Mmmm... Content warning. Don't try reading what I write in the stuff that looks clearly WIP-ish. I like leaving my stuff half-finished and making no sense until I actually finish them.
Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2020 10:19 pm
╞══════════╣| - Personal Information - |╠══════════╡ Full Name: Solati whatever-the-last-name-is Nickname: Sol Titles: ---
Age: Birthdate: {When you were born} Gender: Male
Height: {Inches :: Centimeters} (Yes, we want measurements in both.) Weight: {Pounds :: Kilograms}
Philosophy: "{A Philosophy that resonates with your character.}" Personality: {Behavior of your character}
╞══════════╣| - Character Attributes - |╠══════════╡
{ Character Attributes are designated by one's Race and Class, and will increase through the class progression with the character. }
Health :: Stamina :: Spirit ::
╞══════════╣| - Character Information - |╠══════════╡ First Job: {Determines your skillset} ═╣| Specialty: {May choose a specialty relevant to your first job at character level.}
Health Progression: {Amount of Health Gained per Job Level} Stamina Progression:{Amount of Stamina Gained per Job Level} Spirit Progression: {Amount of Spirit Gained per Job Level}
Likes: • {Minimum of two} • {Give us a taste of who you are!} Dislikes: • {Minimum of two} • {There's something that bothers each and every one of us.} Fears: • {Minimum of two, must be practical.} • {A man has many fears, whether rational or not. How we rise to them determines our lot in life.}
╞══════════╣| - Character Skillset - |╠══════════╡Freeform Abilities • { Freeform abilities are gained at 2 per level and range from learning new weapon aptitudes, special combat techniques from the Training Manual, and basic spellcraft from the Tomes of Arcana or Divinity }
╠══════════╡Combat Styles • { Combat Styles are unique schools of training passed down to certain Classes. Combat Styles apply Descriptive Rank bonus, making them more powerful than Freestyle attacks. }
╠══════════╡Grand Magic • { Grand Magics [Arcana or Divinity] are unique, powerful, spells only available to a select few in the world. While Combat Styles offer more variety, Grand Magics offer more power, unbridled and furious. }
╞══════════╣| - Weapon Worksheet - |╠══════════╡ Weapon Type: {Sword, spear, etc.} Weapon Range: {Its reach. In inches and centimeters/meters please} Weapon Weight: {How heavy it is. In pounds and kilograms please} Weapon Location: {Where it is stored} • {When you create your profile, you may have any one basic weapon, valued at or less than 25ℳ, that your first job may wield.)
╞══════════╣| - Equipment Worksheet - |╠══════════╡ Equipment Type: {Light, Medium, Heavy} Equipment Style: {See Standard Equipment in Other Information Subforum} Equipment Weight: {How heavy it is. In pounds and kilograms please} Equipment Location: {Where it is stored} • {When you create your profile, you may have any one basic piece of armor, valued at 100ℳ or less, that your first job may wear.)
╞══════════╣| - Character Inventory - |╠══════════╡ • Goldmarks: 100ℳ{Marks} {Everyone starts with a minimum of 100} • Basic Waterskin (with 3 days Supply) { Holds up to 5 days supply } • Backpack { Holds up to 40lbs }
╞══════════╣| - Character History - |╠══════════╡ {Your character's background. Please have at least a basic background complete, comprised of a basic overview of their childhood, early teenage years, and what drove them to becoming adventurers, whether for good or evil.}
Five. Guess I'll put the thing here. It's not worth a read atm btw. Forget polishing anything, it's not even organized.
Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2020 10:28 pm
Siren:
Description:
"In the seas where leviathan slumber and cliffs where griffons prey, there lies a yet more dangerous threat. Beware the sirens, for the voices of these beauts lure the most stalwart of men to be their willing prey." - from Irwin's Marvelous Monsters and Menagerie Manual
The dancer by the fountain, turning and twisting like the waves on the ocean as the irresistible tune she hums draws all eyes (and gold) to her. The gypsy selling items from wares she's collected on her travels across the lands, speaking words that can only be understood if you pay her heed, their whispers mysterious like a foggy bay and their laughter bubbling like a lively creek. The intrepid scout, taking to the skies to see what is over the crest of the next hill, heedless of any dangers that may befall their fragile bones. These are the sirens, who traverse as they please their home of many horizons.
The oldest elves remember of a time when sirens were considered nothing more than monsters, intelligent as the more civilized folks, but enemy to all with their voracious appetite for meat and wicked pleasure in battles of wit. However, it has been many centuries since that time, and members of this ancient race have since integrated into society. While many remain as "monsters," wild threats that use their allure to hunt and feast on men and women as their prey, just as many live peacefully with the other intelligent races.
Physical Appearance A siren's form could, at first glance, appear no different from humans. Albeit, with the caveat that they all possess extraordinary beauty. However, all sirens have the ability to transform from human shape into semi-monstrous shape(s). These shapes can fall into one of two different categories. Though, not all sirens can transform into both. Elven scholars categorize sirens based on the forms they can transform into.
Merfolk - These sirens can transform into an aquatic form. Key features are both legs melding into a large tail fin, the ability to see underwater, and the growth of gills that can be used to breathe underwater. Most sirens also exhibit other cosmetic features, such as the growth of additional scales and fins. When not transformed, these sirens are difficult to identify. At most, they have a mild case of sea legs that interferes with their aim moreso than their balance.
Harpy - These sirens can transform into an aerial form. Key features are wings, sprouting either from their back or taking the place of their arms. Most sirens also exhibit other cosmetic features, such as the growth of additional feathers and wings, the reshaping of their feet/hands into talons, and even the acquirement of a beak. When not transformed, these sirens have slim, lightweight bodies with hollow bones that leave them more fragile than most others.
Both - Sirens that can make both transformations are neither common nor rare. They gain the benefit of having both shapes at their disposal but also exhibit the characteristic weaknesses of both in their human form.
Diet
Though technically omnivorous, sirens are primarily carnivores in nature and diet. They will consume plant materials to aid with digestion but extract very little nutrients from anything other than meat, making it unfeasible for them to survive on a purely vegetarian diet. Additionally, as fae, their sense of taste isn't only rooted in the five physical tastes. They have a taste for "Spirit," as many spirits do. Unique to their race, they also have a taste for "Intelligence," as in the intellect of the individual who's meat they consume, which is a particularly delicious flavor for sirens.
In fact, by eating the flesh of intelligent creatures, sirens can prolong their life spans and grow ever stronger. Hence, why sirens of old attacked and still attack humans and also why most sirens who attempt to integrate into intelligent society are young and neither accustomed nor reliant on the power of flesh. Powers aside, the flavor of intelligence isn't necessarily a siren call for sirens. Just as humans can refrain from eating meat, sirens can also easily forgo their favorite flavor. Many do and, though it was much rare in the past, many have done.
Society/Culture
Sirens have a culture, but no society. Their history is delivered orally, through songs that bespoke of a millennia of their kind's deeds. Though written off as barbaric by many of the races until recently, they have sung their ballads and epics of intricate delicacy for eons, before humans even scrawled their first letter down. They, from the beginning, were not a race that enjoyed congregating in neither large nor fixed social groupings. Aside from tight knit families while the young were reared and taught, they traveled as they pleased, meeting and sharing with others of their kind and others of other kinds. Though, encounters of the latter often ended in the other's death and eventual consumption.
However, over the course of centuries, some of these seducers of the wild have grown a vested enough interest or need in the society of the civilized to integrate themselves among their prey. Some to feed. Others as they had grown curious over these equally intelligent creatures. Still others who had been held captive since birth and knew of no other way to live. Sirens, who once would lure minds for so long that bodies would starve, learned over generations how to exercise some modicum of self control in their allure. Already possessed of the ability to transform into the likeness of their prey and the intelligence to think and do as their prey did, the transition had little physical or mental difficulties. However, to call it peaceful, after time immemorable of being hunter and hunted, would be a lie.
From nation to nation and race to race, treatment of sirens differs. Longer lived races frequently distrust them, many remembering when sirens were nothing but monsters. Shorter lived races have come to welcome them, aside from those in nations with a deep prejudice against them or a system--of particular note, a black market in monstrous pets--that exploits them. High society in all races, however, will be hard-pressed to accept sirens. Those educated that know of the siren's power and what it could do to a court cannot in good conscience even allow one to speak within the halls of governance.
Thus, it is that sirens call no one nation home. They have no representation in the leadership of other races, and their kind is naturally inclined to wanderlust to begin with. They travel and travel, often times in gypsy groups of all sorts of demographics, and some choose to settle as their heart pleases, spreading the race evenly throughout those lands that do not pose a danger to them. Do not misunderstand, however. Finding a home to live in peace is not the siren's dream. To be tethered and caged is exactly what many sirens despise most, after all.
While the elves have labeled them as merfolks, harpies, or both, sirens have their own terms for their own kind: the Sunken are those who are at home in the waves, the Scattered are those who are home in the skies, and those who are at home in both are referred to as the Scattered and the Sunken, or vice versa.
Behavior
Sirens are free-spirited wanderers, often following no rules but their hearts. Like many fae, they can be fickle and morally ambiguous. However, sirens that have made an effort to fit into civilized society, those that may be played as characters, are generally not the kind to do evil on a whim. If they had been, they would not have been able to make it this far.
Genetics
Siren inheritance is a strange and jarring phenomenon. As a race, they possess the ability to reproduce with any other race much like humans. Unlike humans, they do not create hybrids. The race of their offspring is determined by their mother. A mother siren will give birth to sirens regardless of her mate's species. A father siren will conceive non-sirens if they copulate with another species. Humans are the one exception in that, occasionally, a half-breed will be born instead.
Important Figures
⦁ "The Siren": "The Siren," was a harpy siren imprisoned and enslaved by a beloved prince of Ternesj'Vorel to be his pet well over a millenia ago. Her name is lost to history, but her deeds sparked both the sirens' greatest tragedy and the theaters' most popular romance. As the first story goes, she killed the prince, ate him, and escaped, enraging the citizens and royal family alike. A genocide of the sirens, still nothing more than cunning monsters, was attempted in earnest within the nation, and though the sirens survived and preservered, they lost countless of their own. The playwright Ballard Inkspeare wrote and directed a popular retelling of the story on the stage that turned it into a cautionary tale of falling prey to lust. However, rather than being popular for its original intent, the story became popular as a forbidden romance, and since then, playwrights and authors the continent over has told and retold the tragic love story of this ill-fated coupe. It is ironic, however, that while such a tale is touted as "ancient" and "once upon a time," the very conditions that gave rise to this story--a trade in monsters, including the ever popular sirens, as goods--remains very well and alive in certain nations.
⦁ Jeravel: Cast as a villain in human history books but narrated as a hero in the ballads of the harpy sirens, the harpy siren Jeravel is the first siren recorded to enter civilized society, and is the most frequently cited by high society whenever any of their own should even think about inviting a siren or getting close to one. Unable to bear watching her kin be slaughtered without mercy, Jeravel entered the heart of the enemy, and through wit, guile, charm, and song, worked her way up the ranks until she found herself seated next to the king. Using the power of her position, she forced an end to the crusade against her kind, and those who disagreed were either silenced or were found suddenly agreeing one day. Broken hearts and bodies littered her path to the top, including the death of the former queen. She did what she needed to do and henceforth enjoyed a life of luxury. Despite her integration into society, she never lost her taste for the flesh of mankind, and the crown prince heroically did away with the evil siren of the court once her consumption of human flesh came to light. She died, but she showed the sirens that followed after her that it was possible to be among the other races. Some modern sirens, while keeping Jeravel a hero, also cast her as a tragic figure and a lesson to the young sirens that wish to live alongside other races: to consume human flesh, even once, is tantamount to being banished forever, if not worse.
⦁ Serena: While the clouds were dyed red with the blood of sirens and humans alike in a fight of justice against survival, the oceans were calm and the seafoam white. The sirens of the sea had no drama or fanfare for their move onto land. Their coming was much like the waves upon sand, changing only a little at a time. Seafaring was a way of life to the folks of the coast, and they were invariably more accustomed to the sirens than their kin in the mountains, coming into contact with them more often. There was an understanding, but hardly any trust, at least not until Serena walked out from the waves of the sea and never returned home. This siren, with a single goal in mind, approached a small fishing village, gained their trust, and lived the rest of her life as nothing but a human, not even transforming even once into a Siren. An ancient siren who had survived until that last step out of the ocean by regular consumption of intelligent creatures, she died after a mere couple decades. However, her legacy remained for both sides of the shores and cliffs, and she would be the first of many sirens who would try to live among humans, some who succeeded and some who didn't.
⦁ Ange: Centuries after Jeravel and Serena, a young siren male was born to an enslaved siren. He, like his mother, was treated as a pet, but in his manhood, he was clever enough and had kind enough masters to earn his freedom. Ange knew only how to live with the rest of civilization, and the thought of consuming the flesh of races he had interacted with on a daily basis, no matter how unsavory his experiences with them were, was abhorrent. Therefore, his freedom lay not in the wilds, but on the open roads of society. However, society had yet to comfortably accept sirens, so he sought to help and sought help from others like him, sirens with no place to go. Together, with Ange as the leader, they formed a small, nomadic band of people who lived in wagons, traveling together from one city to the next, selling goods and offering their services as needed. Throughout his life, Ange continued to help bridge the understanding between sirens and other races until, and he was rewarded for these efforts with the continual improvement of relations between the race. To this day, these nomadic siren caravans remain. Though, none as large as the one Ange led. It takes difficult circumstances and a rare leader to bring sirens, so prone to wanderlust as they are, together onto one path.
⦁ "The First Few": After Jeravel and Serena, other sirens with their own interests in human society made their own attempts, Ange among them. The first of these sirens are collectively known as the "First Few." To sirens, with their oral histories rich with characters and personalities, The First Few tell of the gradual reshaping of life as sirens knew it. Little by little, whether it be by stepping from cliffs or waves, escaping from cages and entering from freedom, each tale recounts a unique experience by a siren treading their path for the first time. In these tales, one can see the various channels through which sirens came to become a part of intelligent society, and there are many sirens who can claim that they are a descendant of one of the first few, born and bred within civilization.
Racial Traits:
⦁ Age: Sirens reach adulthood in their late teens. Most that dwell among the other intelligent races live for a little under a century. On the other hand, sirens in the wild, who freely consumes the flesh and vitality of other intelligent creatures, can live for centuries while retaining their timeless beauty, rivaling even the elves in longevity. ⦁ Size: Medium: As Medium creatures, sirens have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
⦁ ⦁ Racial Bonuses:
⦁ [ Siren Song ]: - Honey sweet tones in a language at once alien and universal, the voice of a siren is a captivating weapon. When a siren speaks in their native tongue of Babel, they can be understood exactly by those who are fixated upon them and by those they fixate upon. When a siren sings in their native tongue of Babel, their haunting voice borders upon a physical experience, a haunting sensation that transcends the aural, and by weaving magic into it, draining their spirit to do so, they may use their songs to make themselves appear as whatever is most pleasurable to those who hear them. It is an change that is both so drastic enough to be anything and yet so enrapturing that common sense flees the beholder. Their wildest suggestions sound plausible. Their greatest demands are a meager cost for their mere presence. However, to speak and sing with such enchantment and universality has a requirement. Only those sirens who can speak only Babel may use Siren Song, for to know another language is to accept what has been scattered.
⦁ [ Of Wind and Foam ]: - Wanderlusting fae denizens of the oceans and coasts, where sky, water, and land meet, the bodies of sirens are in part spirit, in part flesh, giving them a mutable form with which they may traverse the seas, skies, and land. All sirens must choose at least one of the two forms below. Both may be chosen as well.
⦁ [ Scattered Wind ]: - The sirens of wind transform into the likeness of birds, some taking on the plumage of species known and others taking on plumage completely unknown. Their feet turn into talons and they grow feathers and wings when they transform, with which they soar through the skies, but at the cost of brittle bones, hollow and easily broken. Myths of old have mistaken them for angels, and they are as fragile as their angelic appearances suggest. Gain free flight. Take 2 ranks extra damage from all attacks.
⦁ [ Sunken Foam ]: - Some sirens are as much at home as they are at sea, known as merfolks by most and the sunken by their own kind. Merfolks replace their lower body with a large tail fin and grow gills while their upper body remains looking mostly, if not completely, human. They are able to delve into the deepest parts of the ocean, but in return, commonly have difficulty with skills that would be useful above water but not under. As projectiles fare badly in the water, fighting from a distance, without using magic, is a commonly seen weakness amongst the merfolks. Take 2 ranks penalty for all non-magical ranged attacks.
FULL NAME - Solati d'Artagnan NICKNAMES - Sol TITLES - The Bibliophile Princess of the Rauch
AGE - 17 BIRTHDAY - June 21 GENDER - Male SEXUAL ORIENTATION - Demisexual Face-con HEIGHT - 5' 7" WEIGHT - 141 lbs
PHILOSOPHY - Invictus: Unconquerable. LIKES
- Dragons and Books - Singing and Devising - Afternoon naps - The view from the highest tower
DISLIKES
- Filth and Cruelty - Caring and Hesitating - Evening slumber - Meeting younger brothers
FEARS
- Cages and Chains - Speaking and Trusting - His own feelings; past, present, and future
RACE - Siren CURRENT HOME - Rauchlands BIRTHPLACE - Rauchlands
PERSONALITY
tab i - Bibliophile tab ii - Defiant tab iii - Cunning tab iv - Kind tab v - Burdened
I. In the eyes of most, this bibliophile princess Solati d'Artagnan is soft and quiet, a mute who prefers her solitude and a good book or a nap over company. She is disinterested in high society and knows nothing of the power balances within it. Her father spoils her, meeting even unreasonable demands like owning a slave as if she had simply asked for a puppy, all while setting her up with a marriage she is sure to be well taken care of in. Meanwhile, she spurns that very same engagement, ignoring her fiance, if not outright attacking him with sly actions in public. Simple and easy to survey, she is written off by many as a princess one does not need to worry about.
II. In truth, Solati d'Artagnan is a siren prince who has hidden everything about himself for almost as long as he can remember. He cannot be a prince, or else his head will be hunted by those who do not like a royal heir outside of their power, of which there are many. He cannot be a siren, or else he will never have the chance to take the throne and right what has gone so wrong for his homeland for so long. To begin with, he never had a choice. For the sake of the country, he is to be a girl when his father deems it appropriate, a boy when his father deems him ready, and a siren only when his father deems it necessary. In time, he is expected to make these decisions himself, but for always, he is meant to be what the nation needs, such is how his father taught him and such is what he believes he must do. He understands, as he is old enough now, but to understand is one thing, to accept is another, and while he has done both, he remains dissatisfied and angry with the lie that is his life. It is a simmering, hidden fury that he keeps under careful lock and key, just like everything else about him.
III. Solati knows his duty. Severe and serious, the hidden crown prince moves with careful cunning, while fighting in the manner that best suits him. A smoothly executed scheme is like a book with a satisfying ending, both are good plots and both are enjoyed by Solati. Perhaps it is due to his standing as the hidden prince and the cunning he learned and inherited from his father, but stealth and subterfuge have always been Solati's weapon of choice. However, they are more than just his strengths. Solati takes a deep satisfaction when he accurately predicts another's movements or outmaneuvers and outthinks his opponent. He enjoys these battles of trickery, treating them as tests of intelligence, and will occasionally show a rare smile upon gaining the upper hand through these, often less than honorable, manners.
IV. More often than not, Solati is not even given a chance to enjoy even his short victories in battles of wits, his small advancements made through his own intelligence in stealing back even a little bit more power and influence. More often than not, blood needs to be shed and lives taken in a manner all too intentional and planned for Solati to claw out even the smallest achievements. To kill and worse does not excite the siren. He has yet to be twisted to such an extent, at least. However, he has grown cold, so very cold, to cruelty. A heart hardened by countless self-inflicted. Knowing it is and will continue to be necessary, he takes responsibility every chance he gets. Though, it has yet to make it any easier. All he wants is to see his country flourish for once in his life, free from the greed of those who broke apart his own family and forced him into his despicable life, but he does not have the luxury or good fortune to fight cruelty with anything but its like. He must use every tool he can get his hands on, and he must do whatever he can to sharpen every blade at his disposal.
V. With little to enjoy in his life or be proud of, Solati wakes up every day asking if it worth it. Every morning, he tells himself it is for the greater good. Every evening, he finds it hard to believe. Some burdens are easier to bear. His pent up frustrations find their own ways of being released, and it helps that he can sometimes walk the night as a man, even if at that time, he is still hiding his identities. Other burdens remain and never go, such as the constant threats looming over his head. Every motion made must be careful and he must think several steps ahead, now moreso than ever as his precious time to prepare dwindles ever smaller. Still other burdens haunt him and cannot be released. The lives he has taken and pain he has caused halo Solati's head whenever he has a spare moment to think. He tells himself it is for the greater good, but sometimes finds it hard to believe. Many times, it was also for his own survival--his head or theirs--so then was his life truly for the greater good? Will he be able to succeed and make every life he's taken worth it?
Weapon Type: {Sword, spear, etc.} Weapon Range: {Its reach. In inches and centimeters/meters please} Weapon Weight: {How heavy it is. In pounds and kilograms please} Weapon Location: {Where it is stored} • {When you create your profile, you may have any one basic weapon, valued at or less than 25ℳ, that your first job may wield.)
Equipment Data:
Equipment Type: {Light, Medium, Heavy} Equipment Style: {See Standard Equipment in Other Information Subforum} Equipment Weight: {How heavy it is. In pounds and kilograms please} Equipment Location: {Where it is stored} • {When you create your profile, you may have any one basic piece of armor, valued at 100ℳ or less, that your first job may wear.)
The bibliophile beauty. The sleeping rose. The king's treasured doll. The nicknames for this well-kept princess seem to only grow by the year, and not without cause, for it is known in the Kingdom of Rauch that the king would much rather spend his time spoiling his daughters than on politics or the governing of the nation, just another in the line of disappointing kings who ignored the duties of their crown. While ignoring the plight of the poor and the starving and letting corrupt nobles and aristocrats run amok, he delivers punishments for any sleights on his daughters with a heavy fist. Solati, alone, has lost count of the deaths of those who had once tended to her, killed for the smallest mistakes in the most erratic of fashion. Even her birth had been a bloody one. Born weak and sickly, the king had blamed the doctors and everyone who had been present at the princess's birth. Every soul in that room aside from the king, Solati's mother, and Solati herself was summarily executed. The mad-king, people had begun calling him since then.
Even out of the daughters he favors so heavily, Solati is his clear favorite, and few have to wonder why. With her mother's scarlet locks and porcelain skin, dark red eyes flashing brightly in light and turning to like charcoal in the shadows, she is a novelty even among beauties. Known to be mute and meek, even the aristocrats and nobles with little interest in the powerless women of the royal family have had their eyes on her value as a royal wedding bargaining chip. However, thus far, her father's iron grip has saved her from marriage, even to the extent of sacrificing her older sister, and her early betrothal to her paternal cousin has made alternative marriage arrangements difficult to begin with.
Little do the gluttonous aristocrats and nobles know, or the rest of the world for that matter, that to begin with, their efforts to use her as a political tool would all be for naught past the wedding night, when she would be discovered to be a he. Resonare Solati d'Artagnan is the firstborn son of the current king of Rauch, and thus, by the traditions of royal inheritance, the legitimate crown prince. Born a little sickly, his father took the excuse for an action he had always planned. From the moment the supposed mad-king chose Solati's mother to be his new queen and killed his then queen to give her the position, he had but one goal: to craft a heir who would finally break the shackles that the nobility and aristocracy entrenched the royal family in generation after generation, stealing away princes to educate them into slovenly kings with no influence or power. If the king's influence was too weak protect his sons from the same treatment he received, then the only thing he could do to protect his heir was to hide him as a princess. All who may have known Solati's gender at birth were silenced, and under pretense of the child being sickly, he was raised solely by his mother until her untimely death a few years later, killed by one of the many factions that wanted to instill their own queen to influence the king and, more importantly, give birth to the next heir.
Solati returned to the palace after his mother's death and was given but one ultimatum by his father: to devote his life to the country. Young as he was, he agreed readily. Henceforth, the precious princess of the Rauch would be doted on and coddled by his shameless king-father in public. He would be a figure of no importance, and ignored by the courts except for when it was convenient. All the while, behind closed doors, his father would give him a strict education befitting of a heir and force upon him experience upon experience, no matter how cruel or kind, necessary to overcome the hostile court he would face in the future. He grew up close to his sisters, fellow princesses who were raised with similar favors by the father, each growing into accomplished women of a variety of talents as they were spoiled with opportunities other ladies of their country would only dream of. On the contrary, he grew to dread meeting his brothers, distant princes who he would have to confront one day, no matter how innocent or manipulated they were.
The innocent child was quickly burdened with matters of life or death from the very first day in court. First, he must always be a "she" in the eyes of the public. Second, he must never speak, never sing as he loved to do. Third, he could not leave the palace to roam where he pleased as it was in his nature to do. Fourth, he must never show his wings, fins, or anything that would ever hint he was anything more than a human. Fifth, he must never make a friend. Each rule was for his safety and the future of his country, but while his father's rules preserved his life, it also twisted him.
First, as a child, he never really thought of it. His mother had raised him as a girl, as she knew of the king's thoughts, but as his body and mind matured, his false identity slowly overtook his life. Only certain foods could be eaten. He must exercise such and such amounts everyday. He was restrained, as a mere child, from acting like the boy he was. One time, he slipped away and had the chance to rough and tumble it out in the gardens. He was punished so severely that he never did it again. The first time he let slip a word carried a far severe punishment. To demonstrate the weight of the secrets Solati must keep, the king killed the guard who had heard Solati's voice by chance in front of the child's very own eyes.
As he became older, he became more careful. There were no more unfortunate accidents. The mad king displayed fewer "episodes" as it became unnecessary to cover for a child's mistakes. However, the weight of the knowledge of what would occur if he ever did slip up burdened Solati's mind his every waking moment. Therefore, when he met someone he thought was his first friend, someone who was nice and acted trustworthy. Solati naturally fell for the ruse. His father, in his wisdom, let the relationship continue and only stepped in to reveal to Solati the true nature of his "friend." At first, simply a noble's son trying to flatter the hand of a royal princess for the prestige in status, even if it was only a cosmetic decoration, that a marriage to a princess would bring. Then, upon discovering the princess's secret, a devious turn coat who exposed her immediately to his father and had begun plotting how to best use their knowledge to their advantage. Needless to say, the unfortunate noble family died with Solati's affections.
You know what? I need to write this royal history thing separately. Focus on matters directly related to Solati.
Out of the night that covers me, tabBlack as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be tabFor my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance tabI have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance tabMy head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears tabLooms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years tabFinds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, tabHow charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, tabI am the captain of my soul.
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