//// A few final entries are to come, but here's something of where he left off. His ECDQ submission:
Prologue- another look at his beginnings:
There was a young boy, feeble, sickly, but sharp witted. Somewhat prone to foolishness, but what young boy isn't, the headmistress would say. He was an orphan under the charge of Leilon's Home for Delinquents. It still exists today, although there is a different headmistress. The Home is nothing more than an orphanage- a place for lost and helpless children to live, learn a trade, and be tied to an apprentice. And so it was with this boy. He lived there, from infancy until he was 12 years old.
This boy had a hard time keeping up with the other children when they played tag in the yard, but learned to read and write in half the time the others did. The only problem was, he knew he was smart, even as a child, and was proud. Proud until the day his wit didn't save him from a sound beating.
He'd learned the favorite games of the sailors quickly- dice, Dead Man's draw, and others. He also learned he could make quite a bit of coin with a careful stacking of the deck. So he'd sneak out after curfew and head to the local taverns. He'd bounce from gambler to gambler, skimming just enough from each not to anger the drunkards.
A certain sailor noticed how the boy always left with more than he came with. This sailor wasn't a gambler, but he often watched the games. After a few times of watching the boy, he decided to make some profit himself, and waited for the boy to leave dockside. Easily convincing the sods who'd gotten swindled to help him get their money back, the sailor and his cronies waylaid the boy, surrounding him in the back alleys.
This sailor was not the only one to notice the skinny, limping boy with the flashing smile to match the flash of coin in his purse. While the sailors cracked open the boy's jaw, another trap was being laid. The boy went down in a single hit, and a number of the men wondered why they hadn't thought of this earlier. Just as they began to argue over who got how much of the boy's purse, the light from their torches were snuffed out, as were the stars in the sky. They stood in a stupor trying in vain to see through the black air. With several loud thumps and one crack, the sailors all crumpled to the ground. The shroud of darkness lifted and a dwarf, short even by the standards of his race, stood over the boy, leaning on the staff he'd just used to make the sailors' hangovers ten times worse.
He carried the boy back to the Home for Delinquents, and the boy spent the next few weeks recovering. During this time, the claimed an interest in taking the boy on as an apprentice. The headmistress was both suprised and concerned, but not in any position to argue. And thus, when the boy recovered, he became apprentice to the master bookkeeper of Leilon.
The bookkeeper was as swarthy a dwarf as any, and less patient, but he knew the boy's mind was quick, and could be better used for things other than gambling. Yet the book knowledge was only a small piece of what this old dwarf had to offer the boy. The dwarf saw something beyond the sickly boy's appearance.
So, along with the boy's lessons in calligraphy, binding repair, and the like, the boy also had to run. The dwarf would scamper along behind him, thumping the back of the boy's head if he slowed down too much. He made the boy eat full meals five times a day, and forced him into performing ever more challenging physical feats as the years passed.
At first, the boy thought the dwarf was trying to kill him. He could barely keep up, and his body was wracked with pain that would sometimes send him into heavy fevers. Not only were his muscles atrophied from little use, but they were underdeveloped thanks to the disease that ate at him as a babe. But the dwarf never let up, and always seemed to produce the right remedy to at least calm the boy's current mallady.
Eventually, the boy began to find strength. And this taste wet his appetite for more. Soon, he would charge into the regimen on his own, and as he grew into manhood, began to match the dwarf's own wily strength. It took the boy the longest to get over the limp he had carried with him his entire boyhood, but once that was gone, he felt the world would be his.
He began to yearn to see the rest of the world, especially after conquoring every book in the library. Seeing this, the bookeeper allowed the now adolescent boy to take his place in traveling Mistone to procure copies of new texts. It was on several of these journies that the boy visited Blackford castle, its library, and he was always impressed with the Queen's soldiers, or, really, their show of strength. It was on one of these visits he was allowed to watch the soldiers in the training fields while he waited. On the field that day was one of the Queen's captains, and he was teaching a unit how to use a type of sword more immense than any he had ever seen. He was not quite sure how they even managed to swing it. It was that day he determined he too would learn to use such a blade.
And so it came to pass in the years following that he informed his master, the bookkeeper, he would be joining the ranks of the Queen's soldiers. As usual, the dwarf's face was as unreadable as carved stone, but he gave his consent. When the boy left, the dwarf let a smirk sneak across his face.
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List of things that need to be addressed for Cole's ECDQ (that is, things we discuss):
1)
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Breathing slowly, quietly, he looked at himself in the mirror. He held his dagger, a bronze dagger he'd constructed over a decade ago. He forced the tip of the dagger an inch deep into a bare forearm, his forearm. Drawing it out, grimacing, the blood immediately came to the surface. Instead of flowing out, however, it stopped at the surface. He watched as it slowly drained back into his arm, and within a minute the skin was sealing itself back up- on its own. What have I become? he thought.
Sitting at his desk, closing his eyes, shadows swirled beneath his eyelids. Their voices whispered in the darkness of his mind. Incoherent, yet he listened. The voices became shapes imprinted on a background of the void. Figures that danced and slithered and merged until they were no longer beings. Colors flashed from the black and filled the merging shadows until pictures, scenes of places across the world, came to life, as though he were standing in them. Things he had seen; things he hadn't. The volcanic peaks of Firesteep, the underwater depths of the Bay of Carocsa, the bustling streets of Pranzis.
He stood on a ledge in the Grey Peaks of his mind, and looked down at himself. What he saw was shadow. He was shadow, dark and spiraling with wisps of murky air.
His eyes opened, and he was again sitting at his desk, notes scattered across it, all quiet.
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How the Lumbral has effected him. Specifically, how the effects of regeneration and connection to the shadows will affect/have affected his aging. Even apart fom that aspect, however, the whispering of the shadows nearly drove him insane, which is hinted at in his journal. He still occassionally lapses into speaking the shadow language unconsciously, sometimes in mid-conversation with someone, or in mumbling to himself. He especially has problems containing the whispers when he is in an emotional strain. The way that he's learned to shut them out, or at least maintain some control is to continuously play cards, Creatures, in his head. Originally, after the affair with the Lumbral, he despised the shadows, for wrecking his mind so, but has more recently come to a term with them, and keeps his peace. Whether that means he is slipping even more, or that he has finally gained a real measure of control is yet to be seen. At this time, he is involved once more with the Lumbral, through Lalaith's ECDQ, and still with shadows in Ashiel's CDQ. He can never seem to escape them, and strangely, they give him strength.
2) His study of magic. Mentors include Yardislan and Aleister. He learns magic very slowly, but is self taught, which may be a reason for the immense time it takes for him to master even the simplest of cantrips. He's learned through the study of scrolls, primarily, as well as other resources from the libraries of the lands, and observations of his magely friends. He is not, and never was, a mage in the normal sense of the word. When he was young, he learned the usefulness of magic through his readings as an apprentice to the dwarven bookkeeper, and continued to read on the subject in his spare time while he was stationed at Blackford in the Queen's military. He got his hands on a few magical scrolls in his early travels as a freeblade, and began his practice from there. He treats the magic he knows much like the acid flasks and tanglefoot bags he keeps in his travel bags: they are fine tricks to accomplish one's goals- tools, but not the definition of his strength. In the past year and a half, Yardislan has taught him how to scribe for himself. He's learned this process with decent speed, and produces minor scrolls which he uses himself on a regular basis. During the battles against Bloodstone's generals, among other incidents, he's come to believe magic is not only a useful tool, but a necessary one. To that end, he has redoubled his efforts to learn stronger magics, and with the aid of Yardislan, and his study of the elven language, he is making progress, even so far as to be able to cast his magic with only a word, no longer requiring the elaborate gestures that he so often botched while wearing his full plate armor.
3) His study of languages (at this point, he's been studying Elven for the past several in-game years, but that's all). He has now spent some 4-5 years studying the Elven language. He keeps practice sheets and translation guides with him at all times. Yardislan has seen to it Cole keeps advancing, even writing up some of the practice sheets himself. At one time, Acacea also helped Cole learn words and phrases, which he still remembers to this day. (like "Tyea illw ilca." - Pie and ale.). This study has, however proven most useful in his study of magic, as much about the Weave has been written by the Elves. He now regular picks out pieces of Elven conversation, and occasionally speaks the tongue himself in reply.
4) His reputation as a mercenary. He is renowned throught Mistone as for being a willing, if eccentric help for near any problem, so long as pay is offered. To the surprise of many, he is not particularly picky about what the payment is, so long as he gets paid. Thanks to that attitude, he has been paid for his services with everything from pie to servitude, from gold to kisses. He is known for being both dangerous and adventure loving, and, mostly, for having no fear of death. He has contracts with both major trade guilds, the Freelancers and Raven. Also, although he is no longer a soldier of the Queen, he always takes a job if it has anything to do with protecting the Queen. He maintains a deep loyalty to her. He became a mercenary because it seemed the best way at the time of fulfilling his dream to see the world, and everything in it, with his own two eyes. He was not wrong. His work has taken him to the far reaches and back.
5)
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Taking his right hand in both of hers, she greeted him with a smile.
"And how's my fair Norseman today?"
"Still alive, don't ye know it! Ha! And 'ow are ye, me fair headmistress?"
"As good as can be expected. A few more wrinkles and grey hair everyday, and you can thank those twins for that, you certainly can."
She smirked and he laughed and kissed both her cheeks.
"Aye, mum. I'll be hevvin a word wit 'em. In the mean time, go put this away afore the tax collectors notice ye carryin' it."
He handed her a hefty burlap sack. She held it up and pondered a moment.
"It's heavier than usual, my son."
"I buried a box of trinkets in the middle fer ye and the girls. Jes don't tell the boys lest they gets the jealousies. I'll bring sumthin' fer them next time. Is there anything else ye be needin'?"
"Actually, there is one thing... If you could speak to the contractor we arranged to build the new structure, I'd appreciate it. He seems to have it in his head we're building a palace instead of an boarding house, and insists on a sum of gold well beyond our initial figures for the cost of the building."
"Ye talkin' about old Finney?"
"Yes."
"Oi. I'll hev a chat wit 'im. He should know better than te git greedy wit the pride of the Norseman."
"Thank you. Oh, and before I forget, Lynn made something for you."
Retrieving a box from her the top of her desk, she held it up to him, opening the lid just enough for him to catch a whiff of what was inside. He grinned and took the box.
"I see ye med good use of them nuts and fruits I brought ye last time."
"Lynn did anyway. Not that you didn't go on and on about your favorite kind of pie last time you were here. That reminds me, tell Derrick thank you again for me. The children really enjoyed the small feast the Arms prepared for them last Wedlar."
"Aye, will do. And I'd lek te stick around and chat wit ye some more, Catherine, but I hev many more miles yet te travel. Tell the children I'm sorry I missed them."
"You'd better at least see Lynn, you old barbarian, and thank her for the pie."
"But- "
"I'll fetch her. Stay right here."
"Aye."
Grinning, shaking his head, Cole watched the headmistress leave the office, and took a moment to get another peek at the pecan pie.
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His ties to Leilon. That is, the Orphanage he grew up in and now helps fund, the Arms, and others his reputation has connected him with. His journal covers a lot of the orphange stuff. He is also in the midst of helping Jennara build a new orphanage in Roldem. Oddly enough, he is about to sire a child of his own, that is, it's still in the womb. He also has a love for "his" city, and wants to see it prosper.
6) His ties to Blackford, from his days in the military of the Queen. He still visits Blackford regularly, to use its library, and the portal to the Great Library. He has been in the presence of the Queen multiple times, though has not been directly addressed by her. He is fiercely loyal to the Allurial, despite having left her army as soon as his first term was up. He is well known amongst the guards, and armsmasters stationed there, though not so much by the officers. When Drezneb attacked Blackford, he was there to defend the castle, and immediately joined the forces who gathered to determine how to strike back at Drezneb, no pay included.
7) His relationships to the multiple dieties. Specifically, whether or not he will begin to lean more heavily toward one or stay as he is and align with none of them. He has often relied upon the help of Aragen in his studies. He has witnessed the rites of Lucinda, and uses the Weave, and has many friends among the mages. He has cursed Dorand, and Dorand has spoken back in return, until they both came to a measure of agreement (a little DM intervention, not actually quest related)- agreement to not like each other and leave it at that. He grew up in the shadow of Mist, yet gets violently seasick. He lost his first love to the ocean, to Mist. He has been in close contact with the followers of Katia, Aeridin, Rofirein, and Toran, and has prayed at times to all of them. He has many friends among the halflings, though does not often confer with Deliar, and the same goes with Xeenites- many friends among them, but seldom has anything to do with their god.
His training program and his apprentices. Eventually, I see him building a training facility and hostel for young freeblades- something of a mercenary school. Four apprentices have already completed his training, and he still has another under his charge. Not all use his chosen weapon, and not all are human, though often they are female, which is a strange thing, since he is neither handsome nor genteel. Miss Krows, Miss Reyer, and Miss Briams are among those who've trained under the Norseman. His current apprentice is a Miss Greystone. He has a developed curriculum, designed to teach young warriors to use their greatest weapon: their mind. He forces them into situations where a warrior's first insinct - to fight - makes the task much more difficult, or even impossible. The curriculum has become standard, though he alters it slightly to fit the different apprentices.
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As previously mentioned in the PM to Pankoki, I'd like Cole's ECDQ to involve a contract from Queen Allurial herself (or one of her operatives). The job would involve some sort of covert, extra-military operation that Cole would oversee. It should be something that calls more upon his mind and array of skills and resources than on the use of Wicked (his greatsword). The more of the topics mentioned above it could encompass, the better.
