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HikariNoRyuu -> RE: =DF= In the Beginning... (7/15/2014 3:02:30)
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(Disclaimer: I skew the timeline and mess with the lore in my character's backstory, particularly involving Soulweaving and the early events of the game's plot, so for simplicity's sake, please just consider this whole thing AU. You'll see what I mean.)
Kael Resain, born into a family of Dragon Lords, was the middle child out of three, and the only girl. At an early age, she was overshadowed by her older brother Soren and his abilities, but rather than try to mimic him, she worked to be different. With the help of her mother, Alline, she started learning magic, something that Soren had never been very good at. Her father, Corthak, wasn't thrilled, but he tolerated it so long as Kael kept up with her other schooling and followed her mother's instructions to the letter. He later warmed up to the idea when Kael displayed great aptitude for the art.
When Kael was ten, she began what would be the start of her training to become a Dragon Lord. This mainly consisted of history (boring), diplomacy (tedious), strategy (interesting), and Draconic (difficult, but fun). Soren would often study with her, as he was learning the same material, though at a higher level and at a faster rate. Three years into Kael's studies, Soren completed his training and received his Dragon Amulet. Upon seeing how their father praised, Kael began pushing herself even harder, both in magic as well as her other studies, determined to receive the same praise when it was her turn to be named a Dragon Lord. While she still wasn't at the top of her class, in her mind, she excelled.
Later that year, their mother took ill. Alline had never had the strongest immune system, and so would get sick fairly often. Fortunately, this hadn't been passed down to any of her children, but this illness was the worst she had ever had. The healers tried all they could, but they weren't able to help very much. Even the moglins couldn't do much more than prolong her life. After a few months, Alline died. Corthak was grief-stricken, and buried himself in his work. Soren did the same, devoting every waking moment to training Larros, his newly-acquired dragon hatchling. Kael's younger brother, Aiden, who was only seven at the time, didn't fully understand what was going on.
Kael worked even harder than she had been, desperate to give her father something to be happy for. As a result she earned her Amulet not long after her fifteenth birthday, making her one of the youngest Dragon Lords since the start of that century. But much to her disappointment, Corthak only saw the Amulet as a means to send her away on assignment. He claimed that Kael was too much like her mother in both appearance and manner (only partly true; appearance-wise, Kael does resemble her mother, but she has her father’s coloring; as for her personality, no one really knows where that came from), and he couldn't bear to be reminded of her in such a way.
Kael was then posted in Oaklore. There were a few older Dragon Lords there who were supposed to act as mentors, though at first they didn't know how to react to her, as the believed her too young to have received her Amulet fairly, what with her father being fairly high up in the ranks. They did change their minds eventually once they saw her abilities as a mage, but they never fully stopped treating her like a child.
Now this is where I start skewing the game’s plot. After a year or so of sitting in Oaklore and occasionally smacking wayward undead about, Kael was sent on an errand to Falconreach, and on the way she encountered Lady Celestia and Twilly, who were working to transport the black dragon box to a safe location. Kael then witnessed Drakath take the box. She stepped in to help, but Drakath escaped and the box was stolen by a sneevil, blah blah blah we know the story.
Anyway, Lady Celestia and Twilly departed, and Kael continued on to Falconreach. By the time she got there it was fairly late in the day, so she stopped at the inn for the night after checking in with the Guardians there. That evening, however, she got bored, so she set out to explore the town. But, as Falconreach is a relatively large place, she wound up get herself lost. As she was trying to find her way back, she stumbled across a crumbling portal in an overgrown part of town. Curious, she ventured through it, only to find herself in a dark, underground city.
It was there that she had her first encounter with the colony of spider-like Chaosweavers. She didn’t know what they were, but she knew that they definitely belonged on the list of Things to Definitely Stay Away From.
Three Chaosweavers were chasing her through the streets. Kael took one of them out with her magic, but the other two avoided her attacks. They were getting closer, and one of them had figured out how to deflect her magic, so Kael believed herself to be doomed, but then suddenly violet and black spectral chains sprang up from the ground, coiling around the Chaosweavers and crushing them to death.
Then Kael saw her rescuer: a man with white hair and yellow eyes. He helped her to her feet and introduced himself as Tomix. When she asked him what sort of magic that was and how it worked, he was both wary and alarmed; Kael seemed eager to learn about it, something he was not used to.
Anyway, this is where my headcanon really gets going. At that point, Soulweaving had been a banned practice for many years due to the high death toll among Soulweavers-in-training and the general belief among much of the human population that because Soulweaving affects the soul and not the body, it is unnatural. The confusion between Soulweavers and Chaosweavers hasn’t helped one bit. As a result, the Soulweavers that remained typically chose to live out their lives in underground cities like Ravenloss, or within the protected borders around Edelia and the village of Mortem, many of them rarely venturing beyond their chosen safe-havens.
Eventually, Tomix told Kael about Soulweaving little by little, and after a while accepted that she was genuinely interested in it--she found it beautiful, even. With time he even (grudgingly) agreed to teach her Soulweaving, though it would not be the formal education most Soulweavers received.
A couple of weeks and a lot of begging later, Kael was reassigned to Falconreach, and no sooner had she settled in that she was down in Ravenloss for her first lesson. More time passed, and Kael snuck down to Ravenloss almost every night. She rarely got more than a few hours of sleep because of this, and nearly always had some sort of injury, but she was learning. Whenever the Guardians of Falconreach she was working with asked what was going on with her, she would simply reply “training.”
Months went by like this. Kael learned quickly despite Tomix’s frequent warnings (and almost blew her soul apart on at least one occasion). Every so often another Soulweaver would stop by, and whoever it was would sometimes offer input and training of their own. Kael met Izaac this way, and the two of them quickly became friends.
Six months after Kael was stationed in Falconreach, the whole dragon egg wild goose chase happened. Once all that is over with, Kael winds up with a dragon egg in her possession. The egg hatched soon after, revealing a small white ice dragon. She named the dragon Nirin and excitedly wrote home about it. Within a few days, she received a reply from her father ordering her to return home to Swordhaven at once and to bring her hatchling with her.
When Kael returned home, she found that it was Soren who was waiting for her, not her father. Soren told her that their father was stationed in Dragonsgrasp and that he was instructed to bring her there. On the way there, Soren explained that there had been rumors of a Doom Knight in Lore. The Doom Knight’s identity was unknown, and he had yet to even be spotted, but he had already orchestrated a good bit of chaos here and there and it was best to track him down and deal with him before things got out of hand. When Kael asked how they knew it was a Doom Knight if he hadn't been seen, Soren replied that the amount of undead and the swiftness with which they were summoned was too much for any lone necromancer to have pulled off.
Upon arriving in Dragonsgrasp, Kael and Nirin was brought before the Dragon Lord Council. She was asked to explain herself, as normally Dragon Lords are presented with a dragon hatched on Dragonsgrasp, and the one in Kael’s possession was technically a wild dragon (or they assumed he was a wild dragon; Kael deliberately left out the part where Nirin came from the Black Dragon Box and was prophesied to one day destroy the world). Kael explained how she had found it (still leaving out the bit about the Black Dragon Box) and how Nirin had hatched for her. Soren spoke up at that point, saying that on the journey from Swordhaven, Nirin and his own dragon had gotten along quite well.
The Council then debated on whether or not they should allow Kael to keep her dragon, and eventually they decide that it would not be right to separate the two of them as they had already formed a strong bond. Kael got to keep Nirin, all was well, and Soren returned the two of them to Falconreach a few days later.
A year later, Tomix finally deemed her ready to bond with a spirit. He sent her soul to the spirit realm, and there she met Aegis, the Elemental Spirit of Valor. Aegis wasn’t sure what to think of her at first, but because he was impressed by her resolve he agreed to be her Soul Ally, though he wasn’t happy when she told him he had to stay hidden as no one knew she was learning to be a Soulweaver and if anyone did find out, she could be put to death despite her family’s status.
Another half a year passed. Nirin had grown to a considerable size by that point, and Kael was close to mastering her abilities as a Soulweaver, though she had yet to get the hang of Banishing souls. She and Aegis were working on increasing their synchronization in the hopes that they would eventually be able to fight as one soul.
By that time, the nameless Doom Knight who had been creating a bit of trouble earlier had struck again, but still had not been seen. He had already tried to attack Falconreach once, but it was a half-hearted attempt and was easily defeated even without Kael’s Soulweaving. Kael and Nirin had been involved in the fight, and played a large part in keeping the undead army at bay. When the battle was easily won, a few of the more experienced Guardians were suspicious, but Kael didn’t think anything of it.
Several other attacks happened in Swordhaven, Amityville, the Sandsea, Osprey Cove, Willowshire, and other towns, all within the span of a few months, and like the one in Falconreach, they were easily won.
Another month passed, and before long, another, larger force attacked Willowshire. Heading the massive army (consisting of dravirs, togs, and various undead) was the equally-massive earth dragon Gorgok. At first, people weren't sure if the dragon was serving the Doom Knight, but the presence of the undead confirmed it.
Gorgok destroyed much of Willowshire so quickly that an entire flight of Dragon Riders was called in, Soren, Kael, and Corthak among them, with Corthak in command. In the fight, Larros, Soren’s dragon, was severely wounded by Gorgok, forcing Soren to fight on foot for the remainder of the battle.
Near the end of the battle, one last, monstrous wave was sent forth. Soren, still fighting on the ground with the Guardians and the mages, was overwhelmed. Seeing this, Kael rushed in to help just as Gorgok swooped in for the kill. Nirin, despite being only half Gorgok’s size, kept him occupied while Kael tried to get Soren out of there. Unfortunately, they were surrounded. One large dravir struck, but the blow was blocked by Aegis who had appeared at that moment in order to come to Kael’s defense. While maintaining the shield, Aegis shouted at Kael for being stupid, saying that she had the skills necessary to get them out of there alive and that her magic alone wasn’t going to cut it. Soren, alarmed by the sudden appearance of a powerful ice spirit, demanded to know what was going on and why Kael knew the spirit.
More dravir struck Aegis’s shield, weakening it. Aegis shouted at Kael again, saying she had to do something because he couldn’t hold them back forever and Nirin wouldn’t last against Gorgok much longer.
Then, despite knowing that she would probably only end up ruining herself because of it, Kael pulled on her Soul Claws and began taking out the dravir, gaining momentum with each kill as she phased in and out of the spirit plane, leaving behind glowing blue afterimages, at one point moving almost too fast to see.
Needless to say, Soren was stunned. He had no idea that his baby sister was capable of such a thing, or that she would be willing to break the law in order to learn a deadly branch of magic.
Less than three minutes later, Kael had killed enough of the dravir to give them all a moment to escape. Kael called to Nirin, who had been badly wounded by that point, and the four of them tried to flee the scene. Gorgok, however, had other plans, and breathed fire at them as they tried to escape, engulfing them in the flames. Aegis tried to summon a shield to protect them, but he had already been weakened by the dravir so he was more susceptible to the flames than normal, and as a result, his shield quickly failed. Unfortunately, Soren was directly behind Aegis’s shield. Kael brought up a shield of her own as quickly as she could, but not before Soren was badly burned.
Aegis, weakened but still conscious, told Kael to concentrate and to calm herself; he had an idea. She did as he asked, and focused herself inward, forcing her heart rate and breathing to settle to a slow pace. When she had calmed her entire body down, she told Aegis she was ready. Aegis then phased into Kael’s body, temporarily melding with her soul and forcing their combined being out into the open where they then produced an immense energy blast that countered Gorgok’s flames and drove the dragon back, forcing him to flee.
Once the energy dissipated, Aegis pulled himself away, allowing her soul to settle back into her body where it belonged, and Kael, utterly spent, fell unconscious. Aegis forced himself to remain awake long enough to direct Nirin away from the battle and into a safe area.
Thanks to Kael and Aegis, the battle was won, but at a great cost. A large number of the fighters had been killed. Soren, badly burned, was near death despite the healers’ desperate attempts to help him. Corthak was a wreck, worried about his son and at the same time furious with his daughter. No sooner had Kael awoken that Corthak began interrogating her, demanding to know what she had done, how she had done it, why she had let her brother get so badly hurt, and why she had a glowy spirit hovering over her.
Kael answered his questions honestly, admitting that she had indeed learned Soulweaving (though she refused to give the identity of the one who had trained her), while at the same time reminding her father that it was because of her Soulweaving that Gorgok was defeated. Corthak countered this by saying that because of her Soulweaving, Soren was dying. Kael replied that he would already be dead if it weren’t for Soulweaving, as would she, and Nirin, and many others besides. Corthak, frustrated, simply shouted at Kael for being difficult, and confined her to her room. In the meantime, he ordered that the spirit be removed from the room and restrained. Before Corthak left the room, Kael said that she believed she could use her Soulweaving to keep Soren alive, but Corthak only said that she had done enough damage.
Soren died that night. When Kael heard the news, she shrieked at her father, blaming him for her brother’s death, saying that if he had let her help, then Soren might still be alive. Corthak ignored her in order to grieve for his son. A trial was ordered because of Kael’s illegal use of Soulweaving.
The trial was held in Swordhaven a week later. Corthak did not testify against Kael, but he also did nothing to help her. There were those who were crying out for Kael’s imprisonment or execution, but most saw that she should be pardoned because she was the one who turned the tide of the battle against Gorgok.
In the end, it was ruled that in light of her recent deeds, Kael would be allowed to keep her rank as Dragon Rider as well as her post in Falconreach, but she would forbidden to use Soulweaving and she would be monitored at all times to ensure she stuck to the rules. It was also decided that Aegis would be put to death, as a spirit of his power level was seen as a potential threat even though his actions indicated otherwise.
Warlic, however, spoke up at this point. He offered to take Aegis off their hands, and who were they to argue with the most powerful mage in Lore? Warlic promised Kael that Aegis would be safe with him. Aegis agreed to go with the blue mage, but soon retreated to the spirit plane where no one but Kael could reach him.
As word of how Kael defeated Gorgok spread throughout the kingdom, people started commenting on how the ruling was unfair. If Kael had saved an entire town almost single-handedly, then why was she being punished for it?
Another year passed. Kael stuck to the rules set her, albeit grudgingly, as she was much weaker as a mage than as a Soulweaver. At the same time, people all throughout Lore, mainly those who knew Kael, were clamoring for a lift on the ban on Soulweaving. After all, something that had helped to save hundreds of people couldn’t be all bad! And besides, the ban had been in effect for so long that no one remembered why it was in effect in the first place.
Three months later, the ban on Soulweaving was finally lifted, as was Kael’s punishment, and Kael and Aegis are reunited.
All was well until the Doom Knight appeared again, this time in person and proclaiming that his name was Sepulchure. The rest, as they say, is history.
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