wood-elven
underclass, which frequently blamed the foreigners and their mage guilds for
many of their ills.

These actions also came to the attention of the king, who was much less amused.
Aulrathdien's random killings were creating diplomatic incidents, to say nothing
of the civil unrest. The situation put him in an unusual dilemma. It would be
easy enough to send his guards to kill the rogue wood-elf, but it would set a
bad precedent to allow his loyal commoners to kill a wood-elf of royal blood,
no matter how far removed from power. Aulrathdien's father also wielded
considerable influence among the nobility. The boy's popularity among the
peasants might incite riots if the king turned him into a martyr.

The king's solution to this problem was more subtle than anything Aulrathdien
would have come up with in his place, but not by much. He had his guards
capture Aulrathdien and threw him into a prison cell in one of the many twisty
passageways of Evermoon Hollow. He made a public statement assuring everyone
that the boy was fine and that he only wanted to talk to Aulrathdien and help
him to understand the duties of royalty in dealing with foreign dignitaries.
The people, lowborn and high alike, trusted their king implicitly, despite
on some level understanding that he was not precisely a good man. People
quickly got distracted with their lives and forgot all about the firebrand
vigilante.

Several more first snows would come and go with Aulrathdien stuck in that
lonely prison cell.

Role

Chapter 7

There was torture, of course, beyond even the torment of being locked away from
the natural world or ever a friendly face. All he would need to do is recant his
beliefs and swear to be a loyal and more importantly peaceful subject of the
crown and it would cease. If they had simply left him alone, he might have
broken, but Aulrathdien was precisely the kind of person that was encouraged by
great hardship. Not that he was a masochist or enjoyed his suffering, but he
could not help but think that if they wanted so badly to break him, he must be
right. More than one of his guards or torturers was shaken by his conviction and
had to be transferred to another post.

Maybe the king was, eventually, won over in this same way, or maybe there was
some mercy in him. After a dozen years he finally relented and quietly set
Aulrathdien free, warning the young warrior that he was no longer welcome in
Evermoon Hollow and that to return and make trouble for the royal family again
would mean his death, no matter what anyone thought of it. After a dozen years
of solitude and pain, that was a good enough deal for Aulrathdien. He set out
from the Hollow to see what the world would hold for him.

His fighting skills were rusty, his muscles atrophied. He had seen many maps of
Thera over the years but seeing a map and knowing your way are two very
different things. One thought spurred him on: the seasons of the Great Cycle had
not yet turned and the world was not as it should be. The world was full of
wizards fighting the tide and he could still do something to end them.

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