Altaire/Origin

Character Origin / Background

Altaire was born 310 years after the Victory, his life beginning on a small homestead at the outskirts of Axe Clan land. His father, Anzarn, was a smith of some distinction among nearby militias. His mother, Ralla, was an herbalist and seamstress, among other talents. Altaire's early years were blessed by peace, with his father hoping to turn him toward the forge and his mother teaching him to survive nature's general indifference to life. This much, at least, is fairly well known. The rest of this tale is pieced together from anecdotes relayed by those who've come to know Altaire over the years...

In the fall of his 17th year, after a particularly unremarkable day's work in the fields, Altaire returned home to find his father in animated discussion with a leather-clad Human and his retinue of gruff-looking Dwarves and men. The conversation rapidly devolved into angry shouting, and Anzarn dismissed the men from his home with a scowl and a muttered curse. Anzarn then tucked a glinting disc with silvered edges under a floorboard of the home, a look of concern creasing his brow. Altaire asked, "What'd they want anyway, pop? Didn't anyone tell them that you make good on all your contracts? I don't remember ever seeing a customer leave like that..." Anzarn answered, somewhat cryptically, "I hope you never come to know those men. They're not customers. They want somethin' we don't sell and can't give." Anzarn trailed off, then, and retired to a stump behind the house while puffing distractedly on an heirloom pipe. Altaire forced down his growing unease, heading into the house and immersing himself in the last of the day's chores. He stirred a stew pot that smelt of pungent herbs and sweet root vegetables from the garden, but the routine afforded him no comfort. Altaire knew he'd have no luck prying anything further from his father under the circumstances; he prayed, instead, that his own instincts were wrong. He reasoned that his father would share more of what he knew if it were necessary, and that he'd handled the confrontation as well as was practical.

Several weeks later, with that day's odd visit and his father's distress nearly forgotten, Altaire returned from the village market to find a scene conjured from his own nightmares. He heard it before he saw it: the sounds of cracking and splintering wood were joined by muffled cries, and carried easily through the still afternoon air. As Altaire padded past the gate at the edge of the property and looked toward the house, it became apparent that the walls of his family's home had been crushed inward in several places, as if the air itself had set about reclaiming the space for its own purposes. Altaire raced toward the sound, his heart thumping in his ears as his nerves arced warnings to parts of his mind that were no longer capable of responding. Arriving finally at the clearing where the remnants of his home stood, he saw that his father and mother were impaled on short-hafted spears, their blood staining the earth just outside the front door. He realized that the sounds he'd heard were their quiet farewells, and that his opportunity to say his own had likely already passed. As he surveyed the carnage and struggled to contain his desperate fury, Altaire heard the voice of one of the 'customers' from that fateful day echoing within the house: "Burn it. Burn the whole damn thing. Burn the garden, the forge, and that stupid Dwarf and his wife. It'll give the rest of these smallfolk something to think about."

Light and sound receded as mottled black shapes intruded on Altaire's vision. The world shrank, his perspective shifting until it seemed he was watching his own life through a perversely fashioned looking-glass. A howling wind exploded in his mind, joined swiftly by coils of fire and lightning. At first, the elements seemed to fight with the material of space itself, and then later with one another. After a long moment, they fused into a coherent mass that whirled and danced, roaring forth with a single word: "No." It repeated, again and again, each time louder than the last, until the sound was a torment all its own. This went on for what could have been seconds or hours: the voice reverberated like the beating of war drums inside Altaire's head, uncontrolled and accompanied by nearly blinding pain. Finally, the shrieking maelstrom abated, and Altaire's battered consciousness emerged once more. He stumbled to one knee as if struck, and took several measured breaths before attempting to right himself.

Altaire looked up to discover that the men in his home, the house itself, and the ground around it were almost entirely ablaze. Coated in pristine white fire that flowed like oil, the surrounding environment was unmade wholly, seemingly eaten by the voracious flames rather than burnt. The man who'd been tasked with torching the house was, himself, nearly gone already; his still-unlit torch lay beside him, partially disintegrated by a turbulent pool of rippling white flames. Bizarrely, an island of untouched earth lay around Altaire's mother and father, their flesh unmarred by the elements. His father, still clinging to life and with eyes as wide as moons, stared out over the chaos surrounding him before focusing on his son.

Altaire trudged heavily to his father's side and knelt down, the flames receding wherever he stepped. Anzarn summoned his remaining energy and spoke, quietly: "Don't stay. Don't... let them find you here. If you can learn to use whatever that power was, you can... well, maybe you can... stop them. From doing this to anyone else. To the ones they buy and sell..."

Altaire paused, puzzled, and asked, "Power? Tawr... just stop talking already. I might be able to get a surgeon or Empath here in time. They know you in the village, so mayb--"

"Yes, 'power'." Anzarn cut in, his voice nearly breaking as he continued, "I was dead ten minutes ago, boy, and I'm too stubborn to quit breathing yet. This fire ain't natural. I've never seen its like before. When these men came out of the house, you somehow..." he faltered, now, struggling to describe the scene as he cast his gaze over the ruined homestead. "You used forge-fire like cannon shot. You just stood there screamin'... it tore through these two and what was left of our house, and I haven't a clue how. These ones won't be yer problem, though. The one they work for is somethin' else. That tall fella who visited us before is a monster worse than anything in the deepest caves. You have to... you have to let the fire take us. Let it cover this place, end to end, gate to stream. They didn't see you during that first visit... and if there's nothin' to go on, they can't find you. You can disappear, at least for a time. You can be... you'll be safe."

Altaire's eyes blurred with tears as he began to grasp what his father had said, his fingers digging into the damp earth like anchors. Steeling himself, he stood, and spared a last glance at his family as his father nodded his head. Altaire stared into the fire and, bending his mind intuitively to the task, fused the flames to the contours of the land. The white fire spread in all directions, blanketing the earth, as quiet descended on the clearing.