Zaxor

Zaxor Longstalk
Status	Active
Race	Human
Gender	Male
Guild	Warrior Mage
Instance	Prime
Relatives	Longstalk Tribe

Description

You see Zaxor Longstalk, Ethereal Forgelord of Ilithi, a Human.
He has a wrinkled face with frown lines around his mouth, deeply sunken eye sockets filled with cloudy clear-colored eyes and a crooked nose.
He is bald, with liver-spotted skin and a frail and infirm body betraying a decrepit build.
He is slightly under average height for a Human.
He appears to be archaic.

He has a thick bushy mustache that droops heavily on his upper lip and a long shaggy beard.

His left wrist has a tattoo of concentric rings of rich earthen brown which fade into pale blue as the design spirals up his arm. Sprouting from the swirls of inked air, bright red flames stretch across his upper back and to his right arm where they are artfully transformed in deep blue drops of water that appear to run down his right bicep. The droplets transition into jagged bolts of golden hued lightning which coalesce into an ethereal seven pointed star on his right wrist.

He is wearing a dull serpent earcuff, a frost angiswaerd earcuff carved from an opalescent icicle crystal, a bespoke hooded longcoat decorated with Imperial pauldrons, a polished leather harness with a half-handled riste and an Imperial war hammer secured to it, a timeworn Imperial weave military shirt with refined keismin buttons, some dark steel bracers engraved with sinuous Eth'ral'khh, a masterfully crafted glaes and cambrinth Imperial ring, a watered steel sigilated ring ensconced with pure white spiritwood, a dark steel case acid etched with a seven-pointed star, a pair of dashing charcoal twill breeches with elegant folded cuffs and some dark leather boots strapped with polished negnetha sabatons.

The Drunken Mage

Legends are often written on the battlefield. They are stories told beside the campfire on a long journey, tales sung by beautiful bardesses, and the recollections of old warriors sitting at the bar as they near the end of a hard fought life. They often drift from the truth, into fanciful dreams and flowery words, filling the heads of men with dreams of battle and the heart of ladies with unrequited love. Gentle readers, not all legends are made up of flowery words, some are bawdy barroom brawls and drunkards, because heroes can be boring.

There was once a young warrior mage with issues. Zaxor came from boring beginnings, no tragedies to speak of, no murdered parents or kidnapped lovers. He was born, he grew, he joined the guild, he discovered booze. He became a scholar of sorts and could identify a brew by the sound of the cork. The guildleaders sent him on quests and he returned with a swagger in his step and drink on his breath, always successful, always drunk.

As he moved forward in the guild, they sought out reasons to deny him new feats. It was some what of an embarrassment to the powers that be that this young man could take their hardest tasks on and triumph, with blood shot eyes and slurred spells. They decided that some one was making a mockery of them, aiding this drunkard in effort to down play the power of the guild. They had him followed time and time again, spies returning broken or not at all. The reports, when they were able to give them, were all the same. The warrior completed the quest with skill unlike any they had ever seen before, especially considering he did it all with a flask in his hand.

He became known as the drunken mage, spoken with both respect and disgust. It was some what of a game to entice him into battle. Young fighters would challenge him to the death when they saw him staggering from the bar, only to find themselves communing with the gods and wondering what just happened.

Loud and drunk, with a definite swagger, Zaxor had few friends and many enemies, most of whom he would rarely recognize. He sang the songs of the Hooba, gauged his ears with icesteel, and tattooed a ship across his abdomen. He charmed the wenches and scandalized the ladies. Neither giving or asking for respect, he was was unapologetic in his bawdy attack on the world.

Then came the war.

Shunned by his guild, Zaxor took to the battlefield to fight along side the militias. He found himself to be unwelcome amongst those that felt shamed by him, learning that some will lose a battle to save their pride. Charging into the melee alone, he was a force to be reckoned with, but his contributions went unnoticed. It was a sobering time. As his beard grew long and his eyes became clearer, and the isolation found in the quiet after the battle pressed heavy on his soul.

He threw himself into studying history, with the same kind of abandoned once reserved for the bourbon he filled his flask with. He collected antiquities from the Empire of the Seven Pointed Star and the Dragon Priest War that changed him. He befriended a giant pink Kaldar, and became an honorary Longstalk, connecting him to a family for the first time since leaving his own. His companion in battle, a prydaen empath who could melt your soul with a look and brush off the shock with a flick of her wrist, tolerated his presence more so than others. His truest friend was an owl he called "Nisha", summoned from the aether, to perch upon his shoulder and gaze upon the world with mirthless judgement.

The legend of the drunken mage became barroom fodder. Rumors he was lost to the war, or the bottle, or both ran rampant. Stories shifted to lessen the embarrassment of the loser, but victory was never claimed out of fear of retribution.

Some heroes are lost to their own stories... and some rise again to write new ones.

Zaxor Longstalk, we are waiting for you.

Disclaimer

Just because you don't know the story does not mean there is not one. This one is brought to you by the player of Synamon and a grumpy fake owl.