Description
If it weren't for the morbid little trinkets jingling about his person, this
man might be mistaken for a wandering knight. His eyes -- one blue and the
other brown -- are graced with a gentle sincerity. His handsome face speaks
of education and compassion, but something burdens it. Something tragic makes
its home within those features. His shoulders seem naturally broad and his
posture exudes confidence. Most of his hair is gray, though black strands
pepper his well-kept head.
Role
Groundwater
Added Sun Jul 9 01:07:35 2006 at level 26:
Earth sits over massive pockets of water, underground rivers and streams. Up
here, we build wells to reach them -- like portals to another world just
beneath us. A world that is always there. Under everything. We need it, we
acknowledge it and we use it to our advantage. But it is usually out of sight
and out of mind.
Nastagio feels he is of a world like that. It is within and beyond the
reality he stands in. He has ties here, obviously, but they are only ties.
He came to this realization after directing his prayers to the Dragon God,
the Lurker Drokalanatym. Thoughts of life, death, and the fabric of reality
weighed heavily in his mind. Though Nastagio saw no immediate solution, the
questions themselves have strengthened him. He felt as though he was being
watched, but to what end or what expectation, he wasn't sure.
Meanwhile, his sadness and anguish have adopted a sort of triviality. A
tragic air still hangs about Nastagio, but the grief no longer seems
palpable. It is no longer a heavy, suffocating fog in the air. Rather, it is
now the heartbreakingly sweet trace scent of a past lover's perfume a month
after she left the room.
Gods, Fate and Creation
Added Sun Sep 10 16:53:18 2006 at level 42:
Nastagio, unable to create life, can only create death.
It wasn't a fate he sought, and it isn't one he relishes. And so it is his desire to
spite whatever Creator and whatever Threadweaver are responsible for his meaningless
and accursed existence, along with those who enjoy a fullness of being.
His earliest prayers to the Dragon God earned him a vague understanding of what
he is. Unrightfully, perhaps, he feels betrayed by the years-long silence from the
Lurker that has followed.
He can no longer love. That died with his queen and the more innocent days of his
youth. His soul is the Void, nothing more. And it aches for connection that his
anger and hurt will never allow. His children are his undead creations. His friends
are fools or the clever few who would hope to use him. His enemies are those of the
priesthood who do not directly benefit him. The Gods have forsaken him, and he is
intent on returning the favor.
Children of the Mist
Added Sun Sep 24 16:10:31 2006 at level 45:
It seemed, for a while, that Nastagio would be doomed to acting out his spite for a
world that is not his. But he finally felt it.
That sweet pang of love and hope twisted in his belly after he directed a prayer to Psuchae, the Cycloptic
Lady of Dreams and drifted off to slumber.
He saw his queen and his princess. The tiny twisted body, her dripping flesh and rotting teeth
in the cradle. The dessicated, sinking eyes. And within, he saw himself. Serendra looked as
beautiful and ethereal and queenly as she always had. And for his love, his pain and his lamenting
throughout the years, she has returned a greater favor to him: Purpose.
She told him to shed his flesh. Become immortal. Become the father he was always meant
to be. Spend an eternity creating, at long last.
As Nastagio woke, he knew that his pain and wandering had forged him. This was the only way
that things could be. And in the mirror of his subconscious and beyond, he saw what he will be.
The Sleepless Dream
Added Fri Oct 6 15:08:14 2006 at level 47:
To sleep is to surrender to the forces beyond the reach of consciousness.
To die, then, must be sublime. But to be both dead and conscious must lend itself to
the ultimate form of Dreaming. For the Dreams that come to one who sleeps may be interrupted.
They come only during the deepest slumber. But to the living dead -- those who sleep, yet
walk, there is no distinction.
The Dread Lady Kharguhrln said that Liches go crazy.
But geniuses and oracles are often regarded as mad. And this world never did belong to
Nastagio.
He intends to live in the world of Dreams while finally ruling and creating in the world
of reality, chasing the love and the happiness that would never again be his, while living
in the Dream that escaped him.
He will be linked through the realms of spirits and dreams to his Queen and his children.
Forever.
Battling Oblivion
Added Tue Jan 9 19:34:30 2007 at level 47:
Nastagio sat on a throne in his dreams. No - not his dreams. Someone else's.
A god's, perhaps. He felt the powerful darkness in the chamber. But almost as strong,
he felt a sense of longing. Of the emptiness and expectancy of a fate yet unfulfilled
that he feels on a daily basis.
The torment. A dragonbone circlet is all that stands between Nastagio and destiny.
Serendra was waiting. But for her, time no longer matters. Nastagio's body remains strong,
despite the years that tear at it. Many more may pass before oblivion overtakes him.
But it still threatens.
Difficulty and desire have been themes in Nastagio's life. He meets these with indifference
that sometimes may rise to the level of feverish joy. His ascension to Imperial Dreadlord did
not feel as much of an accomplishment as it did something inevitable. Expected. A small piece
of his destiny.
His unwavering faith in Psuchae has led him to his current lot in life. She granted him
a dream decades earlier, in which the love of his life visited him and showed him the child
he had fathered but may never see. She told him that he must Become to join her. To break the
chain of emptiness that binds him. To shout at the stars that hate him and the earth that
rejects him that despite it all, he knows love.
The Void
Added Tue Jun 20 20:08:18 2006 at level 1:
A strange, creaky rumbling filled the Holy Grove that night.
The bandits had been staking out this one for weeks. She looked like she was
about to pop, and the man who had impregnated her been off to town to sell
crops. He was not there to protect her.
The rumbling continued. It didn't occur to her that she was blindfolded,
gagged and hogtied, in a wheelbarrow bouncing over roots and rocks. It did
occur to her that she was well on her way to the end of her life.
It stopped.
Nimble fingers grabbed her and lowered her to the ground -- no, it felt like
-- through the ground. She was in a tunnel. It smelled different than the
cold, sweet forest air she smelled on the way here.
Then someone was lifting her. The echoes and the sounds of the forest went
away, and she was somewhere new. Completely new. It smelled indescribable.
The surgeon had a flair for dramatics. He stood there in the void, his arms
outstretched. His hands gripped knives like some sort of primitive god of
war.
He wished she could see him now, but she couldn't. She could only hear the
ruffians ask about money, and then the clinking of coins. She didn't hear
them leave.
Her face felt better as the tight blindfold was removed. Everything else
convulsed with horror when she realized who she was staring at.
The surgeon resumed his pose, arms outstretched and head back. He looked down
at her and felt in his throat all of the questions he wished she could
answer. But he knew that he would never be satisfied by her words. He hoped
her screams would suffice.
It would be done here, where no one would hear her. Her cries would be lost
in this bizarre place between time and space and fantasy and reality. His
actions would be unforgetable, but in a place like this, it would be arguable
whether this ever actually happened.
He'd be able to live with it.
Certainly, she wouldn't return home. But death, so closely linked to time, in
this void isn't measurable. It's a milestone that can't be marked. A bread
crumb devoured by ravens.
He carefully severed the child from her mutilated womb. Finally, as the woman
had promised him on their wedding day so long ago, she would deliver unto him
a child.
A child plucked from his mother's blooming corpse. Screaming, as she did,
between times and realities and fantasies.
Something that didn't belong.
The Surgeon's Son
Added Tue Jun 20 21:32:50 2006 at level 6:
Nastagio dreamed of castles and knights, and of one day becoming king.
He remembered pretending to save a little girl from a dragon one day. Using
his mighty sword -- a stick -- he defeated the horrible dragon -- a
perplexed golden retriever.
His father wished he would study more. Continue the family business. Surgeons
would always be needed in Aturi.
But Nastagio couldn't take it seriously. He daydreamed and played, making up
stories to tell his friends about monsters that lived in creeks and lurked
the cornfields.
He was a natural leader. His athletic abilities were only fair during
adolescence, but his friends always considered him the best. He always came
up with the ideas.
At 16, Nastagio decided to proclaim his love to a girl he grew up with. She
was pretty. Two years younger than he. She looked like a princess, and he
imagined she would age into a strong and beautiful queen.
Nastagio's father didn't share his tastes, but he figured a marriage between
the two would settle the boy down. Temper his idealism. He'd be under
control.
And he was, for a few years. He delved back into surgical studies and
excelled. When Nastagio was 18, his wife, Serendra, became pregnant. He was
overjoyed. Six months later, something hemorrhaged and she died -- a pale
white lily languishing upon blood-soaked sheets.
Oddly, an autopsy revealed she was not pregnant. Her body behaved as if she
were, but no child grew within her.
Almost immediately, Nastagio vanished from Aturi.
Out of Time
Added Tue Jul 4 12:58:47 2006 at level 8:
Nastagio doesn't know where he belongs, but he knows he doesn't belong here.
He knows nothing about his past or about his nature, but he knows he shares a quality
with his father -- he cannot create life. His bloodline will never persist.
This pains him even more than the love he lost. It calls into question his very
purpose for existence. He has decided to search for a god who similarly does not
have a purpose in this day or time. One who could guide him beyond the constraints of
known reality, and in a scale beyond that of the gods of men.
Perhaps despair drove him to this desperate act. He will seek the Lurker.