Author Topic: The path least taken - Roland Steele  (Read 879 times)

JayJay

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The path least taken - Roland Steele
« on: December 15, 2021, 04:24:12 PM »
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" - For so long I had wrought righteous fire where I tread, the face of Evil trembled in fear themselves when they heard our name. The Vigil, for the longest time the old guard stood and fought the good fight against the forces of darkness, but the darkness continued to claim.
 
 A wicked thing, a terrible curs-ed, vile thing that corrupts all it touches. But not us, those of us who would stand against the coming tide and draw their blades in defiance of the coming darkness. At least, so I thought.

 I remember the days, before I had established my own chapter in the Grey City...  No No, it was with My Commander, Ser Maerin. A staunch man he was.. unrelenting, unbending an exemplary example of what it meant to belong to the Order of Holy Judgement. I remember the last time I saw him, we chased down a maddened mage to the ends of the shadowed wood. The mage had escaped our grasp, long enough to cant his vile enchantments to grant him strength beyond any man.. He appeared before me, ripping out my very heart. I'll never forget that feeling - It was the same as.. when I had lost them. I lay powerless, dying... caught in my own reflections I remember faintly just before my vision faded to nothingness, I saw him charging valiantly at my attacker. Driving a blade into his body.. - Then, nothing.

 It feels like so long ago these days were, though things haven't changed much.. there are just less of us willing to do what is right, and more fools and heathens vying for every excuse to pardon Evil Sonea Evertale, the most recent Verdict delivered to her left an outrage that stunned even myself. What these people would do to feel justified in their perceptions coming to the defense of a freak, with bones erupting out of her back like wings. What she had to do to be rewarded with such, it sickens me...
 
 Her death spurred what  I can only call as a gathering of the wretched, for anyone that would defend such a sick and twisted being must be the same themselves... most notably Ilona Mellis, I heard warnings of her... but I did not have enough information to act in good faith. But, I didn't need to. She volunteered herself to be shot in the back by Gendarme de Sauvre after her interesting choice of actions but with both deaths the warning I had set out to relay was heard.

 To all who would do Evil, To those who murder the Innocent, To the unjust Tyrants.
 
 On behalf of every victim, for every soul lost in the night, and for all those who cannot fight for themselves.
 
 I shall deliever Vengeance."

Ser Maerin, Ser Roland Steele riding out with a column of Knights from the City of Neverwinter. 1372DR
« Last Edit: December 15, 2021, 06:09:55 PM by JayJay »

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Re: The path least taken - Roland Steele
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2021, 11:15:33 PM »
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Roland settles in for the night, after a long time tossing and turning.. finally sleep takes him.

She was there, watching him with those loving eyes.. those eyes that made the world melt away.
"I am... home?"
He wandered the length of the once familiar room, looking at himself in the mirror. He was younger, the scars gone.
The laughter of the children rang in his ears.
For the briefest moment, he smiles.
"Where are they?" he thinks, the landscapes shifts.
The dinner table, the feast.
He was, safe. The worry for once melts away.
He cuts into the steak... it bleeds... the blood pools and continues to pool.

THE SCREAMS

He grasps his head, pain wracks him.

"NO!!!!!!"



He thrusts himself awake, a cold sweat had taken him as he struggled to contain his breath.


//Flashing lights warning
« Last Edit: December 17, 2021, 12:38:43 AM by JayJay »

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Re: The path least taken - Roland Steele
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2022, 06:20:37 AM »
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Silence permeates throughout the room, the blood fresh on the stone floors.. rancid, and decayed. It wasn't the blood of a living man, but it wasn't quite dead either.
He knew the sort.
Those who had taken a vile path in order to attain power that was not theirs, that no mortal should wield and that only the mad seek.
Whether it was done in place of Demonic-pact was yet another question that lingered on his mind. "Was it too late? Could I have saved him?" he thought.
If only he had stopped him that day, trusted his instinct.
Maybe so many wouldn't have had to die between now and then.
The victims frozen, timeless and locked behind the thick veil of ice that would be their prisons.
The flesh now healed, ripped from those whom he cared for.
But in the end, he had won.

He opens his eyes, a view of the gentle waves rolling towards the docks lazily. The seagulls calling out ravenously, were there fewer of them?
A man stood beside him, a man he had grown quite displeased with over the course of the past few weeks. Beauregard. It wasn't enough the man was thrust from the Red Vardo in shame, but was it becoming of him to be entirely incompetent when it came to matters of law?
He wrote an interesting enough contract.
But his use was far outlived.
Pay the man, that's all that remained.

He sifts through a paper, an increasingly more notorious donkey printed upon it.
He knows, and he wants them to know he does. 
He discards the paper into a trash barrel.
"I didn't start this, but I will finish it."
But yet the thought remained, why?

His restless eyes look again over the bay, a longing in them.
Was he so far from home?
Or is this all he had left?

He shut his eyes once more.
He could hear the laughter, hear her voice once more.
He opened his eyes.

Silence
Video contains violent themes, watch at own discretion

JayJay

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Re: The path least taken - Roland Steele
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2022, 05:21:33 AM »
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That loss
it haunted his memories.
But it was also the only thing that kept him going, the want to destroy evil in any form it took.
Forgiveness was for those who had proven they sought redemption, not for those who would take advantage of it at its core.
The weakness he saw in the others sickened him, not from malice but from worry.
Worry that the small bit of good he saw in the world would once again be buried.
Worry that every battle fought was for naught.
That worry drove him away from others, that the weight of the struggle he bore would lead to the deaths of others.. as it has time and time again.
He would carry the burden, alone if he must. For he believed it right, for he wanted to protect them.
So no one would have to suffer.
But him.

Those who follow Tyr's way of Vengeance can be blind in their hatred, and solemn in their step.

No other path presented itself, no way forward.
The only thing a man can do,
Is cut open a new path.


JayJay

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Re: The path least taken - Roland Steele
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2022, 07:34:21 AM »
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Rage,Hatred,Sorrow
They consume me, perhaps that was fated.
In dark times I sought the gods for light, purpose.
Yet that light feels more and more like it will never return.
And the further I reach out, the further it gets.
If it is even there.

I find it, well.. The word to describe it eludes me, an enigma perhaps.
That in these lands that faith is a word used to describe the Gods, to simply believe they are there.
That it would be enough.
That it isn't a given, that it is all left to not even chance or fate.
But hope, perhaps there is something I could learn there.

A grey description, as hazy as the mist that has veiled these lands so.
But yet still I find it much harder to disagree.
For where I once felt the presence of my God I am left only with questions.
With truths that mustn't be revealed.

What has become of my daughter?
Was she ever be found?


Do my wife and sons watch from the halls of your Court?
Are they happy?


My Father, Mother.
Are they proud?


Why can't I feel your presence?

For these are the darkest times and I am without light, seeing only darkness.
I outstretch my hands, looking but never finding.
I withdraw my hands, guarded against what lurks within.
A breath in, and out.
I remind myself.
Duty is my last pillar.
I must be blind to all else.

I cannot find it within me again, to live.
For I would rather face a thousand blades than to ever lose a child again.

"Do not let them close, they do not deserve the fate that awaits you."
« Last Edit: July 30, 2022, 07:44:14 AM by JayJay »