Luvon Fairypaw the Grand Master of Artistry, Painter of the Eternal Star

PK Gank-O-Meter

Role

Chapter 10

The only things keeping him going were his dedication to keeping the Heraldic
spirit alive, the new places he'd yet to visit, and primarily, his desire to
attain truth. He was so close to reaching it, so close to being able to come
back to his mother's cottage and answer all of the burning questions that
defined his reality, so close to setting Hagred free at last. He'd spent weeks
poring over the Lyceum's stock of planar knowledge and combined it with the
training of his guild, the things he'd learned about his instrument, his
knowledge about fairies and fairy magic, and the witchcraft he'd often
witnessed at home, and used it all together to devise a method of breaking the
mystic ward around Hagred's fairy fort. He planned to craft a sort of special
talismanic harp synchronized with the fae energies surrounding the ward.
Theoretically, he just had to find the right pitch and play it just so, and
the ward would break, like the passtune to an enchanted drawbridge, a
mechanism he'd read about that had led him to his hopeful breakthrough.

The first pieces were the feathers of an owlbear, beautiful and rare natural
things attuned to the forest. The second, a bloody orb of power, to be crushed
and the strings of the instrument coated with the powder. The third, a frame.
Any sort of wood would do, but the closer to the heart of the forest, the
better. The fourth, strings. Twine made from any magically conductive fabric
would work, but it had to be able to produce a clear and audible tune when
plucked. The fifth, a gemstone, to be inlaid into the instrument and act as a
focus. His research had been inconclusive as to what kind of gemstone, but
sufficiently clear-cut ones, he surmised, would do the trick. These pieces,
when carefully crafted, would hypothetically create a magic harp that would
act as a sort of key.

Luvon was exhausted. Every question led to more questions. Every painting
spawned two more. But he'd come so far from where he started, met so many
people and seen so many things, and he was not yet ready to lay down his harp.
Not when he was so close to reaching the truth he sought.

All he had left to do was ask around and then adventure out, gather the items,
and create the talismanic instrument. Then it would at last be time to take
Lady Rarywey to meet his mother, just as he'd promised.

Role

Chapter 9

Luvon felt absolutely helpless. He wasn't sure if he'd ever felt quite so
crushed.

Between his fellow Herald Tilea's and the Scion Zoraikla's violent quarreling,
the Inn nearly being set aflame by the latter, witnessing the priestess
Zxctikazxcti's untimely death at the drowned shrine and then hearing of High
Herald Gwendelya's demise just later, the suffocating reality that the ranks
of the heroes were already oh-so-close, and the way the river of truth he
traveled forked again and again, he felt truly like a pebble in the tides,
pushed every which way. Even his art was no longer a respite, as his paintings
became darker and darker, less cathartic and escapist and more ineffectual and
filled with sorrow.

All of it had opened his eyes to just how weak he was, at the moment truly
unable to do anything. If someone wanted to attack the Inn, all he had were
his words, and he'd found that those very rarely succeeded in this world. He'd
found that out firsthand during Zoraikla's assault on the Inn, where he could
only desperately try to pry her away from the Inn grounds while she murdered
the guard and filled the Inn with explosive gas. Only barely had he managed to
prevent what in his mind was the worst-case scenario. And yet, he feared that
the moment he joined the ranks of the heroes in an effort to be capable of
protecting what he held most dear, he would be crushed like the insignificant
beast he felt like, put right back in his place under the heels of those more
worthy.

Luvon was also beginning to feel more of an emotion which which he had very
little experience: rage. How dare Zoraikla defile the sanctity of the Inn,
play with the lives of the patrons and thespians? Her admittance that she took
pleasure in terrifying him and toying with him and seeing his reactions to
things meant nothing to him - he didn't care what she did to him, but to treat
the Inn in that way made him furious. And what he viewed as Tilea's flippant
disrespect for the situation angered him, too, seeing her continue to prod and
egg Zoraikla on while the entire Inn was held hostage. How could she be so
casual about such a thing? Was she really so confident that she believed there
was no danger, or did she simply have no care for everyone inside?

All of it was getting to be far too much for him. Stress led to sleepless
nights, and sleepless nights led to frustration and more stress. Sometimes
Luvon wondered what would happen if he were to disappear off the face of Thera
- to run off into the forests and never return, or to sink under the currents
one final time.

Role

Chapter 8

Luvon had come to realize that there existed truths outside of those which he
had been told. Thanks to his many influences, Luvon had finally come to the
conclusion that not everything his mother told him was true. He had been
forced to challenge his ideas of what truth was, and had emerged from it with
new insight. He had even begun to suspect that his mother may have *purposely*
told a lie, though he certainly had no suspicion yet that she had any ill
intention.

He had also learned the hard way that the beautiful world he'd painted about
for so long was also a cruel one. Hunted occasionally but steadily by an
assassin after a failed attempt at extortion, Luvon had concluded that the
strong had the right to prey upon the weak, and that if he wanted to stand a
chance, he would have to grow stronger, too. He had begun to exercise,
training his upper half to start to match the muscular bulk of his lower half.
At last, he had begun to learn the more esoteric songs his guild offered,
songs that, when Luvon had first taken up an instrument and learned the bardic
arts from Hagred, he never imagined could exist.

Yet his fear of the water had lessened only very slightly. It was still a
gargantuan task for him to step into the waters of the river, let alone dive
down to Rarywey's shrine. The surface scared him more than the water itself;
once he was underwater, everything became suddenly calm. But the river was
still terrifying - and the ocean was completely out of the question. He would
go swimming someday, but he was filled with the fear that the ocean would
shatter right out from under him like the illusory ocean of his youth, leaving
him to fall into the void forever. Something about the surface of the water
more so than the substance itself represented fear and claustrophobia.

Then there was the idea of bringing Rarywey to meet his mother when he went
back, as she requested. He dreaded his mother's reaction. He'd been forbidden
from speaking to anyone but her when he was home - how would she react knowing
he'd spoken to a goddess?

Nonetheless, his confidence was growing bit by bit, and he was slowly
approaching his truth. He could feel it - he didn't know what it was, but he
knew that if he just dug a little deeper, painted a little brighter, he would
find the answers, or at least some answers, to the burning questions of his
existence.

Slaves in someone else's dream world, Luvon repeated to himself in his mind as
he curled up for a night of sleep after sending off his letter to Hagred.
Could it possibly be? What other illusions could my mother have created?

Luvon resolved as he shut his eyes to look into these new discrepancies about
his body and the illusions and the things his mother told him, discrepancies
created by his probing and truth-seeking like new forks in a massive river,
and swore that in those currents he would see truth.

Role

Chapter 7

That was then. Luvon, completely oblivious to what had been her reaction to
his leaving, was completely immersed in the now, unaware of the collision
course he was on.

"Dear Hagred,

I hope this letter finds you well, if it finds you at all. If the
messenger-bird does not find your fairy fort, well, I'll just have to try
again until it does. I've had so many new experiences that even thinking about
them makes my head spin in the best way. You'd be so proud to see how much
I've grown. I've even bulked up and grown a beard just like you said! My voice
got deep, too. I look real manly now, even though I'm still pretty scared.

I've become a Herald of the Eternal Star. I've learned songs that would
surprise even you, using the basics you taught me, of course. I've found
freedom to sing and dance as I like, paint the best works I've done yet. And,
most memorably, I've begun to worship a goddess. Lady Rarywey the Drowned. Her
religion speaks to me in a way nothing else ever has. With her guidance, I've
become alarmingly close to a discovery, and one of her other disciples helped
me seal it.

A saurian called Zoraikla took me to a horrid realm of dreams where the most
awful visions came to be. One such vision was of a great hall where a dark
emperor had beaten down and subjugated all of the races of Thera as trophies,
and the more I thought about it, about the ocean, about the forest, about the
strange things the more I realized something terrible.

Could it be that you and I, too, have been slaves in someone else's dream
world? Do you feel the same way? People react so strangely when they hear I
was raised by a drow or raised without other centaur, and I'm told my body
isn't like others. Do you suppose that Mother may be hiding more from me than
that?

P.S. I hope Mother isn't too angry with me. Tell her I'll be home soon enough,
promise!

Much love,
Luvon"

Luvon slumped as he finished penning his letter. This realization had put him
in a rather gloomy mood, and he loathed the idea that his own mother might
have been the one obscuring his vision this whole time, but the experiences
he'd had and the truths he'd discovered so far all pointed to it.

Despite this, the centaur had recently been feeling the best he had ever felt.
His adventures had led him to the most wonderful places - he'd become a Herald
of the Eternal Star, he'd met so many new friends, he'd become a supplicant of
the Lady Rarywey, and most importantly, he had begun to find truth.

He still had a long way to go. However, he had established some basic truths
that now formed the foundation of his journey through the faith.

Role

Chapter 6

"Dear Mother,

I have set out today to find the truth. With the ocean outside of our home
being an illusion, I cannot stay here any longer knowing that there's
something to be discovered out there. If the fairies in the woods really do
abduct me, so be it, but I'm willing to take that chance. I love you, and I
love our home, but to stay here when the potential for a real journey is out
there would be to do myself an injustice, and I need to make this decision now
before I doubt it. I can finally find out why our home and our world was the
way it was, why those illusions existed there for so long, and why I'm the way
I am. When I do, you can come with me, and I can show you that there was
nothing to be afraid of. We can move somewhere even more pretty, go wherever
we want.

I've painted pictures of the places I've imagined on the other side of the
ocean for my entire life, and now that those places could truly exist in this
world, I'm going to find them. I hope you don't mind that I borrowed a pot and
a rag for a knapsack from the kitchen. I'll be back when I find the answers
I'm looking for. Stay safe - I love you!

Much love,
Luvon"

Aegestra stared at the letter he had left on the counter. Her mind was at once
completely blank and full of rage.

Luvon had been her longest-lived adopted child. The others had become aware of
who she really was and their real purpose here much earlier in their lives.
Exactly thirty-seven bodies and one half existed underneath her cottage in
various states of decay; over seven hundred and eighty years of this, she'd
had to kill them between the ages of twenty and twenty-three. Only Luvon had
survived past twenty-five. She'd been convinced that he would be the one she
would keep forever and ever, the one who could even outlive her. He was her
miracle child. She would never have to weave her curse to kidnap another child
again. She would be the queen of her domain; finally, she would be secure,
knowing nobody could leave her again.

So how could her miracle child abandon her?

The instant she finished reading that letter, something inside of Aegestra
snapped; her vision of Luvon began to warp. Luvon may have been the only one
to stay with her for so long, but she was also now the only one to have
escaped her. It was one thing to have to end her adoptive child - at least
their bodies and souls were with her forever, in peaceful repose under her
home and imbued into her witchcraft. It was another for one to abandon her.
Neither his body nor his soul could be of use to her in this way.

Unforgivable, unforgivable. The forest that morning was filled with anguished
screams of rage that shook even Hagred to his core.

This would not stand. She knew not when Luvon would return home, but she did
know one thing: that when he did, he would not escape her a second time.

Role

Chapter 5

But Luvon was convinced now that this was all real, not the work of fae
dweomercraft. Her tales could not restrain his newfound hope for a new world
any longer, and so after consulting with Hagred and promising he'd be back
someday once he found a way to free him, he wrote a note explaining that it
was time for him to find his own truth, sing his own songs, paint his own
picture of the world as he saw it.

Then he left the note on the counter and set off down the road with nothing
more than a shoddy haversack and a copper pot from the kitchen.

At the end of that road - the Eastern Road, as he came to know it - was
Galadon. His mind was absolutely blown by this massive city filled with more
people than he could ever have imagined, people of all different shapes and
sizes. He could feel it - this was where he had to be. What was Aegestra so
afraid of? No fairies had come to assault him or lead him to death; no ocean
was there to stop him from finding his truth.

So began Luvon's life as an adventurer, the centaur blissfully unaware that
the path towards his truth which he was to walk would be a hellish one fraught
with illusion and fear. Little did he know that there was a lot more to
discover underneath the frail reality Aegestra had so carefully constructed
around him his entire life...

Role

Chapter 4

Very calmly, she told Luvon that Hagred was a liar and a fiend, and that if he
wrote any more stories or painted any more pictures about fairies or other
worlds, or went to visit the fairies or anyone else again, the cottage would
be swept away in a terrible storm, and their home would be gone forever.

This struck enough fear into Luvon to stop him... for now. Eventually, his
longing for that feeling of belonging and friendship drove him to truly defy
Aegestra for the first time in his life, and he mustered the courage to go out
and meet Hagred and the fairies again. Hagred promptly told him that Aegestra
was the one who was lying and that he could see for himself by stepping into
the endless ocean. Inspired by his candor, eager to find out the truth for
himself, and not so ready to take Hagred for a liar, Luvon went out into the
woods at night with his makeshift protective charm and eventually came across
the endless ocean which had kept him contained in this place for so long.

Nervously taking a step forward, he lurched and was alarmed to find that the
illusory water shattered at his touch and his paw landed on solid ground.

Before him was a road. On that road, there was a moving supply caravan ringed
with people, who all looked at him and reacted very strongly to his sudden and
unnatural appearance. They shouted and backed away, and the caravan sped off
towards its destination even faster. But Luvon didn't care - he was awestruck
by what he'd just seen. There were more than just fairies out here - there was
a road, and people who made the road, and a strange moving wheeled object that
was carrying people and things down the road.

Now Luvon had two options. He could either run away down the road and see what
was on the other side right here and now, or go back home and tell Aegestra
about the ocean not being real and all the new places they could go. He chose
the latter.

Running back to the cottage, Luvon woke Aegestra up in the morning and
excitedly told her all about the fascinating new thing he'd found, asking her
why she hadn't tried to step into the ocean before. Barely containing rage,
she managed to come up with yet another lie - it was all fairy illusions meant
to lead him into danger, and that if he traveled down the road, he would die.

Role

Chapter 3

Luvon's fantasies of other worlds and new things were, indeed, crushed. He
didn't enter the forest after that, convinced that they really were all alone.
The young centaur longed for a true relationship, a friend; he could not
relate with his drowish mother, and was desperate for something for which he
had no word yet: love. His idyllic, beautiful forestal life suddenly seemed
claustrophobic and bleak.

But later, Luvon realized that if he had a protective charm like the one
Aegestra had used to take him out to the ocean safely, he would be able to
explore the woods all by himself. Fashioning a crude replication out of wood
and canvas, he set off in the middle of the night while Aegestea slept and
quickly found something strange - a fairy fort, or an earthen mound or ruin
where fairies were said to live. He'd been warned to stay away from these, but
curiosity got the better of him and he stepped forward towards it to
investigate.

To his shock, the resident fairies manifested before him. Chief among them was
a tall, hirsute, merry man with a round belly, wreathed in an iridescent aura,
who introduced himself as Hagred. Though Luvon was cautious at first, he
carefully began to speak with Hagred, and the two became fast friends,
discovering that each shared the other's plight in a way.

Hagred and the fairies had been stuck in this fairy fort for ages, as Aegestra
had trapped them there to be able to use their energy for her witchcraft. It
had become a begruding alliance, but the fairies weren't happy being stuck for
so long, as they regularly migrated over the ley lines to find new places and
cycle their magic through the world.

He spent the night singing and dancing with the fairies, and for the first
time in his life, he felt... free. Everything felt natural - he experienced a
sense that this is what he was supposed to do. The claustrophobia disappeared;
his world suddenly seemed so much bigger just from having another person to
talk to. Every other night, Luvon snuck away and went to the fairy fort, and
Hagred taught Luvon how to sing and dance and make merry as fairies did. The
centaur learned from them the basics of the bardic arts - music theory,
acoustics, sound mechanics, lyricism, all that which made a proper bard - and
fond memories were forged of dancing and fluting under the moonlight with the
paternal fairy he'd come to see as a kind of father figure.

Unfortunately, Aegestra eventually discovered that he was sneaking away, and
she was just a moment away from absolutely exploding with rage on him. How
dare he speak to anyone but her? How dare he need anyone else? But she
realized that anger would simply make him sneakier, so instead, she created
more lies.

Role

Chapter 2

Luvon's parents, naturally unaware of any of this, paid her no heed at the
time of their cursing and, months later, had their first child, Luvon. Sure
enough, he emerged from the womb horrifically... uncentaur. His skin was
mottled visibly with unsightly pocks, and instead of the lower body of a
horse, his lower body was that of a warg puppy, hideous and dark.

And yet, they loved him. Aegestra's plan had failed. They cherished him,
strangeness at all, and were elated to begin their family together. Aegestra
would not be foiled, however, and when she realized that the centaurs would
not abandon their child, she took matters into her own hands. On the morning
of Luvon's first birthday, the new parents awoke to a horrific realization -
their child had been kidnapped.

Luvon, of course, knew absolutely nothing of the circumstances of his birth.
His earliest memories were of Aegestra and her cottage and the forest around
them, the very air pulsing with fae power. Life was simple - she raised him as
her own son, and told him whatever she had to in order to keep him placid and
contained in her closed world. These lies gradually became more and more
bizarre as Luvon became more and more inquisitive about the nature of his
existence.

"Where did I come from?" "I birthed you immaculately, without a man. You're
nature's gift."
"Are there other cottages out in the woods?" "No. We are the only people in
this world."
"Why aren't I allowed to go out into the forest?" "Fairies lurk there. If you
talk to anyone else besides me, you'll die."
"What's in there, if not people?" "The woods go on and on for miles with
nothing but the terrible fairies, who will kill you. Don't ever enter them."
"What's at the end?" "A great ocean that never ends."

As a centaur, he needed lots of space to run, lots of places to explore, and
he soon took to releasing his energy through painting and writing. He would
write stories about love, passion, and adventure, all that which he lacked in
his life, and he would paint beautiful pictures of imaginary landscapes,
pictures of the fairies she warned and taught him about. Each piece became a
portal to another world where he could lose himself in every detail he
created, and he had both the drive and the talent to be an excellent painter.
Seeing no harm in it for now, Aegestra encouraged his talent, supposing that
it would further disincentivize him from running off.

Yet, a teenaged Luvon, somewhat enlightened by his own creative pursuits, was
still not convinced. Surely there had to be something out there, right? He
nagged Aegestra until, eventually, she acquiesced and took him out into the
woods with some fake "protective charms" to show him that there was, in fact,
an ocean that stretched on and on forever. Of course, there was no real ocean,
but an illusion magic placed there by Aegestra to crush his desire to even try
to leave.

Role

Chapter 1

"A curse, a curse upon you! Sevenfold shall your progeny be cursed! May your
foul seed emerge monstrous from your womb!"

So began Luvon's story, well before his birth. His parents, a couple of
good-spirited centaurs looking for new forests to settle in, had accidentally
trampled upon herbs which, unbeknownst to them, had been growing there for
almost ten years, so close to maturation and now ruined by careless hooves.
Even worse, they had belonged to someone - a drow witch named Aegestra who,
upon discovering them in her woods trampling on her age-old herbs which she
had cultivated for so long, laid a terrible curse upon them in her rage,
dooming their offspring to physical malformity and monstrosity.

Except there was no rage. She had done this before, countless times. The herbs
were neither old nor special when Luvon's parents trampled upon them. It was
all a ruse, an elaborate public excuse for her to place her curse on yet
another couple, as she had been doing for centuries now. She had no real
problem with the two centaurs, at least nothing beyond the disdain for all
non-drow life she possessed already.

Aegestra only wanted a child of her own. That was all. When first she tried to
bear child, she miscarried tragically, and this caused problems with her
uterus so as to make her infertile. But, though her husband deserted her upon
realizing she could not give him child, she decided that an inability to bear
children would not prevent her from her only desire. And so, she spent her
days practicing her fae magic, finding convenient new ways to curse couples
about to have their first children so she could enact her own plan.

If she could not experience that, neither would they. She would make their
seed monstrous and ugly and unlike any other of their kind, so hideous and
unnatural that they would be soon abandoned in disgust by their family, at
which point Aegestra would swoop in and adopt the child as her own. Every time
she did this, she took the child with her to her cottage deep in the forest,
and she raised the child as her own, training them to help her with her
witchcraft and keeping them docile so that she could hold onto them for the
rest of her days.

However, there was a reason she had been doing this for centuries. Aegestra
was far longer-lived than the children she would regularly possess, and the
one thing she was unable to provide as a drow parent was love. So typically,
once her adopted children reached adulthood, in their early 20s or even
earlier, they would start to get wise. They would start to long for that which
Aegestra could not give, and decide it was time to see the outside world for
themselves.

That was when Aegestra would murder them. If she could not hold onto them,
neither would anyone else, or they themselves. Her cottage accumulated a
foundation of flesh and bone, dozens of bodies underneath the quaint little
floorboards in her quaint little home.

Immortal Comments

Immortal Comments

PK Statistics

Song List

Skill List

Title History

PK Wins

PK Deaths

Leveling History

Timeline

Mob Deaths

Edges

Flaws

Racial Edges

Class Edges

Edges