The wandering madman

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warped
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Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2021 5:17 pm

The wandering madman

Post by warped »

Greetings.

I'm unsure of the format customary for this, so I'll just wing it and trust to the edit button if it changes are required.

You may encounter an old, old man, wandering the lands of Britannia. Clad in grey raiment, long of hair and short of sense, he is.. a few coals short of a fire. A few bricks short of a load? A few scales short of a dragon, in a manner of speaking. His mind, to be frank, has been shattered, and his memories taken from him.

He's a good sort, more or less. Keeps his word. Keeps his fingernails clean. Minds his feet when he walks among the smaller beings. Walks the path of Virtue, in fact, though he'd be hard-pressed to articulate it quite like that if he's asked.

He's old long past the span of humankind, old almost beyond belief, with an immense-yet-patchy (and occasionally inaccurate; The land is much changed from what he once knew), knowledge of geography and history, despite having no discrete memories of what came before he awakened as he is. Has a natural affinity for magic but uses it seldom, for he is no mage. He carries both Armour and Arms, and when violence looms he charges in swinging, with all the grace and poise expected of a large, grey, tusk-bearing mammal. Which he's not, of course. Not even human, truth be told, though he wears the form of one, heir to all it's ailments and frailties. He knows that isn't quite how things ought to be, but he's fairly fuzzy on the details.

Everywhere he roams, he's carried by his own two feet. Horses are food, in his eye, and nothing more. He can't abide the undead, loves a roaring fire, and trees unnerve him. He travels often by ship, that being the only way to reliably avoid them. At great need, he'll enter under them, nervous and alert, always ready to spring away to safety. To his mind, the danger lies in trees falling up. He's been assured before that trees are generally understood to fall down, not up, but he's not buying that. He knows what he knows, and though he'll chop away at any tree available to prove the point, he's always faintly disappointed when the logs fall down.

His name? A long story, but shortly told: He comes from a place and of a kin to whom Might makes Right, where strength rules and pride, greed, and evil are the norm. To such as that, the way of Virtue seems a twisted and unholy thing, and so for his adherence to them they named him The Warped One. How he came to walk that path is a story for later. He embraced the label he was given, and as he grew in age and might, he forced them to respect it, and eventually to fear it. When his influence appeared to be growing with the youngest among them, they put aside their internal quarrels and banded together to cast him out: Locked him in the form of an old man, fractured his mind, walled away his memory, and sent him Away.

To the race of men, with their short lives and shorter attention spans, it was shortened somewhat, of course. To them, he was known in that before-time as ....Warped.

To hear that name in the here-and-now tickles what's left of his memory in a fashion not entirely to his liking, and so he shuns it. It remains the only name he has or wants, but he'll answer to almost anything else to avoid hearing it spoken. His faculties being what they are, he's quite liable to mis-name those around him as well. He means no insult by it, of course. His grasp on reality is tenuous at best, and like all powerful things, Names tend to upset the delicate balance of what passes for his mind.

He wanders the land only-almost aimlessly, not knowing that he is searching at all. Of the Eight and Three, he holds Honour and Truth to be paramount. All in all, he's a stalwart and trustworthy soul. Assuming he has one, of course. A soul, that is. He's fairly sure a troll ate it.
..-. .. ... ....
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