Character Name: Arestes
Current Level: 20
EXP to Level to NEXT level: 800k to level 21.
- The Bio:
Go here to see Arestes’ initial bio.
After Arestes arrived in Hlint, he didn’t really know where he would fit in. But he made a few friends regardless: Zaraun, Tarradon, Serenity among them. The Red Light Goblins, lazy Orcs and Hooked Horrors all had regular lethal visits from Arestes and Zaraun.
Arestes had forgotten about his latent abilities then, for he repressed them as a bad memory of his past and did his best not to think about them. He didn’t tell anyone of his past, nor did he ask of theirs, for he believed it was not his place.
It was one fateful day when he realised that trying to forget about his parents and his settlement entirely was in actual fact insulting their memory, for who was to remember them and their exploits if he was to forget? And so he invited the otherwise cold killer Zaraun to the peaceful Stag Forest and told her all of his past. Remembering his past released his repressed abilities, and he changed for the first time since escaping from the Lich; into the form of a Dragonling.
Time passed, and Arestes honed his abilities as best he could, trying to strengthen his mind, for what could happen to innocents if he lost control?
Even so, Arestes never had the most stable of minds and he would oftentimes sink into depression or guilt, feeling as though he was a failure at a task or that harm that came to others was his fault. Serenity would frequently find him in the Grove of Katia during these times and try to calm his mind.
Serenity was perhaps Arestes’ greatest support then, in the same way the central pillar keeps a building from collapsing. She was to be the cause of a new shape, and of one of his deepest bouts of depression. For it was during quite a heated argument with Serenity that Arestes lost his temper, and his control, and suddenly found himself in the form of a Minotaur, choking Serenity.
Arestes cared for her, and when he learned that she had developed affections for the “normal” druid, Rhizome, he broke, sinking deeper and deeper into depression and hatred.
It was only because of his old friend Tarradon that Arestes managed to regain a purpose of life again. He learned that a Brotherhood had killed Tarradon's beloved, and even though she had been resurrected, she had been cruelly taken from him, and so Arestes promised Tarradon that he would help avenge this. This turned out to be a far grander and deeper plot, dealing with dragons being enslaved into eternal guardian constructs, crystals of great power that could animate the perfect flawless construct, an ancient order of mages called the Arcanists of the Moon whose leader had supposedly lived for hundreds of years beyond what was normal, a small girl predestined to be the centre of all this, the machinations of an evil drow and much much more.
It was only through the effort of many that the puzzles were solved, golems bashed, ancient items unearthed, the girl saved, and the rift to the world of spirits closed before it could be used to bring evil and undeath onto Layonara.
Arestes learned much from this adventure, made many new friends, discovered new shapes and even gained membership in what turned out to be a not-so morally corrupt Brotherhood.
One of the events that led to a new shape in Arestes’ arsenal was when Serenity, Buppi, and he were captured by drow using foul sleeping poison, and stuffed in cages underground. They all witnessed malicious torture and murder of the drow, and with practically no hope for escape. It was only after watching what the drow had done to their own kin that a path of escape became apparent, and Arestes changed into a fearsome Drider.
During further adventures Arestes made yet more friends: Reventage, Brac’ar, Remiel, Athus, Buppi, Hargranar, Kobal, Ozy, Maedhras and more. However, changing shape as Arestes does doesn’t help friendships, as one is likely have a vendetta against one creature or another. So Arestes learned on one fateful night.
He “awoke” in a strange realm of darkness and glowing blue lights, along with Reventage, three strange, mirrored doorways loomed before them.
Through the first door Arestes saw what had become of his home, masses of living dead, and they all blamed him for their deaths. Through the second door Arestes saw Serenity, and through the third he met his Lich nemesis. All the while Rev was panicking more and more due to ethereal shapes of Illithid. Arestes thought it was their mind bending powers messing with them both, but discovered that it was actually himself causing this dreamscape, he had dragged them both inside to witness his own guilt. Arestes gained the shape of the Mind Flayer then, but lost a friend, as Reventage has yet to forgive him for exposing her to her fear of the brain-eating monstrosities, he doubts that she ever will.
Losing a friend to his latent abilities sunk Arestes into another bout of self loathing and distrust; one from which he has never quite recovered. If he couldn't trust his own mind, then how would he be able to protect his friends and keep them safe? Better to keep people at a distance, he believes, because he could be a danger to them.
A chance encounter in a campground, however, gave a tiny spark of hope. A young druid, Maedhras, came upon him one night as he lay sobbing for all he was, deep in one of his depressions. She stopped and talked with him, and in the course of that conversation she spoke of the gift from Katia they both bore. Arestes learned that not everyone would run from his shapes; that there were those who understood, and could still see his soul in his shapeshifting.
Amongst other adventures Arestes has taken part in can be mentioned the Quest to aid the Golden Vipers in their pursuit of the drow, duergar and their fiendish allies, leading as low as the Great Rift, and as high as the very dreams.
Of worthy mention is also the saga of the Dark Angel, which first started as a mistake Tarradon made, when he threw a vial of divine essence at a vile fiend, that fused into a being that we later came to know as the Dark Angel.
It struck back, trying to steal the clergy of many deities and use them to power itself, it also moved to steal the very power of Sielwood forest and corrupt its heart. And though it succeeded in doing so, the forces of nature that the party of many, including Arestes, represented were able to succeed in cleansing the taint of the Dark Angel from the forest. And so the fight began to fight the Dark Angel and its darkness itself, many fiends were slain, but also the aid of fiends was gained. Pyrtechon's temple on the slopes of the Firesteep Mountains was infiltrated to secure a piece of basalt from the sacred statue of Pyrtechon. It was this piece of basalt that Arestes carried for a while which corrupted him; he vaguely began to resemble the dragon he could change into, even when human, and he could speak the language of the Dragons. If it was not for Reventage convincing him to give up the basalt, Arestes might have been in Pyrtechon's fold today. The changes to his normal form subsided, but the draconic language remained.
A chausuble had to be recovered also, and fused with the basalt, celestial and infernal essences, to create a scion of binding that could make the Dark Angel mortal. This plan was but another machination, as this allowed another to rise to power using the scion, with the corrupted undead champion of Toran, Navarre, at its side.
Arestes joined in the assault that Remiel led on Toran's domain to defeat the Dark Angel once and for all, and save Remiel's family in the process. The Dark Angel was destroyed, but Navarre still roams.
All these events and more have shaped Arestes into who he is today …
- The Quest:
What I would like to happen on Arestes’ epic quest is for him to try to hunt down his Lich nemesis. As it was proved on the event (More like dream, really) where he got his Illithid shape, it really eats at him that the Lich is still out there after having done such a horrible thing. So, obviously Arestes would seek to end its unnatural existence once and for all, phylactery and all.
If he succeeds in this, it would of course give him a small boost of confidence, something he is sorely lacking. Also lift a burden of his shoulders, since he feels it was his fault the Lich came and wiped his village out.
Since Arestes has no idea where the Lich fled to after he shifted for the first time, the ECDQ should probably involve searching for it. Since going epic means gaining Undead Shape, I was thinking something along the lines of the Lich being on/involved with, the Forsaken Islands, since any living being going there gets turned into an undead sooner or later. Perhaps Arestes would need the Undead shape to combat the Lich, or perhaps the Lich could just have fled to those islands, that is up to the GM running it, basically.
Since Ed has been running a few quests involving those islands, the assigned GM should probably talk to him, to get a few ideas.
As for GM I’d like to run this, well, Stormspirit (and crew) ran the Illithid CDQ, and knows the character fairly well I would say, he should be able to come up with a suitable story, if slightly evil
As for further epic development, apart from new shapes, will just have to wait and see.
