As a babe I was taken from my small village in the Highlands, The Orcish slavers ordered that all of the village's children be handed over to their petty chieftain. I was raised as a slave for the first years of my life, it was all I had known. Being a naive child I could never have understood that these Orcs are the people who pillaged my homeland and stole me away from my family. I grew to accept the differences between us in status and as different races. I learned how to handle basic tools and weapons, I carried water and spoils from the villages the slavers looted. The first ten years of my life I lived in squalor and disgusting conditions. The day my lord "rescued" me was the last day of my simple and meaningless life, that day I became a new person. My status erased, and for what? To become a page in a lord's kingdom? What of those people who were left in the slaver's camps? They will never know the taste of freshly cooked meat, or the taste of a fine red wine. How can I accept the fate of those people who were raised the same as myself? For five years I was raised as a page in my lord's court, learning the ways of a squire. I longed for the days of my slavery, my friends that the lord wished I would forget.
My childhood ended the day of my fifteenth year. I became a squire in my lord's castle. The term meant little more than page. I served in one way or another my entire life. To both I was chained, to forever be a meaningless pawn in a lord's game, whether that lord be a god or a lesser man. I grew to hate the life of a squire quickly. I had less duties as a common slave. On my twentieth year I became a full fledged knight of my lord's court. I was expected to serve and protect in the name of my liege. This common misconception of service and protection was little more than a title to cover up the facts that the court was more savage than the slavers. The Orcs had the courtesy to leave you with enough food to survive the winter, these lords played a game of thrones with their villages, as if they were nothing but pawns in a game of chess.
In my twenty-third year the court was ordered to put down a coup d'etat in a local village. The villagers were angry over having even less rations than the meager amount they were given. The greed of the court of nobles was common knowledge, I rode to the right side of my lord to the village. When we reached the village a mob of villagers gathered in the town's square with a herald speaking their minds. The villagers were outraged by the audacity of their lord. A young girl of only eight years confronted the lord without anger and without any dark intent. She asked the man why, why did he take all of the food? He had enough of his own as it was. The answer was simple, the lord's gluttony was too much to sustain with common practiced feasts within the castle. The lord ordered me to silence the child. Outraged, I told my lord I would not commit such an act. He responded by cutting down the girl himself. Appalled by my lord's cruelty I struck him down with my sword. The man who raised me as a noble, the man who took me into his home when I had nothing in the world to offer him, the man who murdered a little girl for questioning his motives.
I was forced to flee from the kingdom for weeks on end, hunted by the court's hounds and targeted by assassins. Finally when I could run no longer I prayed at the nearest town's chapel. I was received by the clerics and priests with open arms and smiling faces. The hunters gave up on the chase, and I was free at last. I apprenticed under the head cleric at the chapel. She trained me in the ways of the righteous and the just, how to protect those who could not protect themselves and to help those in need. I had finally found a place that was worth living for, an existence not judged by your status or race, a place where everyone was treated as an equal.
The clergymen of the chapel taught me all that I needed to know of justice and vengeance and how to differentiate between the two. I became a paladin within two years of religious practice. Once a slave, once a knight, now a force of justice itself. I vowed to find my people and to rescue those in need of help, I would not abide by slavers or sinning lords. No one is above another in the eyes of justice.
For three years I had wander-lusted from city to city, seeking a purpose to my reasoning. I freed slaves from encampments, I saved those who were innocent, and punished those who were guilty. I became an embodiment of law in the eyes of the gods.
My name is Sir Alric Auley Valarus and story continues on my twenty-eighth year...
Mon Jun 22, 2015 6:49 pm by skylordconner
