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  1. Characters

Alosrin Wythe

Wizard
Player Character

Lord Alosrin the Whyte

Alosrin is a half-elf bastard born to a human barmaid, Rose. He never knew who his father was, but his mother implied numerous times that he was high-born. Alosrin would rather not know who he was. He suspects that kind of information would bring him nothing but trouble.

The bar he was raised in was in the slums of a large city. It was far from an easy life. Crime, illness and starvation were rampant. People were born in the slums and they usually died early there. Alosrin in particular had a difficult time as he was bullied a great deal. He was visibly elven; a rarity and disliked trait, as the upper class which neglected them was largely elvish. It didn’t help his cause that he wasn’t particularly personable, and far preferred books to people – despite the fact that he had never been taught to read. He would regularly sneak through the alleys to the libraries of the richer inner city, and would attempt to read until the librarians found him and kicked him out.

Rose had high hopes for her son. She told him regularly that she had gifted him a prestigious elven name like Alosrin so he could rise to the higher courts, where he belonged. She recognized his gifted intellect with how quickly he picked up languages and lessons. She encouraged him to study as much as he pleased. She would save gold so she could buy him chess sets, the game of nobles, and enter him in tournaments. He even won a few before they changed the rules, requiring a minimum (but costly) standard of dress to compete. She tried to save enough gold, but was never able to.

During a particularly bad winter when he was eight, a flu ravaged the slums. His mother fell very ill. Fearing she wouldn’t survive and that Alosrin would be left alone, she tried to find someone who would be willing to care for him. The only family she found willing to take an extra mouth to feed was one that already had dozens to feed, but seemed to not worry at all about another: an ysoki family that sold delicious food to the bar when they were in town. The Petrovsich family cared for him for years, treating him like one of their own.

Alosrin wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t entirely out of the benevolence of their hearts. Alosrin could navigate some of the cities better for them, as he blended in more. He helped them find very prestigious deals with some…less scrupled clients. However, the Petrovsiches were undeniably good, and firmly stayed an honest food cart; regardless of how much the underworld pressured them to take up smuggling. He was grateful for that. He had to be. Had the Petrovsiches not been so determined to protect themselves, they may not have invested the time or gold in supporting Alosrin in learning beginner level spells. They also gave him a far more effective education than he had received before. One of the ysoki on the cart was a trained teacher who homeschooled all the younger ones, including him.

When they finally returned to his city five years later, he learned that not only had his mother survived; she had frantically tried to find him for four years and eleven months. The authorities nearly arrested the Petrovsiches for kidnapping, but he convinced them it was all a misunderstanding. He stayed with his mother and left the Petrovsich family on good terms. Whenever they came back to town, they came with gifts of scrolls and rare books for him. As far as any of them were concerned, they were family.

In general, he was glad to be back with his mother. He had craved privacy that he finally had. While he felt guilty admitting this, there were various elements of living with the Petrovsich family that embarrassed him. Even though their cart was ingeniously organized to easily change from sleeping quarters to a fully functioning kitchen, the crowding seemed like they were poverty stricken. They weren’t, of course. That was just how they preferred to sleep. But for those five years, Alosrin didn’t even have a blanket. The only bed large enough was a compartment on the roof, and plenty of the younger ysoki climbed all over him and slept there with him. That was how they had stayed warm.

Adjusting to life with his mother was not as seamless as he thought it would be. Their house was filthy compared to the cart. Everything and everyone meticulously cleaned there, because if anything could get anyone sick, the entire cart would get sick. Alosrin kept up his good hygiene, which some of the other slumdwellers presumed was due to elvish pretentiousness.

What he hadn’t known was that socially, there had been a great deal of unrest in his home city while he was gone. There had been riots by humans demanding more rights; access to adequate food and shelter, education, and more. Although the nobility offered no real substantial changes, they offered just enough to placate the rabbling humans. One such change was offering five full scholarships per year to the City’s prestigious university. Truly, just a token gesture, given that very few of the slumdwellers could come close enough to being able to succeed there with their current education (or lack thereof), let alone read. Still, it excited the slumdwellers nonetheless to have the opportunity dangled in front of them.

Rose was one of them, and convinced Alosrin to apply. She was ecstatic when he was not only admitted, but had scored one of the top test scores overall. The administration thought he had cheated at first until they saw that he was clearly elvish. Then, they presumed that whoever his birth father was had provided funding for tutoring and thought nothing of it.

Alosrin worked hard in his courses and did well. He excelled in divination and did well in his field studies in particular as a nimble attacker. By the time he had graduated, he had won a few awards based on merit; not that any of them were awarded with much fanfare. The nobility had no desire to see an underling do that well, and the slumdwellers didn’t see him as enough like them to celebrate the victory. Thus, he received his awards in silence and celebrated modestly with his mother. He had never seen her so proud.

The road to graduation was difficult. Although his tuition was covered, nothing else was. Not his living expenses, his books, nor his materials. His mother worked more hours to support him through it. He presumed she worked additional hours at the bar. Her death by a whore’s disease just three days before his graduation ceremony told him otherwise.

Her last words to him were: “Live better than we have. Do whatever you need to do. You deserve so much more than this. I love you.”

He was distraught. He’d thought he had lost her once before, but it was even worse this time. He paid every gold he had to bury her in a plot that could actually be marked; even if it was just by a bush of white roses. But actually burying her; it was something he had never predicted doing. Or rather, something he never wanted to think of. He hardly had time to scrub the dirt from his hands before he was to go the ceremony that should have marked the greatest achievement of his life; a ceremony he contemplated skipping.

No. No, he would go. If not just to make a point that he had made it. He had, after all, earned a position as a master’s student that included a modest salary; enough to get by with. But most importantly, his mother would have wanted him to be there; even if no one would be in the audience to cheer for him.

Or so he thought. No, not only was someone in the audience to cheer. There was a commotion, as the ushers were baffled by where to sit them, and why there were so many of them; sixty-eight, to be exact.

The entire Petrovsich cart had come to his graduation.

It was humiliating. Guests and other graduates were murmuring, wondering why on earth there was such a massive group of…well, rat people. What could they possibly want at this ceremony? Who at this ceremony would even interact with such lowly creatures?

There was no way the Petrovsich family would be quiet for him when his name was called. Everybody, everybody would know and remember him as the half-elf with the massive horde of rats. He would never, ever make a life for himself in the nobility after this.

It pained him, but he used his magic to cast a message cantrip to Grandislav, or “Grandy” Petrovsich: the man who had raised him as his own child.

‘Please leave. I don’t want you here. They hardly accept me as it is, and there’s no way I could ever go any further than this if they know I know you.’

He saw the hurt in his adoptive father’s eyes as he pretended that they were no here for a graduate; but rather, to try to cater the ceremony. They were practically laughed away by the administration, who arrogantly dismissed them for the elven caterers they already hired; even though those caterers couldn’t hold a candle compared to the Petrovsich family in quality or price.

He never spoke to the Petrovsich family again. He missed them, but he knew better. He had to do what he had to do.

The next thirty-five years passed in a monotonous and lonely blur. He worked hard. He finished his Master’s. He worked hard. He finished his Doctorate in familiar studies – the use of smaller creatures for spying. Someone followed up on that research and naturally, they received the credit for it. Funny though, given that their research was not as good. The use of the ysoki, while not being directly “rat tongue”, for lack of a better word, was very effective in communicating with the rats. They learned faster.

He worked hard, but never received a professorship. He even shifted his study to the lesser appreciated field of divination in hopes that he could earn a position in a less competitive field. But alas, he was pass over every single time. He deserved one; far more than most of the noble-born who ascended to those positions did. To make matters worse, he toiled away as a postdoctorate researcher to assist them with their inferior research.

He competed and won chess competitions to break routine, but even that was depressing. Nobody there cared for him. Nobody there wanted him to win. He would take home his gold and trophies to the dismay of everybody else there. Not even he was particularly happy when he won.

No, he had nobody. He needed nobody, he told himself. His mother watched over him. He reminded himself of how aggravating it had been to go five years without a single moment alone. Well, he supposed he had his steady stream of rat familiars; though he needed to bury and bond with a new one every few years. He saved and bought himself a terrible little shack far from the city. Had he been more boastful, he might have called it a cottage. Perhaps he could have married a lowborn woman, but why bother? It would only inhibit his career and he didn’t care for women in that way anyways; and he certainly knew better than to proposition any men. He would someday, somehow get the life he deserved, even if it was just for him. It was just taking longer than he would have hoped. It would happen for him. It would. 

One night, at two in the morning alone in a dark library lit only by candlelight, he admitted it. It was never going to happen. Not this way.

He deserved a professorship already. But he would have to do more to earn it. Just like he always had.

He applied for leave to do field work. Something that would get people’s attention. He took the mission that was widely regarded as a suicide mission: the mission to clear the red dragon Frievracyrth, Devourer of Men from the lands to the north to free the people and reopen the valuable trade route.

It was a mission that had been posted many times. Sometimes it would be reposted after a month, sometimes after three. The record was six months; he wasn’t sure if that crew lasted so long because they had been effective or lazy. Still; it was widely regarded as a suicide mission, but he had a plan. He had a little friend who could explore the layout of the dragon’s lair, unlike other parties had. Information was power, and he was a master of getting it.

The rest of his party though…they seemed to have other thoughts. They just thought muscles were power. Pointy sticks were power. They were brutes who were perhaps physically stronger than him, but he was faster and far, far smarter.

Their initial travels went well enough. He was able to prove himself as a valuable member of the team early on. They gathered important information about the dragon before they attacked, all at Alosrin’s insistence of course. It was fairly limited, given that nobody who had ever entered the lair had come out alive. Still, the stories of the dragon gave them some to work off.

The dragon demanded regular feedings of livestock – more than even a large dragon should need. It likely had a small force to feed as well. More infamously, however, it also demanded a monthly virgin sacrifice. The twelve villages of the county rotated which one had to provide a sacrifice. The only reasoning Alosrin could think of for that was either for some sort of ritual…or to instill fear and distrust among the villagers. The best information they got was a map with the suspected location of the lair’s entrance. That was actually quite helpful.

The week prior to their attack, he sent his rat ‘Slip’ to study the lair. This helped a great deal. He was right; the dragon did have a small army of kobolds. They seemed very dumb. The lair seemed to be in a volcano that, from the outside, seemed dormant but had substantial geyser activity inside. They had to watch out for that. A few traps, mostly trip wires or collapsing rubble. They were able to make their own rudimentary map of the inside to get straight to the dragon without injury. Then all they had to do was…battle a dragon…

It was as much of a disaster as he feared it would be. Within minutes, nearly half of their crew was dead, swallowed or both. Alosrin contemplated running. He could probably make it out…maybe. Pretend he died and start a new life.

As he searched for an escape route, a small group of young human women caught his eye. Ah. The virgin sacrifices.

One of them, a blonde girl, pointed up at the ceiling. He saw what she was looking at. There was a stalactite, a rather large one, hanging sixty feet above the dragon. With a nervous gulp, Alosrin launched the most powerful spell he knew, a pure lightning bolt at it. It was a direct hit, and enough to crack the stalactite loose. It fell, piercing the dragon right through the neck. Due to sheer, dumb luck…he actually slayed a dragon.

He could have been happy. Should have been happy. But he was worried. One adventurer was caught in the crossfire; a man from a wealthy noble family. Had he thought for a moment, which he should have, he could have warned him to get out of the way. But he hadn’t; and the man died. While the villagers and two of their party’s remaining members celebrated, Alosrin fretted while the deceased’s friend just looked sombre. The four of them were all who remained. Was he sombre he had failed to save his friend? Alosrin hoped so. He hoped he hadn’t realized that Alosrin knew a cantrip that could have sent his friend warning.

He tried to think of what to do. He left the crowded pub to get some air to think. It was pouring out. It fit his mood; which soured quickly, when he heard the friend charging into the alley shouting “I’ll kill ya! I’ll kill ya, you freak!”

Alosrin didn’t need to told twice to defend himself. He quickly cast a spell, which was more than enough to finish the wounded man off. And thus, his victim count increased to two. He was just about to run to his room, pack his things, and flee far away when a meek voice said:

“You saved me. Again.” It was the blonde girl from the cave. For some reason…the man was attacking her? No, that made no sense. She must be mistaken. Nonetheless, she fawned over him, calling him her hero who had come to her rescue twice in one day. She begged him to let her come with him to the city. She knew no one beyond the cave, and had nowhere to go. She wanted to follow him and become a brave adventurer like him. He wasn’t fond of the idea of having this young girl in his care…but she was a witness who would swear by his innocence. He wouldn’t have to abandon the work he’d done. He agreed to bring her with him.

He learned the girl’s name was Ashlee. She wasn’t like the others. She wasn’t a virgin sacrifice; her mother had been. Her mother had attempted to be spared as a sacrifice by laying with a man, but it didn’t work out well. She just went to the cave and learned she was with child. She was a talented musician, or something, but she convinced the dragon to let her live and care for her daughter. A few years before, the dragon decided the mother had passed on everything she could to Ashlee, and she was…well…finished.

Her mother had told her stories about brave knights who would come to save them. Ashlee dreamed of being one of them. The unfortunate girl had no idea that none of the remaining three of them planned on ever adventuring again. Alosrin would take his well deserved professorship, thank you very much, while the other two…the other two were probably going to drink themselves to death in a few months.

Alosrin planned to get the girl some basic tutoring and get her independent on her feet as soon as possible. Naturally, that didn’t go according to plan. At their welcoming banquet in the city, the nobility loved her. She was pretty enough, charming, and an agreeable human bounding with gratitude for the elves who saved her; not something often seen. She also had a strange instrument made of a fallen knight’s shield that played a unique but hauntingly beautiful sound. It was novel and had such a sad story behind it; but the girl seemed so hopeful. Daft, but hopeful. She tugged at their heartstrings so much that they convinced the local bardic college to set aside a place for her, and gifted Alosrin extra gold for her care and tuition. He was sure to also pay for tutoring at night, to teach her essential skills like how to read and write. He hoped to make her independent as quickly as possible. She loved learning, but didn’t seem as keen to be on her own. She instead used every single little thing she learned to try to please Alosrin. She made breakfast every morning. She wrote him ballads of his bravery. She cleaned and organized his books as he liked them. While her affections were sweet, there were more often a nuisance.

Alosrin, meanwhile, finally got the position he deserved. He earned his professorship the title of “Lord”, even if it was in name only. It was enough for him…for the time being, anyways.

‘Ashlee and Lord Alosrin Whyte’ became household names horrifically quickly. The rumours ran rampant. The nobility especially loved Ashlee. Thanks to her, he and she received invitations to a number of elusive private events; dinner parties where the women would go to the parlour to gossip while the men would go the study to converse. And oh, those conversations were exactly where he wanted to be. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. He just listened, which made people like him, for finding them interesting; and he got all the information from them while they got nothing from him, yet they left the conversation feeling satisfied. Yes, these were the connections that were going to keep him clothed in fineries and living in luxury. Life was good.

Naturally, it was all too good to be true. He should have known Ashlee was a liability. The girl knew nothing. She knew nothing about the world, or society, or the basics of living. He should have figured out sooner that things weren’t right. She always asked to sleep in his bed or bathe together. He figured she was infatuated, but then he wasn’t sure. She had no sense of boundaries with him, or most people for that matter. She always wore modest clothes; even in the sweltering caves, she had been wearing a high neck. She was tall (taller than him!), and he thought fully grown, but she didn’t seem to understand what the cloths he gave her for her monthly bleed were for. Her voice was…slightly on the deep side for a girl.

In hindsight, it should have been so obvious that Ashlee was a boy.

It was a disastrous conversation. Evidently, Ashlee knew nothing about the human body in general. Alosrin guessed from the charming nickname “Frievracyrth, Devourer of Men” that perhaps Ashlee’s mother had lied about his sex to protect him. Ashlee had never known anyone outside the cave, and there had only ever been women in the cave with him. How would he have known?

This was Alosrin’s fault. He should have taken more time to know and take care of Ashlee. He would have found out earlier; far earlier and might have been able to stop this before it got to this point. Now, it looked like the lowborn half-elf and the human were colluding for six months to swindle good hearted nobles out of their gold.

This naturally coincided with Ashlee struggling in his program. Apparently, song after song after song about Alosrin’s valour in battle was getting old and he needed new material. His teacher suggested he find inspiration and write about love or some bullshit like that; because Ashlee clearly wasn’t already confused enough as it was.

Alosrin needed to get Ashlee away from the stress before he did anything stupid. He took Ashlee to the cottage-shack for a chance to unwind over the week. To his surprise…Ashlee loved it there. And he had a surprisingly good time too. They had interesting conversations, which surprised Alosrin to hear just how much Ashlee had learned. Ashlee’s perspectives on the world, while still naïve, were somehow…refreshing? Alosrin had made an oversight in forgetting there was only one bed, but it was not as awkward as he’d feared. At the end of their week, it was the first time he had ever found himself uneager to return to the city.

Something shifted after that week. Alosrin realized how cold he had been to Ashlee, who mentioned he preferred to go by “Ash” (but only for Alosrin – something which made Alosrin feel more special than it should have). Alosrin wasn’t fair to him. Ash was trying to find his place in the world. In many ways, Alosrin knew the feeling; and he had received significantly more guidance over his lifetime.

Alosrin no longer viewed the bubbly blonde as a burden. Quite the opposite; Ash was usually the highlight of his day. He enjoyed his daily breakfasts in bed, which his normally shared with his roommate. He looked forward to leaving work at a reasonable hour to go to the market and pick up food for dinner that he thought Ash would like. New melodies even seemed to come easier to Ash, who no longer had stress blocking his creativity; it made sense. Alosrin had been pushing Ash to succeed as much as possible before, to get him out of his home faster. Now, Alosrin felt absolutely no rush to have his space back.

Life was good. His research was doing well. He managed to keep his students engaged enough to get good reviews – which was surprising to him, given every life experience he had ever had. Alosrin was…dare he say…happy?

The next three years were the best of his life. They weren’t very exciting. They were boring and content, just the way he liked it. Then fucking Lord Straevyrn had to come and make things uncomfortable by offering Alosrin marriage to his daughter – one who was rumoured to have lost her maidenhead to a stableboy.

In some ways, he could have taken that as a good sign. Lord Straevryn was a wealthy man with large tracts of prosperous land. He had grown his domain from one of the poorest to one of the wealthiest due to prudent investments and clever, carefully calculated risks. He was so renowned for it that it was said that somebody who saw potential in a high risk, high reward investment possibility had the “Straevyrn glint” in their eyes; and Straevyrn saw potential in Alosrin. If Alosrin accepted the proposal, he would have been set for a life of prosperity.

Although…there was a steep condition. Ash, naturally, could no longer be in the picture. That wasn’t a price he was willing to pay. Besides: if Straevyrn had his glint looking at Alosrin, that meant Alosrin, should he make the right moves, could get that life of prosperity for himself, while keeping Ash by his side. As far as Alosrin knew, he was the first to say ‘thank you, but no’ to Straevyrn in a very, very long time.

Ash was horrified when he learned that Alosrin gave up on the opportunity of a lifetime. Alosrin didn’t tell him why; he didn’t want Ash to feel like he was costing Alosrin anything. He wasn’t; he was worth every single hard choice there was.

Though Alosrin was about to have to make a series of hard choices for Ash; because one day he woke up and Ash was gone.

 

 

Now…

·         Alosrin is trying to find Ash. He has no idea what happened to him. No note or anything left behind, which is profoundly odd for Ash. Possibilities of what happened, from Alosrin’s point of view are

o   Ash left on his own volition (small chance, given no note)

o   Ash was kidnapped by Straevyrn

o   ???

·         Alosrin was given a small set of guards (4-5), but Alosrin trusts none of them. He wants to get rid of them at the earliest opportunity. Would like to hire some bounty hunters to help him find Ash.