An old character story

I was poking around in my writing folder and I came across this story that I wrote for a D&D character. It's fun sometimes to go through my old character stories, they remind me of games that never finished, and friendships that have drifted away. Bittersweet, perhaps, but mostly sweet. This file says last modified in 2006, but I think the story is a little older than that.

Null

Once, she was a dancer. In those days her name was Elysa, a name that she considered to be as beautiful and graceful as she was. Her grace was such that from a distance, only her height served as proof that she was not an elf. Her beauty was not exceptional, but it was enough, and her fame as a dancer served only to make her more attractive in the eyes of the people.

Everyone imagined Elysa to be as charming as she was lovely, but this was far from the truth. She was a proud woman, with an incredibly sharp tongue that she had no compunctions against using. She felt that her fame was her due, and that she deserved all of the best things in life, which she rarely got (her dancing brought her far more fame than money). Elysa constantly strove to find a wealthy patron who would reward her art with a shower of lavish gifts, but her arrogance drove most people away.

At the age of 18, she met what seemed to be the perfect patron. Vedorn was a young, attractive nobleman who seemed quite smitten by her. Elysa was dazzled by his masculine good looks and the promise of his wealth. Though she was seeking a patron, she ended up with a husband instead. Their wedding was a huge affair, with hundreds of guests and a huge celebration feast. Elysa left the city to go spend her honeymoon at his country estate.

When she got there, all of the illusions crumbled. The country estate was not as grand as Vedorn had promised, and it turned out that he had spent nearly all of his wealth courting her and throwing the wedding party. The happy couple came home to a small, run-down estate out in the sticks, and the happiness ended there. Vedorn learned what a sharp-tongued shrew Elysa was, and Elysa learned that Vedorn was not above raising his hand to his wife. Each learned that the other had a fiery temper, and they fought constantly.

In addition to their temper and greed, Elysa and Vedorn had one major thing in common; they were both too proud to admit to the mistake of their marriage. They stayed together and maintained the illusion of marital bliss. Elysa still kept her small home in the city, and danced whenever she could, bringing her money home to Vedorn.

Although they quickly grew to hate each other, the physical attraction remained, and make-up sex became the one good thing about their fights. It came as no surprise, then, that Elysa eventually conceived, and then gave birth to a son a little more than a year after they had been married. Their child actually brought a little calmness to the marriage, as they each discovered a spot in their selfish hearts where their was room for love for their son. As well, Vedorn was proud to have an heir and Elysa loved how her friends all oohed and aahed over her and her baby.

Even their shared love of their son wasn’t enough to fully bring Vedorn and Elysa together, however, and though they fought less often, they still fought just as fiercely. Elysa was adept at goading Vedorn to anger, constantly harping on him for being one of the poorest nobles in the land and “forcing” his wife to dance just to have enough money to raise their son. If he hit her, she would remind him of how the bruises marred her beauty, making it hard for her to get work dancing.

And so it continued until the night when things went too far. Elysa provoked Vedorn until at least he truly snapped. He yelled and screamed and raged as he always did, and hit her and threw things, as he always did. His madness didn’t become apparent until he threw an oil lamp at Elysa and laughed when it shattered against the wall and splashed burning oil everywhere.

“Let it all burn up!” he screamed. He pinned her against the wall and wouldn’t let her leave as the flames spread throughout the room. Through her anger and panic, Elysa tried to reason with him, tried to remind him of their child, but still he insisted that they would die together and end the farce.

Desperation lent her strength, and eventually she was able to fight him off. She ran towards her child’s room, but she never made it. A falling timber struck her, trapped her, and that she did not have enough strength to escape. The house continued to burn around her, and the suffocating smoke overwhelmed her. Her vision went black, and it was some time before she came to in a strange place.

By the time anyone arrived to put out the flames, it was too late. Much of the house had been consumed, leaving only stone and brick and debris. In amongst the men armed with buckets there were clerics of various churches, there to pray for the departed souls and offer what help they could through the magical creation of water and spells which boosted the strength and stamina of the erstwhile firemen.

It was a cleric of Ilmater who felt drawn to Elysa as the volunteers pulled her badly burnt body from the wreckage. Drawing closer, he saw that she was not dead. “This one will return with me to my god’s temple,” he said. He could feel the hand of his god guiding him to help her. There would be much suffering to ease.

He healed the burns just in time to keep her from dying, though her body was left quite scarred, and much of her hair was gone. The healing did not wake her, however, so he carried her the long way back to his temple, praying to his god for the wisdom necessary to help her through such a painful time.

Elysa awakened in the temple of Ilmater, disoriented and distraught. She demanded to know what had happened, and when she found out the truth, it crushed her. The house was gone, Vedorn and their child were dead. The flames had taken her beauty, too. She was left with nothing. For a time, she withdrew into herself. She did not speak, and she had to be forced to take those actions that would keep her alive, such as eating and drinking.

During this time, the cleric who had saved her ministered to her. He shared with her the doctrine of Ilmater, and also the personal pain that he had been through before he found peace in the church. As Elysa listened, she realized the folly of her life up until that point. Her vanity and pride had been her downfall, and it had cost her child his life. The cleric told her that enlightenment often came through suffering, and he was right.

When at last she finally spoke, Elysa stated that she was going to rededicate her life to Ilmater and his church. Deep inside, she did not feel that she was worthy to even presume to be a vessel of a god’s power, so rather than seeking to become a cleric or paladin, she stated that she would join the ranks of the monks she had seen practicing. Perhaps she would be able to channel some of the anger that she felt at herself into righteous violence.

Elysa realized that deep down inside, she was still the same person. Enlightenment was not instant, and she had much work to do. To ensure that vanity would never again be a problem, she refused to seek out any healing for her scars. Her outer appearance, she felt, reflected the ugliness that she’d always had inside.

It was her tongue that really worried her, so she took a vow of silence, swearing to not speak again until she achieved true enlightenment and inner peace. To remind herself of this, she had her tongue pierced with a sharp spike, its presence reminding her of the pain a sharp tongue can cause. To remind others of her vow, she took to wearing a tight mask around the lower half of her face, a sign that nothing would leave her mouth.

She said only one last thing before swearing her vow. “The woman that I was is dead. Call me Null, for I am nothing.”

Null trained in silence, and because she did not speak, she spent much time listening. She grew familiar with the doctrines of the church and pondered them always, growing wise in ways she had never been before. She learned when to end suffering, when to ease it, and when to administer it. Still, though, inner peace avoided her. She remained bitter and sarcastic, and as such, she remained silence.

She made no real friends at the temple. Not only did she not speak, but she never sought out the company of others. She never fully fit in at the temple, and so when it was suggested that she travel with a cleric who was scouting out a new temple location, she agreed with a sharp nod of her head. The journey to true enlightenment would be a long one, and it could not be completed within the temple walls.

My current project

I haven't been working much on The Princess Dilemma (more on that in a later post), but I have been writing a bit. My current project is yet another gaming character background story. Sometimes I question why I bother writing them, as they usually only have an audience of one (the gamemaster), but then I remind myself that they're just good practice.

And sometimes, they lead to fun research. The game in question is set in our modern world, and the character in question is the daughter of the Hindu goddess Parvati (well, sort of. The gaming sourcebook played a little fast and loose with the Hindu pantheon, as White Wolf games are wont to do with complex and nuanced mythologies). This has sent me all over the internet, reading up on Parvati, Hindu temples, various regions in India, the languages spoken therein, and Indian surnames.

Of course, I'll probably forget most of this fascinating information in the next few weeks (I've already forgotten the word for the towers on Hindu temples, and I just read that last night), but it was still an enjoyable experience to hunt the information down and read up on things that I otherwise never would have thought of.

Background: Ainsley Anklam, Rifts

To help keep things from getting stale around here, I'm going to post a few roleplaying character background stories. Don't worry, I won't be offended if you don't want to read them. I figure a lot of people out there are about as interested in my character stories as I am in stories about sports games (that is to say, not at all).

The story of Ainsley Anklam -- a Temporal Wizard in a Rifts game that I played for a few months -- seems like a good place to start. It doesn't have very many gaming terms at all in it, it's short, and it's a demonstration of how I use character backgrounds as a way to experiment with different narrative styles and voices. I would never write anything of any serious length from first person with such a casual tone, but it works for a background. It helps me cement the character in my mind, and it gives the gamemaster a good idea of what he can expect from me.

Rifts is a post-apocalyptic fantasy/sci-fi game that takes place in a future Earth with magic, monsters, robots, all sorts of crazy stuff. Rifts are magical portals that stuff can travel through. DeeBee is slang for Dimensional Being (any species not originally from Earth). Other than that, I think I kept the terminology at a minimum. So, Merry Christmas, and if you know someone who might like to read this, feel free to re-gift by giving them a link ;)

My Daddy was a grifter. We were always on the move and he was always doing little things to get stuff for free. Free meals, free lodging, free money. Sometimes it was honest stuff, play up on peoples’ sympathies and they’ll help you out of the kindness of their hearts, but most of the time it was straight-up scam artistry. I helped a lot. After all, what better to set people at ease than a cute little red-headed girl with a smattering of freckles? It varied whether I was an actual participant in his grift, or just an adorable presence at his elbow, smiling at the mark.
Sure, I remember a lot of the ploys we used to use - but I sure ain’t gonna tell you. Trade secret, you know.
Daddy had a lot of good words for advice. He’d tell me things like “Honesty is a virtue in other people and a weakness in yourself” and “Look both ways before crossing the street” and “Never eat expired ham.” But his favorite thing to say, above all else, was “You can’t con the con man.”
He should have listened to his own advice. He always thought that it meant that no one could con him and he never stopped to think that maybe he should be careful to make sure he wasn’t trying to pull one over on someone even trickier than him. One day he tried to pull off a huge scheme on some other guy. I don’t even know what he was doing, or how he messed it up, or what the terms were, but apparently it was some sort of bet that he lost, and I was the wager.
So that’s how I found myself, at the age of 10, as the property of some ugly whatsit who liked to be-bop around in time and space. No kidding.
I went from assisting one con to assisting another, but my master wasn’t a small-timer like Daddy. He did big jobs. Sometimes he tricked people out of stuff, but mostly he just took it. I learned a lot from watching him, ways to distract people and then just pick something up when they weren’t looking. Fun stuff. He taught me some important stuff, too, like how to speak a couple languages and even read Euro, and how to do math.
When I got old enough, he taught me all kinds of skills that he found it helpful for me to have. Every now and then, he’d steal something big, like a vehicle, and we’d need to break it down to parts. Then we’d have to find buyers. Mostly the boss-man would do that, but sometimes he’d let me tag along. I got to know a thing or two about buying and selling and being sly about it. One day he caught me palming, and gave me some exercises that would teach me how to “do it right.” He also gave me some locks to play with. Daddy would’ve been proud, I think.
Sometimes, when he didn’t want to travel ‘round with his magic, he’d let me drive. I got pretty good with cars and hovers; anything else he’d pilot himself. Just because I crashed that one tank into a building in the middle of our great getaway...
Things weren’t too bad with him, all told. Sure, he wasn’t loving like Daddy, and he had this bad habit of wanting to be all “mysterious” - bastard never even told me his name, so I started thinking of him as “Big Ugly,” though I always called him Boss or Master. He liked that. Anyway, he took pretty good care of me. There was always food, and decent clothes, and when I was 12 he gave me my first gun. He did keep me pretty busy with chores around his “lair” (ok, so it was a nice apartment, but lair sounds more impressive), and sometimes helping with jobs.
Wasn’t until I was 15 that I realized that he’d actually wanted me for something more than housework - ugh, no, not like that you pervert. Truth be told I don’t even know if he was a he. But anyway, I was about 15 when he really took me on as an apprentice. Started teaching me about space and time and magic, and how to bend it all to my will. I’d never thought that I’d ever have a chance at that kind of power, so I latched right onto it before it could get away.
Dunno if I was a good student or not, but Big Ugly seemed happy enough with my progress. He started letting me help with the big jobs, and a couple of times he even let me do a job all by myself. I got really good at getting things, one way or another. Of course, even if I actually purchased things, they were things that someone else had stolen, and I bought them with money we had stolen. Or made by selling stolen goods. I doubt I ever handled clean money during my ‘prenticehood, but that’s ok.
We traveled around a lot, but even more once I started learning magic. All over Europe and into Asia and over to America and down into Mexico once. Of course, our travel wasn’t just limited to this world - we went to some others, too. I traveled through rifts and portals, and learned that I had a knack for reading them, which came in pretty handy. I met all kinds of DeeBees and fought a few monsters and stole stuff that I had no idea what it was. Most of it was for jobs, but sometimes it was just sitting there and I’d take it. Hell, it’s hard not to do that when you can.
We passed a little over a year like that, til one day Big Ugly said that if I wanted to work with him any longer, we’d have to strike up a new bargain. Turned out he and Daddy had struck the original bargain without consulting me, so I guess my father had some idea what he was getting me into at the time. Suppose I should be grateful, then, it was definitely a better opportunity than I’d have gotten otherwise. Anyway, I didn’t like the sounds of the bargain he wanted me to agree to, so I set off on my own.
I have to give Big Ugly one thing, he didn’t just boot me out with nothing. Couple guns, lotsa credits, some gold and gems, everything I needed to start up a new life. My share of the take from the past few years, he said. I couldn’t argue with that. He even dropped me off back in England, which was mighty nice of him. I wasn’t sure if that was where I wanted to be, of course, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.
I spent a bit of time doing my own thing, living off my wealth and enjoying being lazy before I got bored. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with myself, so I started keeping an ear and an eye out for jobs. That was when I found Phinny’s want ad...