Leonias2006-01-11 17:32:29
(Just a story that crawled out of my head while considering how to deal roleplay-wise with the recent turn of events considering Leonias. Theme is typical considering the death of the parents. But there's something I'm trying to convey in this short-short story. You ever heard of a "dry drunk"? Replace alcohol with a tendency to let your rage get the best of you. When you berserk to the point of complete insanity, and whatever instigated that stage of rage is surpassed by something else that happens afterward, how much worse can it get? When you're already used to an adrenaline-filled, berserking state of existence, what's next? It's a hard place to imagine, and the process of getting there makes it seem like something breaks. This is a story where nothing breaks.)
Leonias was only seven years when the ivy began to stretch over the granite citadel walls. He had just had his first beginnings of a crush for a girl at ten years old when a stray rock flinged off a clumsy carriage wheel, splitting a crack into the colored glass that covered the sanctuary lobby in a dome. He had passed the place many times, his house on the southeastern corner directly from it's entrance, but he never even once gave it a second glance.
The royalty was still strong back then, great celebrations held so often through the revolutions that it seemed like life was a constant splendor of all the sights, sounds and flavors the core worlds had to offer. His mother ensured his perfect attendance at the academy, and when he turned sixteen his father had began inquiring about a future position for him within the royal guard. A rank his grandfather had held long ago within the royal militia by right of blood relation to the royal family, but one his father had not taken up after him.
The Justiciar were peasants, back then. Strays done wrong from all corners of the core worlds who had, in a moment of inner strength surpassed the path of reactionary hatred and found a corner of resolve that ensnared them: a place where the only resolute was to be sure what had been done to them was never done again to another living creature. That place took them, changed them. Turned them into something else, a being whose identity was solely that of the near-selfless, distantly self-indulgent cause-rendering ideal named "Justice". They were housed in Celest, it's compassion knowing no extent. In wars, they proved their worth and were named a second militia to the royal family. A title that stood stronger than steel and stone just south of the great pool.
When Leonias turned eighteen, his father grew ill with a heart disease. The man favored drink, and ate little other than meat. When he passed, his mother sold the house to keep their finances steady. She was old fashioned, Leonias's mother. A woman of tradition and demure responsibilities about the home. All the family's friendships and colleagues were truly of his father's, and the mother knew little how to contact them. Their passage came to Rockholme, when new work arose with Rockholme's restructuring of their government. She took a job there piling numbers for a small desert miner's industry. She was loved, there. As was her son.
But Rockholme is not the most ideal of places, and an unsightly brawl between a traveling prince's bodyguards just a few yards from where Leonias's mother was trading trinkets for water-foods (a title given to all fruits and other moisture-aplenty foodstuffs on a desert planet such as Lorrd)would end her life with a stray bolt. He watched them leave, the little boy. Watched them with his appointed guardian's hands on his shoulders in a restraint that never went realized to be necessary. He watched them pass through the gates, going just as they had came.
He lived the life of a mercenaric for a time, tutored under the old bounty hunters. He found the way of combat fitted him, and he loved nothing more than the feel of cold steel in the tight grip of his fists. An errant job for an innocent target turned him awry from the lifestyle that might have had him running from his anger all his life, instead fate turned him a hand that would have him spill his mentor's blood all over the cement floor of their small dormitory just beyond the cavern mouth of the Rockholme mines. Somewhere else, an innocent woman named Kayleigh lived on.
He was nineteen when he returned to Celest, believing some amount of solace would be found in staring at his old home for hours pointlessly. They had changed the paint, and horribly ruined the decor. His mother would have done a thousand times better, and shriek if she saw what had become of it, he thought. The nightsky grew idle with twinklings of sun-shards overhead, and it grew cold. He had severed the past behind him: there was no passage back. His moment of inner twisting brought about a sideward glance, and there it lay, the iron doors of the Justiciarian Citadel.
He was backed into a corner.
He entered that place. Two old men would sit with him in the ageless barracks, heard his story. Enjine Du'Vaunt, son of Dexter Du'Vaunt and an old weaponsmith who had a prejudice against magic for some reason Leonias couldn't discern. He lived there, with them. And he began to change.
From the scriptures on the tablets in the lobby, he learned benevolence. He learned the regulations of men who lived in a constant extremity; A place of complete and utter berserking that occured so quickly and breathed so utterly still it surpassed any length of self control to the point of no identity. To a belonging of purpose and self-containment. A realm where knights broke into markets in mountain settlements and stood in front of crossbow bolts that might have struck down innocent women.
He understood the significance of the sword, and studied to understand the wisdom of choosing religious philos apart from realistic satyrism: That one was an excuse, the other a solution. When he was ready, the old engineer forged for him a suit of armor.
He's never removed it since.
(The product was a golem. A suit of armor, alike to a clockwork-animated suit of platemail. Seemingly empty. I can't find the words to express what that feels like.)
Leonias was only seven years when the ivy began to stretch over the granite citadel walls. He had just had his first beginnings of a crush for a girl at ten years old when a stray rock flinged off a clumsy carriage wheel, splitting a crack into the colored glass that covered the sanctuary lobby in a dome. He had passed the place many times, his house on the southeastern corner directly from it's entrance, but he never even once gave it a second glance.
The royalty was still strong back then, great celebrations held so often through the revolutions that it seemed like life was a constant splendor of all the sights, sounds and flavors the core worlds had to offer. His mother ensured his perfect attendance at the academy, and when he turned sixteen his father had began inquiring about a future position for him within the royal guard. A rank his grandfather had held long ago within the royal militia by right of blood relation to the royal family, but one his father had not taken up after him.
The Justiciar were peasants, back then. Strays done wrong from all corners of the core worlds who had, in a moment of inner strength surpassed the path of reactionary hatred and found a corner of resolve that ensnared them: a place where the only resolute was to be sure what had been done to them was never done again to another living creature. That place took them, changed them. Turned them into something else, a being whose identity was solely that of the near-selfless, distantly self-indulgent cause-rendering ideal named "Justice". They were housed in Celest, it's compassion knowing no extent. In wars, they proved their worth and were named a second militia to the royal family. A title that stood stronger than steel and stone just south of the great pool.
When Leonias turned eighteen, his father grew ill with a heart disease. The man favored drink, and ate little other than meat. When he passed, his mother sold the house to keep their finances steady. She was old fashioned, Leonias's mother. A woman of tradition and demure responsibilities about the home. All the family's friendships and colleagues were truly of his father's, and the mother knew little how to contact them. Their passage came to Rockholme, when new work arose with Rockholme's restructuring of their government. She took a job there piling numbers for a small desert miner's industry. She was loved, there. As was her son.
But Rockholme is not the most ideal of places, and an unsightly brawl between a traveling prince's bodyguards just a few yards from where Leonias's mother was trading trinkets for water-foods (a title given to all fruits and other moisture-aplenty foodstuffs on a desert planet such as Lorrd)would end her life with a stray bolt. He watched them leave, the little boy. Watched them with his appointed guardian's hands on his shoulders in a restraint that never went realized to be necessary. He watched them pass through the gates, going just as they had came.
He lived the life of a mercenaric for a time, tutored under the old bounty hunters. He found the way of combat fitted him, and he loved nothing more than the feel of cold steel in the tight grip of his fists. An errant job for an innocent target turned him awry from the lifestyle that might have had him running from his anger all his life, instead fate turned him a hand that would have him spill his mentor's blood all over the cement floor of their small dormitory just beyond the cavern mouth of the Rockholme mines. Somewhere else, an innocent woman named Kayleigh lived on.
He was nineteen when he returned to Celest, believing some amount of solace would be found in staring at his old home for hours pointlessly. They had changed the paint, and horribly ruined the decor. His mother would have done a thousand times better, and shriek if she saw what had become of it, he thought. The nightsky grew idle with twinklings of sun-shards overhead, and it grew cold. He had severed the past behind him: there was no passage back. His moment of inner twisting brought about a sideward glance, and there it lay, the iron doors of the Justiciarian Citadel.
He was backed into a corner.
He entered that place. Two old men would sit with him in the ageless barracks, heard his story. Enjine Du'Vaunt, son of Dexter Du'Vaunt and an old weaponsmith who had a prejudice against magic for some reason Leonias couldn't discern. He lived there, with them. And he began to change.
From the scriptures on the tablets in the lobby, he learned benevolence. He learned the regulations of men who lived in a constant extremity; A place of complete and utter berserking that occured so quickly and breathed so utterly still it surpassed any length of self control to the point of no identity. To a belonging of purpose and self-containment. A realm where knights broke into markets in mountain settlements and stood in front of crossbow bolts that might have struck down innocent women.
He understood the significance of the sword, and studied to understand the wisdom of choosing religious philos apart from realistic satyrism: That one was an excuse, the other a solution. When he was ready, the old engineer forged for him a suit of armor.
He's never removed it since.
(The product was a golem. A suit of armor, alike to a clockwork-animated suit of platemail. Seemingly empty. I can't find the words to express what that feels like.)
Unknown2006-01-12 03:59:42
In a completely unrelated note, I used to go by the title Justicar of the Seren, way back when 
