3. Spooky

Spooky


  • Character Name: Spooky
    Player Name: DarksideAvenger

    (this is the condensed version)

    It all started, as is often the case, with two women. One I regret, and one I don’t. For better or worse, the two shaped who I am this day. Life, as luck would have it, rarely turns out the way we plan. Triumph and tragedy often differ by only where one stands when they happen.

    Some had said I had a gifted youth. I excelled at my training in martial skills, weapon smithing, and alchemy. People expected great things.

    Things change.

    Maybe if I had accepted responsibility for what happened, it would have been different. I have doubts. My mistake. My fault. Someone else paid the price. I dealt with it the wrong way. I turned my anger on the world. Nothing eased my pain. I could say I was easy prey for the wrong crowd, but I went all too willingly. The Mistress was there to collect the pieces.

    The Mistress of Pain, Lady of Darkness, Maiden of Loss, call her what you will. I found my solace in the night. She ruled it. There was only her. A few would become her chosen. Shadows in the Dark, Knights of the Long Knives, the Mistress’s Assassins, each a rival for her attention. Blood flowed like wine. To us it was “being in the trades.” The trades paid well. Success opened many doors, each more wicked then the last. I’ve walked the mushroom lined streets of the underdark. Stood witness to the birth of a Lich. Profited from men being stripped of their freedom and will to survive. The list continues…

    I was good at what I did. Want to send a message? I could be messy. Take the Merchant selling stolen artifacts, who ticked off the wrong people. I caught up with him at a quiet little inn out in the country. After what I did to him, they nailed the door to his room shut. Don’t need attention? The beloved noble died peacefully in his sleep. His nephew, and heir, was rotten to the core. Watch what you drink before bed.

    Then came the day I met her. She was searching for her father. Headstrong, reckless, naïve. An easy mark. I kept tabs on her for a while. She was good with a blade, that was clear early. Made a lot of connections quickly too. I thought she might make a good asset for the group I was running with at the time. I decided I needed to get closer.

    My skills as an alchemist had blossomed at this point, so I put them to work getting her to notice me. She had a need for potions, and I became her supplier. It was child’s play making sure our paths crossed frequently. We adventured together, shared information, laughed and carried on just for the fun of it. I found myself becoming her guardian, and her mine. The day didn’t feel right if she wasn’t in it. I had her right where I wanted her. One simple push and she would have been one of us…

    I couldn’t do it.

    It was at that point I realized I had changed. For the first time in a long time I realized I had something to live for; her love. That’s the point where I stopped being a killer, and became a man with a horrible dark secret. I lived in two worlds, balanced on the sharp edge of a knife. For a while, I could maintain both worlds, but there was no way I could hide it from her forever. The day came where I had to choose.

    The easy route, the safest route, the smart route, led back to the Mistress. I made the costliest mistake of my life. I couldn’t be apart from her. She owned a piece of my very soul, the one piece the darkness hadn’t taken. I turned my back on the Mistress and the groups I had been a part of. I thought I could escape, get away, live the life I had never dared dream of before.

    Nobody walks away.

    For a while I thought I had done it. Hubris? Ego? Pride? Possibly. Hope. My deceptions ate at me. How could she trust me if I was keeping things from her? How could she trust me if she knew. The only chance we had was for me to come clean in the hopes she could forgive me, and we could start life over again. She was devastated. Oh, she had had her suspicions, she wasn’t a fool. Had she ignored her head because of the calling of her heart? She urged me to make amends for my life. Face the consequences of my poor decisions. Show that I was what she believed me to be. She was right. I would turn myself in and walk the gallows if it came to it. For her, I could face death.

    He came the night before I was to go through with it. One of the chosen. I would be silenced for my audacity, and before I could do too much damage to the Mistress‘s plans. He was good. Better than me. Better by far. We were together, her and I, along with some mutual friends who had offered support. Good people all. I marked his entrance the second he came in the door. Knew his purpose, his plan, his technique. He would kill them all to get to me if he had to. I had enough blood on my hands. I bid my companions farewell, they wanted to stay, but I lied and told them I would be all right. She was the last to leave.

    The first strike left me defenseless, after that he took his time and enjoyed it. After a few hours he grew bored and ended it, or would have, if I hadn’t moved just enough to stay his knife from hitting its mark. A hair’s breadth to the right would have ended my story.

    She found me clinging to life the next morning. Took care of me, got me back on my feet. She should have walked away. She stood by my side during my confession, pain burning in her eyes, tears streaming down her face. It was hurt that I had put there. I swore to myself it would never happen again. My sentence was short. I had information some important people wanted badly. Badly enough for me to talk my way to freedom. She was waiting for me. Love is a funny thing. One chance she said. One was all I would get. It would be enough.

    It wasn’t long before our friends started disappearing. Those that had offered help. One after another. I urged her to flee, but she would have none of it. Stand her ground, fight for what she believed in. One of the qualities I loved in her. I’ll never forget chipping her shattered body out of the ice on the cold mountain ridge she used to visit when she was troubled. In that moment I lost everything that was important to me. The fall had ended things quickly at least. I buried her by a wooded grove alongside a horse pasture in her native land. She would have liked that. She had always loved horses. All I have left is a small lock of her hair, my most treasured possession.

    Anyone who thinks it ended there, doesn’t know the Mistress. Had I been a follower of Bane, he would have finished me and moved on, but the Dark Side of the Moon knows no limit on her vindictiveness. She promised me a long life full of torments. At first it was the visions, just enough for me to doubt in the back of my mind that my love was dead. Then came those who claimed they could bring her back to the living. Demons and Doppelgangers pretending to be her. Each with enough knowledge for hope to rear its ugly head again, if only for a short time.

    Still not enough.

    The chosen brought me before the Mistress, in all her terrifying glory. I would spend all eternity feeding her shadows, drained of all but the flicker of life, knowing what I had lost, but not being able to do anything about it. The Mistress reached into my mind and ripped out what I knew, but left the knowledge of what I had been, alchemist, assassin, weapon smith, swordsman, surgeon. The skills just don’t exist anymore. How long was I there, chained to the alter, without the strength to move? Months? Years? An eternity? Did I dream the nightmare or live it?

    Did the Mistress allow Torm’s Champion, a friend I once tried to kill, to rescue me? Or was her attention turned long enough for me to be lucky? I hope to never know.

    My last friend urged me to run, live my life like I was someone else, keep moving in the hopes the Mistress had forgotten me. Drifting from one town to the next, calling no place home. I took work as a courier. Getting things to places no one else could. I still could do that at least.

    The job was simple, take new orders to a mercenary outfit called The Company, that was holed up fending off a siege at a grindhouse known as Ben-Halik Keep. Getting in was tricky. Getting out was impossible. I spent three months stuck at Ben-Halik fighting along side The Company, living off of rats and rainwater, battling on the walls, and in the tunnels and sewers below. We did what we had to in order to survive. They accepted me like one of the brothers, and in turn, I found the way through the enemy’s line that allowed us to abandon Ben-Halik and lick our wounds to fight another day. I joined the company as a scout after that.

    They never asked my name, let alone about my past. My comrades took to calling me Spooky, which although I can’t stand the name, seems to suit me well enough. I became part of The Company’s advance guard. Probing enemies, scrounging supplies, gathering intelligence and preparing the way for the rest of The Company when our contracts expired and we felt the need to move on to redder pastures.

    I’ll be leaving in a few days for some slog-pit called Peltarch. The Captain seems to think The Company can find work there. My job is to pose as a courier, identify the major players, and prepare for our advance team to come in and hammer out a contract with whomever is willing to pay the most coin. Simple enough.

    I just hope this is one of those places the Mistress has forgotten.

  • ICC

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