Character Thread

Rhiv's Story:

I am the son of Arjhan and Kava, dragonborn of the Daardendrian clan.
My dragonborn family of generally secular background but with historic connections to the cult of Bahamut. My father settled in Port Charlotte after a particularly violent group of religious schism within his clan led to the death of all of his immediate family members and a permanent disenchantment with the gods in general. He quickly set up shop in the city and his skill at the intricate and efficiency with the plain elevated him within the city’s smith guild. The proximity of the shop to the docks led to a natural partnership with the East Blackwallian Naval office based in the city.

Though neither of my parents were actively devoted religiously during my childhood, the virtues of what was right reinforced around the dinner table and the importance of being "good" in a general sense was regularly imprinted on my mind and my hindquarters. The drive to become great at what you do and to do it with honor and truth was held in great esteem; not for the appreciation of other but because it was a good in and of itself. My father valued skill and excellence in all endeavors and clearly let me know when I had failed. The dragonborn drive for honor carries on into the culture of the race. In my family, as amongst most dragonborn, the most horrible crime was dishonesty and oath-breaking. Commitment to a word is expected to be carried out to the letter and ultimately, those who fail to meet their word are expected to accept the consequences.

When I was a child, my father would return from his work at the smithy with incredible tales and songs that the marines and naval men would regale him with as they came for weapons and repairs. Stories of mighty warriors triumphing over evil and earning the praise of all who heard of them. My two older brothers wanted to become great smiths like my father, but I never understood why they would settle for merely becoming craftsmen; I wanted greatness and adventure for myself. My dragonblood yearned for riches and glory. While they honed their making talents, I went outside, pretended our hammers were weapons, and fought great battles in my imagination. Though I, of course, spent significant time in the family business, I was often assigned to manage the forge and the finer points of metalwork stayed with the brothers.

As I grew older, I spent more and more of my time watching the local guards and marines practice. Some of these men saw my potential and began to teach me, informally at first, but soon I was joining their training sessions. I would neglect my responsibilities to listen to every story he and the marines would tell me and dream of having songs sung of my own deeds someday. Upon reaching adulthood and following several years of continued work for my father, I began to tire of the traditional life at home. The stolid (though respectable) life of a smith in Port Charlotte was a poor bauble that failed to catch my eye. Prospects of love for a dragonborn in a human city were limited (despite my way with words and a devilish charm) and my mother’s attempts to connect me with available female clan daughters from the remote dragonborn villages were unattractive compared to the lure of adventure and glory.

With the smithy in capable and far more interested hands, I set out in my mid-twenties to make my own way with the weapons of war. I joined the East Blackwallian navy as a marine and--though most of my fellow marines and sailors were human and none were dragonborn--I was able to mix well with them and proved my value in both daily toil and the occasional skirmish. Never the sharpest knife in the drawer, nonetheless I quickly rose to the rank of junior lieutenant through force of charisma, solid performance, and some luck (dysentery, storms, and an unfortunate deckside brawl ended the careers of 2/3rds of our officers within a short period and I was thrown into a leadership role to fill the void.

Autumn 934
Three years into my service we fell upon a particularly fierce pirate armada that had been preying upon the regional waters for quite some time. When the battle reached its pitch, with luck and skill seemingly favoring the pirates, my ship was rammed by the Pirate flagship. I was hurled into the sea, wrapped in the rigging and trapped under a sinking mast. With my ribs and left arm broken I knew I was doomed and my complete lack of forethought for the hereafter really dawned on me…. Probably a little late. As I faded into black, in the midst of screaming agony and fear, I cried out for help and was actually answered. Adonai, the God above all gods, saved me that day. I remember little of the next moments, but I was literally enveloped by a shining light and lifted to the surface of the water by an Archangel. As I breached the surface he left me near a floating mass of wood and ascended into heaven leaving only the imprinted knowledge that I, effectively, owed him my life and that I would be told what to do with it at a future time.

In what I later discovered to have been over an hour of time that I was under water, reinforcements had arrived to the battle and the tide had begun to turn. I was pulled onto a new vessel and—despite the fact that the battle still raged—several of the sailors could not stop raving about the light that had accompanied my rise to the surface. They, and I, were sure a god had saved me. Upon the successful completion of the battle, prisoners were rounded up and, following a summary court presided over by the court, the punishment for piracy was swiftly meted out upon most. Death. On my rescue boat a particular lad stood out among the morose prisoners. In an intense moment which I will remember for the rest of my life as the first clear sensing of good and evil--I was hit with an overwhelming differentiation between him and his fellow pirates. The pervading sense of evil and darkness I could feel emanating from each of his neighbors was absent from him and I clearly heard the words of my new Lord calling upon me to save this man. As the quartermaster raised his axe to deliver the payment for his deeds--as if a tongue of flame had replaced my own--I commanded him to stay his hand and he froze instantly as a magical power that was absolutely not my own held him in place. As the Captain and my fellows began to object I spoke the truth that I had felt about him and requested that his life be spared at the behest of Adonai. The sailors who has seen my miraculous rescue immediately jumped in and told the story to the rest of the group. The Captain, a hard but wise man, begrudgingly yielded and offered to spare the life of the pirate on the condition that I be the one to brand him as one who had received clemency despite deserving death. Though my hand was used to dealing out pain and damage, never had I personally had to deliver the judgement of a greater power than myself on the defenseless flesh of a prisoner. The smell of seared human skin will forever remain with me as a reminder of the consequence of evil and the importance of mercy.

As the adrenalin of the battle and the supernatural events that followed slowly drained from my system, I gradually was left with a churning pit in my stomach that increased with every pitch and roll of the ship. My traumatic death experience sinking to the bottom of the deep blue had rattled my mind and the sea--for which I had always had a tolerance, rather than a sailor’s love--had now become a frightful beast that I had to avoid at all cost. I prayed for my new God to strengthen my mind and help me overcome the paralysis and weakness I was beset with but He did not answer. The damage and casualties from the battle meant that our ships immediately returned to Port Charlotte but we were still several days journey from the port. By the time we reached land I was a weakened shell of my former marine self, and could barely stomach another minute on board and was searching desperately to reconnect with the strength and direction I had received from Adonai. Upon reaching the docks I immediately applied for a discharge from service and was granted a leave of absence. I went back to work at my father’s smithy to put food on the table, but I knew that it was only a temporary stop as I continued to search for the greater calling I had tasted during the battle. I quickly searched out the local church of the Adonai and sought the council of the chief cleric. Donderos, the priest, was a good man, but I was a problem unlike any other. I knew next to nothing of religion and was never considered wise or intelligent as a child, and my brief connection with the higher power had not changed that all that much. His advice, to join Port Charlotte’s small but well regarded seminary of the Adonai, was well intended but an absolute disaster.
Though the brothers and teachers I was surrounded with taught me much about the Adonai, his calling, his status as the one true God and His unique identity as both Mercy and Justice, I was a poor fit for the rigors of seminary. I was terrible at languages and worse at philosophy and theology. Our church documents explaining the mysteries of pluralistic monotheism were beyond my comprehension and all I truly had was a doubtless faith borne of my own experience.

Winter 935
After a year of struggle and the battle with my own pride and inability to quit once a job was begun, two major events changed my life forever. In December of 935, a travelling missionary came to take a leave in Port Charlotte and took up a temporary residence at the seminary. This human was made after my own heart. He spoke with passion and fire of the great needs that existed outside of the walls of the seminary. Though small in stature and plain of look, stories of his heroism and martial prowess in defense of the village of Dirtrim in which he had taken residence, had preceded him to our doors. He was not the Paladin of stereotype: He of the flowery language and noble bearing, covered in plate-mail and treating those who followed other codes or deities as unacceptable heathens. He taught me that--while most think only that being a holy warrior of shining means gaining vast arcane powers by way of separating themselves from all the would taint them--the truth is that a Paladin is more about what they are than what they aren’t. Above all paladins show that courage is possible. It is easy enough to find reasons to give in to evil. War is ugly and cruel, but it is not peace when cruelty reigns, when stronger men steal from the weak, when the child can be enslaved, or the old thrown out to starve, and no one lifts a hand. That is not peace: that is conquest and evil. He showed me that Paladin, regardless of their approach or choice of weaponry, are the sword of good defending the helpless and teaching by our example that one be a force to break evil's grasp on the innocent. Sometimes that can be done without fighting, without killing, and that is best, but some evil needs direct attack, and paladins must be able to do it. The people are frightened, and they have lost trust in each other, in themselves, and need the strong hand of a Paladin to protect them from evil rather than forcing them to the good. I began spending more of my evenings and nights adventuring into rougher parts of town doing looking for opportunities to support the cause of justice for the people of my city. Some nights this would involve guarding a frightened widow from her land-grabbing neighbors, and others would involve hours alone walking alone or hanging out in bars to discover needs. The fact that I enjoyed both the beer, the occasional brawls, and the somewhat hesitant applause for good work definitely didn’t hurt either!

In April of the same year, I entered into District 17, commonly known as Ironspike on one of my regular jaunts. I stepped into a watering hole to catch up on the local news and ended up getting involved in a bit of a heated discussion between two humans and a dwarf related to racial equality in the kingdom. The conversation quickly turned ugly and a third fellow snuck up behind me with a bottle and attacked me without warning. Though I managed to maintain confidence, the hint of weakness led the others to pile on and I began to quickly lose ground. Backed into a corner with no way to escape I prayed to the Adonai for support and an aura of protection emerged around me helping deflect some of my opponent's blows. I was still being hammered on all sides and--as I was unarmed--my ineffective use of a broken chair only helped shield blows rather than hit any of my attackers. Suddenly, from outside my view, two bolts hit the first attacker through the right shoulder and he dropped quickly. A tall half-elf emerged from a side room and called for the remaining to stand down before they received the same. The two remaining back off nervously and I had time to regain my breath and cross over to where the half-elf, who I now recognize as the pirate I had saved years before, stood.

During this time the rest of the bar patrons had circled around and the aura was definitely menacing. All had weapons or bottles and all looked very angry. We started to slowly back out of the room while maintaining your defensive positions. As we neared the threshold and freedom, the half-elf threw one parting particularly insidious insult about the ringleader’s mother. What would have been an episode demonstrating the value of diplomacy turned into an all out brawl with just the two of us against the mob. We manage to barely defeat (or escape depending on which of us you talk to and how much they have had to drink) the mob with our lives and some significant wounds. I knew from that day forth that might would be necessary to support the cause of right against the darkness of hatred.

That night, while in midnight prayer, my Angel returned. In a loud voice he proclaimed that the Adonai would empower and use me for his Glory. He laid out my tenants as the following: "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, Vengeance is His, and He will repay. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

This would be my mission and my calling. Soon enough, I began my training as a paladin, the mightiest and most righteous of all heroes. I had never cared much for religion, but I found a God who had saved me despite myself and had empowered me to be one of his true warriors despite my weaknesses. I hope my shining example his comrades will come to see the value of my code, but I believe that doing Good under threat of punishment doesn't count. As the Adonai told me: "Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master servants stand or fall. You, however, will stand, for Adonai is able to make it so."