I'm not sure where I was born, or even when really. I know I was sold to the slavers early. My early memories are of snow and ice, but I was kept down in the southern reaches. He'll, I don't even know what they got for me, or if there was a they.
I was beaten often. To train, to punish, just for fun. Any excuse really. They were training me for the arenas, but you had to earn your keep as well, so they'd rent me out to just about anyone for the right price... for any use. People all want something, sick bastards.
They even made sure I could read and had proper manners. It made me easier to train and worth more on lease. After all, if they can quote neat stuff or recite poetry while they're strapped face down, are in the air they are worth more, right?
In the early years they kept me to unarmed March's to not permanently damage the goods. I was good, really good. It even kept foreign objects out of my ass for a while. I'd even take some strategic injuries to make myself a little less desirable for a while. Unfortunately I always healed perfectly... from everything.
Eventually they moved me to weapons, then full battle rounds. I excelled at it all. At the occasion of my greatest victory in the rings I was bought by some dynasty pig. He decided to have me used by his guests at a private party that very night. Something inside me finally snapped. My body burst with flame I ripped from the domination frame, using the remnants to kill at 15 people in the room. I fled the estate and haven't looked back.
I'm known for not backing down. If I walk from a fight, it's to get something bigger to hit them with. I don't sneak, I don't back down, and I don't play politics, but I can see what you are planning 6 moves ahead. Don't touch me, I don't like being touched. That's never happening again unless it's on my terms. I can't stand people that prey on others, and abhor slavery. Never touch someone against their will in my presence, I feel that touch on my own skin, and won't tolerate it.
I sent him a text that I would try to give him what he wanted but as it was this was not very heroic.
I sent this:
You first raised your eyes above the drug addled haze that had been forever part of your life in your early teens. Life had not been hard or particularly memorable. Qat, marijuana and hash were the drugs that you remember most, not Mother, Father, Sister or Brother. You do know the word Master and that was not you. You spent your formative years l with a dozen other children working in the tight spaces of a sawmill, choking on the sawdust that filled the cracks and crannies, but always the rewards gruel and qat. Once you were too big for the small spaces you were given bigger jobs and bigger payouts. You worked the pumps from the river that ran the saws. You fed the logs into the saws. Qat in the day and Marijuana at night. You saw what was what between the gloom and realised that it was your owner’s position that you coveted, the overseer of the sawmill; he owned the children, the workers and the guards, he got heroine. Your owner was owned by him too. You made yourself valuable and were rewarded. Your value was seen one day by the Overseer’s Owner and you were removed from the dormitory and the sawmill for the first time in your memory.
You were trained to read and write the tongue of the sector. You were taught a trade of woodworking, but more you learned that you were in Amber River, a Realm holding, whatever that meant. You were given better food, peas porridge and opium at night. You worked hard, sometimes until you bled from your fingertips with hopes of earning a bigger portion of drug at night. Something changed in you before long, it was when you saw the woman in pretty clothes walking the streets with guards. You asked, your new owner, who owned her. He struck you down for your insolence, but learned that she had no owner, she owned you all. That moment you decided that you would stop taking drugs. The withdrawal was more painful that any injury you had suffered ever, but you endured and you grew stronger. But your plan was clumsy and it was noticed. You were taken aside and plied with drugs again and you were sent to one of the hundreds of Latifundia that surround the nation’s capitol. Life was more harsh there but you endured and gained strength again while you toiled in the fields growing lentils, poppies and marijuana. You made a second push and covered up your withdrawal and your growing awareness, but to no avail. You were discovered and you were again drugged and set to work in a more distant Latifundia. This time you spent your days toiling by pulling logs cut from the forest through the woods to the river where they were sent down river to the city. The days were spent under the lash and the nights buried in a group huddle seeking what warmth you could from the rest. Your gruel was thin and the drugs were harsh but strong; welcome to help forget the strain of the day.
Stories floated down from slave to slave about an uprising, a band of slaves that had thrown off the yoke of the masters and had murdered them, painting the walls with bloody handprints. Tales of these murderous band was retold often amongst your crew, because of the hope it generated. After the tale spread about how this crew was active in Serat, Injalha and Deleshan, as well as Amber River, you were more determined than ever to break your habit in case your chance came to run with the Bloody Hand. Third time lucky, you were not. Punishment for you was swift and severe: forty lashes every night and hung in the open day and night until you died. The Bloody Hand was not going to rescue you. The only person who was going to save you was you, were your thoughts, gasping from your cross. The only benefit of this punishment was that your last moments would be completely free of drugs.
A voice thundered through you mind, bringing you back to your senses. “Your world is enslaved. Break your bounds, break the all the chains that hold you down. Break the chains that hold all peoples down and be free.” Midnight was replaced by the soft yellow light of dawn as the sun rises, but this time the light was coming from you. The chains that held you became light and the frame that held you tight broke as if they were kindling. Five guards were stricken at the sight. Your chains swung forward and wrapped two tightly and freed their heads from their shoulders. Your fists sank deep into the rest spraying gore across the yard. You planted you legs on the ground and your hands on the Overseer’s hut and heaved. The structure collapsed, its lanterns burst, spreading flame. The alarm was raised and the guards rushed forth, to stand, nay, to flee. You chased them down and through their corpses upon the pyre. The storeroom loaded with drugs took flame at once, burning high and bright. You broke the slaves chains that night, the ones that held them down and the ones that held them down. The sign of the Bloody Hand adorned every wall.
****
Your fellow slaves stumbled after you into the dark, the ten foot tall thick hedge of holly was breached many times by you, but it still took hours for the inhabitants of your latifundia to filter after you. You freed them, they are your responsibility. You knew that you could not cave them all, some would surely be recaptured by the Jackals, the slave slave trackers. And there was the matter of food and water. The later was remedied when you found a stream, but a thousand people muddied that source quickly. A day and a night followed and it became clear that Ascending Air was not a good time to make a massive break for freedom, but is there really a good time? I figure in a tree announced his presence by dropping out in the open ahead of you; his forehead glowed with a ring of light. He quickly said a number of words in a few languages before you understood one, Greetings, I am Nameless Wolf and I was sent to find you. You talked quickly soon you felt a kinship with him. He told you that he was also a slave of a latifundia in the Deleshan province a few years earlier, but he freed himself and now he is dedicated to the destruction of the Slave States. He was here to bring him together with other Solar Exalted that he has gathered to make a common cause. He agreed to take your charges to his town first, but it would take four days. After four days your people were transported a thousand miles over the roof of Serat, Wallport --an independent town, and Injalha to a valley nestled next to mountains bordering Deleshan.
The town was called Nowhere and there were cultivated fields with free people farming there. There was a tall tower in the center of the newly built buildings and there was a number of monks that greeted you some of whom you discovered were actually other Solars and some were another Exalted type called Sidereal. One of the latter you got to know was Venerable Silk. He greeted you warmly and answered your questions. The Nameless let you know that so far none of them had lied to him, but they had not told him everything yet, but he reflected that they did tell him that it would take many long nights to tell him everything, so, you should trust them until he said otherwise. You learned much from your association with them, The Cult of the Illuminated and you met other Solars too.
After a few months of training and focusing on readying your Essence you had enough and were determined to go out and crush the mechanism of the organization of the slave states. You decided that it was time to press your skills and to free more of your fellow slaves. You snuck off into the night intent on bringing the fight to the Dragon Blooded Dynasts. After a day of hard running you entered a small clearing and found Venerable Silk meditating upon a rock. As you approached his eyes opened and spoke, “At last, you have gotten here just in time, but not a moment too soon.” He stated that for now your training was completed. He gifted you with four items that you wear every day, your armour, gauntlets, boots and razor harness. He apologized that Orichalcum was not more common, but a few craftspeople worked on them including some of your Solar allies. Further he told you that there was a valley to the north of Amber River that was defensible and offered a safe place to raid the nearby latifundia there and he had taken the liberty of sending some people there to that staging point to make it ready for your arrival.
The town was called Right Here and the people that had been sent there were the thousand slaves that you had freed, free of drugs and sorely needing training that you felt you could deliver. Within the next few months as much of travel was restricted due to winter, you trained your people through that time. With the help of 3 Solar allies. When the first snows receded, raiding began. Your forces were arranged in a non-standard Realm fashion, Claws of six, Lions of 30 and Battle Lions of 120. There was much success and Right Here grew. The success was noted, but trouble in the area was building. A late season guest had much to tell you. The Nameless Wolf arrived one night and informed you that the region was soon to be embroiled in a regional war with the Realm, the true leaders of the Slave States. He let you know that there was about to be an invasion close by another freehold, the town of Somewhere Else and the Nameless and the Sidereals were purposely baiting the Tepet Legions into fully committing to a protracted war. He was informing you that he and The Cause would need more troops in the future and leaders to battle their forces. He also asked if you had encounters with other emissaries claiming from certain parties. He was very vague. He was also concerned about any interactions that you have had with the massive shadowland to the North West, Marama’s Fell. Within a month you received another missive, a sorcerous message, informing you that Tepet Arada’s forces had been bloodied and put into rout. A week later Venerable Silk was in the town and he was requesting your presence in Somewhere Else as the Dawn caste the took the lead in the recent battle was called to organize the greater defense of the area, which you will be part of.
He told me that this character was an empty shell and that he would not play him. also I ignored key facts about his character.
I sent him this:
As you learned later in life, more slaves are born to it than are taken and forced to it, and yet you stubbornly cling to the idea that you are such a slave. When you saw your first slave of northern stock you knew in your heart that it was not true, you were dark of skin to his white and your dark hair was in contrast to his light, but that just meant that you were different. What you did know, without doubt, that young slave boys, pretty slave boys, had really two destinations, the brothels or the slave pits; everyone enjoys it when something beautiful is destroyed. You decided that rather than be pampered and undignified, you would be scarred or dead.
The whippings that you received for becoming the bruiser of the slave quarters, you felt was a small price to pay. Unruly and untrainable you were dropped in the slave yards before you turned ten. In Nexus, there is a market for everything and it turns out this includes Child Fights, that is: children vs animals, children vs adults. You were lucky as you were pitted against just a man in your first bout. You paid attention to the crowds, they were there to see you lose, but they wanted to see something interesting. Even three on one, you were easily outmatched, but you picked up essential lessons that stayed with you the rest of your career. 1) know what the crowd wants and give it to them. 2) if there is an option, don't be the first to attack. 3) lousy entertainment is the path for a quick death or a slow one. After three matches the children that did not learn those lessons were dead and you found yourself onto bigger and better things.
The next few years you were trained with weapons interspersed with matches in the pits against equally skilled opponents some were fights before crowds and others were fights before the master. You realised that these were two different fights for different purposes. The former was to survive and to win and the latter was to show off what you learned in a non lethal way. The last earned you better training and the other, survival was its own reward. You were given dance lessons and trained in basic anatomy so you knew where the best places were to land a punch and the best places to cut to give a better show. You were taught some of the finer arts to better teach you the skills you needed to give the crowd what they wanted and what they did not know they wanted.
Your first fight in the Gladiator Pits of Thorns was to a sell out crowd. Your opponent was a wild woman from the Eastern Forests. You had seen her fight before, she was brutal and efficient and she used poison on her javelins. You had seen larger stronger fighters go down to her as the poison did its work and paralyzed each target. You dosed yourself heavily with a drug that you were assured would counter the effects of the toxin that you thought she was using. You entered the pit to great cheers from loyal fans and your opponent entered with boos. But you knew that if you just simply beat her your fans would cheer, but they would not love you for it. Your training taught you that you needed to play the crowd, create a story that they would love you for.
The battle began as much as expected, circling and bravado. You called out to your opponent and called him savage she was silent and watchful. You telegraphed every more that you would make so that even she would know where you were attacking to and what you were trying to do. Your ploy was successful. She hit at you and you were only able to block the blow at the last second. She swung her spear overhead and in towards you and you dodged and weaved cutting yourself to give the crowd the thought you had been hit, the face and the legs, places that bled heavily but were not life threatening. She was good, though, good enough that some of her blows really hit home and her blade was indeed poisoned. And you had guessed wrong. She had chosen a poison that caused pain. But you had prepared for paralysis and that was what the crowd was going to get. You swayed, stumbled and fell, you rolled away from her killing blow. There is nothing that a crowd likes more than a hero who falls, unless it is the fallen hero who comes back to win against all odds. Blood trailing down your face and a wound at you side with bloodied feet swaying fighting to hold your ground against her onslaught. You grappled her as a last desperate ploy, or so it looked, falling hard against the ground where you broke her, impaling her on your knife. The crowd was hushed. The a pennant flapped in the wind where it hung on the wall. You rose to your feet unsteadily and then with surety as the crowd erupted with pent up emotion. The rise of the hero despite the odds!! A voice boomed above all the others, Akri my son, I Exalt you to lead and inspire through your actions.
The crowd hushed.
Boos began to filter down from the stands. Figures in the stands rose and began pushing through the masses, no less than three figures dressed in colourful jade armour rushed down the steps. The portcullis raised for your victory began to descend. You knew what the crowd wanted now and you were disinclined to pander to their desires. Your affected limp and paralysis gone you sprinted to relative safety. The seas of people parted from you in the streets and the locals peppered you with stone and garbage. The streets filled with people gave way to avenues free of obstacles. The newly erected gates that you had passed through only weeks before in fanfare, you dashed through, scattering the throngs. Many had seen the way you fled and the Wyld Hunt had no difficulty in homing in on you. There is no shame to flee before a superior foe, and ten Dynasts in armour with fangs of Dragon blooded regulars, is always a superior force against one.
You crested the hill a few minutes ahead of that certain death. A lone figure was sitting there with a golden bow across his lap. “You are late, do you want to fight them, or live to fight another day? I am the Nameless Wolf and your best chance at seeing the next dawn. What do you say?”
The town was called Nowhere and there were cultivated fields with free people farming there. There was a tall tower in the center of the newly built buildings and there was a number of monks that greeted you some of whom you discovered were actually other Solars and some were another Exalted type called Sidereal. One of the latter you got to know was Venerable Silk. He greeted you warmly and answered your questions. The Nameless let you know that so far none of them had lied to him, but they had not told him everything yet, but he reflected that they did tell him that it would take many long nights to tell him everything, so, you should trust them until he said otherwise. You learned much from your association with them, The Cult of the Illuminated and you met other Solars too.
But it was not your bag. You were your own master and refused to dance to another’s tune, no matter how well meaning. Venerable Silk wished you well, telling you to keep the hearthstone and the weapons he had gifted you and telling you that you are always welcome back. Through the winter you made your way back to Nexus where you intended on finding the spotlight of the center stage in the Pit. The biggest news was that the Empress of the Realm has disappeared. But that can wait, as you have just arrived.
He told me He wanted his original story unchanged, this character was a buffoon and a juggler
I told him that there was nothing heroic about a someone who was only ever concerned about the virginity of his asshole.
impasse/
I am tired and frustrated. But what should I expect from a person who tried to justify the cold blooded murder of someone was a act of good.
He is a friend. I can't let this be the definition of the end of talking to him forever
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