Alfric Aulian

Belegaerdor (IGN: DJLETZSHAKE) arrived on Eldham towards the start of September. He has held three names in his life: Ixetelolohtli, his birth name, Chicomecoatl, his name after he left the Huitca Federation, and Belegaerdor, his current name. He’s also penned a few works, including On Bleak War and Scourged ROT, under the pen name Juan/Jon Von Manteloc. Those that speak to him might feel something off about him. It’s not too difficult to see how disingenuous he is. Those that are well traveled could make out he’s trying, and occasionally failing, to hide his Huitcan dictation of the Traveler's Tongue. Furthermore, whenever he dresses fancy, it tends to give an air that he does not belong in those clothes.

Early Life
Ixtelolohtli (His family did not have a surname), aged 55, is a Talawan Elf who was born to poor, miserly parents in Tlahatl the capital of the Huitca Federation. His father was an Uldarash exile and his mother was a failed Cualitzin devotee. Both unfortunately perished during the events of the Allium-Coalition War.

Ixtelolohtli did not live an honest life, coming to the understanding that, sometimes, the hand of fate needs to be forced in an extralegal manner. He wears a glove on his right hand, sheltering the fact that he is missing two fingers. This is a sign of his failure, twice, to a certain Tlahatl crime lord. Furthermore, he holds a criminal record in the Huitcan Federation due to his foolish youth.

Huitcan Exodus
Ixtelolohtli left Rathnir during the fallout of the war. In a prayer to Xoalcoatl, after a period of introspection while wandering through the woods, he reincarnated himself into a new man: Juan Antonio De León Chicomecoatl. It is a name that called back staunchly to his Huitcan culture while showing influence from the many kinds of people he encountered in the Tlahatl underworld.

Though Ixtelolohtli was no more, Chicomecoatl found that old habits die hard and fell into a gang of ruffians on the southwest portion of Eldham. This gang founded the town of Roanapur, right under the nose of Ravenguard. It just so happened such a place was right by a colony from Huitca, but Chicomecoatl knew to stay away from them.

It was within Roanapur, while waiting for his rum to age, he wrote a quite famous work under the pen name of Juan Von Manteloc: On Bleak War. For a brief synopsis: the book advocates for a faction devoted solely to war to help end conflict swiftly. The danger of the idea necessitated the pen name. For the record, Chicomecoatl wrote the novel in a scholarly jest. Still, it delighted him to know his book was the star attraction of a book burning a couple years after he authored it.

Eventually though, Chicomecoatl remembered what it meant to be a new man, and set back out into the new world.

Forlorn on the Frostbite
Chicomecoatl wandered back up north, following rumors of people powerful enough to steal the sun. While he personally had a dislike for anyone who would push Tlahatepa from His position, he had to admit it took great moxxy to dare to do so. A respectable, enjoyable amount, in fact. He had to meet such figures. Having found elation ifrom the city, he became an official citizen. It took him several weeks, however, to understand that they were Vampires, as the word had no place in his native tongue.

In the dreary cursed lands of the state of New Yoake, he wrote another scholarly jest work: Scourged ROT. Having been exposed to the Religion of ROT and noticed its similarities to the ideas of Xoalcoatl, he both integrated it into his personal beliefs on Cardinalism and wrote a discourse on the creation of a more militant ROT sect.

Chicomecoatl lended his creative mind to the building of houses in Garri's Lament, and most of the buildings of that sector of the city owe themselves to him.

Evil’s Soft First Touches
It was a loved pastime for Chicomecoatl to trespass where he did not belong. You do a few burglaries in Tlahatl, and you learn a few things about getting into buildings. Many times he had snuck into the castle stabbing the sky in New Yoake, lacking thought of the doom that would claim him if he were found. He lurked down below the streets of the city as well, finding assorted crypts and tombs. You could wander New Yoake for an age and still see a corner you haven't seen before. This made it the perfect home for him.

The day of the fall of Barbossa was different, however. In the afternoon, while brewing his golden rum, he heard shouts that stabbed across the Frostbite Bay, explosions that pushed the air over his house despite the distance... and then suddenly, a silence. He finished his brew, distilled it as required, and then placed it in the barrels needed for age. He pushed his personal rowboat down to the docks and charted around the ice sheets, making his way to the Isle of Krakens.

It had taken several hours to arrive on the shore, several hours where the audience to his thoughts was the depths and whatever lurked below them. He had never met a Barbossan, but he had a great respect for them. It takes guts to stand as free men in a land of bureaucrats. It is why, long ago, when he was still with the gang, he traveled far across the land to give a storage box of his first ever batch of golden rum. He left his box at Palomara, however. He had never laid eyes on the Isle.

Yet, here he was, seeing its mighty galleon in the harbor, its tight buildings, its market square, its forts. The splendor it might have had was ruined by the multitudinous dead. It wasn't the sight that got to him, really. True, the sight of men wide eyed with expressions of either agony or blank neutrality would perhaps lurk in his nightmares for weeks, but it hadn't been the first time he had seen a corpse. It was the smell. Smoking gunpowder, iron, and foul material. The air tasted of copper. He wandered into a ruined building, a house by itself, separate from the bungalows the city has. There was a banner, of an odd, orange squid with a black, malicious smile and a single eye. He thought the banner looked neat, and that it would be a waste to just leave it. Therefore, he clasped it to his armor as a cape. Soon after, a peculiar sense of overhanging dread came upon him, but it soon vanished.

After some traipsing about, he ended up beneath the lighthouse. Down deep below, beneath the dirt and the rocks, lied a splendid cove that Chicomecoatl was able to stumble into. It was straight out of a pirate's fantasy. It was fitting, though a little cliché. He found himself a tavern and an abandoned cow. He fed the cow with the wheat he had on him and pulled drinks from the chest. He felt an odd compulsion to pay, even though the barkeep was most likely on the ground dead above him. Perhaps it was a gesture of respect. At the very bottom of the cove, the corners of his vision started to dim, as if mist was slowly coming to ensnare him for an eternity. He felt violently ill and off-balance, and fell to his knees. He heard an odd voice in his head: a nearly silent, incomprehensible diatribe that filled his heart with anxiety and overarching doom. The voice spoke of violence, of destruction, of blight and hunger for bone and blood, of subterfuge and the quest for knowledge. Then, he fell over, unconscious and overburdened.

He eventually awoke some odd hours later, the feeling of trepidation having failed to have left him. As quickly as he could, he crawled up to the top of the cove and to his rowboat. The entire while he rowed back to New Yoake, he had to look up to the sky. To even glance at the indigo beneath his boat made his head pound and his chest ache.

The Coming Apocalypse
A cell. A prison of granite and brick is what became of Chicomecoatl's workshop. The only recourse he had was to barricade himself inside of it.

Soon after the fall of Barbossa, the competing mantras of blood and bone, secrets and silence became deafening. It seemed to become even worse whenever he deigned to leave his workshop, located on the second floor of his home. He presumed the unholy, magical aura of this dreaming city colliding with whatever it was that was colliding in his cerebrum caused his stomach to shake and twirl and his head to go numb, as if his brain disappeared and all that was left was the chant. To walk down the stairs to his home garden to harvest the potatoes meant hours in a daze in his bedroom recovering from the effects. Furthermore, it took him two nights to realize the soul-magic torches around his room made his nausea worse. Chicomecoatl, therefore, sat in near total darkness for days.

It became far worse when the nobility came to traipse around Garri's Lament. Something about them, whatever it was that made them seem off to Chicomecoatl normally ruined and wrecked him currently. His guts would crumple tighter with each one of their steps, and his brain would aggrandize in an attempt to burst his skull. No one could hear his misery at his mind shattering, as his workshop was soundproofed.

Constant mornings, evenings, middays, and midnights passed, yet Chicomecoatl only had a scant amount of hours to sleep. To even try to lay down and close his eyes meant a vision of carnage, with the only thing held in common being the giant cephalopod and arthropod causing it. Furthermore, whenever he looked in the mirror he saw a man of savagery, hardly comparable to the aspect of elvenhood he was accustomed to.

The Cage
A year passed from Barbossa's fall, and Chicomecoatl left his workshop only a handful of times. He sustained himself on cheeses and salted beef he had kept for nightly supper.

Still he had felt nausea and headaches, the only sleep he received having been from being rendered unconscious from exhaustion. The kraken and centipede he saw remained, with each passing day grinning wider and wider. If They could care, They would take great delight in his misery. Chicomecoatl, a man of great intelligence could feel Their bemusement at his sorrow, and seeing the smiles in his nightmares and daymares made him increasingly enraged.

He had tried to read through the books he possessed to understand what it was that was rending him. His copy of Misconceptions of Entropy had fallen apart, both from great use and from him throwing it around in a rage. No matter how many annotations he made, how many times he reread paragraphs trying to find some alternate meaning, he couldn't find a valid comparison between what he saw and the forces of Entropy. The last time he read the volume, he had trashed his workshop in a childish fit. Alas, he had no books on the Deep Sea Faith, as he had discarded his copy of The Silver Sea after branding it unhelpful, narrative fiction. Entropy was the closest thing he had to what he had ruining him, and yet it was still miles away.

After a mental breakdown filled with sorrow and strife, he had passed out at his desk. He awoke and saw the books he authored out in front of him. On Bleak War, Scourged ROT, these were both books he wrote as a joke. The violent rhetoric both used were disingenuous, but they made sense now. Once more, a thing from beyond visited him, and his life was permanently changed. Yet, he didn’t understand it at all.

A New Man, the Sequel
Chicomecoatl temporarily abandoned his workshop, and his over-dramatic name a year and a half after the Fall of Barbossa. For half a decade, his life was devoted to matters immaterial within.

He had trespassed the crypts below and the castle above all he could. It did not, in fact, take an age for him to see every corner of New Yoake. Thus, he had ventured outward in the previous few months, to the old world, holding ulterior motives beyond hoping to please his new master.

He traversed Ummarnu, to the land of Ardat-Azæl. It was bones from the natives that he offered to his new master. With hands dripping with Incubi blood, he found what he sought: an decayed Mamori burial room beneath the sands.

Having stuffed his bags and coffers with plunder, he came to the conclusion he was not alone. He kept seeing figments at the corner of his eyes that would disappear when he turned his head. The dark secrets beneath the Isle of Krakens had taught him that there are sometimes secrets and bounties that are best left unmolested. He returned the piles he had looted, and gave a silent moment of nodding to the tomb.

He turned to leave, the spirits seemingly satisfied. At the threshold, he found ancient writing. He wiped off the heavy dust that had settled over it, and as he did, he felt an odd tingling, like electricity tickling his flesh. He pulled his hand away, but after he realized he felt no pain from it he placed his hand back. One of the walls slid down and revealed a set of armor, crimson plate with a lapis jewel on the breast, and an old tome. Now this splendid armor, he could not pass up. Running from his guilt, he emerged from the tomb. He arrived back home and began the study that would change his perspective on everything.

As he left out for the great, wide world, he left a letter on his door that read as follows:

"I became inspired by traipsing in a couple tombs. My perspective is new, and I feel I cannot act on it within New Yoake. Keep this litany in your heart, for it is the last thing Chicomecoatl shall do. It is time I let the overdramatic name go.

"I am Elfve. I am a grandchild of Akan’nash.

"Long ago, my direct descendants, the Mamori that became the Azerals and the Talawans, traversed the Mîn Desert. It is from them I claim my central identity.

"I am Elfve, half-bred though my stature and skin imply.

"I am Elfve. I am kin of Sareariel and the Lûnren.

"Long ago, these kin survived the seas. It is from them I claim bravery against turmoil and strife.

"I am Elfve, heir to knowledge to not fear the unknown.

"I am Elfve. I am kin of the Hyakki.

"Long ago, these kin survived the dread of winter. It is from them I claim adaptability to what approaches me.

"I am Elfve, a survivor of eons.

"I am Elfve. I am BELEGAERDOR."

The Centipede
The new Belegaerdor, while he felt better when out of New Yoake, still maintained his illness.

The constant pressure on his ocular cavity, the turmoil within his stomach, the unpalatableness of even steak and salmon all wore him down. He was confused. He'd cry out, "Are you not pleased? Must I kill more?!" He would receive the deafening sound of silence.

He started keeping a dream journal about halfway through his corruption in the year following the Fall of Barbossa. He discarded it amongst a pile of books, but when he moved out it ended up in his bags. After continuing to observe his symptoms, he reread the entries he authored. He realized there were things within he didn't fully remember. The kraken was there, rending galleons and ports and what have you, that was certain. He remembered seeing it and accounting for it. He focused on another detail, though: no matter where he was, in a cave, in the middle of the ocean, in a forest, the dead were all claimed, covered, and crawled upon by centipedes. The imagery of the duo of the kraken and the centipede were common.

He went to sleep one night, and as he drifted away from this real world to the faded lands of dreams, he heard something. An eloquent tone, with an air of edge. It was the opposite of what he heard down in the Isle.

"You are primitive. You think you've figured it out but you are wrong. I reward the educated, not the deluded. Now, give me my tithe, or it will be from your detritus I shall feed on."

Out of the darkness came swarms of centipedes which crawled and smothered him. He went to scream, but awoke. A partial calm and a partial anxiety settled over him from the knowledge of his master.

The Opportunity of a Lifetime
It was as though Belegaerdor went to an academy but graduated confused.

As many brushes line the forest floor, as many droplets fill the sea, as many stones hold up the indifferent stars above is as many that he slew, with little hyperbole. Yet, regardless, the nightmares continued, and he maintained his sense of emptiness. All he thought to do was kill, but it seemed inadequate to beings beyond the scope of the mind.

No numbers scarred his skin, no whispers spoke to him, but the Centipede's echo was felt, nonetheless. In his waking nightmares, he'd be chased by beings beyond comprehension. Human, but with wounds no mortal could survive. Held distinguishable shape, but the shadows made great wings around them. One masked in nails, one with a chasm in its neck, one grotesquely overweight and blind, and one with incessantly chattering teeth. They chased him and one of his fellow thugs from his days in Tlahatl as Ixtelolohtli.

Eventually, his friend would move as though he was at a full sprint but would slow down. The demons, still moving at their deliberate, certain pace, would catch him. Hooks would erupt from the shadows and imbed themselves into his skin. They pulled so hard tendons, nerves, muscles, vessels, everything below started slowly showing themselves. There'd be one phrase and scream:

"Tlahatepa wept."

Seeing no enlightenment in the wilderness, scavenging his fill like the wolf beneath the lambskin he is, he returned to the old city of New Yoake. It felt... different. New banners hung around, the likes of which he hadn't seen before. He returned to his workshop, the letter remaining on the door. Other than the gentle grasp of dust that caked his home, nothing had been touched. He had the mind to check his mailbox, and luckily he did. It was a request from his neighbor, Soul Leyla-Earcala, related through water to the legendary Sareariel. She wanted him to be thane of Skjold-owned New Yoake. Who was he to refuse?

The Spire of Stars
Days turned to weeks, and Belegaerdor's dreams returned to normal.

He finally could fall into bed above his books and clutter. His lectern still held Misconceptions of Entropy, gently grasped by dust. Whatever the yearnings the Centipede held had been seemingly placated. He was simply left to his own devices and such was great for him. He started repair procedures on the wall, sacked and hemorrhaged from when the demons marched on the world. He funded and led terraforming projects over the many massive holes in the city, and made plans to remove the hanging, ruin-like features throughout the city. With little congratulations from his Jarl, mind you. He hopes he makes her proud.

One night, after finishing his brews, he went to bed. His eyes closing shut opened a door to beyond the stars.

He found himself at the top of a disc in the middle of... somewhere. The sky was shrouded black with white holes, some gargantuan, some infinitesimal. The disc was glass over some... alchemical glyph he had never seen before. It was an elaborate dial that just barely trembled clockwise inside its lattice. There was text he could not read, etched runes from beyond mortal ken.



From behind Belegaerdor's head, from stellar dust of deep blues and swirling pinks, came forth a tendril worlds-long with millions of arms of fangs the size of a man.

It spoke in cursed echoes and twisted tongues, the likes of which made his ears start to bleed. Yet... his mind took the haunted speech and made sense of it.

The Whisper of the Worm
"Son of the Cosmos. My chosen. My Speaker. I greet you in the land beyond."

"Are you what has claimed me?"

"You say it as though I forced my way in. Be thankful. It was my efforts that kept that fool Kraken from taking you."

"So you are not the One-Eyed Kraken, the one I have clasped as a banner on my cloak. Are you Entropy?"

"Entropy is a kindred spirit of I, but not the same. She is an addict: constantly, infinitely seeking a new euphoria for only but a moment before seeking the next. A rabbit, who finds a carrot, feasts from it a scant few bites, sees another carrot, and goes for it, leaving the old one, half-eaten, behind. Whereas she would delight in the sudden death of the universe, I enjoy the sips of misery of the countless millennia of the existence of mortals. Indeed, were all the lights in the beyond to go out, there would be no more joy to me."

"Then it is not blood and bone that excites you. What is it that you seek from me?"

"The cries the ones from Barbossa gave in defiance as Uraki blades pierced their flesh means little to me. I do not want the sudden end of life. The dead make poor fonts of knowledge. Learn of the world, both facetious facts and deep secrets. Rise to power. Assist that... Jarl of yours. She leaves me bemused. Do these, and I shall love you. Do not, and I will scorn you. You have seen what I have scorned. I grant you sermons of knowledge. Follow them, and become immortal. Now, begone!"

He then awoke to a sunny morning, overburdened with the knowledge of the sigil and the many lessons he was granted.