08-06-2013, 03:15 AM
(This post was last modified: 22-08-2013, 12:03 PM by SentaiPink.)
DURAS THE MARAUDER
Abridged; This character's sheet has been edited to avoid spoilers.
Abridged; This character's sheet has been edited to avoid spoilers.
![[Image: duras2.jpg]](http://imageshack.us/a/img850/842/duras2.jpg)
The first words I heard in the slobbering language of the middle, are the only words I ever want to hear from it’s inhabitants.
“Yes, my Xitian Master.”
“Yes, my Xitian Master.”
Name: Morath Duras
Age: 50 [8/13]
Gender: Male
Birthday: 17th
Race: Xitian
Dress:
A bright red tunic with yellow trim around sleeves hemlines and back. Gray trousers, heavy work gloves and brown boots often accompany this. If he’s only in his tunic he’ll usually have a heavy leather belt full of tools. Otherwise he’ll often wear a chain shirt and red-dyed leather armor over his lighter attire.
Skills:
Fire - Advanced
Earth - Normal
Nether- Easy
Combat:
Battle axe - Advanced
Whip - Average
Trade:
Building (carpentry) - Average
Lumbering - Basic
Masonry - Average
Knowledge:
Reading & Writing
Battle tactician
Backstory:
Morath was born in the Dusk realm, and was raised by two fairly distant parents, both had vested interests in their holdings in the middle realm, and both often spent their time there. It wasn’t until Morath was to start his training at around 7 that the family actually moved him with them to the middle realm. Morath’s father was a commander whose service in enslaving the middle realm scum was rewarded with bountiful lands and slaves to work them. His family lived well, with seemingly no end of slaves to serve their whims.
“They outnumber us, son. So we must make sure the scales always tip in our favor. To that end, controlling them with fear and brutality, its the only thing these savages understand. Really, they’re not even people, just Mesalian cattle.”
Morath’s father was not shy about how he treated the cattle people, as not just labor, but objects for his amusement. Morath would often fight the scared slaves as part of his training. His father, Jarod, wouldn’t give them weapons, but having to catch the terrified workers was never easy. The boy question his father and his treatment of the Mesalian’s. Sympathising with their slaves and their enemies was a weakness Jarod would not tolerate in his son, and brutally punished the boy for it. Morath rarely spoke out against his father or questioned him but the response from Jarod was almost always the same.
As Morath reached his teens he showed a great aptitude for manipulating fire and for the art of war, including a preference for an axe in battle and use of a whip on the slaves. All of which were honorable traits for the Xitian youth.
Ura, Morath’s mother, ensured any half-blood slaves would be elevated and trained as Xitians, giving the spawn of cattle the chance to rise above their squalor. She was the one who sought to teach Morath’s a skill outside of battle. Ura decided to counter destruction with creation and hired a master to teach him carpentry. It wasn’t until much later Morath realised his parents were preparing him for what they feared to be an inevitability. The Lucin’s had returned in numbers, their gate home was locked. Both of Morath’s parents were preparing him for the coming war. Which was soon upon them.
Morath, welcomed the chance to test his mettle and training against the armies of the Lucins, just as every teen of privilege believes himself indestructible. Morath had grown into a strong youth, broad and tall, with growing still to do. The slaves, emboldened with the knowledge of the Lucin’s conquest against the Xitians thus far, revolted. The masses that had been under the cruel boot of the Duras family rose up in the night, with pitchfork, scythe and stick. The family and their guard, whom largely consisted of half-bloods raised to be loyal to their ‘proper’ bloodline, had been prepared for the Lucin return, and the revolt was crushed, but the cost was high. With few slaves left Morath and his father set fire to the remaining slaves homes, butchering the last of them. With nothing to remain for, the family set out to join the war effort on the front lines.
The Duras family served with honor and valor, befitting their Xitian heritage. They fought knowing there was no way home and no backup. They knew marching onto the field of battle they’d not come back. Morath and his half-brothers and sisters, saw the end of the war, his parents met their honorable deaths during the battles upcoming to it. They fought in what was the last battle, the last ground held by the Xitian armies, Morath was captured, soaking wet, bloodied and sick with Aether, his surviving siblings along with him. One by one, Morath watched as his siblings broke under the pressure of the Lucin’s icey torture, and their reward was a quick death. But the stubborn young man that would only answer to his family name of Duras now, would not bend, nor would he break. The Lucians kept him captive for years, occasionally torturing him but usually just letting him rot in a cold dank cell. When the order for the purge came down, the Lucin’s took the man outside to finally end him, but there were more than a few of his kin lined up to meet their fate. By the time they got to Duras he had summoned what strength he had, aided by the nether rich night, Duras managed a bright, white hot flash of fire. The risky move exhausted him, but through sheer grit and desperation he slipped away from his captors in the blinded chaos that followed.
He ran until his muscles ached and his lungs burned, eventually collapsing on the stoop of a small farmstead. The owners, finding the half starved and haggard man in their yard, brought him inside to rest. Unaware of what they’d let into their home, He slept for three days, and awoke to find food and ale waiting for him. Duras drank his fill and ate, but he was weak and exhausted still. He couldn’t even muster the energy to shoo the Mesalians away. When they came to check on him and found they’d unwittingly allowed a Xitian into their home, they were quick to alert the guard and the Lucins.
Duras was lucky in that he’d noticed the farmer running out to greet the guards and took the opportunity to get away. He hid from the Lucins, but having to do so ate at him. Why should a soldier of the great and cunning Xitian armies have to hide? It was unacceptable weakness. The lucins searched the farm first, which bought Duras enough time to slip away. He found a small cave and hid within it, closing off a wall with his powers. He ended up falling asleep there, exhausted still from his escape and the effort of moving the stone and dirt to hide himself. Duras didn’t even know he’d slept through the greater part of another day before he left his hole and returned to the surface. The lucin patrol had moved on and he returned to the farm to show the farmers just who he was. Duras hated the act of hiding from the lucins, and while he couldn’t take out his rage over his imprisonment or torture on them, he let out his anger for the injustices he’d suffered on the farmer and his family. After looting all he’d needed, set fire to his home leaving the man broken and chained as his home burned down around him and his family. Duras was in the wind before the Lucin patrol had returned to witness the result of their own incompetence.
The cattle had cost him his home, and the Lucin’s took his family and just about everything else. Dura’s hate knew no bounds. He slowly regained his strength and with it his power. Duras had to hide, for most of the purges, he would camp in caves, sure to close off any entrances when he does so, he’d move largely at night when the dusk fiends were most active, he’d steal food from Mesalian homes and raise their farmsteads as he went along. The Lucin’s knew he was out there, but since he moved alone, never left witnesses willing to talk and didn’t follow a predictable path, they couldn’t catch or trap the madman. The purges came to an end, and Duras remained at large.
Even after the purges very little changed about the way Duras operated, generally he tended to avoid the Mesalian’s and their cities, he was capable enough to build himself a small home nestle on the outskirts of the desert. Over the years to come he finally met some of the surviving Xitian people in the middle realm. What was left of the Xitian’s started to band together, meeting in secret, planning, organizing. Duras was powerful and a natural leader, he would once more serve what remained of the glorious empire that spanned two realms. Their objective was simple enough, but the subtle political manipulations required in the plan was too gentle a tactic for him. His missions were much more straightforward. Duras was given targets for his rage, he’d raid and pillage under disguise and the banners of neighboring kingdoms, and thus stirring conflicts, suspicion and fanning the flames of war. He became known as Duras the Marauder, a title along with a job he did with pride.
Soon the civil fighting was in full effect. Duras watched with delight as the cattle people killed each other. Oddly enough as things became more chaotic for those of the middle and the Mesalian and Lucin people, things settled a little for Duras. For once given opportunity to work on building for others, Duras worked on simple structures as he made a small secluded village for those that had survived the purges and remained in the main lands with him. As relatively quiet as this chapter of his life was, Morath was never satisfied with just being a builder. The village sat nestled in the desert, it felt too much like hiding to him. The Mesalians should fear and respect their Xitian masters, he always resented having to avoid them. He managed to swallow his pride though, and accept that, at the very least, he lived among his kin. Most of the Xitians in the village were older, or women, only a pair of the warrior’s aside from Duras lived there, and they were both men 20 years Dura’s senior.
One of the women in the group was a skilled smith, Calli, making everything from tools to sturdy weapons and armor. Though she wasn’t a warrior Duras deemed her worthy, and went through the efforts to woo her. His gentle touch and kind words died off no sooner were they married. Even the birth of his son did nothing to aid their relationship. Far from marital bliss, things began to deteriorate. Unwilling to put up with Calli’s disrespect in regards to how he treated her, it was only a matter of time before he started putting her into her place. Calli wasn’t going to tolerate his abuse though, willful and independent, the fight between the two the night she left Duras, taking with her their son, left his home afire.
More embittered than ever, Duras had no choice but to rebuild his home and continue his life without her. He wouldn’t speak of her when others asked.
Over the years it became pretty normal for a handful of half-bloods to be brought into the village, to be taught the culture of their people and how to harness their powers and hopefully sway them to serve their betters. Duras, had nothing against the process, but also was unsuited to have any part of it, not that he really wanted to help anyway. The last time this was done, Duras had set out to get lumber and supplies from outside the desert while the training was starting, upon his return, he found the village he’d help build in ruins, the buildings having been burnt down or the ground and stone they were build on ripped out from the foundations, collapsing the buildings. Those left to defend the village were crushed inside of their own homes, the rest were gone. He could smell the stink of Mesalians upon the place he’d called his home. Duras picked through the wreckage, and once more donned his armor, setting out into the sands to find the blood traitors.
Inspite of the immense amount of brutal violence Duras is capable of, he is not an angry man, or even one easily spurred to anger; When he is however, he is nothing if not every bit the monster the Mesalian people whisper about to this day. He traveled for weeks before he caught up with the blood traitors, they had only two of Duras’s kin left alive. Duras rode in on the half-bloods like the very nether had opened up and spat him out. His axe bit the life from one of them before they even managed to give cries of alarm. A young man, close with the earth shook the ground under Duras’s feet, Duras stomped a foot down and the camp fire the man stood beside became a towering inferno, its flames consumed him and one of his kin before they could loose an arrow. The last two remaining of the blood traitors were the woman that lead them and a young hunter. The hunter tried to charge Duras in an attempt to defend his leader, Duras didn’t even give him the honor of death by pyre, He instead took a whip to the boy, cracking it across his face before he got even close enough to harm Duras with his sword. While he recoiled in agony Duras closed the gap between them. The blow from Duras’ axe bit into the man’s side so hard bone and flesh rended with a sickening noise, the hunter was dead before he hit the ground.
This left only the woman. She called Duras a murderer, monster and slaver, none of which was untrue or the first time someone had said as much to him. She tried to counter him with sword and nether, but her skill was not of a grade where the nether could harm him, and if anything he only regained some of his spent energy. He dealt with her as well, she was the only survivor, so she could live with the shame of her failure.
After freeing his kinsmen they left the desert and abandoned the ruins of their home. It wasn’t long after Duras left for the forbidden lands.