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» Chapter 2 The Skinsaw Murders
Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeSun Jan 03, 2016 10:19 pm by GM - Phil

» Toraq's Backstory
Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeSat Jun 06, 2015 2:58 pm by Sammyglow

» Sandpoint Hinter Lands
Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeTue May 19, 2015 10:29 pm by GM - Phil

» THE SKINSAW MURDERS
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» poison time
Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeMon May 11, 2015 11:00 pm by GM - Phil

» Baelfires death
Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeSat May 09, 2015 12:28 pm by ulvein

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Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeTue May 05, 2015 10:16 am by Party Badass McKowskie

» down time after the feast for clearing thistle top.
Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeThu Apr 23, 2015 7:41 am by benjohnbo

» the truth and nothing but the truth
Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeMon Apr 20, 2015 9:05 am by GM - Phil

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 Toraq's Backstory

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Sammyglow




Posts : 1
Join date : 2015-03-14
Age : 34

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PostSubject: Toraq's Backstory    Toraq's Backstory  Icon_minitimeSat Jun 06, 2015 2:58 pm

The Story of Toraq

This is not a happy tale.
This is a tale of a fall from grace; the shaming of a beloved King, the renunciation of a young prince and scandal that shook a kingdom.

What follows are the true events of our hero Toraq

The night was young, as the pains of childbirth grew more intense. For all that the poor woman knew from a life of agony, nothing had prepared her for what she experienced that night. This was surely the price she must pay for the sins she had committed. It was said that humans were not allowed to even step foot in Iadara, the beautiful capital of the elven kingdom of Kyonin, yet here she was in the keep of the castle giving birth to a son. For a human to give birth to an elf is in and of itself a feat, but this was no ordinary elf she bore, for her son was the son of the King.

It was a forbidden love. She had met the King during a night in Kyonin, where her caravan had stopped to rest and resupply before beginning the perilous journey through the Five Kings Mountains in route to her home of Andoran on the coast of the Inner Sea. Being the daughter of a sailor, she felt much more at home on the sea than she did on land, but the 4-month journey to the River Kingdoms had been a wonderful opportunity to see new lands.

The party was in a hurry to return to Andoran before the first of Lamashan to avoid the potential of heavy snow in the Mountains. Once snow began to accumulate in the pass of the Kings it would close the pass to travelers until the first of spring when the snow finally began to melt. The thought of snow, however, was far from the woman’s mind as she enjoyed the smells and slight cool in the breeze that accompanies the first day of fall.

She journeyed as part of Royal caravan, which sought for form an alliance with the newly appointed Governor of Gralton, Hannon Gralt, and to provide any support the struggling state may need in firmly establishing itself within the tumultuous River Kingdoms. The young woman assumed the role of Royal Ambassador while on the trip with her calm demeanor and noble deportment. Dressed in the finest silks Andoran had to offer and adorned in jewelry crafted in the Dwarvan Kingdom of Kraggodan, the maiden surely looked the part of royalty, and played the part well when she dined at the Governor’s table.
That dinner had been the highlight of her meal. The way the musicians played, and the bards sang made her feel like a queen in a castle. She imagined herself being entertained like that on a nightly basis as she gazed upon the glorious Castle Iadara. She could never have imagined that she would meet the King of Kyonin, or that he would take such liking to her, but there she was, in his holiness’ presence after the King, wishing to strengthen his kingdom’s relationship with Andoran, had stopped by her camp. She was taken immediately by the King’s splendor and felt a longing for the elf unlike any she had ever felt towards any man. Unable to come to realty with how she felt for the King, she was almost unable to act when a servant of the King called on her later that night in secret and escorted her to the palace. Thus it was to be, the beginning of her secret affair with the elven King.

She remained in the city for 3 months in a cottage behind the castle receiving her meals and visits from the King in secret. That winter was particularly brutal in Kyonin, and as a result of the woman grew sick and became feverish. The King had his personal wizards minding the woman as the snow continued to accumulate in the city, the wizards detected a second life beginning to grow within the woman. The woman remained sickly during her pregnancy, and this fragility would later be passed off to her child who as a result would inherent a fragile physique.

Upon hearing the news of the woman’s pregnancy, the King moved the woman to the castle where she lived in secret until it was time for the child to be born. Knowing that she would never be able to be fully with the King, her love, the woman would name the child Toraq, which means, “met with misery” in Elvish. What the woman did not know was that the child Toraq would continue to live up to his name as his life would be continually marked by despair and sorrow.

Here the woman and child remained for almost a year while the King continued his secret visits and Queen Telandia Edasseril continued to grow increasingly suspicious of her husband’s unusual behavior. At first she had no problem believing that the King was in fact locking himself in his study to read through ancient manuscripts, but her suspicion began to grow when the would regularly be barred from entering the study while her husband was supposedly “studying” inside. One night, the Queen had had enough of being told where she could and could not go inside her own castle so she forced her way past the guards positioned outside of the study only to find the room vacant. She immediately ordered a full search of the castle and its grounds in order to locate her husband. Being informed of the King’s presence in the Keep, she rushed at once to find out what exactly her husband had been up to all those nights.

When she entered the inner most chamber of the keep, the bedroom reserved for the Royal family during times of siege, she found her husband sitting on the edge of the bed with a child in his arms. In the bed next to her husband was another woman, a human woman. Unable to process what was witnessing, the Queen ordered both the King and the woman to be arrested.

Before the guards could restrain the woman however, the king had returned the child to his mother, and was standing between the guards and his mistress. The advancing guards were no match for the Sorcerer-King who made quick work of the two men. The sight of her husband defending the human mother and child was too much for the Queen, and as she retreated to the castle she let out a maddening cry that alerted every guard to the her plight. Reinforcements arrived, just as the bookshelf concealing the secret entrance to the crypt slid back into place. Using light created by the King, the party navigated the catacombs until they emerged from the mausoleum that stood in the center of the Royal Family’s cemetery. Before the King could seal the door of the mausoleum, the Imperial Guards were upon the King with their swords drawn.

Looking back at the woman and child the King called out, “Fly you fools” before returning to the guards and sending towards them a wall of fire so intense that it forced the woman and child to retreat to the edge of the woods to avoid the heat. The guards continued to pour forth from the mausoleum though and soon overran the King. The woman and child had just reached the edge of the woods when she turned and saw the King’s body falling lifeless to the ground.

She had no time to mourn his loss however, because the guards were soon in pursuit of her and her child. The woods proved to be a capable protector and soon the woman and child could no longer hear the sounds of their pursuers.

Finally allowing herself to rest and grieve her loss she crumbled to a heap at the base of a giant oak tree and fell into a tormented sleep. Awoken only by the sound of her child who, to the woman’s surprise, was not crying, but laughing.

The child, barely a year old, sat at the base of the tree giggling as a serpent, nearly double to length of the woman slithered around the child. Fearing that if she called out if might frighten the snake therefore causing it to strike her child she remained frozen in a fix stare watching as her son grabbed the serpent and rolled around in the leaves as if playing. The snake, appearing to have grown tired of the child slithered off into the deep woods. Breaking free from her trance, the woman rushed to the child and embraced him. Deciding that the woods were no longer safe, the woman and child made their way to the nearest town to seek refuge.

The babe would never know his father, nor would he have any memories of living in the great Elvan palace, but what he would have would be the story from his mother of a great man who gave his life to defend his family.

Too disgraced to return to Andoran, the woman, satisfying her desire to live by the coast, fled west with her child to the Shinning Sea together. The arrived in Korvosa and the woman quickly found work in the shipyard repairing torn and damaged fishing nets.

It seemed like the mother and child had finally put their shameful past behind them when one morning the temple bells rang out in warning as black sails began to materialize on the horizon. The year was 4685 AR when the pirates from Riddleport attacked Korvosa. Luckily, the town had in place a great chain, which could be draw from the water’s depths, tight across the Bay to prevent the passage of any ships into and out of the Bay, but before the chain could be wrenched from the murky deep, the Dred Pirate Tammerhawk’s ship sailed past the barrier and into port.

Seeing the chain raised behind him, the pirate captain abandoned his original plan to commandeer the fleet of Naval Academy ships docked at Korvosa, and instead docked his ship and commanded his men to dispatch of the town guards so that the chain would return to its watery resting place. With the few men remaining with him, Tammerhawk raided the nearby ships so as not to return empty handed, but the pirate captain became enraged at finding nothing more than fishing ships docked in the harbor. Tammerhawk began slaughtering the crews on every ship to satisfy his anger.

Her eyes widened with terror as the hatch was thrown open and the pirate Lord leaped down into the hold where the woman sat with her child mending the ship’s nets.

“Please my Lord, spare us. We are but humble workers here on the docks and could not possibly be of any threat to you or your men,” the woman cried.

“Quiet whore!” Tammerhawk roared as he drew his sword and raised it to strike.

Throwing herself in front of her child, the woman fell to her knees as the pirate’s blade passed threw her body. “Toraq, I love you,” she said with tears in her eyes.

Drawing his sword from the woman the pirate captain prepared to strike again, but the woman’s lifeless body was already tumbling to the floor of the hold.

Though the hold was dark, Tammerhawk could see the child, only 3 years of age, sitting on the tattered nets his mother had just a minute ago been sewing and he could see the eyes of the child staring at him not with fear as he had expected, but with a sorrow that reached even the pirate’s cold heart.
Hearing his crew outside shouting that the chain had been lowered, Tammerhawk made an uncharacteristically sympathetic move. Returning his sword, still stained with the blood of the slain woman, to its sheath he reached out for the child and returned to his ship with a new passenger.
“So much for take no prisoners,” one of the crew called out as the Captain returned to his ship with the child under his mighty arm. Ensuring the child’s safety, the Captain locked Toraq in his own quarters before giving the order to flee the Bay and return to the fleet before the Royal Navy appeared.  

Toraq proved himself a worthy deckhand, using the skills learned from observing his mother, he was assigned the task of mending the sails and repairing the crew’s clothing when they would become tattered and torn during raids and skirmishes. The crew also utilized their half-elf passenger’s sight to help navigate when darkness or fog threatened to take the ship off course. The pirates raised Toraq as one of their own and soon taught him to fight and to shoot a bow. It was said that Toraq could skewer a fish jumping from the water from 100 feet away.

Even though he had grown into an accomplished ranger and a feared pirate, Toraq would always remain significantly smaller and more fragile looking than other Half-Elves that lived in Riddleport.
Although he would grow to see the pirates as his new family, he would never forget that it was in fact Captain Tammerhawk himself who had made the child parentless in the first place. For this reason, as the child grew more skilled with his bow, his arrows always seemed to sink just slightly deeper into the chests of men than they did into other creatures they encountered. He never killed for any reason other than protection. His bow was always a last line of defense, which set him apart from his fellow pirates who would often slash first and ask questions later.

Feeling called to more than a life of piracy, Toraq left Riddleport in 4707 AR and, traveling South along the coast, soon arrived in the quaint town of Sandpoint where he found it difficult to find work as he bore the marks of a pirate on his body. He would eventually find work aboard a merchant ship captained by Thalina Andyll. Toraq continued to find a use for his skills aboard the ship as a sentry on the vessel where he was thus assigned the responsibility of defending the ship from attacking pirate fleets; some of whom Toraq had previously been a member of.
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