You are Trence Colunstin, a teenage adventurer, currently in the castle of the villaneous Lord Mackhal, the man who sent so many bandits and pirates after your head.
With you are your closest friend, Willis Navers, sharpshooter and high-powered spell enthusiast, and his mother, Sessha Navers, a high-level assassin.
They make up two-thirds of your adoptive family, along with Uncle, named Waris Sovril, who is no fighter, but a skilled magical experimentor, curse-breaker, and inventor of the Thaumulator, a piece of magical detection apparatus.
In many ways, your adventures are about that apparatus.
For you were stuck in a statue for at least a century, petrifed by an unknown cause. Uncle found you with his device, brought you home from a ruined estate, and slowly broke the curse on you, releasing you to the world for the first time in a long time.
After a few years living with him, your idyllic life was interrupted by bandits. Someone, who you later found out to be Lord Mackhal, sent them to your village with small amulets tuned to detect you.
You were knocked out and kidnapped.Through unknown methods, you broke free, escaped, evaded pursuit, and ran back home. Uncle had already stopped there,
left you a note, and had you run to the city, you friend Willis's other home, to safety in numbers.
Sessha, Willis's mother, and a high level adventurer could protect the two of you from any mere bandits, and you would spend the next year, after Uncle arrives, tracking down who sent them and preparing for the future, as it seems you will live a life of conflict.
Your next adventure is to find your origins, or to return to wherever you were turned to stone. Unfortunately, your statue was too old for this, and it turned into a string of tracing ownership backwards, to a famous adventurer and her descendants.
..
Who proved they were not trustworthy, kidnapping Uncle and holding him hostage against your good behavior, forcing the three of you to the arctic mountains to complete a quest to retrieve him.. a pilgramage to a
once-famous elemental shrine of Cold.Once there you don't waste your time, and decide to ask what the old spirit knows of those who would hunt you down... which it doesn't know. Those people weren't there, but you were, and although it didn't know what you were, it did know where it could find something else, linked to Cold and linked to you, could be found.
After returning, picking up Uncle, and
making sure the treacherous nobles won't forget you, you head off to your next destination, a short boat trip to an
island full of ancient ruins.Your stay there is brief, but adventurous, as you explore ruined buildings, fight pigmen on penguins, and duke it out with robots and ghosts, as you look at the weird white buildings and funky machinery of the ancient Trisamorians, whose civilization fell several hundred years ago.
It leads you eventually, to a room under a ruined university, half-full with dirt, where a small bit of slice blue-and-white melon that was what the spirit directed you to before.
There.. you aren't sure what happened. But it was something. And from then on, you could use your magic properly, allowing you to change form into various small, somewhat dangerous creatures with unfamiliar abilities, that nobody can identify. Still. Back in the city, nobody knew what was up with you, not even the
god of secrets, so it isn't surprising, but still.. anyway, once you're back on the mainland surely Klamati will be able to tell you something.
But after a bit more exploration, a drinking contest, and some waiting, leaving won't be that easy. A pirate fleet has arrived, and you're going to have to
fight your way out.The battle goes well, mostly, with the friendly adventurers who work the ruins more than willing to help out a friend against a small army of pirates, mercenaries, and miscellaneous soldiers. You breeze through the preliminaries pretty easily, save for a bit of difficulty against some more of Lord Mackhal's real gun-armed troops.. until someone else arrives.
Carina of the Starry Skies.Whatever is going on, it's bigger than just some rich noble who wants you dead. Carina is an elite adventurer, and a powerful combatant, and she came close to wiping the decks with you three. You manage to force her to retreat magically, along with her buddy soldiers.. but you aren't completely confident you could win if she was playing for keeps.
Anyway, once you're back home, you have to decide on your next move. You need to take out Mackhal, or else he'll just keep sending assassins or bandits or such at you, and one of them will get lucky. You also need to find out who Carina is working for, which turns out to be
someone from the Isle Perilous, either the government there or the paladins of the god of diplomacy. Neither of which would be good news, really.
Still, you have some time before it gets critical again, and you wouldn't be an adventurer if you never did some sidequests, and after some visits to a
Water Temple, and a
Dwarf Mine, you end up with a lead on what might grant you another form, for a
certain mountain lake.
There, you repeat the experience from earlier.. with what you are beginning to suspect could be the memories of others of your species, those you have never met, who died centuries before the modern day.
Following that, your next trip will be to
Mosral City, where you find allies to hopefully help you murder Lord Mackhal, letting him know that it isn't right to kill someone just because they can turn into moderately cute creatures. You put together a disguise as a caravan, pick up a few soldiers, including Verity Maduras from the lord of Mosral City, and head off to face the evil lord..
the trip is eventful, you got ambushed by monsters repeatedly, and eventually betrayed by your escort. You had to fight your way out of your burning wagon, and into the castle proper, where you faced off against a squadron of adventurers and a last group of elite guards, before licking your wounds and forcing your way up into the target's bedroom..
only to be met by a second elite adventurer. Dorren of Mossberg, some kind of magic user. Bound to kill you, but he's looking to talk first, and he is
the first person you've ever met who knows what you are.
Author
Topic: Extinction (Read 225198 times)