Member
lol joanna
Shinny
xtra
op2024
Silver Moon
ErosSense
Forsythe
Tortoise
Xantara Aradia
VisynVaught
Identity
- Vaught The Great
- Vaught The Mad
- Slayer Of Portus Cruor
Type
Rogue being
Myth
"So I'd like to tell you a little story about Portus Cruor. Yes, that gritty place of unlimited filth in the south nobody likes to talk about. Not even the people living there like to talk about the place for doing so isn't good for their reputation or their 'professional' success in most cases, so don't worry if you've never heard of anything like this before. It's not a very well known story and I can certainly say that because I myself stumbled upon it in the archives only recently."
The magister and his student sat opposing each other, only separated by a small round table covered by an unorderly arrangement of parchments and a few burning candles.
"So we have Portus Cruor where no honest nature wants to go to, and also there we have Vaught, a boy who's allegedly been picked up by some scoundrels sailing along the western coastline of The Greatwood. Those pirates... it's not enough for them to harass innocent seafaring merchants for their goods, but some of them don't even stop from human trafficking. Their miserable city has a rather constant need for slaves as its inhabitants treat them far less well than those of... erm... here, for example ?
Vaught, looking like someone who had not even finished growing into an adult, was put into the pits. That's what they call their arenas down there where they let people fight against each other for public entertainment. Some of those are paid and more or less professional individuals, but most are captives who are forced to fight for their lives and seldomly make it higher up. They are given promises of freedom and coin should they reach the top, but of course the owners of the pits make sure that they get the most out of their greatest assets before that.
Vaught however... he was a lucky one. Completely inexperienced, but showing enough talent not to be put into an impossible situation by his owner at the early stages. People could watch him making his first kill by barely using more than a stone, but soon they saw him wielding a wooden club, then a simple axe and ultimately sword and shield. I have to admit that I'd be amazed if that would be one of my own children, but fortunately we don't do such cruel things like stealing people up here.
So Vaught rose to be one of the major attractions of the pits, seeing great bloodshed several times a month and preparing to defend his own life during the remainder of the time. Whether he ever started to like it ? I don't know. It's certain however that he adapted, becoming a more and more cruel and ruthless man himself both in and outside the arena at least as far as we know. People also noted that he bulked up dramatically until he, at some point, outright dwarfed his opponents. Spectators started speculating whether the owner of the place had hired an alchemist to mix some wicked substances into the man's food, because, you know, he also grew heads taller than the others.
Then, only a few years into things, came what my sources often refer to as 'the night of the red ring'. A simple summer day with swealtering weather as its typical for that part of Outremer. The time of the year when everyone who can stays inside at day and starts enjoying himself in the cooler evening hours. The pits were set for a tournament that would include only the best of the best and go on for days, a real eyecatcher for the whole of Portus Cruor in the light of countless torches and a full moon.
Vaught was there as well, but from the very moment he stepped onto the gray sand there was that uncertain feeling of something being different. Maybe it was an illusion caused by the dim and irregular lighting, but his eyes didn't seem brown anymore. They appeared red: not that kind of passive red of an albino, but a wicked red that almost seemed to glow."
The magister smiled, almost laughing slightly as he waved his hands as if to stave off something.
"Oh yes, I know what people with too much imagination like you might think: The full moon, it certainly has something to do with it! All those superstitions common people like to stick to... No no, trust me: I'll come to the point where you'll see that it's not what you might think it is!
So, where was I ? Ah, yes, when Vaught entered the arena. Now of course he had sustained a lot of injuries in past fights just like everyone else, but as he stood there with nothing more than a piece of fur and an improvised girdle covering his hulking body people started to wonder whether they simply couldn't see them or if there indeed were no more scars on the man's skin. And the gray sand beneath his feet ? Soon after the intial fight had begun it wasn't gray anymore, but red and wet by anybody's blood. And when I say 'anybody' I mean 'anybody' because Vaught didn't stop after he had gutted every man and woman he was supposed to kill, but he then climbed over the high metal fence and started a massacre on the stands. Just like in every arena they were arranged in a large ring, hence the name of the occasion."
The student's eyes widened as he continued listening, now seemingly more attentive than before.
"You think he must have been killed within seconds by some guards ? That there must have been preparations in place just in case one of those highly trained and imprisoned killers would go crazy just like that ? You're right about about the latter, but not about the former. Vaught went beyond 'good' when people saw how arrows and bolts shot at his naked skin could slow him down, but not stop his murderous rage until everyone was either dead or had managed to flee. Vaught escaped from the pits and continued on his path through the narrow streets and alleys. At some point they just gave up pursuing him, probably when it became evident that he wanted nothing but leave the damn place.
I can see you wondering why I'm burdening you with all that nonsense. Well... that's because I'd like to add some more literature to your workload, but not without at least some actual motivation to read it. So may I hand you this pile of my personal handwritings you've been sitting in front of for the whole time ?"
The old magister leaned back in his chair, just looking at his student as the latter slowly picked up the parchments in front of him, each of them filled to the brim with a dense mixture of letters and drawings.
"I want an independent opinion about my work so far. I feel like my writing style might be a bit too complicated, but the matter is serious: Did you ever hear the term 'primordial chaos' before ?"
The student shrugged his shoulders, looking at the magister whom had invited him into his personal office so unexpectedly with curious eyes.
"It's about metaphysics so to speak. A theory one of my predecessors here has put up but which has never received much attention for it's quite abundantly abstract and speculative. It's about how, between gods and demons, the world itself has come to be. I never gave much about mere speculation, but once I stumbled upon this Vaught I remembered that, at some point, the author of this theory starts arguing that this process of the world's becoming might not yet have reached completion and that some remainders of this 'primordial chaos' might still exist in the most unexplored corners, just never having transitioned into a state we humble humans refer to as 'matter', 'magic' or just somehow meaningful for us.
But what would happen if one bit of this 'chaos' took one of us humble humans as a sketch for itself to finally gain consciousness, but only to end up surrounded by cruelty without mercy ? Wouldn't it do everything to defend itself before it's newfound shape is destroyed and while it still is flexible enough to assimilate and incorporate whatever kind of improvement it can find that could help with that ? I'm talking about Vaught, because let's not forget that The Greatwood is one of those most unexplored places we know of. Who knows whether this process of continuous adaptation and improvement had already reached its limits when he fled from Portus Cruor or if said city has only witnessed an intermediary stage of it ?
I'm convinced that Vaught's mind might already have been set much earlier, but that it was only this night when he realized that he couldn't learn anything from the pits anymore. Now it's just me and my ramblings of course, but I think we had a chance to become friends with something great and unique, but instead we trained it how to view us as enemies that need to perish at all costs. It all happened almost a decade ago, but the thought still hurts."
The magister and his student sat opposing each other, only separated by a small round table covered by an unorderly arrangement of parchments and a few burning candles.
"So we have Portus Cruor where no honest nature wants to go to, and also there we have Vaught, a boy who's allegedly been picked up by some scoundrels sailing along the western coastline of The Greatwood. Those pirates... it's not enough for them to harass innocent seafaring merchants for their goods, but some of them don't even stop from human trafficking. Their miserable city has a rather constant need for slaves as its inhabitants treat them far less well than those of... erm... here, for example ?
Vaught, looking like someone who had not even finished growing into an adult, was put into the pits. That's what they call their arenas down there where they let people fight against each other for public entertainment. Some of those are paid and more or less professional individuals, but most are captives who are forced to fight for their lives and seldomly make it higher up. They are given promises of freedom and coin should they reach the top, but of course the owners of the pits make sure that they get the most out of their greatest assets before that.
Vaught however... he was a lucky one. Completely inexperienced, but showing enough talent not to be put into an impossible situation by his owner at the early stages. People could watch him making his first kill by barely using more than a stone, but soon they saw him wielding a wooden club, then a simple axe and ultimately sword and shield. I have to admit that I'd be amazed if that would be one of my own children, but fortunately we don't do such cruel things like stealing people up here.
So Vaught rose to be one of the major attractions of the pits, seeing great bloodshed several times a month and preparing to defend his own life during the remainder of the time. Whether he ever started to like it ? I don't know. It's certain however that he adapted, becoming a more and more cruel and ruthless man himself both in and outside the arena at least as far as we know. People also noted that he bulked up dramatically until he, at some point, outright dwarfed his opponents. Spectators started speculating whether the owner of the place had hired an alchemist to mix some wicked substances into the man's food, because, you know, he also grew heads taller than the others.
Then, only a few years into things, came what my sources often refer to as 'the night of the red ring'. A simple summer day with swealtering weather as its typical for that part of Outremer. The time of the year when everyone who can stays inside at day and starts enjoying himself in the cooler evening hours. The pits were set for a tournament that would include only the best of the best and go on for days, a real eyecatcher for the whole of Portus Cruor in the light of countless torches and a full moon.
Vaught was there as well, but from the very moment he stepped onto the gray sand there was that uncertain feeling of something being different. Maybe it was an illusion caused by the dim and irregular lighting, but his eyes didn't seem brown anymore. They appeared red: not that kind of passive red of an albino, but a wicked red that almost seemed to glow."
The magister smiled, almost laughing slightly as he waved his hands as if to stave off something.
"Oh yes, I know what people with too much imagination like you might think: The full moon, it certainly has something to do with it! All those superstitions common people like to stick to... No no, trust me: I'll come to the point where you'll see that it's not what you might think it is!
So, where was I ? Ah, yes, when Vaught entered the arena. Now of course he had sustained a lot of injuries in past fights just like everyone else, but as he stood there with nothing more than a piece of fur and an improvised girdle covering his hulking body people started to wonder whether they simply couldn't see them or if there indeed were no more scars on the man's skin. And the gray sand beneath his feet ? Soon after the intial fight had begun it wasn't gray anymore, but red and wet by anybody's blood. And when I say 'anybody' I mean 'anybody' because Vaught didn't stop after he had gutted every man and woman he was supposed to kill, but he then climbed over the high metal fence and started a massacre on the stands. Just like in every arena they were arranged in a large ring, hence the name of the occasion."
The student's eyes widened as he continued listening, now seemingly more attentive than before.
"You think he must have been killed within seconds by some guards ? That there must have been preparations in place just in case one of those highly trained and imprisoned killers would go crazy just like that ? You're right about about the latter, but not about the former. Vaught went beyond 'good' when people saw how arrows and bolts shot at his naked skin could slow him down, but not stop his murderous rage until everyone was either dead or had managed to flee. Vaught escaped from the pits and continued on his path through the narrow streets and alleys. At some point they just gave up pursuing him, probably when it became evident that he wanted nothing but leave the damn place.
I can see you wondering why I'm burdening you with all that nonsense. Well... that's because I'd like to add some more literature to your workload, but not without at least some actual motivation to read it. So may I hand you this pile of my personal handwritings you've been sitting in front of for the whole time ?"
The old magister leaned back in his chair, just looking at his student as the latter slowly picked up the parchments in front of him, each of them filled to the brim with a dense mixture of letters and drawings.
"I want an independent opinion about my work so far. I feel like my writing style might be a bit too complicated, but the matter is serious: Did you ever hear the term 'primordial chaos' before ?"
The student shrugged his shoulders, looking at the magister whom had invited him into his personal office so unexpectedly with curious eyes.
"It's about metaphysics so to speak. A theory one of my predecessors here has put up but which has never received much attention for it's quite abundantly abstract and speculative. It's about how, between gods and demons, the world itself has come to be. I never gave much about mere speculation, but once I stumbled upon this Vaught I remembered that, at some point, the author of this theory starts arguing that this process of the world's becoming might not yet have reached completion and that some remainders of this 'primordial chaos' might still exist in the most unexplored corners, just never having transitioned into a state we humble humans refer to as 'matter', 'magic' or just somehow meaningful for us.
But what would happen if one bit of this 'chaos' took one of us humble humans as a sketch for itself to finally gain consciousness, but only to end up surrounded by cruelty without mercy ? Wouldn't it do everything to defend itself before it's newfound shape is destroyed and while it still is flexible enough to assimilate and incorporate whatever kind of improvement it can find that could help with that ? I'm talking about Vaught, because let's not forget that The Greatwood is one of those most unexplored places we know of. Who knows whether this process of continuous adaptation and improvement had already reached its limits when he fled from Portus Cruor or if said city has only witnessed an intermediary stage of it ?
I'm convinced that Vaught's mind might already have been set much earlier, but that it was only this night when he realized that he couldn't learn anything from the pits anymore. Now it's just me and my ramblings of course, but I think we had a chance to become friends with something great and unique, but instead we trained it how to view us as enemies that need to perish at all costs. It all happened almost a decade ago, but the thought still hurts."