Post by Mergiot on Nov 14, 2013 3:22:55 GMT -8
Mergiot was born into a family of scholars and intellectuals. His mother, Angeline, worked as a librarian in the royal library of Andera and his father was a royal chartered cartographer & historian. He spent most of his early childhood with his head in the numerous books that his parents had collected or at his parents places of work. Although his family lived in a good house, in the nicer part of the metropolis, they weren't overly rich. His father always used to describe them as being comfortable.
He attended school at St Cuthbert’s and thrived in the academic subjects without any need for real effort. His determination and exertion were employed in the physical aspects of his schooling, especially in endurance running, feats of agility and in keeping fit through exercise & other similar endeavours. He never really took to the unarmed fighting lessons, often annoying his teacher and infuriating his opponent by using his agility to avoid attacks rather than fight back.
After school he often helped at either of his parents workplaces rather than returning home alone and quickly picked up on the skills & knowledge needed in their respective careers.
He graduated from school with the highest honours in all his academic subjects, with special commendations in the fields of local history and nobility & royalty. He achieved above average marks in all the non-academic subjects also, even in martial combat, although the teacher said on his report that he could not fail him as he never lost a fight, and his victories were thanks to his opponents giving up through boredom or getting themselves ringed out trying to catch him rather than being bested by a better “fighter”!
After he graduated from St Cuthbert’s, Mergiot followed in his parents footsteps by having part-time jobs in both the library and the royal cartography office. He spent 2 years working in both roles, but after reading all the books he had wanted in the library and feeling somewhat bored, as there were very few patrons of the library, he focused his efforts more on the historian & cartography career path. At the age of 20 Mergiot was awarded his Royal Charter of Cartography and recognised as an eminent historian. These two accolades propelled him into the higher echelons of society almost overnight and he was subsequently befriended by several of the rich & elite of Andera’s society.
During the following 3 years of partying, socialising and mixing with the elite & powerful of the city, he became ever aware of the chasm that existed between the rich and the poor in Andera’s society. By starting to pay more attention to the poorer parts of the city he also realised the tyranny that was being imposed upon them through extortionate taxation and apparent corruption in the cities authorities & their governing offices. This quickly began to eat away at Mergiot’s morality and he found more and more ways to challenge what was happening in the slums of the city.
He organised rallies and petitions. He reported crimes of corruption and heavy handed enforcement to his contacts. But, inevitably, this made him more and more unpopular with the powers that be and his “friends” soon started to distance themselves from him. His parents were “retired” from their positions and were given substantial pay-offs as a golden hand shake. He in turn was relieved of his position in the Royal Cartographers office, the reason being “due to lack of funding and budget constraints”.
His parents were worried for Mergiot’s safety and so convinced him to leave the city and find refuge in the academy of magic some 200 miles away. Reluctantly, and only for his parents own piece of mind, he agreed and departed Andera with a heavy heart and righteous injustice at being forced out of his home.
Mergiot spent the next 8 years studying at the academy of magic and once again excelled at his new endeavour. He was the hardest working and most diligent of his peers and soon become renowned for his theoretical knowledge in many of the Arcane fields. In particular his knowledge of the history of the Arcana was second only to his tutors and the council of wizards! He graduated as a white robed wizard two weeks prior to his 28th birthday and was given his staff & robes of Wizardry.
With his new found powers, knowledge and abilities he made his way back to Andera to try and use his new status to help redress the plight of the poor and downtrodden in Andera’s society. However, a lot had changed in the 8 years since his departure. He hadn’t heard from his parents in over a year, even though he only wrote to them on a quarterly basis, he was still concerned about the lack of contact. Upon returning home he was greeted by strangers in his former family residence. They informed him that they bought the house 6 months ago in a vacant lot auction.
Mergiot searched high and low through the cities records looking for any information he could find about his parents. His local knowledge proved useful in finding snippets of information but nothing conclusive as to what had happened to them. He spent the next year trying to find them in the vast metropolis or at least any news about their fate. His goal in returning to Andera in order to right the wrongs of its society was lost in his desperate plight to find his family. Finally he found a piece of information that not only shocked him but decided his future from that day forward.
In the mail office that he knew his parents used, he found they had left a letter for him, dated almost 20 months prior. They couldn’t afford the postage cost to send the letter so it was left with the mail office in the hope he would find it.
It read:
“Dearest son
We cannot stay in Andera any longer. Things have gotten worse for all but the elite of society. The taxes have risen so high that we have paid almost all our savings to the corrupt state. We had enough left to buy our passage to a new land and a new opportunity, and to provide us with provisions enough for the journey. We don’t even have sufficient funds to mail you this letter, but leaving it at this mail office we hope you will find it if you ever return to Andera.
We have bought our passage on a ship that is taking refugees to a new colony many miles north-west of Andera, called Kragsport.Several of our friends have already left for a new start there and although we are now both in our 60s we feel it better to risk the journey than to stay here and surely die of starvation or disease.
We hope you are doing well with your studies at the academy of magic, although we have no doubts that you will pass with the highest of honours. We are very proud of you and whatever choice you make for your future we hope you can, one day, find your way to visit us in Kragsport before the end.
We know this is a hard letter to for you to read, as it is the hardest thing we have ever had to write. But our choice was simple if not desperate. Pay our last funds to the taxman or try for a new life in Kragsport. Desperate times call for desperate measures and hopefully our skills will prove useful in the new land.
With all our love.
Mama & papa”
Fighting back his emotions he asked the mail clerk about Kragsport and was directed to the port authority.
Upon enquiring at the port authority offices about Kragsport, and transportation to it, he was informed that the Kragsport transport left 2 months ago and wouldn’t be back for another 2 months. Mergiot paid for his place on the next transport and decided to find lodgings for the length of his wait.
In the time he had, whilst waiting for the ship to Kragsport, he spent his days researching journals, books, maps and any other source of information, including historians and adventurers who had knowledge of the area in which Kragsport was located, to learn all he could before he journeyed there. Nearly all his time was consumed by this endeavour and the 2 months came and went quickly. He felt he had a good understanding of the place he was headed to and although daunting, he had never liked water, least of all swimming or boating on it, he was eager to start his journey north.
After eight weeks of turbulent seas and very uncomfortable travel, the transport arrived in Kragsport. There were over 100 people who had started the voyage from Andera, but thanks to the longevity of the journey, due to the poor weather conditions and several raids by pirates, in which he had to use his skills & powers for the first time offensively to help defend the ship and those who could not defend themselves, many of the old, weak & young died.
The ship finally arrived at Kragsport on a wet and cold morning. Mergiot paid for his luggage to be unloaded to the town’s inn, whilst he headed to the town’s mayoral offices to enquire about his parents. There were only 30 people, left from the 100 who had started out from Andera, that disembarked from the ship and he seemed to be behind every last one of them in the mayor’s offices. After waiting several hours for the line of new colonists to be registered and processed it finally came his turn to address the clerk.
He registered his particulars and those trades and jobs that he was proficient at, as well as any other useful skills he could turn his hand to. The clerk was particularly interested in his wizardry skills and informed him that a new mages tower was under construction and he would be most welcome to enquire there about work opportunities. After the clerk had finished all his official duties, Mergiot enquired as to the whereabouts of his parents. The clerk didn’t recall their names and checked through the logs for the voyage his parents were on. The news that the clerked relayed to Mergiot’s made his legs go weak and he fell to the floor, on his behind. They were dead. They had failed to make the long and arduous journey from Andera to Kragsport. The ships log states that his father had died in a pirate attack, an arrow in his chest. His mother died of unknown causes several days later. They had both been buried at sea.
He now felt truly alone and lost in the world. Alone and far away from his homeland of Andera. Alone and far away from the academy of magic. Alone and far away from his parents, in another plane of existence. The emotions he had held back, upon reading his parents letter in the Anderan mail office, now came flooding forth, unabashed and unchecked. He wept uncontrollably for what seemed like hours, but it was in fact only a few minutes. He may of been a man approaching middle-age, but at this moment he felt like a child again. His thoughts raced back to the day he departed his home and headed for the academy of magic, leaving his parents behind. He felt a pang of guilt start to grow within him. He now realised that his ideals and actions in trying to right the wrongs in Andera’s society had caused all this to happen. His foolish quest to help his fellow man, however noble, had forced his departure, had caused his parents to lose their jobs and had eventually caused his parents to take the dangerous voyage to Kragsport. Which had led to their deaths…He withdrew from the mayor’s offices and headed towards the inn. He paid the innkeeper for a room and retired therein. As soon as he was alone in his room the grief took hold again and he wept for long hours until he finally fell asleep.
His sleep that night was disturbed by visions of ghostly images, of the undead clawing at the edges of his mind, of his parents walking the streets of Kragsport, in a sleep of death, from which they had awoken only to seek out revenge on the living for their fate.
He woke mid-morning to the sounds of people in the street, chatter from the bar below and the bells on the ship as it departed for Andera once again. He washed and dressed and made his way down to the bar for something to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but his regime of regular meals and physical conditioning took over his body by instinct and pushed him forward. He sat in the bar staring into nothingness and toying with his food. His mind was in a constant state of recollection, providing flashbacks to all the good and the not so good times in his life. Although he was in a melancholy state, his facial expressions would change involuntarily as a good memory or a bad memory came to the fore. Smiling, wincing, angered, sadness these expressions and more fleeted across his face as each memory brought a different emotion to the fore.
After an hour of toying with his breakfast, he had only eaten a few mouthfuls, he left the inn and walked down to the sea and stood there watching the horizon for several hours. As though hoping for a ship that would carry his parents back to him and safely to shore. It was in this time of reflection that his thoughts starting to alter. His feelings of guilt subsided. He began to realise that he was not to blame for what had happened, nor was he to blame for his parents death. He was a grown man. In fact, he realised that today was his 30th birthday! It was not his fault…it was those corrupted and power hungry vultures that ran Andera who were to blame. It was society as a whole who chose to suppress the weak and needy instead of lending the hand of compassion and aid.
He began to think long and hard over the next few days. Spending what little currency he had left on his lodgings and food, whilst his thoughts and inner conflicts wrought out a new consciousness, a new vision of his fate, a new destiny for him to embrace. He would not let his parent’s deaths or the countless deaths of those unfortunate souls in Andera or those who had sadly departed on the voyage to Kragsport, be in vane! He would use his powers, his knowledge and his will to help those who needed it the most. To put right the wrongs that happened every day. To provide hope to the hopeless and give relief to those who were suffering. No he wasn’t going to become a cleric or a priest, he had witnessed enough of the corruption riddled religious orders in Andera to convince him that religion wasn’t the saviour of the people. He knew that action was the only way to save someone from a miserable fate.
From today he was no longer Mergiot the victim, Mergiot the deluded idealist, Mergiot the lost…he was Mergiot the Wizard! And his actions were going to speak louder than any words ever spoken before…
He attended school at St Cuthbert’s and thrived in the academic subjects without any need for real effort. His determination and exertion were employed in the physical aspects of his schooling, especially in endurance running, feats of agility and in keeping fit through exercise & other similar endeavours. He never really took to the unarmed fighting lessons, often annoying his teacher and infuriating his opponent by using his agility to avoid attacks rather than fight back.
After school he often helped at either of his parents workplaces rather than returning home alone and quickly picked up on the skills & knowledge needed in their respective careers.
He graduated from school with the highest honours in all his academic subjects, with special commendations in the fields of local history and nobility & royalty. He achieved above average marks in all the non-academic subjects also, even in martial combat, although the teacher said on his report that he could not fail him as he never lost a fight, and his victories were thanks to his opponents giving up through boredom or getting themselves ringed out trying to catch him rather than being bested by a better “fighter”!
After he graduated from St Cuthbert’s, Mergiot followed in his parents footsteps by having part-time jobs in both the library and the royal cartography office. He spent 2 years working in both roles, but after reading all the books he had wanted in the library and feeling somewhat bored, as there were very few patrons of the library, he focused his efforts more on the historian & cartography career path. At the age of 20 Mergiot was awarded his Royal Charter of Cartography and recognised as an eminent historian. These two accolades propelled him into the higher echelons of society almost overnight and he was subsequently befriended by several of the rich & elite of Andera’s society.
During the following 3 years of partying, socialising and mixing with the elite & powerful of the city, he became ever aware of the chasm that existed between the rich and the poor in Andera’s society. By starting to pay more attention to the poorer parts of the city he also realised the tyranny that was being imposed upon them through extortionate taxation and apparent corruption in the cities authorities & their governing offices. This quickly began to eat away at Mergiot’s morality and he found more and more ways to challenge what was happening in the slums of the city.
He organised rallies and petitions. He reported crimes of corruption and heavy handed enforcement to his contacts. But, inevitably, this made him more and more unpopular with the powers that be and his “friends” soon started to distance themselves from him. His parents were “retired” from their positions and were given substantial pay-offs as a golden hand shake. He in turn was relieved of his position in the Royal Cartographers office, the reason being “due to lack of funding and budget constraints”.
His parents were worried for Mergiot’s safety and so convinced him to leave the city and find refuge in the academy of magic some 200 miles away. Reluctantly, and only for his parents own piece of mind, he agreed and departed Andera with a heavy heart and righteous injustice at being forced out of his home.
Mergiot spent the next 8 years studying at the academy of magic and once again excelled at his new endeavour. He was the hardest working and most diligent of his peers and soon become renowned for his theoretical knowledge in many of the Arcane fields. In particular his knowledge of the history of the Arcana was second only to his tutors and the council of wizards! He graduated as a white robed wizard two weeks prior to his 28th birthday and was given his staff & robes of Wizardry.
With his new found powers, knowledge and abilities he made his way back to Andera to try and use his new status to help redress the plight of the poor and downtrodden in Andera’s society. However, a lot had changed in the 8 years since his departure. He hadn’t heard from his parents in over a year, even though he only wrote to them on a quarterly basis, he was still concerned about the lack of contact. Upon returning home he was greeted by strangers in his former family residence. They informed him that they bought the house 6 months ago in a vacant lot auction.
Mergiot searched high and low through the cities records looking for any information he could find about his parents. His local knowledge proved useful in finding snippets of information but nothing conclusive as to what had happened to them. He spent the next year trying to find them in the vast metropolis or at least any news about their fate. His goal in returning to Andera in order to right the wrongs of its society was lost in his desperate plight to find his family. Finally he found a piece of information that not only shocked him but decided his future from that day forward.
In the mail office that he knew his parents used, he found they had left a letter for him, dated almost 20 months prior. They couldn’t afford the postage cost to send the letter so it was left with the mail office in the hope he would find it.
It read:
“Dearest son
We cannot stay in Andera any longer. Things have gotten worse for all but the elite of society. The taxes have risen so high that we have paid almost all our savings to the corrupt state. We had enough left to buy our passage to a new land and a new opportunity, and to provide us with provisions enough for the journey. We don’t even have sufficient funds to mail you this letter, but leaving it at this mail office we hope you will find it if you ever return to Andera.
We have bought our passage on a ship that is taking refugees to a new colony many miles north-west of Andera, called Kragsport.Several of our friends have already left for a new start there and although we are now both in our 60s we feel it better to risk the journey than to stay here and surely die of starvation or disease.
We hope you are doing well with your studies at the academy of magic, although we have no doubts that you will pass with the highest of honours. We are very proud of you and whatever choice you make for your future we hope you can, one day, find your way to visit us in Kragsport before the end.
We know this is a hard letter to for you to read, as it is the hardest thing we have ever had to write. But our choice was simple if not desperate. Pay our last funds to the taxman or try for a new life in Kragsport. Desperate times call for desperate measures and hopefully our skills will prove useful in the new land.
With all our love.
Mama & papa”
Fighting back his emotions he asked the mail clerk about Kragsport and was directed to the port authority.
Upon enquiring at the port authority offices about Kragsport, and transportation to it, he was informed that the Kragsport transport left 2 months ago and wouldn’t be back for another 2 months. Mergiot paid for his place on the next transport and decided to find lodgings for the length of his wait.
In the time he had, whilst waiting for the ship to Kragsport, he spent his days researching journals, books, maps and any other source of information, including historians and adventurers who had knowledge of the area in which Kragsport was located, to learn all he could before he journeyed there. Nearly all his time was consumed by this endeavour and the 2 months came and went quickly. He felt he had a good understanding of the place he was headed to and although daunting, he had never liked water, least of all swimming or boating on it, he was eager to start his journey north.
After eight weeks of turbulent seas and very uncomfortable travel, the transport arrived in Kragsport. There were over 100 people who had started the voyage from Andera, but thanks to the longevity of the journey, due to the poor weather conditions and several raids by pirates, in which he had to use his skills & powers for the first time offensively to help defend the ship and those who could not defend themselves, many of the old, weak & young died.
The ship finally arrived at Kragsport on a wet and cold morning. Mergiot paid for his luggage to be unloaded to the town’s inn, whilst he headed to the town’s mayoral offices to enquire about his parents. There were only 30 people, left from the 100 who had started out from Andera, that disembarked from the ship and he seemed to be behind every last one of them in the mayor’s offices. After waiting several hours for the line of new colonists to be registered and processed it finally came his turn to address the clerk.
He registered his particulars and those trades and jobs that he was proficient at, as well as any other useful skills he could turn his hand to. The clerk was particularly interested in his wizardry skills and informed him that a new mages tower was under construction and he would be most welcome to enquire there about work opportunities. After the clerk had finished all his official duties, Mergiot enquired as to the whereabouts of his parents. The clerk didn’t recall their names and checked through the logs for the voyage his parents were on. The news that the clerked relayed to Mergiot’s made his legs go weak and he fell to the floor, on his behind. They were dead. They had failed to make the long and arduous journey from Andera to Kragsport. The ships log states that his father had died in a pirate attack, an arrow in his chest. His mother died of unknown causes several days later. They had both been buried at sea.
He now felt truly alone and lost in the world. Alone and far away from his homeland of Andera. Alone and far away from the academy of magic. Alone and far away from his parents, in another plane of existence. The emotions he had held back, upon reading his parents letter in the Anderan mail office, now came flooding forth, unabashed and unchecked. He wept uncontrollably for what seemed like hours, but it was in fact only a few minutes. He may of been a man approaching middle-age, but at this moment he felt like a child again. His thoughts raced back to the day he departed his home and headed for the academy of magic, leaving his parents behind. He felt a pang of guilt start to grow within him. He now realised that his ideals and actions in trying to right the wrongs in Andera’s society had caused all this to happen. His foolish quest to help his fellow man, however noble, had forced his departure, had caused his parents to lose their jobs and had eventually caused his parents to take the dangerous voyage to Kragsport. Which had led to their deaths…He withdrew from the mayor’s offices and headed towards the inn. He paid the innkeeper for a room and retired therein. As soon as he was alone in his room the grief took hold again and he wept for long hours until he finally fell asleep.
His sleep that night was disturbed by visions of ghostly images, of the undead clawing at the edges of his mind, of his parents walking the streets of Kragsport, in a sleep of death, from which they had awoken only to seek out revenge on the living for their fate.
He woke mid-morning to the sounds of people in the street, chatter from the bar below and the bells on the ship as it departed for Andera once again. He washed and dressed and made his way down to the bar for something to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but his regime of regular meals and physical conditioning took over his body by instinct and pushed him forward. He sat in the bar staring into nothingness and toying with his food. His mind was in a constant state of recollection, providing flashbacks to all the good and the not so good times in his life. Although he was in a melancholy state, his facial expressions would change involuntarily as a good memory or a bad memory came to the fore. Smiling, wincing, angered, sadness these expressions and more fleeted across his face as each memory brought a different emotion to the fore.
After an hour of toying with his breakfast, he had only eaten a few mouthfuls, he left the inn and walked down to the sea and stood there watching the horizon for several hours. As though hoping for a ship that would carry his parents back to him and safely to shore. It was in this time of reflection that his thoughts starting to alter. His feelings of guilt subsided. He began to realise that he was not to blame for what had happened, nor was he to blame for his parents death. He was a grown man. In fact, he realised that today was his 30th birthday! It was not his fault…it was those corrupted and power hungry vultures that ran Andera who were to blame. It was society as a whole who chose to suppress the weak and needy instead of lending the hand of compassion and aid.
He began to think long and hard over the next few days. Spending what little currency he had left on his lodgings and food, whilst his thoughts and inner conflicts wrought out a new consciousness, a new vision of his fate, a new destiny for him to embrace. He would not let his parent’s deaths or the countless deaths of those unfortunate souls in Andera or those who had sadly departed on the voyage to Kragsport, be in vane! He would use his powers, his knowledge and his will to help those who needed it the most. To put right the wrongs that happened every day. To provide hope to the hopeless and give relief to those who were suffering. No he wasn’t going to become a cleric or a priest, he had witnessed enough of the corruption riddled religious orders in Andera to convince him that religion wasn’t the saviour of the people. He knew that action was the only way to save someone from a miserable fate.
From today he was no longer Mergiot the victim, Mergiot the deluded idealist, Mergiot the lost…he was Mergiot the Wizard! And his actions were going to speak louder than any words ever spoken before…