Keine Aiur

Human cleric from the Order of Sindu, and former dark priest for the Cult of Zeimar, God of Evil.

History

Throughout time, many stories have been told of children who, suddenly orphaned by the tragic death of their parents, were raised by kind and gentle people, eager to give a lost child a better chance in the world. This is not one of those stories. There are other stories, told to frighten children around a campfire, of little orphan boys and girls whose childhood was far more tragic and dreadful after the death of ma and da. Your story is one of these. You don’t remember your birth parents, but it is likely to say that they were murdered by those who fostered you. Deep in the haunts of woods and caves, where no man dares enter and no creature will roam, far from the wish and whim of Man and Elf, lurks the Heart of Zeimar, the insidious followers of the Lord of Evil. Two of these cultists, Gamar and Nystil, took an orphan boy and reared him in the Dark Path, until the boy became a man and claimed his own place among the Tainted Priests as Ashan’gar, the Wicked One. One day, the occult warriors ravaged a small village near the Keshian border, slaughtering the men and sacrificing the women and children. You, your sword slick with the blood of innocents, came up the last surviving adult male, standing alone in the town square. As you approached him, he did not run, but stood, leaning on his oak staff. “Why don’t you run, old man?” you asked. “Your death draws near.” “I don’t fear death, but I do wish to see it coming. It would be a pity to have such an important event sneak up on you,” he replied. Mildly curious, you asked him if he was a holy man. No, he said, but I am a spiritual man. You sneered and told him that there was no difference, and that you too were a priest. He shook his head sadly and quietly replied, we are not alike. I am a Sindu Cleric, a man who placed his faith not in the divine, but in his own humanity. Men, not gods, were the creators of the world’s greatest achievements and foulest transgressions. With a cruel laugh, you asked him why he did not smite you down with his “spiritual powers,” he only smiled faintly. “You will understand someday, I think,” he answered. With a swift stroke, you severed the old man’s head from his body. “Not today.” Yet as the days passed on, the old man’s face was seared in your mind’s eye. There had been many murders before this one, but none had haunted you like the Sindu Cleric. Blind fury raged in your mind, and you realized that the source of your anger was the look on his face before you killed him. It was not fear or shock or even acceptance of death; it was far worse. Pity. How dare he pity you! And behind your seething anger, one question hammered away: why did he feel sorry for you? Your inner torment continued unabated. The unholy rituals had lost their luster; even the slaughter of peasants could not raise your deep and brooding depression. Gamar and Nystil responded to your questions with meaningless dogma and one day, you left the Tainted Priests to seek your own answers. Far across the human world you traveled, but found nothing. Across the windswept sands of Ta’Na’Rul, known as Kesh in the human tongue, the dark priest trekked, until he came upon a simple wooden building near Tiranor which housed the Order of the Sindu. You stormed into the great hall demanding answers, but all your attempts to coerce the clerics met with the same kind of words and sympathetic expressions you had seen on the old man who haunted your soul. Later, you would find it hard to explain how your conversion took place, only that one day you set down your dark sword and replaced it with the simple oak staff of the Sindu. On the day of your Awakening, a celebration for your ascension as a new member of the order, the head cleric said that you must bring closure to your past life in order to fully embark on this new journey. What would you have me do, you asked. He shook his head, replying that only you would know what course of action that entailed. Nodding, you excused yourself politely from the table and returned to your quarters. Unlocking the large chest in the corner of your room, you stared at the dark greatsword, a present from Gamar and Nystil on your naming day. For the last time, you picked up the weapon and left the great hall. Many stories tell of heroes with dark pasts who are converted to good, and in doing so, take an artifact of that shadowed history and throw it into a river. It’s an act of symbolism, that one has finally discarded his evil nature. But the Sindu Clerics are practical priests, unconcerned with symbolism, and this is not one of those stories. Deep in the haunted woods, the Tainted Priests paused in the middle of their child sacrifice as you entered their circle once more. Your foster parents, Gamar and Nystil, smiled as you approached them. We are pleased to see you again, Ashan’gar. We knew that you would return to the warm embrace of the Dark One once more. With a smile, you decapitated your parents with a single stroke of your sword. “Not today.” The fire raged behind you, the smell of burning flesh thick in the air. Your sword, once stained with the blood of innocents, now slick with the blood of the sinister, lay discarded on the ground. With staff in hand, you once again started toward Kesh, never looking back.