PCs:Shard
| Full Name:Shard Aengel Age: 34 years
|
Physical Traits
Shard is a good looking young man with golden hair and blue eyes. He bears two small horns on the top of his head, which lead to confusion about his nature more than once. He is of average height and he always carries a smell of sawdust wherever he goes.
Personality
Emotions always led his life. Shard is a being of heart more than of head, which caused him so many problems in his short life. Joyous and passionate, he is a funny prankster - the kind to put caltrops on an ordained chair or to a blow wet paper ball in the back of his friend's head in an official meeting. But when it comes to carpentry, he becomes serious, professional and really disciplined in his work, although he really likes to make his apprentices sweat a bit while testing by teasing them about eventual failure!
Friends & Associates
Shard holds many friends in his heart. Most of them are part of the Order of Gorethar and the ACE. But few of them really knew him well, in fact he can really count only two of them to be really close. Edge Dravenmore was one of his best friends the time they were both part of the Order of Gorethar. They were often seen together having fun and smiting things.
Findail was the quartermaster of the ACE when they both met. It took a time before they came to know each other well, but they were sharing the same passion for carpentry. Soon they became good friends, working on new projects, discovering new processes and helping the ACE to not crumble under the absence of its officers. Then they grew in the hierarchy of the guild and their friendship grew with it. When Shard died, Findail was probably part of his last memories...
HISTORY
Early Life
Not many things are known about the early life of Shard. He knows he came from an Nymph mother and an Human father who was a follower of Maleki. Many lies were told to him from his adoptive father. Sadly, his adoptive parents both died before he'd been told the truth.
His life as a teenager was hard though. With those two horns, he was often the laughing stock of the other kids and isolated himself. Perhaps a reason why his emotions guided his life that much. During this time, he developed interest in many crafting skills. His first passion was in alchemy and herbalism. But soon came to develop other things that needed more physical strength as mining and blacksmithing.
His foster father was trying to educate him in this way, preaching that it was a way to serve Gorethar. Then came the day where he received a call...a call of Faith. He was not really training as others do in academy, neither really seeking to become one, but as every Paladin before him he surely was devoted and had a great sense of duty. How he discovered his power and how it was given to him is still unknown. But that's what pushed him toward Elysia where he joined the Order of Gorethar.
The Order of Gorethar
Shard had been recruited in the Order by Hert Snyder. His time in the Order of Gorethar was really good for him. He progressed in the Order at a normal pace and from his first day he cherished to become the first Scout of Gorethar. He soon developed techniques of scouting associated with his psionic abilities and his roguish skill.
From his time as adherent to the time he been promoted to Initiate, he came to know some of the members very well and still counted them as close friends even after his departure from the Order. Among them, Aspen Stormcat, Edge Dravenmore, Trenton Renils and Losin Rockhands to name just a few. The Order was his family and each of his brothers and sisters were giving the love he never knew when he was young. But Shard, being a very emotionally driven person, something was always missing. Whether it was the need for constant change in his life or someone to share a more intimate love, he was always looking away.
So he came to know Davillia Chert, his first love. Davillia was a young woman beginning to learn the ways of mining and blacksmithing when he first met her in Deglos. Soon their shared interest in crafting united them. Before long they were in love, and all was for the better for Shard. He had a Lover and a family, and was one of the most happy men on Avlis. But a strange feeling was about to erupt...jealousy.
The fall of a Paladin
Davillia was a really good natured person, but also very chaotic and wild. The order and kind of stability Shard had in his life were rudely shaken when he discovered that Dav had a second lover. Jealousy immediately overflowed him, and horror when he also discovered that this other lover was a woman! Dark Moon of the Maiden of Dre'Ana. From this day he also began to feel a secret hatred for the Maiden.
Shard was at first disgusted, and shocked, but he tried to not let his angry feelings break his relation. He tried real hard to accept the duality of Davillia and accept Dark Moon as well. But it came to be too much for him. With his duty of his Order and his time passed at the ACE, he had little time to see Davillia who was almost always with Dark Moon. So he felt he was no more at his place. Those were dark times of sadness and pain for him, but a ray of sun was about to illuminate his life, someone for whom he would never had thought he could feel love, Elong Singalong.
Their story began at a Ferrell Trade Fair. He already knew Elong prior to this time, but was only seeing her as an evil woman, listening only to the stories others had to tell him about her. But something different happened at the Fair. During the grand auction of the Fair, a lich came in to auction things. Many of the brothers of Shard were opposed to the lich. Shard should have been, too, but he instead began to feel it was not the right thing to do, not there while it could be dangerous for innocent people to come into a fight with this dangerous undead.
So began his Fall from Paladinhood.
Elong told him he was special and not like the other member of the Order. Rapidly they felt comfortable together and took some time alone together to talk. It was obvious they were at the opposite of each other, but at the same time, they were so good together. No need to tell that their story was against all odds. For the Order of Gorethar, it was unacceptable for one of their members to be emotionally associated with a person they saw as a monster acting against all of Gorethar's teaching. On the opposite, Elong had many friends Shard saw as natural enemies. But their love grew through all those obstacles and the inevitable happened...
Shard left the Order of Gorethar and was declared an apostate, the shame title of the Order. His vow made to Elong to not slay undead was also part of his fall. Soon after he lost all the gifts and power Gorethar had granted him. He was no longer a paladin. Feeling that Gorethar had left him, he converted to Kelvos. In the same week, they both married secretly under the eyes of Kelvos at the temple in M'Chek.
Shard the Fallen
I guess all paladins are a bit lost if they fall from grace. Shard for his part concentrated on his passion: carpentry. He was already a great researcher and had much fun doing so. Within ACE he found many unknown processes of making new thing. He also was the first to achieve the rank of Grandmaster. As Loremaster, his fun was to test the younger members when they were ready to be promoted and his greatest passion was to make classes to teach his love of carpentry to others. Over time his passion for ACE also took more and more time away from his wife. But they were sometime seen together, alone on a hill near the rock in Mikona.
Even if he fell from grace with Gorethar, Shard never lost his sparkle of goodness. He was always looking to help others. But being a paladin was a part of him that was missing. And as a holy warrior of Gorethar he was warded against diseases...but no more. In his last days he was often speaking to shadows around him and developed the skills to summon one of them. Was it hallucinations or delirium from a sick man? Shard had been sick a long time before dying, but never told anyone. Too proud to admit it, he wanted his friends to remember him as a healthy, smiling good man. But the disease took its toll on him and he died alone in his ACE room. He never again saw his wife but some whispers around tell that on his last breath he said: I love you Elong, my angel.
After his death, Edge took his body and went into the T'Nanshi forest to bury him. He buried him under one of the full grown Yew trees near Zvidureth, in memory of the great carpenter he was. On the lower part of the tree, engraved words in the bark can be read:
Here Rests Shard
Grandmaster of ACE
_____________________
Years passed and war too. Some 20 years after his death, for unknown reasons, even for himself, Shard been released from his death plane. Back from the dead, he found a quiet world and discovered he'd been away so long that all his friends, love and connections were gone, dead or left south Negaria. Well most of them. For a time he wandered searching for his past but soon he realized that most of his past life was now sweet memories. So he went to the A.C.E. and took the guild as guildmaster to devote his new life to his past and present beloved guild.