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Post by Tom Troughton on Mar 24, 2004 11:50:40 GMT
*Tom relaxes slightly.*
"Thank you Rob. As I said if I could tell you I would. All I can tell you is I am not of this relm, I am a renagade from my own race and have wanderd these and other lands for at least the last century. But ask me no more as I said it would put both myself and yourselves at risk."
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Post by ringmasterrob on Mar 24, 2004 19:17:39 GMT
Rob: *nodding* So does anyone else have a story to offer here?
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Post by Hordriss de Confuseur on Mar 24, 2004 19:26:06 GMT
*Having listened silently to the tale and conversation, Hordriss appears wrapped in thought... his own tale is long, and whilst those of Strange seem always good intentioned, however macabre their outlook, his own tale went into the darkness in a much more purposeful manner...*
A tragedy indeed, Strange, a fall... but also a new beginning, this is perhaps the nature of those who live for as long as we... continually renewing ourselves...
*Hordriss cannot help his gaze wandering to Tom as he says this, he is about to say more, more about the strange fragments of vision he experienced through their mental link, when he feels, briefly, a stab of emotion from Tom. It appears that that link is still active, intermittantly, and right now he can feel the apprehension, the fear almost in Tom's mind. Hordriss stops speaking, and makes a small gesture which he hopes Tom interprets as 'enough said'*
One has, of course, one's own tale, but first one has a question of you Strange... Are you sure that taking up the habit of a religious man was such a caculated decision? One has met other wanderers such as yourself who have been called without their knowing... indeed they form a part of one's own story....
[OOC: Hordriss can start now or not, depending on what people want, I'll wait for a bit more Strange discussion first, I'm very keen to learn about Strange's name as well, particularly why he chose his new name]
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Post by Tom Troughton on Mar 24, 2004 20:43:55 GMT
*Tom interpreates Hordriss siginal the right way, but desicdes he that now is the time to leve just in cas.* "Gentalmen If you will excusse me I am going to check on miss Julia as I have a gut feeling something has just occured." "I shall return momenteraliy." *Tom forstalls any questions by quikley deeparting." [ModNote: Tom goes here.]
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Post by ringmasterrob on Mar 25, 2004 8:02:12 GMT
*ringmasterrob recieves a Telepathic Vibration*
Rob: Ah! The builders have arrived at the Boarding School. I must go to greet them, farewell my friends for I do not know when I will return.
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Post by Tom Troughton on Mar 27, 2004 0:05:45 GMT
[ModNote: Returning from DG's room.] *Not long after Rob departs Tom re-enters.* "Oh I see Rob has departed, ah well I have a feeling his and my paths will cross againe." "Have I missed anything?"
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Post by Young Grimwold on Mar 27, 2004 0:53:01 GMT
I don't believe so. We are waiting to hear more from Brother Strange, if he wishes to say more.
In the mean time, welcome back. Was the traveller, Julia, in any trouble?
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Post by Tom Troughton on Mar 27, 2004 1:23:59 GMT
"No, No. Just Lord Fear and his Minnions rattaling The Saber. Mr Nesty must have scedadaled round to Marbale head prety sharpish the minuet he left this Inn and informed Lord Fear of Miss Julia's presence."
"One of his henchmen broke in and left this on the window sill."
*He produces the note.*
"A Crued attempt at intimidation. The Infernal cheek of it."
*He reads the note out.*
"Beware. Defiey The Will Of Fear and his Vengence and Great Wrath will strike yey down."
"A Bit melodramatic, but I dout of litttle need for concern."
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Post by Hordriss de Confuseur on Mar 28, 2004 12:00:27 GMT
*Laughs*
Indeed, cliché ridden and somewhat absurd, but we must not doubt the sincerity of the sentiment behind it... However, this young lady seems to know something of our world already, so she should be able to avoid the more obvious opposition agents... Although everything is not always as it seems nowadays....
Brother, if you will permit one to begin one's tale, we find you in pensive mood...
[OOC: i.e. I'll start, but if Strange wants to add to his story then do, he can interrupt Hordriss or treat it as if he spoke in this gap..]
One's life has been long, very long indeed. One was born but sixty winters ago, yet one has lived for centuries...
Perhaps one's full name will give you some explaination: Hordriss Cynghannedd Perittotatos Ocultillion, the twenty-seventh Earl de Confuseur. One's ancestry contains many noble families, of the Saxon, the classical and the Celtic. Each schooled me in a little of their arts, but one was unformed, an excess of conflicting forces. When one was young, one's magic followed the same pattern as one's daughter, it was wild, uncontrollable, a regrettable family inheritance. In the heat of youth, ideas were conceived which would drive one for much of one's life... Like so many noble families we had more titles than acres, and the name De Confuseur no longer had even a family heraldry. In the eyes of history we were dying, and there were few enough of us. Driven to uphold the family name, I searched through our records, and found that we still had one honour to our name... a chapel in the depths of the Celtic lands.
One left one's family and took one's wits, for one's magic at the time was unreliable, and travelled to this chapel... Only to find it abandoned, overgrown with ivy and time, just as the rest of my family history was. I wept bitter tears... I was young and such passions came easily. Then, one seemed to hear a voice. A sound from within the mossy structure before me, and I entered....
There, one saw the first of many wonders.... The face of a young girl hovered above the altar, such a pale face. This was the spirit which had driven the people away from our family temple. I cursed it, threw pieces of cracked marble at it in my frustration, but of course this sprit could not be harmed by mortal means. As I watched, it began to speak, and I realised that it was endlessly speaking, endlessly giving prophecies and truths to those it thought was listening, but none of these words made sense to my ear. Then... then one tried magic...
One attempted an ancient art to lay a spirit to rest, perhaps I could restore this monument to my family. As one wove the spell however, one did not realise how it worked... For as the last words of the spell died away, one seemed to rush closer to this girl, see her take on physical form... see her lying there, in a trance, helpless before the man with the sword. Without thinking, one raced forward, knocked the sword from his hand, watched him flee, turned to the girl... but she was already dead. The man had been guarding her, preventing her, in her mad trance from throwing herself on her own knife, unable to bear the endless visions. Sickened, I turned to leave, but one was no longer in the chapel.... one looked out of a cave-mouth, onto an ancient settlement below...
For the girl who lay dead before me was none other than the Delphic Oracle, and my own magic had spirited me over a thousand years into the past.....
[OOC: More to come, although I'm not going to detail every part of the 1500 years! Well come on, haven't you ever wondered where the Oracle of Confusion came from? Next part, into the Darkness...]
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Post by Young Grimwold on Mar 28, 2004 23:57:51 GMT
*During an earlier lull in the conversation, tiredness got the better of YG for a moment. He closed his eyes against a flurry of paranoia, as thoughts of Mellisandre and Motley rose within his mind. Drifting into sleep, he had a bizarre dream, where Melly had come to Wolfenden; to find Motley, and by reuniting with him, torture YG for what he'd done to her. YG had been lucky enough to hear Mellisandre sing once, and always cherished her voice; but in the dream, she was standing on a huge hill overlooking Wolfenden, her outfit torn and her hair black, singing a surreal, high-pitched song that stabbed at him:*
[OOC: Kate Bush...]
'Down in the dingy, dungeon rooms We'd jest and play for show. You had a costume like I'd never seen: So red, so yellow. Another'd hurt me, When I wanted to befriend him I hated him. I tricked him, too.
Nightmares in the night. He told me I'd become a cavernwight, Never get to Wolfenden, Wolfenden Wolfenden Heights.
Motley, it's me- I'm Melly. I've come here now so cold! Let me in-a-your window.
Motley, it's me- I'm Melly. I've come to hurt Grimwold! Let me in-a-your window...'
*YG opens his eyes, and shifting uncomfortably, he dismisses the dream and listens intently to the others, who hadn't noticed him briefly nodding off.*
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Post by Tom Troughton on Mar 29, 2004 18:18:03 GMT
"Arrr so thats were that spirit came from, I had oftern wounderd about that Oracles origens. Well you learn something everyday."
"Should have known you would have had a hand in it some were along the line. After all it's title was The Oracle Of CONFUSION."
"Did You Name it Hordriss? Or did it just aquire that title by cowincidence?"
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Post by Hordriss de Confuseur on Mar 30, 2004 11:25:57 GMT
*Hordriss is temporaily distracted by a pain at the back of his head, at first he thinks that it is his bruise, but it feels rather more like a burst of psychic energy being released nearby. Not being a trained psychic, merely a sorcerous dabbler, the impression quickly fades from his mind. He looks up at Tom and laughs slightly*
In some ways, Troughton, you could say that she named me.... One ran from the cave and hid in the town, soon the news that the priestess of Apollo had killed herself was widely known, but fortunately one had not been implicated. Unsure what to do, I used one's skills to set myself up as an apothecary.... Then she began to appear to me. The ghost of the Priestess...
Her mind was trapped between worlds, still in the receptive state of an oracle. She could not remember her own name, and when she asked for one I told her mine.... but her ancient tongue tripped over the French title....., and turned De Confuseur into The Confuser. It is odd, then, that one took this for oneself, despite the fact that she spoke it in a language which only we understood in this classical land...
One spend one's first years as a soothsayer, putting on the theatrical facade whilst my oracle, the Oracle of the Confuser, gave her fractured answers, muddled with words culled from all times and worlds. We were both out of time, and both adopted new names, and I became the Confuser, a travelling prophet.
*Hordriss frowned, he wished that he could leave the tale here, say that this was his past.... but he had to trust his audience*
But the years laid heavy upon one, and despite my companion I was truly alone, out of time and place. As one aged one reflected that one's life would never achieve anything, one's family was not even established yet, and I would die worthless.
One will not tell you how it was accomplished, for fear that even speaking of it will return to haunt me... but one made a pact with a foul being. One gave him part of one's essence, not quite soul, more part of one's mortality. As long as he held it, one could not age, or die. He even gave me a new name, I became Malefact, a dooer of evil....
To see generations wither around you, it gives you a strange perspective. Is it any wonder that one's whole life became centred around one's own goals: the furtherment of one's family. Yet every action I took, in guise as advisor to assist or opponant to spark rebellion seemed to be futile, it galled me to see how vapid and week one's ancestors had been.... at least that was how it appeared at the time.
One spent an eternity studying, but my dark master had already tricked me, for without aging, I could also not progress in magic. Only the ancient Celtic rites of the warlock could advance me, despite my study... One could feel one's potential, and it was endlessly thwarted.... As the centuries rolled by, I took my part in the chain of events.... I sat at the tables of emperors, and then watched their empires fall.... The Greeks, the Romans... and I studied, and learned for the day I could throw off my master. It was I that took the Damsell of the Lake, Nimue, and poisoned her mind with a lust for Merlin's power.
*His hands twist before him as he forces out this confession*
I who watched as she took his power through her seductions and left him under a stone... but still she could not help me advance, and Merlin had refused me... Only that strange, shy woman... that enchantress... Morghanna le Fay, she was kind to one....
With her, one did not listen to the Warnings of the Oracle, one saw a chance to give new life to the line De Confuseur at last.... but with my mortality, one's link to the world still gone... I was unable to start a new line...
Again, I had my obsession.... to find my former master, who had faded from sight with the dawn of the New Era, in the middle of Ceasar Augustus' reign I felt his presence fade, and could no longer track him, for something new and powerful was present....
Then, eventually, one's apprentice warlock traced him, to a castle in the North of Britain, and one followed, with Tyntian, my apprentice urging caution.... the foolish boy...
For one's sights were set firmly on reclaiming one's reality, for the time of one's birth was imminent, and one needed it again before this time, or it would wither and die, and I would be his slave forever....
Forever a thrall.... to the Gruagach.....
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Post by Tom Troughton on Mar 30, 2004 17:09:51 GMT
*Tom stifened at the mention of this name.*
*He mutters something in his own languege.*
<In a hard emmotionlas tone.>
"I never had the plesure of meeting The Gruagach, but I have heard of him. A Tryrant and villaine 10 times worse the The Evil Necromencer Mogred, The Cold Harted Ice Queen Aceandra, The decietful Witch of Leval 3 Malice, The Sadistic Morghanna (He bows his head slightly in apolagie to Hordriss for possabile worsoning the reopend wound) or The Vile Techno-soucera Lord Fear combined."
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Post by Hordriss de Confuseur on Apr 1, 2004 11:13:42 GMT
*Hordriss winces at the sound of Morghanna's name, he has not revealed to this company the end of that tale*
[OOC: Of course, anyone who read the Forge will know, but your characters don't, unless I've told you that you do!]
Indeed, Troughton... the Gruagach was the first great evil ever to haunt these lands, and lurks here still... for a creature such as He was cannot ever be destroyed, for he is found in the hearts of all...
Perhaps you know something of what One found? The castle of Dunshielm, caught in a dimensional rift through my master's power whilst the lord Treguard fought in the Crusades. One gained entry easily enough, my master welcomed me as a lost goat to the fold... one thought that one could fight him..... but he held my mortality, and with it exerted his control. He set me and my apprentice working on his new dungeon... crafting the dark magic in new ways....
My oldest companion, the Oracle, sought out other spirits in the mountains, and one bound them into walls and doors.... My apprentice was the ingenious one though, for it was he, with his mind corrupted by evil, who could imagine the corridor which sprouted blades, or the room in which nothing was stable, but only I had the power, gifted by my master, to shape them.... My master was powerful, but he had little physical prescence.... he used one as his hands....
One tried to fight, but everything one crafted twisted to evil... it was when trying to capture enough power to destroy him that one created the Bloodfang Blade.... And there were other experiments, some worse, some merely stranger, created with the dungeon's shifting power.... One had thought that the phase shifts had destroyed them.... the dungeon was never truly stable.... but if Bloodfang survived....
But enough of that... it shames me to admit it, but in the midst of all this evil I felt... enjoyment, satisfaction. One tried to say that it was all my master... but one must accept that the darkness of my own soul was taking hold.... In the end it was another darkness which saved me...
One had lost the Oracle, who had fled to the lower levels of the castle... but one still had one's apprentice and one saw the effect the evil influence had on the young man... his mind was contorting under the strain... soon he would have nothing left of his humanity.... One admits now to this... in order to save him, one drove him mad with a poison....
*Hordriss fixes the others with a stare*
One could not bear, with the part of my heart that was still human, to see youth corrupted into darkness... One wonders if he ever fully regained his old mind... but one knows that he still remembered being a wizard, and kept his wits, but altered. He even left behind his old name and hid his face.... When he returned, bringing Lord Treguard back to face his adversary... he had changed so much that he did not recognise me as one slipped away from the ruins of my lord, grasping the remnants of one's mortaliy that my master had hidden in a gemstone.... but I recognised him, for all the Folly he had fallen into....
*A half-smile crosses his face*
Perhaps his mind was gone, but he remained good forever more, but one could not return to the dungeon until he left, for fear of recognition as one of its architects..... Besides, with part of my mortality returned... one had other business with that dark enchantress, Morghanna....
Soon our child was born. Did one love her? Yes, despite the hardening of my heart over the centuries she was special, for she too was an immortal. Together, one saw a great future before us for the new house De Confuseur. Then..... then I felt the Oracle again, calling me to the dungeon, that Folly was gone, and that the rest of my mortality lay there, imprisoned in a golden pendant. I went, through the portal opened in the Oracle's chamber... but she followed.. Morghanna.
One had not seen her treatment of Arthur first hand. At first, one sought only for more power from these dungeoneers, the first I met I threatened it was true, but one thought that this castle was but an illusion to them, they would not be hurt... Then she appeared.... and she killed them....
I felt their pain, oh they would not remember it, when returned to their world the Helmet of Justice removed the memories of the final moments, but they could not clear my mind, not of the sound of that child striking the canyon floor, nor the smell of the one struck by her power... it made one's stomach turn.... I saw her with our daughter, one thought.... would she treat her the same way?
*The next scene is almost too painful to relate*
She had never returned my love... not a mother but a fiend... One banished her from the dungeon, wiped the memory of our daughter from both our minds.... sent her back in time like me to grow with a family who would care, and when the time was right, when I was worthy... I would remember her...
*His breathing calms*
There is little more to relate. It took one some time to find the golden pendant, but with it my powers could finally advance and become far greater. One tried to change, but it was some time before one had redeemed one's soul sufficiently for Merlin to trust me sufficiently to leave the dungeon and continue his battle with Mogdread elsewhere, and it was not until the freezing of the dungeon, when one saved a dungeoneer with one's own hands, that one remembered one's own daughter... perhaps that was one's redemption....
Since then one has tried to complete the process, abandoning the calling name one's old master gave me, rendering it harmless when given to another who had not made my pact.... seeking to destroy one's old creations.... Yet perhaps one will never be truly redeemed until one finds the last fragment of mortality, somewhere in this land.... The part which allows me to age. One does not wish to die a violent death... but the right to any other... eventually... is still denied to me...
So in the end, one's tale is similarly undying.... but just as Bloodfang was re-forged into Unity, so one hopes that Malefact the Confuser, servant of the Gruagach and Architect of pain.... may also be re-forged...
*Hordriss bows his head, his story over, if still full of gaps... he is exhausted.*
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Post by Tom Troughton on Apr 1, 2004 16:21:06 GMT
"Seems I may have misjudge you somewhat Hordriss, and for that I apolagise. I never understood what you had gone through. With out Mortality a person is NOT realy a person."
"I can also understand better now why you are so protective of your daughter."
"Certainly those type of events you have been through weather by your own hand or at the hands of others could easyily scare a persons mind and soal but I have never sufferd such a situation so I can't speak from experience."
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