What's your story?

I think it would be really cool and a really nice opportunity if people told their character's stories before, like the journal section except you don't have to write entries.

Zalastra was the product of a father who was dead before he could remember him and a mother who was a furglewort addict; born and raised in Mercinae in a low-end basement flat near the end of Beggar's way. His mother worked as a barmaid in a local tavern and, when she wasn't doped up on 'the wort', did her best to try to keep her son fed. She always had a pleasant, upbeat disposition despite her less than exemplary and inattentive parenting skills. When on the wort though, as she was most times, she would simply slip away into her hallucinations and forget Zalastra even existed.

As he grew into his adulthood, Zalastra did as well as could be hoped for a street rat such as himself. He upheld his morals, but often had to resort to begging for food. He was on the brink of starvation and contemplating ending his misery by leaping from a nearby rooftop, or other such dramatic, when he did witness a sight to behold... A wandering bard, one of the few minstrels of the land, was to hold a public performance in a celebration of the winter solstice. Of course, Zalastra had seen many other such performances, but none ever by a true bard as talented as this one. While in attendance, the very music instilled Zalastra with a strength and warmth. It did seem to return his meat to his bones! Above all else, though, as Zalastra beheld the public spectacle of joy and vigor, he regained his will to live and vowed to become the ideal which the performing bard represented to return hope to the land...

That is, only if Zalastra was able to survive the winter... Try as he did, Zalastra was never able to find the bard after the performance was over, as he sought to ask the bard to instruct him in the melodic ways of song and dance. And so, Zalastra was no closer to achieving his goal than where he stood as a simple beggar.

However, our aspiring young minstrel had cunning and resourcefulness in his favour, so he improvised. He started with a rusted bucket and a pair of cartwheel spokes he found in a corner and began playing his wooden drums for his food, to a much greater return in money after he had the chance to practice. Then he slowly progressed on to other instruments until he could finally afford his own lute at the age of 16.

By then, his mother had suffered a non-lethal overdose of furglewort, and has since remained a brain-dead resident at the Halls of Healing, where attempts to restore her mind have been, as yet, unsuccessful. This turn of events, together with a few extended spells of starvation due to slow winter months, severely dulled Zalastra's faith in his ideals and those of humanity at large. Often, he would grow despondent and succumb to the same demon that plagued his mother, furglewort, together with the more powerful, but harder to find, poison, grelixar.

Eventually, at the age of 18, he was arrested by a Mercinaen authority for possession of a controlled substance, public indecency, and disturbing the peace when he ran streaking through Cassiandora Square shouting obscenities while under the effects of grelixar. Fortunately, Zalastra was let off easily when he agreed to undergo a drug rehabilitation program hosted by the Knights of Mercinae. While under the supervision of the Knights, he learned to control his addictive urges to a small degree and ultimately decided that he needed to do something more meaningful with his life, whereupon he drew upon he bardic inspiration to save money to enter the School of Mercinae where he would study history, geology, mathematics, and survival skills in order to gain acceptance in the Bard's Guild.

Which brings Zalastra to where he is today: a rehabilitated drug addict wandering the lands in hopes inspiring people, not in the name of justice and light, but simply to inspire people to do something.

this has to be the funniest thing I've read on this site to date...
And you left out your drinking problem...along with the fact that you can't hold your fluids...

Two weeks... I'm disappointed that nobody else has posted here yet... Especially at you Leona, for creating this thread and not putting your own character story here!

*urges everyone to post some fluff*

EDIT: Woohoo! Thanks Moony!

I wanna post, but got something planned.... I'll put a Coming Soon here

Bah!
Just for future reference and to get Zalastra off my ass, I will in fact be posting a story on here shortly.
And in our defense you did set the bar pretty high, so shut your damn piehole!!!

Still waiting for Leona and Moonflight's stories years later! Ha. (And Moonflight has quite an interesting tale, don't you know.)

So I'll spin a yarn about Bodhin.

Bodhin was born in Mercinae but spent much of his childhood in other lands, with a single father who had magical abilities but only used them for personal profit, a sort of mage-merchant who traveled to different worlds and some say he even traveled through time, using this ability to exploit markets until he was killed by a sorcerer. Little is known of Bodhin's mother except that she left the marriage and her son behind, preferring life in the woods.

Before his murder, Bodhin's father dropped the boy home in Mercinae, boxed him on the ear, and sent him to city school to make his way in the world. He then disappeared into a blazing gateway and that was the last Bodhin ever saw of him until the unhappy evening a slathering wight demon dropped a severed hand bearing a distinctive tattoo that informed him his father was dead.

Ever after, Bodhin has kept pretty much to himself although he is friendly enough. He bonded with a mage named Firentz and joined the mage guild, later following Firentz to Parrius and the Enchanters Guild. As a Parrian, Bodhin grew into a sort of polite mage pirate, using magic for his own interests much as his father did. He served as a baron of Parrius and as of the year 1091 is serving his second term as Guildmaster of the Enchanters, although these days the guild is limited to Zersiax and Bodhin.

Elsewhere on this site, in the section for characters' journals and such, there is a small collection of stories about Bodhin and Zersiax, the guild's tutor. Zersiax still instructs Bodhin on the ways of magic, and the guildhouse quietly waits for another apprentice to appear. It is the year 1091 and Bodhin is 84 years old, still young in Avalon years.

Cute stories really.

Malebolgia doesn't have any parents, not at least in the sense that you humans understand. If I'm forced to explain myself I would say that my Father is Darkness and my mother is Malice. My origin is Decadence, Death and Sorrow.

I wasn't born as a normal human child either.

My presence in this land was gradual, the result of hatred and envy. The accumulation of despair and darkness suddenly gave way to my initial flesh. From the very beginning my goals were determined, my path was set. I was destined to become the scourge of the light, the harbinger of death. Even my name was specifically chosen to signal that destiny.

It has not been an easy path, but my undead heart is quite happy with what I have become after these years. Perhaps some day I'll expand on my early adventures, but right now I must go and find some blood, the thirst is too painful, and my lust for human flesh is killing me... see you soon my little prey