- Messages
- 225
- Character Biography
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The death of a dream is a terrible thing to endure.
Yet Trajan found himself suffering this very fate. Here now in a jail within Alliria, not the prison wherein he was certain to go, but mingled in with the drunks and louts and minor offenders and those likewise awaiting conviction, separated only by the iron bars which comprised the cramped confines of each individual cell and their accompanying doors.
His failures, those known and those unknown, had compounded to such an extent to bring him to this moment. His attack upon the traitorous College of Elbion, surreptitiously alongside the pyromancer Maho "Jerik" Sparhawk, had ended in disaster. Yet even before that, the Luminari and his fellow believers suffered the loss of the Supersledge and the powerful magical catalyst known only as The Vicar. There were some victories: his success in the Pandemonium Crisis, recruiting Aiofe in the healer, and deposing the orcish warlord Gromagg Ur with Madame Valkery. But these did not balance the scales in his favor.
It was during the preparation for his darkest operari, which he referred to simply as "Brightfield," that what little fortune remaining with him had dried to sand and fell from his palm. Feeling pushed to such an extreme as perpetrating a terrible and deadly false flag action here in Alliria, it had proved to be his downfall. Two xenos (Heike Eisen, a vampire, and Szesh, a Draconian) had felled six of his most devoted and loyal men and taken him prisoner.
Those six men were also the only members of the Luminari who knew what Trajan was doing. Where he was. Now, no one--so far as Trajan was aware--knew.
And it was worse still. Unbeknownst to Trajan, one of his most efficacious and core believers, Clarissa Mejeure, was missing, whereabouts unknown to anyone--much like his own current predicament. Worst of all, Trajan did not know the great schism that was happening within the Luminari: the shadowy formation of the Luminari Purists.
In ways he knew and ways he did not, his world and his dream were both crumbling around him.
Trajan sat in his small cell. A man diminished, for his burned legs had only been tended to enough such that he was not writhing in insurmountable agony. He wore only the garb provided to him by the guards: a rough cloth tunic, very much akin to a potato sack.
He had not told Captain Bronmarch nor any of the guards his name, what he was truly doing in Rennegast's tower, nothing. When he spoke to them, he said only, "Everything I do, I do for my fellow Man." And he knew that within some weeks' time, he would be transferred into the custody of the city of Elbion.
Yet now, someone was trying to get his attention.
A guard. Another man or woman jailed, speaking through the bars. A visitor, for such was allowed briefly within the jail. A xeno, even. Any of these, potentially.
And Trajan looked up and at the person who hailed him. Wondering what it was they wished from him. Wondering, also, if perhaps it was time for a reckoning of sorts.
Yet Trajan found himself suffering this very fate. Here now in a jail within Alliria, not the prison wherein he was certain to go, but mingled in with the drunks and louts and minor offenders and those likewise awaiting conviction, separated only by the iron bars which comprised the cramped confines of each individual cell and their accompanying doors.
His failures, those known and those unknown, had compounded to such an extent to bring him to this moment. His attack upon the traitorous College of Elbion, surreptitiously alongside the pyromancer Maho "Jerik" Sparhawk, had ended in disaster. Yet even before that, the Luminari and his fellow believers suffered the loss of the Supersledge and the powerful magical catalyst known only as The Vicar. There were some victories: his success in the Pandemonium Crisis, recruiting Aiofe in the healer, and deposing the orcish warlord Gromagg Ur with Madame Valkery. But these did not balance the scales in his favor.
It was during the preparation for his darkest operari, which he referred to simply as "Brightfield," that what little fortune remaining with him had dried to sand and fell from his palm. Feeling pushed to such an extreme as perpetrating a terrible and deadly false flag action here in Alliria, it had proved to be his downfall. Two xenos (Heike Eisen, a vampire, and Szesh, a Draconian) had felled six of his most devoted and loyal men and taken him prisoner.
Those six men were also the only members of the Luminari who knew what Trajan was doing. Where he was. Now, no one--so far as Trajan was aware--knew.
And it was worse still. Unbeknownst to Trajan, one of his most efficacious and core believers, Clarissa Mejeure, was missing, whereabouts unknown to anyone--much like his own current predicament. Worst of all, Trajan did not know the great schism that was happening within the Luminari: the shadowy formation of the Luminari Purists.
In ways he knew and ways he did not, his world and his dream were both crumbling around him.
* * * * *
Trajan sat in his small cell. A man diminished, for his burned legs had only been tended to enough such that he was not writhing in insurmountable agony. He wore only the garb provided to him by the guards: a rough cloth tunic, very much akin to a potato sack.
He had not told Captain Bronmarch nor any of the guards his name, what he was truly doing in Rennegast's tower, nothing. When he spoke to them, he said only, "Everything I do, I do for my fellow Man." And he knew that within some weeks' time, he would be transferred into the custody of the city of Elbion.
Yet now, someone was trying to get his attention.
A guard. Another man or woman jailed, speaking through the bars. A visitor, for such was allowed briefly within the jail. A xeno, even. Any of these, potentially.
And Trajan looked up and at the person who hailed him. Wondering what it was they wished from him. Wondering, also, if perhaps it was time for a reckoning of sorts.