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LADY TALIA OF CHESAPEAKE

Character Name: Lady Talia of Chesapeake

Where To Begin, Aye That Be A Grand Question I Do Suppose

 

Where to begin, aye that be a grand question I do suppose. I have had many a grand adventure and spun many a tale since my arrival in Sosaria how do I distinguish that which led me to where I am today by mere words alone it be quite the story to weave and I do pray I do nay bore ye to death as I share it with ye today.

My earliest memories of this world are vague at best I arrived here just after the shattering of the Gem of Immortality and the splitting of the facets. It is said in many a tome of family history that my Mother Elsbeth Crevox was a time traveler just as the Dark Lady Minax was. That she could weave and bend the very fabric of it manipulating it in ways that she saw fit. It was the concern for her daughters; my twin Sister Raven and I that caused her to open the black gate that night that brought us to the Chesapeake shard long after the founding of the Trammel Facet.

Sometimes I wonder had my Mother known that The Stranger would eventually arrive from Earth and Vanquish Mondain if she would have made the same choices for us. I know that it had to be difficult for her confronting such turmoil with two tiny babes to care for. For most of my adult years I despised my Mother that was until I had children of my own that is when I finally began to understand the need to protect that she must have felt.

It did not take her long to settle in this world finding another time traveler from her own time an Elven smith named Halibus who had escaped just as she had. He had always been fond of my Mother; in fact many have said over the years that he loved her more than anything else the world had to offer. He took pity on my Mother offering her a place to live in safety to raise My Sister and I.

Soon the two were married and together they purchased a small tower on the coast of Moonglow. Now before ye go and think that this was a simple love story it was not. I bring to thy attention now the twists and turns that we Crevox’s have faced throughout our written history. It would seem that my Mother had a darker soul, darker than any could have imagined for she appeared to be so righteous and noble. In fact in her diaries it is confessed at many a time and in many a fashion that she was obsessed with Mondain and highly jealous of his relations with his apprentice Minax. It would be this obessesion on my Sister’s and I 5th birthday that would drive our Mother back to the time that she escaped from. She had been in the library one morn when she came across a tome containing the tale of Mondain and The Stranger. In horror she fled from the library her heart racing at the thought of his destruction she came back to our meager home kissed her daughter on the forehead and bent time once more in order to return to the time before The Stranger to try and save Mondain.

The last memory that I have of my Mother is a single white rose pressed into this journal in which I write this tale for ye today. It is worn with age now just as I am worn with age. Sometimes I gaze upon it and I wonder how is that she left us so easily is love truly that consuming that ye will give up everything ye hold dear to try and save it?

So now we were Motherless Children left with a Stepfather and our adopted twin brothers Maxmillian and Dimitri Thorn. Halibus was a good man, a gifted man. He often told us stories of the world back in the days of Akalbeth when the before the isle of Ambrosia his home supposedly plummeted into the sea. He often kept the guise of a simple blacksmith but behind his soot laden face and his tattered clothing laid the greatest secret of all his magic.

One eve when I was about 10 years of age I caught him sitting upon the banks of the water causing great cyclones to rise up out of it and skip across the surface. Of course when he saw me the cyclone he had been forming simply fell apart and he tried to stammer out an explanation. I personally could have cared less.

“Teach Me,” I told him that day as I plopped down on the bank next to him.
“I want to be able to do that too.”

His eyes at first turned cold as I asked him but then as he looked upon me and saw the same curiosity his beloved Elsbeth had shown radiating from deep within my eyes he agreed he would teach me his secrets even though it was dangerous.

What Halibus did not expect was that I too was descendant from the race of Eldar’s bearing a mark of promise upon my hip in the form of a great black dragon clutching a blood red rose within his claws. The Eldar’s were gifted magically some of them were even known to be able to control the very elements themselves while others the Sirens had the ability to sing their victims to their death. My marking told the tale of my decent into darkness that began with my magical teachings.

Within Months after he began my lessons I was able to control the 8th circle with little effort summoning great elements of fire and vortexes of energy to do my biding. It was during one such summoning that my life yet again fell apart. I should have listened to him that morning but I was a stubborn youth. He cautioned me that he felt evil in the air and I dismissed it as the ramblings of an old fool and continued on with my bending of fire. My glorious Element had just begun to form when over the Horizon a trio of riders appeared all dressed in black robes riding black horses with fire for eyes.

“Take Talia!” Halibus yelled to my Half Brother Maxmillian who was working in the nearby field harvesting crops for the darker months. Dimitri also an accomplished mage rushed to Halibus’s side calling down bolts of lightning from the skies above to try and ward off the intruders but they kept coming.

“Run Maxmillian, run! Do nay let them take her.” Those would be the last words that I would ever hear from Halibus’s mouth as the riders descended upon him and Dimitri. As Maxmillian and I ran that morning I caught a glimpse of the necklace that one of the riders wore it was an obsidian wisp which of course I would learn later to be the mark of the Followers of the Apocalypse an order of mages intent on bringing about the use of the Armageddon Device that would purge all the unworthy from Sosaria soil. It was this order that snatched up the only man that I had ever considered a Father as well as my other Brother. Thankfully Raven had been sent off to the Bardic Academy in Britain for lessons or I fear I would have lost her too. All Maxmillian and I could do was stand in a field of wheat and watch as cascades of lightning fell from the sky. We were helpless against their power and now we were alone.

For weeks after the destruction of our home and family we wandered the world sleeping under the stars and taking food from strangers that took pity upon us. During the day Maxmillian would hunt he was an accomplished archer but many times he would return shortly after sunset empty handed and long faced. While he hunted I would practice my magic’s determined that someday I would find the order and take back from them what they had taken from us. I grew stronger and stronger each attempt I made at casting succeeded with more force as well as damage until at the age of 15th I reached the level of Grandmaster Mage.

It was around that time that Maxmillian had found an abandon cabin in the woods of Minoc during one of his hunts it was as if the family that had lived there ran off in the night in fear. He was so very excited the eve he came home to tell me of it and together just after sunset we set off to the site that would become our new home.

When my eyes first rested upon it my lips curled in disgust this place was not fit for a mouse to live in. The furniture that the family had left behind was broken to pieces by some manner of creature perhaps orcs and there was a stench in the air that would turn even the strongest of stomachs there was much to be done.

It took us several weeks to complete repairs upon the cabin for neither Max nor I was very good at crafting much. Luckily a carpenter that lived a few houses came to our aid laughing heartily at our feeble attempts to make the cabin look like a home. Max and I by then had joined the Warriors of the Dark Moon, A motley group at best headed by one of the finest men I have ever known in my years here we had a home and now we had friends perhaps now we would know the good life.

Oh the adventures that we had together, the blood we shed and the laughter we shared. It was nice not to be alone. It was on one of these adventures that I met the Priestess Torbinia and she told me of the Temple of Light. She praised my magical abilities and encouraged me to seek her out which eventually I did. The day I entered the Temple of Light was the day I found myself so I thought. I was instantly taken under her wing and she began grooming me to be a Priestess but it was never enough for me. Their libraries gave me access to darker magic and I took to the woods at night in attempt to summon forth one of the great Daemons that the tomes had told tales of invoking name after name until finally one answered a Daemon Lord named Marza.

At first I thought I had failed and begrudgingly returned to the temple that night. It wasn’t till the rise of the next morn that I realized that I found that I had succeeded. The bells at the Temples entrance resounded into the silent morn just past eight that day and upon the doorstep stood the most glorious man I had ever seen. He was a charmer to say the least with his dark hair and his green eyes to the guards he identified himself as a wandering healer looking for shelter for a few eves. Of course he was instantly admitted for the Temple turned away none of the Light often giving refuge to those who were running from the evil forces in return for the performance of menial tasks.

I was taking my lesson in the courtyard that afternoon when he approached me and the words he spoke as he looked into my eyes caused me to shiver. He became my companion and I begged Torbinia to allow him to stay despite my oath of chastity I had taken I had fallen in love and I was not willing to let him go. Finally she relented reminding me of my oath as she swept into her chambers. I was so thrilled that I rushed off to tell him instantly only to find him waiting for me in my chambers in the secret room that contained all my darker tomes.

My eyes fell to the floor as she gazed upon me for I knew I had been caught. Those tomes were enough to have me removed from my station and I could not bear the thought of what his opinion of me was now. As he came toward me he chuckled and I remember the room getting very warm soon he was right before me. Gently he ran a finger under my chin and raised my eyes to his where I looked into flickering flames instead of the compassionate green I had come to know.

“So” he began in a deep voice “It was ye that summoned me to this plain. I have searched endlessly this Temple for the one that was powerful enough to call me. I would never have guessed that the one I searched for stood right at my side all this time.”

All I could do was stare at him in awe that feeling of love I had for him intensifying by the moment.

“Tell me what it is that ye want from me” he whispered

“Power” I whispered back.

“And what would ye give for this power” he replied with a chuckle

“My very soul” I replied without fear.

Those words changed my life forever, the pact was signed and the deal was made. I was his and his power was mine or so I thought but I quickly learned that making a deal with a Daemon was not as sound as I thought it was.

He took me from the temple that night back to his home where I became his prisoner, treated as nothing more than a doll that he kept on a shelf and took down every now and then to admire. I gave to him two children Catrina and Nathaniel but it was never enough for him he always wanted more. Nathaniel was taken from me as a child and watched over by his Father, Catrina on the other hand was disregarded for she was a female and not of his concern. It was for her safety just as my Mother had done for mine that I plotted my escape and one eve after he left my cage I was able to do just that.

It would seem in all of his haste he had forgotten to place the heavy lock back on the cage door and I was able to bundle Catrina up in blankets slipping through the bars. We ran and we ran until I was so tired I could nay longer move somehow we reached the City of Britain were a kind woman Emilee Darkstone took my daughter and promised that she would care for her.

I was wracked with fever and delirious left to rot in a city where I knew no one. I had given up all hope when a woman approached, a woman with a noble smile I would later find out that she was Lady Eve LeRieux of the proud order of the Soul Seekers of Sanctuary.

She ordered her guards to take me to her home where she spent many an eve caring for me. When I finally returned from my fever I warned her of the great danger she was in by having me there but she did not so much as flinch at my tale. She took my hand and told me that she would stand at my side Daemon or not. He would take me from this place only in my free will and she would die trying to protect me. Tears sprung to my eyes at such a compassionate pledge of loyalty and thus began my time at her side. She made me her second Priestess one of the dark and she together with the Priestess of Light Cerridwyn Silverspeak set about to attempt to erase my past and provide me with a positive future.

Sadly when ye sell thy soul to a Daemon it is eternal and Marza once more tracked me down this time through horrific dreams that kept me from my sleep. After three weeks of his torture and in attempts to save my sanity I ran from Lady Eve’s cottage one eve and found myself upon the Shrine of Chaos screaming for absolution.

“Why do ye cry” a voice cut through my haunted mind and I turned to gaze upon my savior Olivya D’Algrath for the first time. She looked like an angel that night as the wind swept her blood red hair from her face revealing her emerald green eyes to me she listened to my tale without so much as a comment till the end when she made her offer to me.

See Olivya D’Algrath was a childe of the night a Vampire from the Clan of Vampires that reeked havoc through the night on the Chesapeake Shard for decades. That night as tears streamed down my tired face she offered to take me as her own as a ghoul with the potential to become her childe if I proved worthy. The offer went against everything I had ever believed in but at the same time provoked that love for the darkness that was buried deep into my heart. She gave me three eves to make my decision and upon the third eve if it was what I wished I were to return to the shrine where she would be waiting for me then she disappeared into the shadows as if she had never been there at all.

The three days that followed were three of the hardest I had ever lived and my decision was solely based on an attack that Marza attempted to make on Cerridwyn in my feeble mortal form I could not fight him much longer but under the guide of my Vampiric Mother I could.

I returned to the Shrine on the third eve and I pledged my life to her. Together we did succeeded in banishing Marza back to the Abyss and thus my nightmares ended. Eventually I was found worthy and I became a Vampire, which of course I remain even now.

I could continue on with this story through all the twists and turns that I have encountered in my path. Some of tragedy, some of love and some of pure evil but I shall not.

How I shall end this tale today is by mentioning the life that I lead now. I was given my second chance at the life I always desired and in my attempts to lead it I have left behind not only my Vampiric family but the darkness as well.

Balance that is what I seek now as well as the control of the Beast that lingers within every Kindred Heart. For a while I resided as head of a guild called Via ab Vates and through my time with them I made the acquaintance of a woman named Katriona the guild master of the Guardians of Chivalry. This woman opened my eyes to the fact that just because my nature is as it is and my heart is inclined to be dark that I do not have to lead the life that was chosen for me that I was free to make my own choices. Through my friendship with her as odd as it seems a Human and a Vampire as friends I have learned many things most importantly control. Within the pass months we merged Via ab Vates and the Guardians of Chivalry under the banner of the Guardians. She gave to me the chance to be myself and she accepted me for who I am.

It is a struggle for me to deny my evil intentions but I once again fight on the side of good most recently taking part in the war to push back the invasion that has gripped our fair city of Britain. I will continue to fight on the side of good as well as fight myself for control for there are far greater evils in this world than what I possess within me and I would rather fight them than contribute to them to make Sosaria once again safe for all races big or small.

This is where my story ends or at least this telling of it for my story will never end. In darkness and light through the multiple shades of gray I will always linger till the day our world finally ends. I hope you have enjoyed this tale as much as I have enjoyed weaving it for ye. Be Blessed Citizens of Sosaria and remember when ye think thy life is broken the wheel of life turns causing ye to begin yet again.