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HISTORY
World Description:
The world once was a peaceful place. Though primitive in its technology, the lands flourished with six races of creatures, all gifted with life and curiosity and the urge to explore their world. Standing at the pillars of this prosperity were the Six Deities, silent watchers who favored and blessed their individual races of choice, each in control of one part of the vital elemental flows of life. Though life presented wars of ideals and progress among the races, the Deities reliably shifted the balance as needed, overseeing the constant progression of civilization and the progression of their blessed world.
With the high position of the Deities in the balance of life, many races considered them as religious figureheads; devout clans began building temples and monasteries in their honor, praying vigilantly in wait of their constant blessing, and craving to understand their gods more so that they may please them. It was these clans that discovered magic - a creature's born ability to tap into the elemental flows - which quickly started what would be the destruction of the world.
The discovery of magic was first hailed as a sign of religious triumph. Hundreds of thousands sought to learn, but all had their reasons. What started as meditation and awareness morphed into the study of spells, enchantments, and power of will - how far could one push their mortal body against the natural flow of the earth, and what miraculous things could one accomplish? Some claimed it might be immortality, others an omniscient wisdom, while others simply saw chances for new power.
Conflicts soon arose with magic at the forefront of the battles. Power among the races shifted dramatically as militarized victories brought greater tolls on beings and land alike. The Deities, sensing the dangerous shift taking place in the people they so loved, began to lessen their blessings, to which the races only amplified their magical attempts. What delicate balance that the Deities had been carrying for millennia started to crack. For the first time, the earth itself began to fight back. Floods and earthquakes and monsoons all began to chip away at the peace that the world had otherwise taken for granted. In their distress, the beings of the world split into two categories - those that blamed the deities for the war and destruction, and those that saw them as a sign of horrible things to come.
The bloody war that followed between those two factions lasted only ten years, but in its fury, the conflict snapped the balance of magical power, claiming the life of the Deity of the seas. With the absence of her presence and blessings, her race of choice - the Ethra - were brought to a quick extinction. In their anger, the remaining deities cut off their blessings completely from the races of the world, retreating to a spiritual solitude where they continued to struggle for the balance of their world, now amplified with the loss of one of their own.
It has been one thousand years since the extinction of the Ethra.
With the loss of the Deity of Water, the elements wreaked havoc in an attempt to restore that which no longer existed. All but the most spiritual centers of water turned to acid. Precipitation began to destroy both man and beast and plant alike. Tides rose permanently, flooding entire continents, wiping out millions of the world's population along with much of the records of the Deities' struggles, and isolating those that remained on islandic nations.
The five races that remained quickly established arms of power based on remaining populations and resources. Orcs still controlled much of the military strength by pure numbers and soon crowned a king over the wasteland. Humans, while frailer and more damaged by the wars, held the high ground on trade, farming, and the dwindling state of economy. Prominent families with ties to the Orc monarchy soon found themselves pulled into nobility for the sake of the survival of what life remained. Wyverns, though scarce, were seen as the last creatures with any kind of religious touch and often controlled the few shrines and monasteries left. Goblins became the craftsmen, archaeologists and scavengers, eagerly trying to both keep the present liveable and regain what history was being lost. Lastly, on the very bottom of the social structure were the Elves; once the most magically attuned creatures, the race was now considered frail and purposeless, lacking the boldness and power that other races presented. Though not driven to extinction like their Ethra brethren, Elves were now often left to rot on the streets, serving as prostitutes, sent into slavery or used as carriers for the drug trade.
The city of Ordo, built around the holiest of lakes, has been transformed into the world's capital nightmare, providing what little supplies of food and water remain and acting as a hub of trade and politics. Those in high social, political, economical, or religious standing are treated to a life of luxury, spending their time for the people and wanting for nothing in return for their service. From there, the classes dramatically fall. Most everyone else stationed around the capital live among decaying rubble, makeshift villages or nomadic travelling groups. Food is a precious resource, water even more so, and the world becomes a violent and dangerous place to exist for the unlucky and faint-hearted. And most importantly, the history of the deities has been completely lost to the passing of generations, all but a select few still knowing what a dangerous precipice their world now hung upon.
In an attempt to regain the mythical use of "magic", a process was found to powder acidic tree bark that, when mixed with blood, became a powerful drug the color of the night sky. This "black sugar" granted tranquility, confidence, and what some claimed could help one see and speak to the spirits themselves. Because of how overwhelmingly easy it was to make, the drug trade took hold of the slums of the capital and quickly grew out of control. Even those in nobility found themselves wound up in the mess, easily pumping Black Sugar powder into the bloodstreams of slaves to use as walking bargain chips. To die from the drug is commonplace, either in overdosing attempts to see their gods, or through the blatant draining of blood and discarding of the corpses that remained. Despite its corruption, the nobility do not move to stop it so long as it does not interfere with their lives. In contrast, the common people grow to fear it, even for the money or supplies it might bring to sell one's self to the trade. Becoming a slave quickly means surrendering to the very real possibility of death.
Background:
Elutherius was born the eldest child and only son of a high-standing human family in the capital of Ordo. His father, a strict and unforgiving man, stood as a Lord and one of the key heads of distribution for goods on the Council of Elders. It was by his hand that the lesser races kept themselves alive, and likewise, how many could die if his control and will were not precise among a company of Orcs. The Lord's wife, a gentle and frivolous soul, was a nonexistent presence built completely for appearances. What times she spent with her children were to adjust clothing and hair and mannerisms, offering only glancing platitudes to soothe the often fiery words their father had towards them.
As the eldest, Lutha was told from birth that he was of a chosen few. Everything in the grasp of a noble's life, down to the smallest detail, was a birthright handed to him by the spirits themselves. This demanded a delicate but severe balance of disciplines to keep a young mind in check - branding, scarring, and mutilation of body parts were commonplace throughout the noble quarters. But despite this, Lutha never found himself questioning his place. He was educated in language, numbers, and the expansive history of both Orc and Man, learning that all other races fell below in a natural, pitiful pattern. Unable to leave the noble quarter without punishment for endangering himself, the boy took up the handgun, often climbing up onto high windowsills just to shoot passing birds. During the nights he would descent to the basements of the castles to taunt the prisoners and slaves, finding that a hatred of his status was common place. When his father berated him for his actions or attitude, Lutha only doubled his cruelty, finding a rush in how he could make someone into little more than an object with his words. The only person who escaped his anger was his younger sister, Tabitha, who was much kinder and more compassionate in heart than he felt he could ever be, garnishing a strong desire for Lutha to protect her.
It was she that lead Lutha to a breaking point. While aware of the drug trade, the young nobles were often kept far enough from the raw details to establish a level of comfort. After his tenth birthday, while searching for his sister in their home, Lutha managed to eavesdrop on a Black Sugar deal between his father and couriers for the king himself. There he discovered that, rather than a slave, it was his young sister being offered as a drugged boy, already half-dead where she lay on the trading table. Rage brought Lutha to try and intercept the meeting. When guards were unsuccessful in restraining the child, Lutha's father pulled a gun on his son, barely missing Lutha's head but successfully ripping the hearing from his left ear. After a significant struggle, he escaped, fleeing the noble's quarters and tumbling into the rotting sewers of the city below.
It was an old goblin scavenger who found him hiding in the refuse, dragging him to his feet and requesting for him to perform a task if he wished for a meal. At first, the boy blatantly refused, cursing and spitting and keeping up his refusal for many days. It was only when he no longer could walk from his starvation that he finally begged to the goblin to perform their task, the thought of death too close in his mind. The scavenger agreed, on one condition: for to boy to never beg for his life again.
That scavenger took Lutha under their wing for the next eight years; they gave him his basics, instructed him on where to find work, and kept him appropriately hidden from the guards that would search for him. His handgun now his one true companion, he practiced with it religiously, quickly swearing he would use it one day to blow his own father's head off his shoulders. He learned to overcompensate for his deafness with quick reflexes and a sharp tongue, earning the attention of traders who needed errand boys or item runners. Jobs stretched across cities and islands, Lutha finding a knack for the business of a hard bargain, keeping on his feet and staying on the run while performing for the highest bidders. All the while, the goblin drilled the laws of his new world into his head: Should he want to never go back to where he came from, then the decisions he must make in what horribly cruel world awaited him should define that. Don't accept what you cannot earn. Death is unkind and those that say they are for the people are unkinder - you are left on your own. The nobles do not care for their people, and the people could care even less for their nobles - titles mean nothing to the common man. Do not trust easily, and do not extend a hand if it means you will not survive in turn.
It was a mantra - enough to keep him moving and surviving to his next morning, establishing himself only to stay alive and wait for his chance, stewing in the resentment that fueled him to one day storm the holiest of noble quarters and take his father's life.
It was on one run that he was interrupted, demonic creatures appearing and causing havoc in an otherwise peaceful village. One of the only beings properly armed, Lutha begrudgingly joined in combat long enough to see the people evacuated, only to see his client ripped open and devoured by one of the beasts. Angered, Lutha released his temper on his fellow fighters, to which most reacted as he expected. Only one in particular, a conman by the name of Alfonso, remained unmoved by his outbursts, even going so far as promises to make amends, should Lutha allow him to. After a night of relentless asking, Lutha agreed.
The group soon discovered that all who fought had been tagged by a spiritual marker, something that the lone Wyvern of their group explained must be a curse from the gods. He warned that creatures like that would only increase in size and number, and that if it had something to do with them, then it was their responsibility to discover why they had been marked and what the gods would want from them. Though Lutha highly protested the entire story as a facade, stating his outright refusal to travel in a group with a full-blooded elf as a peer and even going so far as to completely abandon the group to return on his own, it took only one ambush of demonic monsters for him to reconsider just how deeply this encounter may have affected him.
Their journey dragged them across all of what remains of the islands, to ruins and temples and libraries in an attempt to learn what had happened to their world and how to keep it from crumbling to complete nonexistence. They learned of the deities, of their previous roles, and of a catastrophe that had happened long ago. All the while, Lutha struggled, actively grinding against the party in his initial discomfort, especially towards the elf. Aloof, uncaring, and even resorting to betrayal for the sake of not finding himself in prison, Lutha's selfish attitude was often addressed with resentment and conflict. But while Lutha impatiently waited for them to grow too frustrated and let him leave, he found himself still being dragged along. Despite how often and how hard he bit back, slowly and surely he began weaving connections.
Out of the entire group, Lutha found himself begrudgingly attaching to Alfonso, the man who made a promise to him from the start. Like a plague, the conman latched onto Lutha from the first day of their journey, subtly but consistently attempting to establish a connection despite how Lutha so often clamped down and refused to talk. They argued constantly, giving way to one another as Alfonso ripped Lutha open bit by bit with his own words, leaving him vulnerable and lashing out further, often to the expense of the rest of the party. Only as Lutha's personal window of freedom started to contract under the suspicion of patrols and noblemen did he find himself opening up willingly to Alfonso: finally speaking of his sister and her death, the anger at his father, the hatred he held towards an unforgiving world. Alfonso did not agree, but claimed he did not need to - one's experiences formed ones path, and that all one could do was take advantage of the help along the way. A bond quickly started to develop between the two.
Though minor strides were made, Lutha's elusive behavior toward the party continued to a breaking point, a couple of his companions more than eager to rip his tongue from his throat. One set of ruins, set across swamps to the north, would prove as the most dangerous of terrains to cross due to how quickly the acidic waters could kill a man. While the group debated on the best course of action, Lutha gave into heated impatience and went ahead on his own. Determined to prove the waste of time in the group efforts, Lutha struggled through, ultimately mistiming one that sends him straight into the waters of the swamp, burning through fabric and flesh alike up to his neck and chin. Even as his pursuing teammates found him and drug him out to dry ground, lack of a way to rinse him off left him quickly rushing towards death.
It was the elf who ultimately surrendered what little resources and time they had, risking her own well being in attempt to cast a healing spell and keep Lutha alive - a sentiment that he could not argue with despite how it disgusted him. Left to a sea of only his thoughts and endless pain, Lutha was brought to a proper healer, who stated that he would have been dead long ago without the actions of the elf at his side. Between the event and the disfiguring it caused him, Lutha now struggled with the rigidity of his own viewpoint for the first time, seeing differences as something more but still violently wishing not to acknowledge them. To acknowledge difference here, after all, meant he might have to do it elsewhere, and there were things he knew he could not budge on. Constant pain from scar tissue left him reliant on those around him more than was comfortable, but his verbal blows started to soften as his ability to trust in his group as a whole finally started to manifest.
After his full revival, Lutha was once again recognized, handed a notice by a passing troop of guards that states the recent death of his mother. Though his composure didn't break, the purpose of the standoff never escaped him. With his urgent goading, the party was forced to flee once more, Lutha resorting to holding a boatman at gunpoint to get them from the soldiers as fast as possible. But the inevitability of capture quickly approached. Their boat surrounded, everyone on board now threatened to be killed for numerous counts of trespassing and theft, Lutha finally acted against every betrayal he had led his party through to that moment, steeling himself and openly surrendering to allow the rest of those on board to flee. The decision was accepted with reluctance, Alfonso swearing in whispered tones that they would come to rescue him.
All the way back to Ordo he went, bound and shackled and inwardly conflicted. But for the first time in months, he finally had his sights on what he'd been starving for for a very long time - a chance at confrontation with his father. In concordance with the laws of his birthright, he was dragged into the castle courtyard, where his entire left hand was mercilessly hacked off. Through his pain, he was told he would be bandaged and imprisoned and eventually brought before his father, who would decide what would become of his life. It became one more thing his life, his birthright, and his father had stolen from him. Perhaps this one fateful moment would be his final chance to quell eight years of hate.
While imprisoned, through his delirium of pain, he heard an unfamiliar voice instructing him to "merely say the words and be granted privacy", and woke to a parchment on his person. It was a parchment he did his best to hide, even as he was brought before his father multiple times, his anger bubbling out of control more and more with each encounter. Only when he finally bit his tongue was he allowed to be unguarded around his father, and it was only then that he finally used the parchment, a private fighting grounds in which only one could leave alive.
Lutha attacked with wild abandon, his father defending himself in turn. Lutha ripped through his father with his words, and heard in response that his father had no choice in his actions, that a lack of sacrifice towards the monarchy would mean hundreds of thousands might die, and that if it hadn't been his young daughter, then he would have had to choose Lutha instead. Too enraged, Lutha refused to accept the answer as anything but an excuse, doubling down, claiming that his father was acting out of a place of heartless personal gain, that his selfishness was making him blind. But his fury started to make his actions sloppy, and his father struck him down, enough to disable him but not stop him entirely, letting Lutha take as many swings as he wanted until he held the barrel of a gun to his son's head.
"I wonder, Lutha. Aren't you doing the same thing?"
Though Lutha would claim he wasn't, that they were not the same, that he was doing what was right by his own sister, his father countered. What would his sister have wanted, if she knew so many people would die if she lived? What should have wanted to happen? Would she have wanted this kind of anger, a life wasted, happiness forgotten, for her sake? Or would she want the happiness of her people, above all else? On Lutha's refusal to respond, his father simply let the silence hang. He said he was sorry for all that had been done under his hands, and asked Lutha to do what he claimed he wanted to do, rather than what his anger had led him to do - he needed to do what Tabitha would have wanted.
And then, to stop their confinement and save his only child, Lutha's father shot himself.
With the body having vanished with the parchment's enclosed space, Lutha had a valuable, if small, window of time to process his shock. There was no feeling of fulfillment. Only dread, confusion, and a conflict that felt grossly unfamiliar. Using what little time he had left before he would be hunted down, Lutha scoured the manor records, finding copies of documents that showed more of the catastrophe - hinting at not an abandonment of a deity, but a murder from mortal greed, of lands that had been swallowed up by the sea, and of something dark that was attempting to fill the space that mankind kept digging out over a thousand years of silence.
To do what his sister would have wanted meant to find an end to it... and to do so meant to return to the people that he knew would be the only ones to use the information wisely. So as he escaped from the manor, now far emptier and purposeless than his arrival, with only reuniting with the man he considered a friend in his mind. The truth was far uglier. While he did find the group, he found that their number had changed. Nearly all were gravely injured. Alfonso had reached out to the followers of a deity, had made a bargain in exchange for a darker magic to assist Lutha, and in the process had alerted a group who collapsed the building the party had been in. Alfonso had given Lutha to kill his father, a task he did not complete, only for himself to be killed in the process amidst the rubble.
While the actions of his father had shaken Lutha, the loss of someone he'd grown close to became a true moment of clarity - of seeing just how dangerously he'd been driven, of how much he had been losing and ignoring, and how he could not take any of it back. Though dangerously close to a spiral, Lutha had never been drawn to apathy, and in his grief let himself ground in the last words of his father. To do what his sister wanted - to do what Alfonso wanted - was to share information, to try to gather themselves up... and to try to make up for the awful road his actions had turned them down, when their entire world was at stake.
Now, perhaps, they could fight for a change that would matter.
The world once was a peaceful place. Though primitive in its technology, the lands flourished with six races of creatures, all gifted with life and curiosity and the urge to explore their world. Standing at the pillars of this prosperity were the Six Deities, silent watchers who favored and blessed their individual races of choice, each in control of one part of the vital elemental flows of life. Though life presented wars of ideals and progress among the races, the Deities reliably shifted the balance as needed, overseeing the constant progression of civilization and the progression of their blessed world.
With the high position of the Deities in the balance of life, many races considered them as religious figureheads; devout clans began building temples and monasteries in their honor, praying vigilantly in wait of their constant blessing, and craving to understand their gods more so that they may please them. It was these clans that discovered magic - a creature's born ability to tap into the elemental flows - which quickly started what would be the destruction of the world.
The discovery of magic was first hailed as a sign of religious triumph. Hundreds of thousands sought to learn, but all had their reasons. What started as meditation and awareness morphed into the study of spells, enchantments, and power of will - how far could one push their mortal body against the natural flow of the earth, and what miraculous things could one accomplish? Some claimed it might be immortality, others an omniscient wisdom, while others simply saw chances for new power.
Conflicts soon arose with magic at the forefront of the battles. Power among the races shifted dramatically as militarized victories brought greater tolls on beings and land alike. The Deities, sensing the dangerous shift taking place in the people they so loved, began to lessen their blessings, to which the races only amplified their magical attempts. What delicate balance that the Deities had been carrying for millennia started to crack. For the first time, the earth itself began to fight back. Floods and earthquakes and monsoons all began to chip away at the peace that the world had otherwise taken for granted. In their distress, the beings of the world split into two categories - those that blamed the deities for the war and destruction, and those that saw them as a sign of horrible things to come.
The bloody war that followed between those two factions lasted only ten years, but in its fury, the conflict snapped the balance of magical power, claiming the life of the Deity of the seas. With the absence of her presence and blessings, her race of choice - the Ethra - were brought to a quick extinction. In their anger, the remaining deities cut off their blessings completely from the races of the world, retreating to a spiritual solitude where they continued to struggle for the balance of their world, now amplified with the loss of one of their own.
It has been one thousand years since the extinction of the Ethra.
With the loss of the Deity of Water, the elements wreaked havoc in an attempt to restore that which no longer existed. All but the most spiritual centers of water turned to acid. Precipitation began to destroy both man and beast and plant alike. Tides rose permanently, flooding entire continents, wiping out millions of the world's population along with much of the records of the Deities' struggles, and isolating those that remained on islandic nations.
The five races that remained quickly established arms of power based on remaining populations and resources. Orcs still controlled much of the military strength by pure numbers and soon crowned a king over the wasteland. Humans, while frailer and more damaged by the wars, held the high ground on trade, farming, and the dwindling state of economy. Prominent families with ties to the Orc monarchy soon found themselves pulled into nobility for the sake of the survival of what life remained. Wyverns, though scarce, were seen as the last creatures with any kind of religious touch and often controlled the few shrines and monasteries left. Goblins became the craftsmen, archaeologists and scavengers, eagerly trying to both keep the present liveable and regain what history was being lost. Lastly, on the very bottom of the social structure were the Elves; once the most magically attuned creatures, the race was now considered frail and purposeless, lacking the boldness and power that other races presented. Though not driven to extinction like their Ethra brethren, Elves were now often left to rot on the streets, serving as prostitutes, sent into slavery or used as carriers for the drug trade.
The city of Ordo, built around the holiest of lakes, has been transformed into the world's capital nightmare, providing what little supplies of food and water remain and acting as a hub of trade and politics. Those in high social, political, economical, or religious standing are treated to a life of luxury, spending their time for the people and wanting for nothing in return for their service. From there, the classes dramatically fall. Most everyone else stationed around the capital live among decaying rubble, makeshift villages or nomadic travelling groups. Food is a precious resource, water even more so, and the world becomes a violent and dangerous place to exist for the unlucky and faint-hearted. And most importantly, the history of the deities has been completely lost to the passing of generations, all but a select few still knowing what a dangerous precipice their world now hung upon.
In an attempt to regain the mythical use of "magic", a process was found to powder acidic tree bark that, when mixed with blood, became a powerful drug the color of the night sky. This "black sugar" granted tranquility, confidence, and what some claimed could help one see and speak to the spirits themselves. Because of how overwhelmingly easy it was to make, the drug trade took hold of the slums of the capital and quickly grew out of control. Even those in nobility found themselves wound up in the mess, easily pumping Black Sugar powder into the bloodstreams of slaves to use as walking bargain chips. To die from the drug is commonplace, either in overdosing attempts to see their gods, or through the blatant draining of blood and discarding of the corpses that remained. Despite its corruption, the nobility do not move to stop it so long as it does not interfere with their lives. In contrast, the common people grow to fear it, even for the money or supplies it might bring to sell one's self to the trade. Becoming a slave quickly means surrendering to the very real possibility of death.
Background:
Elutherius was born the eldest child and only son of a high-standing human family in the capital of Ordo. His father, a strict and unforgiving man, stood as a Lord and one of the key heads of distribution for goods on the Council of Elders. It was by his hand that the lesser races kept themselves alive, and likewise, how many could die if his control and will were not precise among a company of Orcs. The Lord's wife, a gentle and frivolous soul, was a nonexistent presence built completely for appearances. What times she spent with her children were to adjust clothing and hair and mannerisms, offering only glancing platitudes to soothe the often fiery words their father had towards them.
As the eldest, Lutha was told from birth that he was of a chosen few. Everything in the grasp of a noble's life, down to the smallest detail, was a birthright handed to him by the spirits themselves. This demanded a delicate but severe balance of disciplines to keep a young mind in check - branding, scarring, and mutilation of body parts were commonplace throughout the noble quarters. But despite this, Lutha never found himself questioning his place. He was educated in language, numbers, and the expansive history of both Orc and Man, learning that all other races fell below in a natural, pitiful pattern. Unable to leave the noble quarter without punishment for endangering himself, the boy took up the handgun, often climbing up onto high windowsills just to shoot passing birds. During the nights he would descent to the basements of the castles to taunt the prisoners and slaves, finding that a hatred of his status was common place. When his father berated him for his actions or attitude, Lutha only doubled his cruelty, finding a rush in how he could make someone into little more than an object with his words. The only person who escaped his anger was his younger sister, Tabitha, who was much kinder and more compassionate in heart than he felt he could ever be, garnishing a strong desire for Lutha to protect her.
It was she that lead Lutha to a breaking point. While aware of the drug trade, the young nobles were often kept far enough from the raw details to establish a level of comfort. After his tenth birthday, while searching for his sister in their home, Lutha managed to eavesdrop on a Black Sugar deal between his father and couriers for the king himself. There he discovered that, rather than a slave, it was his young sister being offered as a drugged boy, already half-dead where she lay on the trading table. Rage brought Lutha to try and intercept the meeting. When guards were unsuccessful in restraining the child, Lutha's father pulled a gun on his son, barely missing Lutha's head but successfully ripping the hearing from his left ear. After a significant struggle, he escaped, fleeing the noble's quarters and tumbling into the rotting sewers of the city below.
It was an old goblin scavenger who found him hiding in the refuse, dragging him to his feet and requesting for him to perform a task if he wished for a meal. At first, the boy blatantly refused, cursing and spitting and keeping up his refusal for many days. It was only when he no longer could walk from his starvation that he finally begged to the goblin to perform their task, the thought of death too close in his mind. The scavenger agreed, on one condition: for to boy to never beg for his life again.
That scavenger took Lutha under their wing for the next eight years; they gave him his basics, instructed him on where to find work, and kept him appropriately hidden from the guards that would search for him. His handgun now his one true companion, he practiced with it religiously, quickly swearing he would use it one day to blow his own father's head off his shoulders. He learned to overcompensate for his deafness with quick reflexes and a sharp tongue, earning the attention of traders who needed errand boys or item runners. Jobs stretched across cities and islands, Lutha finding a knack for the business of a hard bargain, keeping on his feet and staying on the run while performing for the highest bidders. All the while, the goblin drilled the laws of his new world into his head: Should he want to never go back to where he came from, then the decisions he must make in what horribly cruel world awaited him should define that. Don't accept what you cannot earn. Death is unkind and those that say they are for the people are unkinder - you are left on your own. The nobles do not care for their people, and the people could care even less for their nobles - titles mean nothing to the common man. Do not trust easily, and do not extend a hand if it means you will not survive in turn.
It was a mantra - enough to keep him moving and surviving to his next morning, establishing himself only to stay alive and wait for his chance, stewing in the resentment that fueled him to one day storm the holiest of noble quarters and take his father's life.
It was on one run that he was interrupted, demonic creatures appearing and causing havoc in an otherwise peaceful village. One of the only beings properly armed, Lutha begrudgingly joined in combat long enough to see the people evacuated, only to see his client ripped open and devoured by one of the beasts. Angered, Lutha released his temper on his fellow fighters, to which most reacted as he expected. Only one in particular, a conman by the name of Alfonso, remained unmoved by his outbursts, even going so far as promises to make amends, should Lutha allow him to. After a night of relentless asking, Lutha agreed.
The group soon discovered that all who fought had been tagged by a spiritual marker, something that the lone Wyvern of their group explained must be a curse from the gods. He warned that creatures like that would only increase in size and number, and that if it had something to do with them, then it was their responsibility to discover why they had been marked and what the gods would want from them. Though Lutha highly protested the entire story as a facade, stating his outright refusal to travel in a group with a full-blooded elf as a peer and even going so far as to completely abandon the group to return on his own, it took only one ambush of demonic monsters for him to reconsider just how deeply this encounter may have affected him.
Their journey dragged them across all of what remains of the islands, to ruins and temples and libraries in an attempt to learn what had happened to their world and how to keep it from crumbling to complete nonexistence. They learned of the deities, of their previous roles, and of a catastrophe that had happened long ago. All the while, Lutha struggled, actively grinding against the party in his initial discomfort, especially towards the elf. Aloof, uncaring, and even resorting to betrayal for the sake of not finding himself in prison, Lutha's selfish attitude was often addressed with resentment and conflict. But while Lutha impatiently waited for them to grow too frustrated and let him leave, he found himself still being dragged along. Despite how often and how hard he bit back, slowly and surely he began weaving connections.
Out of the entire group, Lutha found himself begrudgingly attaching to Alfonso, the man who made a promise to him from the start. Like a plague, the conman latched onto Lutha from the first day of their journey, subtly but consistently attempting to establish a connection despite how Lutha so often clamped down and refused to talk. They argued constantly, giving way to one another as Alfonso ripped Lutha open bit by bit with his own words, leaving him vulnerable and lashing out further, often to the expense of the rest of the party. Only as Lutha's personal window of freedom started to contract under the suspicion of patrols and noblemen did he find himself opening up willingly to Alfonso: finally speaking of his sister and her death, the anger at his father, the hatred he held towards an unforgiving world. Alfonso did not agree, but claimed he did not need to - one's experiences formed ones path, and that all one could do was take advantage of the help along the way. A bond quickly started to develop between the two.
Though minor strides were made, Lutha's elusive behavior toward the party continued to a breaking point, a couple of his companions more than eager to rip his tongue from his throat. One set of ruins, set across swamps to the north, would prove as the most dangerous of terrains to cross due to how quickly the acidic waters could kill a man. While the group debated on the best course of action, Lutha gave into heated impatience and went ahead on his own. Determined to prove the waste of time in the group efforts, Lutha struggled through, ultimately mistiming one that sends him straight into the waters of the swamp, burning through fabric and flesh alike up to his neck and chin. Even as his pursuing teammates found him and drug him out to dry ground, lack of a way to rinse him off left him quickly rushing towards death.
It was the elf who ultimately surrendered what little resources and time they had, risking her own well being in attempt to cast a healing spell and keep Lutha alive - a sentiment that he could not argue with despite how it disgusted him. Left to a sea of only his thoughts and endless pain, Lutha was brought to a proper healer, who stated that he would have been dead long ago without the actions of the elf at his side. Between the event and the disfiguring it caused him, Lutha now struggled with the rigidity of his own viewpoint for the first time, seeing differences as something more but still violently wishing not to acknowledge them. To acknowledge difference here, after all, meant he might have to do it elsewhere, and there were things he knew he could not budge on. Constant pain from scar tissue left him reliant on those around him more than was comfortable, but his verbal blows started to soften as his ability to trust in his group as a whole finally started to manifest.
After his full revival, Lutha was once again recognized, handed a notice by a passing troop of guards that states the recent death of his mother. Though his composure didn't break, the purpose of the standoff never escaped him. With his urgent goading, the party was forced to flee once more, Lutha resorting to holding a boatman at gunpoint to get them from the soldiers as fast as possible. But the inevitability of capture quickly approached. Their boat surrounded, everyone on board now threatened to be killed for numerous counts of trespassing and theft, Lutha finally acted against every betrayal he had led his party through to that moment, steeling himself and openly surrendering to allow the rest of those on board to flee. The decision was accepted with reluctance, Alfonso swearing in whispered tones that they would come to rescue him.
All the way back to Ordo he went, bound and shackled and inwardly conflicted. But for the first time in months, he finally had his sights on what he'd been starving for for a very long time - a chance at confrontation with his father. In concordance with the laws of his birthright, he was dragged into the castle courtyard, where his entire left hand was mercilessly hacked off. Through his pain, he was told he would be bandaged and imprisoned and eventually brought before his father, who would decide what would become of his life. It became one more thing his life, his birthright, and his father had stolen from him. Perhaps this one fateful moment would be his final chance to quell eight years of hate.
While imprisoned, through his delirium of pain, he heard an unfamiliar voice instructing him to "merely say the words and be granted privacy", and woke to a parchment on his person. It was a parchment he did his best to hide, even as he was brought before his father multiple times, his anger bubbling out of control more and more with each encounter. Only when he finally bit his tongue was he allowed to be unguarded around his father, and it was only then that he finally used the parchment, a private fighting grounds in which only one could leave alive.
Lutha attacked with wild abandon, his father defending himself in turn. Lutha ripped through his father with his words, and heard in response that his father had no choice in his actions, that a lack of sacrifice towards the monarchy would mean hundreds of thousands might die, and that if it hadn't been his young daughter, then he would have had to choose Lutha instead. Too enraged, Lutha refused to accept the answer as anything but an excuse, doubling down, claiming that his father was acting out of a place of heartless personal gain, that his selfishness was making him blind. But his fury started to make his actions sloppy, and his father struck him down, enough to disable him but not stop him entirely, letting Lutha take as many swings as he wanted until he held the barrel of a gun to his son's head.
"I wonder, Lutha. Aren't you doing the same thing?"
Though Lutha would claim he wasn't, that they were not the same, that he was doing what was right by his own sister, his father countered. What would his sister have wanted, if she knew so many people would die if she lived? What should have wanted to happen? Would she have wanted this kind of anger, a life wasted, happiness forgotten, for her sake? Or would she want the happiness of her people, above all else? On Lutha's refusal to respond, his father simply let the silence hang. He said he was sorry for all that had been done under his hands, and asked Lutha to do what he claimed he wanted to do, rather than what his anger had led him to do - he needed to do what Tabitha would have wanted.
And then, to stop their confinement and save his only child, Lutha's father shot himself.
With the body having vanished with the parchment's enclosed space, Lutha had a valuable, if small, window of time to process his shock. There was no feeling of fulfillment. Only dread, confusion, and a conflict that felt grossly unfamiliar. Using what little time he had left before he would be hunted down, Lutha scoured the manor records, finding copies of documents that showed more of the catastrophe - hinting at not an abandonment of a deity, but a murder from mortal greed, of lands that had been swallowed up by the sea, and of something dark that was attempting to fill the space that mankind kept digging out over a thousand years of silence.
To do what his sister would have wanted meant to find an end to it... and to do so meant to return to the people that he knew would be the only ones to use the information wisely. So as he escaped from the manor, now far emptier and purposeless than his arrival, with only reuniting with the man he considered a friend in his mind. The truth was far uglier. While he did find the group, he found that their number had changed. Nearly all were gravely injured. Alfonso had reached out to the followers of a deity, had made a bargain in exchange for a darker magic to assist Lutha, and in the process had alerted a group who collapsed the building the party had been in. Alfonso had given Lutha to kill his father, a task he did not complete, only for himself to be killed in the process amidst the rubble.
While the actions of his father had shaken Lutha, the loss of someone he'd grown close to became a true moment of clarity - of seeing just how dangerously he'd been driven, of how much he had been losing and ignoring, and how he could not take any of it back. Though dangerously close to a spiral, Lutha had never been drawn to apathy, and in his grief let himself ground in the last words of his father. To do what his sister wanted - to do what Alfonso wanted - was to share information, to try to gather themselves up... and to try to make up for the awful road his actions had turned them down, when their entire world was at stake.
Now, perhaps, they could fight for a change that would matter.