Post by Aradath D'Lagen on Dec 23, 2009 14:16:11 GMT -8
Name: Aradath D'Lagen
Gender: Male
Age: 65
Birthday: November 17th
Species:Mortal
Affinity: Light
Abilities: Instinct, Cast Light, Light Flash, Purify, Truth seeing, Mirror Image, Cleanse, Grand Illusion, Hypnosis
Artifact: An orb made of blue crystal that grants the ability hypnosis.
Current level: 7
Role: Mentor of Tobias
Alignment: Lawful good
Appearance: He's an elderly mage, with long hair and a long beard silvered with age. As any elderly person, his wrinkles have become apparent, especially around his brown eyes. He's 5'11" and rather thin. He wears a hooded white mage robe with gold trim. He also has a golden cord tied around his waist with various pouches attached. He is never without his staff.
Staff:
Mahogany with a clear crystal on top that glows a bright white when magic is channeled through it. It's 5' 7" in length.
Personality:
He's wise, but can come off as arrogant and constantly has the holier-than-thou vibe turned up to full blast. He has an even deeper rooted hatred of the darkness than his apprentice. He cares deeply for Tobias and is often overprotective of him.
History:
In his youth, Aradath was much like his apprentice Tobias; naive and seeing things in only light and dark. However, unlike his apprentice, he was headstrong and would voice his beliefs to anyone that would listen, getting into arguments with others that would last hours, as he refused to back down.
Shades of grey did not exist. They were purely illogical, one would simply choose dark or light, wouldn't they? They couldn't be both at once. And the ones who chose darkness? They were simply fools, weaklings that thought that the dark would aid them when in reality it was just using them.
He would not give up on this philosophy, angering one particular dark mage.
Her name was Akila Omrose.
He was slightly younger than Tobias at the time, but about five times more headstrong. It was at a meeting of all different affinities of mages that he started up an argument with her about the superiority of light to darkness. He walked away from hat argument, thinking nothing of it. She walked away plotting and scheming.
He didn't understand the darkness.
"They don't know," she had hissed. "They don't know. How could they know? With their charmed lives... the only way to make them see is to make them live it." She paused at this thought, turning the words she had just spoken over in her mouth, tasting them. "Yes. They'd have to live it..."
It was months later when he had an encounter with her again. He had been on a rather lonely road, examining a patch of daffodils, when he had suddenly fallen unconscious. When he awoke, he found himself in a dark dungeon, the dark mage standing over him.
She stared at him with her dark eyes as he demanded why she had taken him. After a few moments of silence, she replied. "I think I know what's wrong with you light mages; you just have it too easy. It's easy to talk about your lofty ideals and battling darkness when you don't actually know what it's like to have it inside you, clawing for release. So now, you will know... I will show you."
"I will never succumb to darkness! Never! My light, will guide me through it! Even in the darkest room, a burning candle will still give off its light!"
She stared at him evenly. "We shall see... We shall see."
He was there for weeks. Perhaps months. After awhile it was impossible for him to keep track of time, and there were very few memories of the place he could recall, for they al ran together.
Pain... That's all he could feel, all he could comprehend. His mouth was opened wide as he tried to scream, but no sound came to him. He struggled against his chains, just trying to make it stop. Why? Why would this woman go to such great lengths? He could feel something dark inside him pushing at him. If he gave into it, the pain would end, wouldn't it? She would have gotten what she wanted... No, he could not do that! He had to be strong! Mere pain would not cause him to betray the light!
But unfortunately for him, pain was not the only lesson Akila wanted him to know. He was left in isolation, in complete darkness for what seemed to him an endless amount of time.
Alone... He was completely and utterly alone. He was shaking somewhat as he once again felt the swell of something inside of him. The darkness... It was growing. Not only that but he felt desperate. Desperate for something; anything to ease his loneliness which seemed to crush him internally.
Have you heard of the seven vices? The seven human traits that would lead us all to hell?
Pride, avarice, wrath, gluttony, envy, sloth and finally...
Lust.
She walked in the cell then, and he instantly turned toward her, not caring who she was, only that it was the only human contact he would have in so long.
"How do you feel?" she asked, staring at him intently.
Aradath stared at her for a few moments, blinking as one would to get used to the light after being in the dark for so long. Part of him knew that he should not answer; that he should remain silent in protest, continue to defy her in any way possible, but he couldn't do it. He needed human interaction and at the moment he didn't care how he got it. "Lonely."
"You know it, then," she said. "That is a part of the darkness. The loneliness. No one hears you. No one sees you. They choose not to."
"I don't understand," he said quietly, looking at her for a few moments. "Why would you wish to use this to fuel your magic? Why would you wish to use something that makes you feel so..." He hesitated for a moment not sure if he should use the word he was about to. "Vulnerable."
Akila looked at him for a moment, then shook her head. "You don't understand, then," she said. "Not yet... for us, it is the only choice. The only path. At times it is a desperate bid for survival- against ourselves. Using it for our magic is the only way to process it properly. Our strength lies in the relentlessness of it... do you see?"
"No, I don't see... Don't you see?" He leaned forward toward her, eyes glinting intently. "You don't have to be so lonely and desperate! You don't need to fight against yourself. If you trusted yourself in the light, you would not need to channel such things! You could channel happier emotions instead! You could draw your strength from happiness!"
Akila shook her head. "There is nothing inside me that can do that," she said. "My only happiness lies in darkness. It is the strange music that calls to my heart, the blackness that blankets me as I sleep. Darkness is my 'light'."
"But why?" He insisted, leaning even farther forward. He stared into her eyes, his intense. "Surely you must derive some sort of pleasure from life? Something like that? You can't just really feel nothing but darkness all the time."
Akila regarded him blankly for a moment, then looked away. "I already told you," she said. "Darkness is the only thing that gives me pleasure."
"But surely there must be something else," Aradath said, tipping his head slightly. "Something a little more... physical." His gaze swept her from head to toe. He did not quite know what was going on with him. Right now, all he knew was that he wanted human contact. No, he wanted her.
"And that is 'light', too?" she questioned, a slight curl of amusement to her lips.
That made Aradath hesitate, and he sat back, trying to quell the feelings raging inside of him. He was feeling quite warm all of the sudden and he shifted uncomfortably. He felt urges, which he had not felt in such a long time.
His gaze turned to her again as he struggled for an answer. Light? Was what he was feeling light? No, it probably wasn't, but... It felt so right.
He leaned forward again, his gaze intense. "I thought that you did not care for such things as that?" He then sat back once more, a feeling of shame coming over him. He could not give in to such feelings! Yet even as he thought this, the lust was stirring in his body. He had been alone for so long, he needed human contact.
The amused smile curled her lips further, then lessened somewhat, without disappearing.
"I don't," she said. "But hearing it from you, a light mage of such vigorous purity... I had to ask." The smile broadened to reveal white teeth. "You want me," she realized. "Don't you?" That was rather unexpected. He had hated her passionately, and now that passion had turned to lust, somehow. She knew she was an attractive woman, but it still surprised her.
The breath caught in his throat, but Aradath nodded ever so slightly. "Y-yes." His voice was no more than a husky whisper, his throat feeling thick somehow. He swallowed and tried to look away, but he found his gaze being continually drawn back to her.
"Even the light is permitted to have such pleasure," he said, trying to justify his feelings, mostly for himself.
"Then that is one thing the light and dark have in common, it seems."
He inhaled sharply, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he exhaled right away. He recoiled slightly as he felt a certain measure of abhorrence towards her and himself. The feeling of disgust writhed through him like an electric shock, making him flinch as if it caused him pain.
Was he not a mage of the light? Was he not supposed to be above these kinds of feelings? Especially towards a dark mage and yet... There was an aura about her that he just wanted to touch; to drink in; to experience.
It was the he could feel every one of his teachings slowly corroding away. He was sliding into the darkness. And once one began sliding down such a slippery slope, there was little you could do to stop it.
Aradath's eyes bored into the ceiling above as he drew in a deep breath trying to comprehend what had just happened. He hadn't been in control of the situation, or himself.
He hated it.
He loved it.
He could not understand how his feelings could conflict like that and yet... He closed his eyes and tried focusing in on himself for a few moments. There was something inside him that was growing. Shadows with in himself, whispering promises of sweet relief if he would just give in.
He hated it.
He loved it.
It repelled him and yet he lusted for it all the same.
He could not give in. He could not! Yet... As he was once again left alone, he could feel it raging in him, always.
Alone.... He was constantly alone. In complete and utter isolation. Aradath had once fancied that his master would learn of his whereabouts and burst through the cell door to rescue him. But as the days wore on and one, that hope finally faded into nothingness, a bleak despair replacing it instead. His eyes were constantly unfocused as if they were staring at something far away, distance and coldness replacing the warmth that had once inhabited them. His arms were constantly wrapped around himself as he desperately tried to remember what human contact felt like. He could feel something rage inside of him; the age old battle that has taken place since the dawn of time. The battle of light against darkness. And for once, Aradath did not know which force would emerge victorious.
There are none who know what happened in that dungeon after this. Aradath himself had banished the memories from his mind. They were too painful, simply too painful to recall. She let him go one day, for reasons he never understood. She left him with something though. Something that he should have thrown away the moment he obtained it, but instead kept.
She stood over the broken mage who was collapsed on the ground, blinking in the sunlight. She knelt over him, bringing her lips close to his ear. "One day, Aradath. One day you will see someone who the light cannot help. And when that time comes, you will help them with darkness." She pressed a crystal sphere into his hand.
It was a sphere which granted him the ability hypnosis. One that, as he was recovering, he swore he would never use.
Yet... The hypocrisy of light never ceases. It was with this very orb he commanded Tobias to forget five years of his memory. He used this orb to commit perhaps one of the darkest deeds possible; kidnapping a little boy away from his parents.
Aradath took good care of Tobias, partly to atone for what he had done, but mostly because he was so innocent. So caring and trusting.
He vowed to himself that Tobias would never have to go through the pain that he did. That he would never have to learn the lessons of darkness.
So he shielded him from it for twenty years, keeping him away from all things dark and teaching him only in terms of black and white. No, his apprentice would not learn of shades of gray. It was something too painful. He could not bear to see Tobias in so much pain as that knowledge would one day cause him.
But it is the audacity of light that causes one to think that it is possible to keep the darkness away.
((A lot of this background came from a rp my friend Sneeuw and I had, so I give her credit here. ^^ ))
Gender: Male
Age: 65
Birthday: November 17th
Species:Mortal
Affinity: Light
Abilities: Instinct, Cast Light, Light Flash, Purify, Truth seeing, Mirror Image, Cleanse, Grand Illusion, Hypnosis
Artifact: An orb made of blue crystal that grants the ability hypnosis.
Current level: 7
Role: Mentor of Tobias
Alignment: Lawful good
Appearance: He's an elderly mage, with long hair and a long beard silvered with age. As any elderly person, his wrinkles have become apparent, especially around his brown eyes. He's 5'11" and rather thin. He wears a hooded white mage robe with gold trim. He also has a golden cord tied around his waist with various pouches attached. He is never without his staff.
Staff:
Mahogany with a clear crystal on top that glows a bright white when magic is channeled through it. It's 5' 7" in length.
Personality:
He's wise, but can come off as arrogant and constantly has the holier-than-thou vibe turned up to full blast. He has an even deeper rooted hatred of the darkness than his apprentice. He cares deeply for Tobias and is often overprotective of him.
History:
In his youth, Aradath was much like his apprentice Tobias; naive and seeing things in only light and dark. However, unlike his apprentice, he was headstrong and would voice his beliefs to anyone that would listen, getting into arguments with others that would last hours, as he refused to back down.
Shades of grey did not exist. They were purely illogical, one would simply choose dark or light, wouldn't they? They couldn't be both at once. And the ones who chose darkness? They were simply fools, weaklings that thought that the dark would aid them when in reality it was just using them.
He would not give up on this philosophy, angering one particular dark mage.
Her name was Akila Omrose.
He was slightly younger than Tobias at the time, but about five times more headstrong. It was at a meeting of all different affinities of mages that he started up an argument with her about the superiority of light to darkness. He walked away from hat argument, thinking nothing of it. She walked away plotting and scheming.
He didn't understand the darkness.
"They don't know," she had hissed. "They don't know. How could they know? With their charmed lives... the only way to make them see is to make them live it." She paused at this thought, turning the words she had just spoken over in her mouth, tasting them. "Yes. They'd have to live it..."
It was months later when he had an encounter with her again. He had been on a rather lonely road, examining a patch of daffodils, when he had suddenly fallen unconscious. When he awoke, he found himself in a dark dungeon, the dark mage standing over him.
She stared at him with her dark eyes as he demanded why she had taken him. After a few moments of silence, she replied. "I think I know what's wrong with you light mages; you just have it too easy. It's easy to talk about your lofty ideals and battling darkness when you don't actually know what it's like to have it inside you, clawing for release. So now, you will know... I will show you."
"I will never succumb to darkness! Never! My light, will guide me through it! Even in the darkest room, a burning candle will still give off its light!"
She stared at him evenly. "We shall see... We shall see."
He was there for weeks. Perhaps months. After awhile it was impossible for him to keep track of time, and there were very few memories of the place he could recall, for they al ran together.
Pain... That's all he could feel, all he could comprehend. His mouth was opened wide as he tried to scream, but no sound came to him. He struggled against his chains, just trying to make it stop. Why? Why would this woman go to such great lengths? He could feel something dark inside him pushing at him. If he gave into it, the pain would end, wouldn't it? She would have gotten what she wanted... No, he could not do that! He had to be strong! Mere pain would not cause him to betray the light!
But unfortunately for him, pain was not the only lesson Akila wanted him to know. He was left in isolation, in complete darkness for what seemed to him an endless amount of time.
Alone... He was completely and utterly alone. He was shaking somewhat as he once again felt the swell of something inside of him. The darkness... It was growing. Not only that but he felt desperate. Desperate for something; anything to ease his loneliness which seemed to crush him internally.
Have you heard of the seven vices? The seven human traits that would lead us all to hell?
Pride, avarice, wrath, gluttony, envy, sloth and finally...
Lust.
She walked in the cell then, and he instantly turned toward her, not caring who she was, only that it was the only human contact he would have in so long.
"How do you feel?" she asked, staring at him intently.
Aradath stared at her for a few moments, blinking as one would to get used to the light after being in the dark for so long. Part of him knew that he should not answer; that he should remain silent in protest, continue to defy her in any way possible, but he couldn't do it. He needed human interaction and at the moment he didn't care how he got it. "Lonely."
"You know it, then," she said. "That is a part of the darkness. The loneliness. No one hears you. No one sees you. They choose not to."
"I don't understand," he said quietly, looking at her for a few moments. "Why would you wish to use this to fuel your magic? Why would you wish to use something that makes you feel so..." He hesitated for a moment not sure if he should use the word he was about to. "Vulnerable."
Akila looked at him for a moment, then shook her head. "You don't understand, then," she said. "Not yet... for us, it is the only choice. The only path. At times it is a desperate bid for survival- against ourselves. Using it for our magic is the only way to process it properly. Our strength lies in the relentlessness of it... do you see?"
"No, I don't see... Don't you see?" He leaned forward toward her, eyes glinting intently. "You don't have to be so lonely and desperate! You don't need to fight against yourself. If you trusted yourself in the light, you would not need to channel such things! You could channel happier emotions instead! You could draw your strength from happiness!"
Akila shook her head. "There is nothing inside me that can do that," she said. "My only happiness lies in darkness. It is the strange music that calls to my heart, the blackness that blankets me as I sleep. Darkness is my 'light'."
"But why?" He insisted, leaning even farther forward. He stared into her eyes, his intense. "Surely you must derive some sort of pleasure from life? Something like that? You can't just really feel nothing but darkness all the time."
Akila regarded him blankly for a moment, then looked away. "I already told you," she said. "Darkness is the only thing that gives me pleasure."
"But surely there must be something else," Aradath said, tipping his head slightly. "Something a little more... physical." His gaze swept her from head to toe. He did not quite know what was going on with him. Right now, all he knew was that he wanted human contact. No, he wanted her.
"And that is 'light', too?" she questioned, a slight curl of amusement to her lips.
That made Aradath hesitate, and he sat back, trying to quell the feelings raging inside of him. He was feeling quite warm all of the sudden and he shifted uncomfortably. He felt urges, which he had not felt in such a long time.
His gaze turned to her again as he struggled for an answer. Light? Was what he was feeling light? No, it probably wasn't, but... It felt so right.
He leaned forward again, his gaze intense. "I thought that you did not care for such things as that?" He then sat back once more, a feeling of shame coming over him. He could not give in to such feelings! Yet even as he thought this, the lust was stirring in his body. He had been alone for so long, he needed human contact.
The amused smile curled her lips further, then lessened somewhat, without disappearing.
"I don't," she said. "But hearing it from you, a light mage of such vigorous purity... I had to ask." The smile broadened to reveal white teeth. "You want me," she realized. "Don't you?" That was rather unexpected. He had hated her passionately, and now that passion had turned to lust, somehow. She knew she was an attractive woman, but it still surprised her.
The breath caught in his throat, but Aradath nodded ever so slightly. "Y-yes." His voice was no more than a husky whisper, his throat feeling thick somehow. He swallowed and tried to look away, but he found his gaze being continually drawn back to her.
"Even the light is permitted to have such pleasure," he said, trying to justify his feelings, mostly for himself.
"Then that is one thing the light and dark have in common, it seems."
He inhaled sharply, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he exhaled right away. He recoiled slightly as he felt a certain measure of abhorrence towards her and himself. The feeling of disgust writhed through him like an electric shock, making him flinch as if it caused him pain.
Was he not a mage of the light? Was he not supposed to be above these kinds of feelings? Especially towards a dark mage and yet... There was an aura about her that he just wanted to touch; to drink in; to experience.
It was the he could feel every one of his teachings slowly corroding away. He was sliding into the darkness. And once one began sliding down such a slippery slope, there was little you could do to stop it.
Aradath's eyes bored into the ceiling above as he drew in a deep breath trying to comprehend what had just happened. He hadn't been in control of the situation, or himself.
He hated it.
He loved it.
He could not understand how his feelings could conflict like that and yet... He closed his eyes and tried focusing in on himself for a few moments. There was something inside him that was growing. Shadows with in himself, whispering promises of sweet relief if he would just give in.
He hated it.
He loved it.
It repelled him and yet he lusted for it all the same.
He could not give in. He could not! Yet... As he was once again left alone, he could feel it raging in him, always.
Alone.... He was constantly alone. In complete and utter isolation. Aradath had once fancied that his master would learn of his whereabouts and burst through the cell door to rescue him. But as the days wore on and one, that hope finally faded into nothingness, a bleak despair replacing it instead. His eyes were constantly unfocused as if they were staring at something far away, distance and coldness replacing the warmth that had once inhabited them. His arms were constantly wrapped around himself as he desperately tried to remember what human contact felt like. He could feel something rage inside of him; the age old battle that has taken place since the dawn of time. The battle of light against darkness. And for once, Aradath did not know which force would emerge victorious.
There are none who know what happened in that dungeon after this. Aradath himself had banished the memories from his mind. They were too painful, simply too painful to recall. She let him go one day, for reasons he never understood. She left him with something though. Something that he should have thrown away the moment he obtained it, but instead kept.
She stood over the broken mage who was collapsed on the ground, blinking in the sunlight. She knelt over him, bringing her lips close to his ear. "One day, Aradath. One day you will see someone who the light cannot help. And when that time comes, you will help them with darkness." She pressed a crystal sphere into his hand.
It was a sphere which granted him the ability hypnosis. One that, as he was recovering, he swore he would never use.
Yet... The hypocrisy of light never ceases. It was with this very orb he commanded Tobias to forget five years of his memory. He used this orb to commit perhaps one of the darkest deeds possible; kidnapping a little boy away from his parents.
Aradath took good care of Tobias, partly to atone for what he had done, but mostly because he was so innocent. So caring and trusting.
He vowed to himself that Tobias would never have to go through the pain that he did. That he would never have to learn the lessons of darkness.
So he shielded him from it for twenty years, keeping him away from all things dark and teaching him only in terms of black and white. No, his apprentice would not learn of shades of gray. It was something too painful. He could not bear to see Tobias in so much pain as that knowledge would one day cause him.
But it is the audacity of light that causes one to think that it is possible to keep the darkness away.
((A lot of this background came from a rp my friend Sneeuw and I had, so I give her credit here. ^^ ))
