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Biography and Acts of Valor: Valoth was born long ago, in a land so cold and forbidding that no matter where one went, you would never escape the ice and snow. This kingdom of shivering, helpless men was completely hostile to most forms of life, being cold, rocky, wet, and the only food to be had is the lichen that clings to the rocks and the strange goatlike creatures that slurped it off said rocks.
Oh, and the dragons. It was improbable at best that dragons, creatures of fire, air, and heaty things would exist in this environment, especially with so little food. But as usual, dragons are creatures of magic, and magic loves to be contrary. The people that did live there barely survived, living off of spare scraps of rotted flesh from a dragon's kill and lichen, hiding at night in crevices, always keeping a watchful eye out, never truly sleeping. This life took a toll on them, and they were thin, with pinched faces and bodies of skin, bone, and little else. Truly a wretched existence.
That would all change when Valoth was born. Of course, with these subhumans not even have formed language yet, he was not named Valoth. He was simply the Climber. From birth he was ever curious about what lay above the wet crags his family group crawled around on, despite their shrieks of warning to come back. He was much stronger and more muscular than either of his parents, and more dextous into the bargain, letting him leap around the mountainside with the goat things. But all things must end at some point, and eventually Valoth's old life succumbed. What happened, you may ask?
A dragon found them.
It was a desperate time of year; the snows had come down especially hard and the family hadn't found any food in days. So they climbed.
The mountain that they were on was tall enough to breach the cloud layer, but the constant rain and cold killed anything but the lichen, and there was sufficient moisture above the coulds for at least some plant life to grow. Of course, the dragons lived above the coulds, but they were desperate and needed to get in, grab the food, and get out. Of course, that went wrong. A dragon came upon them as they were cramming berries into their mouths. As they ran in terror, it flew after them and took the young Valoth. He never saw his parents again.
Valoth spent many days in a cave on the mountainside, waiting for the dragon to return from where it had placed him. After a week, it came back with food. As Valoth gorged himself, the dragon watched him. It looked at him - no, it looked into him, assessing his mind, such that it was, his doubts, his thoughts, all of it. It decided that he was on the verge of developing thought; it might as well give him a push.
Valoth was simple wen he was first granted thought by the dragon. Simple concepts squeezed into his mind, like grapes entering a soap bubble. Sun. Sky. Time. Food. Gradually, after a period of several days, he turned to the dragon and said, "Who?"
His awakening had just begun.
Several months passed. Valoth was educated by Alkus, the dragon who had taken him, as to speaking, hunting, combat, and perhaps most importantly, the art of thought. Alkus firmly believed that no matter how strong one was in body, the mind was the greater wepon - a lesson he demonstrated by pinning Valoth to the cave floor with a thought. This was the reason he had taken Valoth from his now dimly-remembered parents: he had sensed his potential. At first, he was able to do no more than think at Alkus very hard, but as time went on and his conversations with Alkus imperceptibly transformed from psychic tanslation on Alkus' part to full telepathic conversations, he was eventually able to affect the world around him. It started with a pebble. Just a pebble, moved an inch or so. Then a slightly larger stone. It progressed like this until Valoth was lifting boulders with ease, and finally Alkus let him out of the cave. He had almost forgotten the outside world. It was right about now that Valoth learned to fly. All dragons did eventually, once they were skilled enough to lift their own body weight three times over. Alkus and Valoth flew together amongst the lonely crags of the world for days, Valoth eventually becoing able to sustain flight constantly, just before they arrived at their destination, and where Alkus revealed the reason he had taken him from all he knew: Combat.
The dragons of the world had typically inhabited the mountainous regions, and their lesser bretheren, great blind serpents and farseeing lizardmen, had dwelled in the darkness below. But they had grown jealous of their sibling's place in the sun; they wanted to claim the peaks for their own. The dragons, unwilling to fight against those who they saw as their misguided kin, instead uplifted champions of other races to repel the Blind invasion. Valoth was to be one of these champions. He was armored in the scale of the first dragons to fall in the invasion, given claw and tooth as sword and scale as shield. The skull of a child dragon slaughtered by the lizardmen adorned his head, and he was presented before the eldest of their race, the First Scale, to judge him worthy or unworthy of champion status. After a thourough examination, he was accepted, and marched out onto the frontlines. He dove into the advancing ranks of blind things as a hot knife clove through butter; his every strike killed, and he wreaked havoc with his psychic abilities, making enemies run in terror, crushing them beneath the might of his mind, and using his abilities to instantaneously travel short distances, appearing behind enemy lines and killing all there before disappearing again. Valoth sustained many years in combat, gaining many scars and killing far more. His combat skills grew to that of legend, and his psychic skill increased daily. The armies of the dragons were pressing forward; they were almost at the hives where the blind ones made their fould spawn when they arrived. The Blind, in desperation, had made a pact with those who would end all. Swarms of alien horrors blocked the skies and sent their foul progeny to kill every last thing on the planet. Valoth was the first to encounter them, and he managed quite well against them, but eventually even he had to fall back before the horde. The dragons barricaded themselves in deep caves in the highest mountains made specifically for this purpose as they debated what to do. Valoth was a voice for fighting them at first, but he eventually realized that even one such as he could not fight this. So the dragons did what must be done. They had been studying the skies for many years and had located a planet that would be amicable to their kind; all they had to do was go there. Every dragon of evey age, from the First Scale to the smallest hatchling, focused their energies and pooled their thoughts. Valoth participated in this; he knew, if only for a scant few minutes, the feeling of having millions of minds join your own, and knew that He was Larger than his current body.
They were almost ready when the horde reached the door. Some brave souls who had volunteered to act as a rearguard broke off from the link and barred the door; when the throng broke through, they held them off long enough to let the others escape.
One to fall was Alkus, slain by a behemoth insectoid, but not before crushing it's body. As Valoth saw Alkus' bleeding body on the floor, more of a father to him than his progenitor had ever been, he was filled with a tearing grief. All who were in the link felt this, and their pooled emotion amplified the effects. Instead of going between planets, they went between universes.
It was by a sheer stroke of luck that they landed on a habitable planet. It wasn't long before an offshoot of humanity had made contact and established diplomatic relations. It was here that the alliance noticed Valoth, Last of the Champions. He was alone in the world, his familial bonds having been severed by the forces of the Abomination. He was as powerful a psychic as anyone had ever seen, perhaps even more.
He was chosen, and when offered the chance to avenge his foster father, he gladly accepted.
Description: Valoth is a tall, imposing man, 8 feet tall, with silvery-grey hair and pale blue eyes. His face and body is covered in scars and bulging with muscle, and he wears clothes of treated dragonhide, and armor of dragonscale, excepting a helmet, which his powers had trouble going through. He is armed with a dragonclaw sword with a dragonbone handle, and has several dragonfang daggers on various parts of his person. He radiates an aura of power that most can feel as they walk toward him. Mentally, Valoth is a seasoned warrior, having fought terrible beasts for many years, and slain many. While he can be detached from those he interacts with, he is ridiculously loyal to those he considers friend, and will fight with a fell fury to protect them.