Lemons

A Tyrant's Undoing

Dazed. Dizzy. Ultimately confused.

Avad was alll of these things.

Having been struck by lightning and bearing no metal upon him, he was badly shaken, and wasn't thinking clearly at all. His spellbook was clutched tightly to his side as though it could ward of death. Eventually, he managed to string together a few vague thoughts: Silver fox on his neck. Famous thief. Princess is gone. King is not going to be pleased.

Then he took a moment, upon regaining full thought processes, to consider what the scene looked like. Himself, a known storm mage, lying in the corridor. A lock fused and blasted off by lightning. A missing princess. None of this was any kind of evidence for his innocence, and he ground his teeth at how he'd been unwittingly manipulated by that harsh bitch Fate.

Staggering to his feet, he began to hear the sounds of sabatons clanking down the hall at a rapid pace, and made his choice. "Andom têllumar neru'un vanastel." Another cloud of fog spread from his open hand, and the footsteps slowed for the crucial moment it took for him to bring himself to his feet and back up a few paces from the window. "I'm glad you're waterproof," he murmured, stroking the spellbook, before sprinting to the formerly-glass opening and leaping through.

On the way down, he began to draw the glyph in the air for an unnaturally thick cloud to cushion his landing. Instead, he received a sharp spike of pain through his temples. "Ohhhh no..." he groaned. "I overdrew."

That was the last thing he said before plummeting into the water with an ungainly splash and promptly being nearly drowned by his robe. It was an exercise in humiliation for him to flounder to shore, his head aching incredibly badly. He stumbled, the dizziness of unrestrained magic use from that wild bolt taking its toll.

"I...hate you...so much..." he grimaced as he slogged up beside the thief.

A Tyrant's Undoing

Avad's brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to ask a question of the princess.

Then, suddenly, he found himself flung bodily forward and his face slammed into the steel bars of the prison, coming very close to knocking him out. A shell of transparent gray light peeled away from his body and he gasped for a moment in the sheer shock of the moment. Whatever had hit him, it had gone through his shielding as though it wasn't there, and still slammed him into the prison hard enough to bring him close to unconsciousness. As it was, he was heavily winded and unable to rise.

Understand, Avad was not overfond of close-quarters combat. Indeed, he was close to useless at it, and his official robe provided little in the way of protection. He was used to sitting in the backlines of an army and manipulating the battlefield from a distance, not brawling with the lithe, white-haired man that had just tackled him down.

Gasping for air, he tried to mouth a few words to a spell: "Achm...Achma..." but ended up only wheezing instead, the gritty stone of the dungeon floor pressing far too hard for his liking into his prone form. He raised his right hand to draw a glyph in the air, but without the corresponding words of power, there was no point. It was like trying to move water with a sieve; the magic simply drained through his hand. At last, he managed to gasp the word out and draw the glyph: "Achmat." Lightning.

There were dangers associated with phrasing a spell so carelessly. With no verbal direction of what to do, the lighting he called could do whatever it pleased. And of course, it was just his luck that the spell recoiled on him. While it succeeded in launching a bolt of lightning at the man before him, it also coursed a jolt of electricity through himself. Without the grace of his shield, he was rammed forcefully back by his own magic, colliding with the opposite wall and groaning heavily. Raising his head, he looked to see if anything had come of his spell. Anything at all, barring hurting him even further.

A Tyrant's Undoing

Oh, was the magic also supposed to be in elvish? I was unaware. As it stands, they are translated as such: Andom têllumar erentêl vanastel means cloud-fill-garden-blind and Andom arbricopis êthen olmfeil is translated as cloud-sight-transcend-all. By all, what it means is that squad that he had in mind when casting the spell.

A Tyrant's Undoing

Avad:

The man crumpled his head into his hands as he looked over the situation in the garden below.

"What a mess this has turned into," he muttered. "It would've been such a nice party, too. I've not been to one for quite a time." For a moment he had a flashback to gashing bolts of lightning searing into unexpecting partygoers, but shrugged it off. It's been near twenty-five years. I can handle it.

Sighing heavily, he took his head out of his hands and raised one into the air with outstretched finger, a bead of silver-gray light coalescing at the tip. Grunting out "Andom têllumar erentêl vanastel" and tracing a sigil in the air with the light on his finger, he turned to the patrol of guards beside him as the garden filled with billowing gray fog. "Go down there and calm them down. They're confused, there are rumors spreading, they don't know what's happening. And please," he added with a withering glare, "Sost's bones, do not use lethal force. Try not to injure at all. They've all on the edge of riot already. The last thing we need is more chaos."

A salute, and they ran to do so. One, however, remained in salute. "Sir!" he bellowed, "what are you going to do?"

Avad sighed. "First, soldier, I'm going to do this." Again his voice lowered to a mutter: "Andom arbricopis êthen olmfeil." He traced a different sign, and he eyes of the soldier in front of him gleamed a dull gray and he rubbed them a moment, clearly confused. Avad inclined his head. "Fogvision. Otherwise you'd be as blind as those in the cloud down there. It's on all of your squad. And now," he turned, his ivory robe swirling about him in a suitably dramatic fashion, he thought, "I need to pay somebody a visit."

---

Grim-faced, Avad stood by the cell that the princess was in. He'd been taking care of her from afar for years now, and she looked as he'd never seen her: defeated. That was the word. Her eyes were dull, and she seemed closed in on herself. He sighed for what was perhaps the seventieth time that day.

"Tahra," he began wearily, "why would do kill her? You were so close to the throne. I've known you for many years, girl, and I don't think you're stupid. So why?"

He hadn't believed it when first he heard. He'd heard, after all, many strange rumors from the guard barracks of the castle, ranging from the tragic to the raunchy and all in between. He'd thought nothing of one that the queen was dead, killed by her daughter. In fact, it wasn't even the first time he'd heard that.

But then he saw the queen's body in the sanctum.

It had taken a vast amount of convincing to be let down here. Technically, only the highest ranks of military--General, Fleet Admiral, Archmage Ascendant--were allowed into the holding cells for those condemned to death, but he'd pulled some strings and pulled rank to slip down here 'unnoticed' for a brief time to talk to Tahra. Even then, he'd had to conceal himself in a misty shroud when making his way down into the truly deep cells, where only the king was allowed to walk.

"And one more thing, Tahra," he said, voice softening, "I know you'll die on the morrow, but...where are your wounds? You're doing a remarkable job of hiding them. The king was holding a bloody sword, said Eiendol. So the least I can do as courtesy is to treat them." For yet another time that night, a bead of light leapt to his finger, though it was more of a gold than a silver. He grunted and swayed. "Been off the front too long, getting soft and out of practice," he admonished himself. Locking eyes with the princess, he spoke. "Healing magic. Not the best at it, but if you don't know some, you're orders of magnitude less useful on the battlefield. Now, your torso is covered in blood. Let me patch you up."

A Tyrant's Undoing

Avadodren Ichen Onem

Name: Avadodren Ichen Onem (the -ch in Ichen is pronounced as a hard, guttural hiss)

Age: Appears somewhere near his mid-thirties to early forties.

Race: Avadodren, or Avad, as he is known to very close friends, is 100% bonafide human.

Looks: No matter how exceptional I truly am, all that is seen is my exterior. By that standard, I was born average, and will die average. Av is exceedingly typical looking. He is of typical height, somewhere between 5'10" and 6', and average weight for his slightly slender build. He has a messy head of brown hair and a pair of gooey, dark-brown eyes. His skin is pale and fair, a few freckles smattering his brow and the bridge of his nose, to his eternal chagrin. He wears his uniform as a High Battlemage, a long, flowing robe of pale ivory white and embroidered with ash-gray and flaming red in elaborate flame patterns. His honorable stars are worn on his shoulder. He nearly always carries his spellbook with him. It is a massive tome, bound in dark gray leather and bound with ragged, long-used, gilt pages. He has a bit of a theatrical flair about him; often, he will twitch a finger and use a tightly controlled gust of wind to flip the pages instead of being a regular person and using his fingers in a more mundane fashion. Put it all together and you have a medium-tall, medium-light, brown-on-brown-on-pale person, eyes glimmering with deep intelligence, with a flamboyant nature and an incredibly sharp mind.

Bio: Avadodren Ichen Onem was born Avad Onem into a Valstand noble family of middling influence and wealth. Though he wanted for little in his childhood, he certainly had none of the absurd wealth of some of the higher families. He was trained in the standard noble pursuits; swordsmanship, riding, court manners. Then, at one particularly uninteresting party, he experienced a cataclysmic magic surge. As many such events go, there was much flash. There was, however, far more danger at Avad's magic surge than most. Several nobles were permanently injured, and his father, Veddys, was killed. Avad, desperate to escape the cloying guilt that ate at him, decided to find a noble death: a battlefield mage, torn apart either by the power of his own spellcraft or by whatever might be faced at the moment.
Through some cruel joke of fate, he lived through every campaign, and indeed, through many years, began to creep little-by-little up the ranks. Eventually, his desire for a good death fled, replaced by a savage desire to ascend to the highest echelon of magic: an Archmage. He took the name of the greatest Archmage in the history of Valstand: Odren. He appended it to his own, calling his determination for all to see: I will be an Archmage. Along the road, he took an honorific as well: at the battle of Ichen, he distinguished himself by saving over a thousand men with a well-timed fog cloud to obscure the enemy's lines of sight. Thus, 'Of Ichen's Glory' became his military title. He internalized it, turning it into a name as he fully took it for himself, becoming nigh-obsessed with his rise to glorious power, burying the memory of his past and determined to make his late father proud.
Over time, that motivation faded. He was no longer a child, and became able to look back without regret. His meteoric rise through the military steadied off as his frenzied energy petered away, and he settled into the life if a professional High Battlemage. While he still aspires to the Archmage's mantle, he longer pursues is feverishly. He's a close confidant of the king, and is able to see the good buried beneath the tyranny. He firmly believes the king has the best interests of his subjects at heart, and will support him in nearly endeavor.

Other: In departure from his typicality, Av is an exceedingly skilled mage specializing in storm magic. In particular, he has a talent for nimbomancy, or the control of clouds. He has a lesser talent for direct combat with his magic--although the lightning bolts and lashing rain ensure that he's no slouch there, either--but rather, when engaging, is far more adept at tactics and strategy. His fog and cloud control allow him to craft expert illusions and massive concealment and for one of his age, he has a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of military strategy, born both of natural aptitude and of enormous amounts of study. As a side of effect of his long military experience, he is able to remain unbelievably calm under pressure.

A Tyrant's Undoing

Name: Avadodren Ichen Onem (the -ch in Ichen is pronounced as a hard, guttural hiss)

Age: Appears somewhere near his mid-thirties to early forties.

Race: Avadodren, or Avad, as he is known to very close friends, is 100% bonafide human.

Looks: No matter how exceptional I truly am, all that is seen is my exterior. By that standard, I was born average, and will die average. Av is exceedingly typical looking. He is of typical height, somewhere between 5'10" and 6', and average weight for his slightly slender build. He has a messy head of brown hair and a pair of gooey, dark-brown eyes. His skin is pale and fair, a few freckles smattering his brow and the bridge of his nose, to his eternal chagrin. He wears his uniform as a High Battlemage, a long, flowing robe of pale ivory white and embroidered with ash-gray and flaming red in elaborate flame patterns. His honorable stars are worn on his shoulder. He nearly always carries his spellbook with him. It is a massive tome, bound in dark gray leather and bound with ragged, long-used, gilt pages. He has a bit of a theatrical flair about him; often, he will twitch a finger and use a tightly controlled gust of wind to flip the pages instead of being a regular person and using his fingers in a more mundane fashion. Put it all together and you have a medium-tall, medium-light, brown-on-brown-on-pale person, eyes glimmering with deep intelligence, with a flamboyant nature and an incredibly sharp mind.

Bio: Avadodren Ichen Onem was born Avad Onem into a Valstand noble family of middling influence and wealth. Though he wanted for little in his childhood, he certainly had none of the absurd wealth of some of the higher families. He was trained in the standard noble pursuits; swordsmanship, riding, court manners. Then, at one particularly uninteresting party, he experienced a cataclysmic magic surge. As many such events go, there was much flash. There was, however, far more danger at Avad's magic surge than most. Several nobles were permanently injured, and his father, Veddys, was killed. Avad, desperate to escape the cloying guilt that ate at him, decided to find a noble death: a battlefield mage, torn apart either by the power of his own spellcraft or by whatever might be faced at the moment.
Through some cruel joke of fate, he lived through every campaign, and indeed, through many years, began to creep little-by-little up the ranks. Eventually, his desire for a good death fled, replaced by a savage desire to ascend to the highest echelon of magic: an Archmage. He took the name of the greatest Archmage in the history of Valstand: Odren. He appended it to his own, calling his determination for all to see: I will be an Archmage. Along the road, he took an honorific as well: at the battle of Ichen, he distinguished himself by saving over a thousand men with a well-timed fog cloud to obscure the enemy's lines of sight. Thus, 'Of Ichen's Glory' became his military title. He internalized it, turning it into a name as he fully took it for himself, becoming nigh-obsessed with his rise to glorious power, burying the memory of his past and determined to make his late father proud.
Over time, that motivation faded. He was no longer a child, and became able to look back without regret. His meteoric rise through the military steadied off as his frenzied energy petered away, and he settled into the life if a professional High Battlemage. While he still aspires to the Archmage's mantle, he longer pursues is feverishly. He's a close confidant of the king, and is able to see the good buried beneath the tyranny. He firmly believes the king has the best interests of his subjects at heart, and will support him in nearly endeavor.

Other: In departure from his typicality, Av is an exceedingly skilled mage specializing in storm magic. In particular, he has a talent for nimbomancy, or the control of clouds. He has a lesser talent for direct combat with his magic--although the lightning bolts and lashing rain ensure that he's no slouch there, either--but rather, when engaging, is far more adept at tactics and strategy. His fog and cloud control allow him to craft expert illusions and massive concealment and for one of his age, he has a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of military strategy, born both of natural aptitude and of enormous amounts of study. As a side of effect of his long military experience, he is able to remain unbelievably calm under pressure.

A Tyrant's Undoing

FANTASYFANTASYWOOO

I'm super down for this. Yes.

Welcome to Atlas! (A RWBY roleplay)

Also, I'm in regular contact with Braslazer. They're still around and will be active, but has been running into some snags in the actual character creation progress.

Welcome to Atlas! (A RWBY roleplay)

Hi.

...I'm alive...

Welcome to Atlas! (A RWBY roleplay)

We're just waiting a bit, I don't think it's dead. Just a few characters need making.