Curse

SOT · Aug 16, 2005, 03:08 PM // 15:08

It was a long time coming. Battles were waged for countless generations, and the guild known as 'The Sisters of Teal' had hoped to set itself vitally apart from the miasma of like-minded malcontents. There was much despair in the hearts of the guild ranks, as they were a small cluster of warriors and mages, surrounded by vast armies and inexplicably craven machinations. All about them, those that were both living, dying, and undying, were building their power base, or their niche, within a growing wall of war, warriors, the opressive, and the oppressed. This is the story of the Fall of Teal, it's founder Fatal Kiss, and the rise of the Black Hand of Fate:

The Beginning:
Much of the background for Fatal Kiss is lost to all but her own memory. She was born and raised on the outskirts of Ascalon, in a little shed owned by a hermit named Menton Felthisk. Menton was a stern teacher in the ways of the woodland people, but he always showed Fatal Kiss a strong sign of devotion and respect.

Although hardy as a younger person, there was always a silent dark cloud hanging over her head. Fatal Kiss learned early in life to let the rages from one's bad experience channel into the flesh, and therefore life, of her enemies. She was a proud warrior, but not for a lack of trying. She was strong of will and mind, and was first on the scene to help out an endangered friend or uncapable weaker person. She had a strong affinity for the Deldrimor dwarves, and longed to one day serve as an emissary to their wise and beloved king.

She never got the chance. While Fatal Kiss was able to meet and aid the King of the Shiverpeak's good dwarven people, her explorations across the face of Tyria, in the face of horrendous upheaval and strife, were cut short by none other than from within her own damn ranks! Within the guild, small though it was, there was dissent.

The emblem of the guild was felt by many to be indicative of something regal, something grand and imperious. It was a teal dragon, with snapping jaws agape, a serptine tongue forking out from that most beastly gullet. All this, atop a wash of black, to better stand out against the sun as it tired to brighten it.

No, the guild emblem had not been the problem. The issue within the ranks and without was the name of the guild itself: The Sisters of Teal. Few in Tyria not acquainted with the heroic self-sacrifice and dogged battle readiness of the guild itself knew of it, or took it seriously. Those that knew the truth were momentary allies on various occasions, always lending directions, or gear, or stratagems to aid the cause of the 'watchers of tyria' as they self-dubbed themselves. The Sisters of Teal were the eyes and ears of the silent Tyria.

That side of things had always interested Fatal Kiss. She enjoyed the creepy delight in standing around in towns, soaking up the gossips, hearing the rivalries, and tasting the undercurrent of the unseen and the unresolved that seemed to permeate the very earth at her feet. Hers was a guild of silent sentries, standing tall and strong against the flux of a world in the grip of a screaming chaos.

Shortly into the lifespan of the Sisters of Teal Guild, a new upstart joined the ranks. He was a very different creature than the Ranger/Mesmer Fatal Kiss had respectedly become in her short life. His was the way of the sword, axe, and the fireball. His was the elementalist and the warrior caste. With strength of muscle and wit of magical user, Sir Typhoid burst onto the scene as an unknown variable. He was grim of face and short on words, and the few guild members who had not been murdered or who had not fled regarded him almost comically. He was dressed like a circus clown, all non-matching armor, and always seemed to be at the merchant, unloading his satchels of many varied and amazing things.

To his non-guild comrades, he became known as 'pack-rat'. To his guildmates, and to the growing horror of Fatal Kiss, he was beginning to be seen as the face of the Sisters of Teal. This would begin the long fall of grace for the Ranger/Mesmer. Her end would not be legendary int he anals of Tyrian lore, but it would nonetheless be the catalyst for things to come.

Fatal Kiss had been pinned down for several days in a mossy quagmire, just outside of the Black Curtain. While there, her comrade in arms Alesia had been disembowled by a bog skale, and her fighter mercenary known as Little Thom had been poisoned and lay near death at the water's edge. Her thoughts had been whirling full circle from the current state of things, to the ever-present and growing threat to her guild leadership by the enigmatic, and seemingly past-free Sir Typhoid.

Nis name suggested a regal history, and perhaps a nobility somewhere back in his bloodline. None knew whether his title was self-stamped or had been given in the past. The very nature of the silent warrior/mage drove her up the wall, and made her resent him almost out of spite. It got so irritating at one point she actually lost recollection of just HOW this upstart ever actually entered her organization. Always before, she had been the one to go to for advice, the one to seek out for difficult missions.

Now, she was basically a court jester to her own subjects, and her pet panther, Garfield was the mascot for some losing team, in her mind at least.

The Ordained Murder:

Sir Typhoid sat atop the corpse of an undead Mesmer and chewed on some rawhide, all while watching the stageplay, playing out far below him. The woman known as Fatal Kiss was sitting on her haunches, bow on her lap, apparently trying to stare a hole through a tree stump. She was obviously working the gears of her meticulous mind, he thought to himself.

Her wounds, many and deep, bled less and less, and her color seemed to be returning to her flush cheeks, and Sir Typhoid surmised her Troll Ungent was doing its much needed duty in the face of certain death. Sir typhoid nonchalantly glanced at the now festering and bloating corpse of the healer, Alesia. He felt nothing for her passing, mindless as she seemed to him to be, and felt only the momentary irritation that comes from knowing someone died without honor because they had none to start with. Monks, he sneered; helpful but utterly devoid of stones in the thick of it.

His bias forgotten, Sir Typhoid set about launching an incantion. It was known to the sages and mages as "Meteor Shower". It was then, and is now, a truly a pretty and disastrous spell to use on the field of battle. It batters all beneath it's gaze to the ground, and burns continuously for many moments. Whole armies have been ripped apart by several of these spells used in wide but close proximity.

Today, that army was Fatal Kiss.

As the fatigued ranger looked up to the heavens, a look of resigned understanding seemed to settle over her face. Her time was done. Her guild was without sail in a sea of raging monsters, both man and monster alike. To remain silent was a death sentence, as mere watchers could not hope to remain vital in a world torn apart by its own vomitus and spasms of madness. No, her time was now over, and in her place, someone of power and instinct, someone of initiaive and leadership would have to take the reigns from her misguided hands.

That someone was Sir Typhoid.

Fatal Kiss was buried with reverance and respect, set alight on the seaboard of Kryta and set out to that sea. A tear of grim determination lanced down Sir Typhoid's left eye, and he and Armor Merchant, the second in command of Fatal Kiss trotted off to Lion's Arch, to discuss the future...

"From The Ashes"

Sir Typhoid spent 2 weeks in complete, unreachable isolation. When he once again emerged from the wilds near Kryta, his beard had grown thick, his unbathed exterior was awash in the filth of weeks without a good cleanup, and his eyes were fierce with determination. What shook the foundations of Lion's arch was not his physical degradation he had let happen, it was his black as night armor, made from the skins of wyverns, and his cape, apparently showcasing a guild emblem of a black hand, ablaze with golden fire. Not even that was the biggest shock. The largest upset to the townsfolk was that the cape itself appeared to be made from the flesh of other adventurers, and had been infused to look like sackcloth, minus the hair. His emblem was the yellow blood of a devourer queen. Truly, this once slightly respected and admired warrior was now mad.

In reality, it was all a calculated play on his part. Sir Typhoid knew that to maintain the respect of those he and his army would one day smother to death, he must come out of the shadows without mercy, without remorse, and without the slightest hesitation. He was mighty. He knew it and they all knew it, but to prove it, he would need morale that was unwavering. He would need the loyalty of a great host of men and women, those for whom the glory of life was only matched and surpassed by the glory of the flesh of enemies on one's blade. Only the strongest and most deviant of death-dealers would do.

The Black Hand of Fate was born that day, partly to spite those that decried the former guild as nothing but a farce, and partly to show respect to Fatal Kiss, for although no one really knew HOW she died, NONE but Sir Typhoid himself knew WHY she died:

Her own orders.

Fatal Kiss had understood that to complete her guild, it would have to live on in her stead, and the only way to completely change the vision of it, would be to change leadership over to someone who could do it without hesitation. She ordered her own death, so that her basest ideals could live on.

And so it was, and is now, that Sir Typhoid, apparent villian and unknown, steps up to lead his people, the ever-growing virus that is the Black Hand of Fate, into the realms of dominion, glory, and honor. We march on your walls even as this is being written!

SOT · Aug 16, 2005, 03:45 PM // 15:45

Sir Typhoid had gathered his assembled guildmates for a meeting. Overhead, the flags and banners of his order whipped furiously in the frigid northern night air. There were distant rumblings of thunder in the middle-distance, and somewhere over a high pass, the calls of snowy wolves crept into each of the assembled beings' consciousness.

It was a moment of profound importance, for here, within the hallowed and fortified walls of the Guild Fortress Hall, Sir Typhoid was performing a commencement ceremony. The Black Hand of Fate had amassed many new faces in the short time since inception, and the lore, law, and guidance needed to propel it into the next phase was being written by those who now stood, silent as graves, awaiting the tumult that was their glory by birthright.

Sir Typhoid removed his helm in a regal gesture, and dropped it into the snow at his feet. He said, "So as the helm drops to non-use, and is forgotten for a time, so are all things in due course running the way of ruin and change."

He continued, in a more solemn tone:

"Ours is a saga written as we breathe, yet remaining unfulfilled, despite all that we accomplish and fail to accomplish. Failure and success, each kindred in spirit and function, yet each as undying as the goading of a nemesis into attacking. Eternal is our vigil. Everlasting is our aim. Evermore is the struggle. Forever is the gain"

"By Balthazar and Tyria's Tears!" rang up the echoed response of those amassed before him. Sir Typhoid took a hand and bent low, grasping a small amount of Tyrian frosted snow from the ground beneath him. Standing, he waved his arm out in a slow arc across the foreground of those amassed in front of him, opening his hand little by little, letting the powder redistribute in chaotic patterns on the wind, to land no one knew where.

Each and every member of the order then went to one knee, Sir Typhoid included, an said silent prayers to the god's of their personal stations, and as they arose in unison, without practiced perfection, Sir Typhoid held up a parchment. On this parrchment, were the words of Sir Typhoid, hand written in the blood of Char Flame Wielders, scripted in a steady and exacting hand. He read aloud, his voice booming out across the frozen wastes, despite the howl of the icy winds:

"For every bright and terrible power in the world, there exists one reality: Everything succumbs to Fate. Even the old Gods and their staves of shaping worlds have bent knee in reverence to the truest form of diety: Inevitability. All things, alive or dead, all things quiet and loud, all things of any substance or non-corporeal form, all of these things are bound to what is to be. It is not a question of if things change, it is a matter of time until they do so rearrange.

We men of flesh and bone, beings who worry for the good or ill, have nothing to fear. We can no more alter our destiny than we can accept it eternally, for eternity is forever changing its armor. As do the seasons, our ages move onward. As does the sea, our levels of might and weakness wax and wane.

To everything there is an end, and to everything there is a beginning. To everything there is a reason, and yet a lack of sanity found beneath its skin. We are the Black Hand of Fate. We are the harbingers of that which is fated to come to pass. We will rise. We will eventually fall, only to rise anew in some form. All things are as they will be, no matter the opinion of those affected. So let it be."

A moment of silence, and Sir Typhoid turned and walked into his cave on the island's northern tip, to contemplate all that is fated to come...

SOT · Aug 16, 2005, 04:54 PM // 16:54

Upon an excursion into the wildnerness just outside Lion's Arch, Sir Typhoid
and Armor Merchant slew a Bog Skale, and beneath it's body discovered a bright, prismatic orb, blinking and making a faint humming sound.

Closer inspection by the two comrades revealed a picturesque world within the spere, as one would find within a snowglobe. In that imagery, a tapestry of mighty dragons, bovine-looking warriors with shamanistic rites all around them, and dwarven beings carrying range weapons that made booming sounds could be see, swirling in a chaos of energy.

Beyond all reason, both warriors felt a twinge of trepidation. Never before had they seen something of such sinister and yet simplistic beauty. They felt
compelled, simultaneously, to touch the sphere and perhaps gain some insight by touch.

Touching the orb proved life-altering.

In his mind's eye, Sir Typhoid saw the face of every foe he had ever slain in
his life, and all of his guildmates faces as well; swirling, morphing, becoming
stone, then water, then sand, then wax. Everything from every whim and emotion in his existence became one meshed entity, all of it screaming in a cacaphony of one, steeled moment of profound clarity. I was the same for Armor Merchant, and as he looked back to his comrade for a glimpse of some sign all was well, everything for both warriors went black as night, and all thought ceased...

"The Awakening"

Sir Typhoid stirred awake, an abrupt sense of difference in his bones and
muscle. He opened his eyes with a start, and heard the sounds of sandblown
desert. Sitting up with a start, he cried out in agitated fury, trying tograsp
his surroundings. His first horror was realizing his hands were larger than his
own head, and green, deep and forest-stained green.

He then realized his outcry sounded like an angry dragon, gruff and laced with sandstone and toil in it's timbre. Shock gave way to curiosity, and the mighty warrior stood to get a better surveyance of what had happened to him. He realized with profound worry that his comrade, Armor Merchant, was nowhere to be found, and he apparently was in a strange and previously unseen land.

At that moment, a crow landed at his feet, mere inches from him, and magic fire and ice swirled about it, like a storm. up sprang the tallest human being that Sir Typhoid had ever seen, and in the ageless, wise eyes of that being, Sir Typhoid saw profound compassion, wisdom, and an all knowing cunning that was unnerving.

"I am Medivh," said the apparent human-apparition. "And I bid you welcome to the World of Azeroth".

SOT · Aug 16, 2005, 04:56 PM // 16:56

Two days was all it took for Sir Typhoid to understand with utter certainty
what this new world he stood in meant for him and his brothers-in-arms. Azeroth was ALIVE, terrifyingly ALIVE with creatures and races of all types and agenda.

It was a veritable garden of Eden to a seasoned warrior like himself. He
realized, as medivh told him of his 'mysterious crossover' into this world,
that he could now go to and fro between his homeworld of Tyria, and this new one of Azeroth, and plumb the secrets of both, by merely touching the
"chaostone" he had found by cosmic chance beneath the Bog Skale body back in the outskirts of Lion's Arch.

The implications of this, aye, the mere staggering POSSIBILITIES that this presented his order, were mind numbing. They could conquer and dominate in not one, but now TWO universes, seemingly independent of one another, but yet, as one machine. The machien of war would truly be glorious now, in this hour where world's collide!

SOT · Aug 23, 2005, 03:35 PM // 15:35

Sir Typhoid shuddered awake, back in his Tyrian Human form. He looked around. It was late-night and apparently he had come to his home plane on the outskirts of Elona's Reach.

Sweat on his brow, the warrior stood and surveyed his immediate area. Scratching some non-existent itch, the warrior scanned left to right, searching for signs of Armor Merchant, his companion, who was still mysteriously absent from his presence.

His gaze froze near a boulder roughly 100 yards away. Hydras had gathered over a corpse of some sort, and their snarling and jerking heads told the warrior his presence was not unnoticed. He prepared for the worst, as was most often the case in the wilderness, and unsheathed his chaos axe, which he had dubbed 'foe finder' for the weapon's apparent sentience in regards to seeking out flesh to rend.

He never saw the minotaur 'Snarl Roughoof' stalking up behind him, nor did he have time to react when he was knocked flat out on his face from the reargaurd as the minotaur chieftan charged him head on in the back.

Sir Typhoid rolled over, hopeing to parry any followup blow that was surely on the way, when he heard a whirring buzz sound, and saw the minotaur stare off into the left field, an arrow protuding from between his eyes. Another pair of arrows replaced its eyes, and the creature roared in rage and confusion, pain apparently being a given.

The monstrous minotaur ripped first one, then the other arrow from its eye sockets and began wildy swinging its head, as if in some desperately sadistic hope it would cleave some unsuspecting person caught in his horns. After several moments of this, an arrow laced in fire entered his throat, and his gullet exploded in a nasty blob of charred flesh and ash.

Falling to the ground in a resounding thud, the beast gargled missing flesh once, then lay still.

Sir Typhoid had by that point regained his senses, and had entered a stance and readied himself for what peril was next. He relaxed as a lass, perhaps the most beautiful lass his eyes had ever seen, sauntered up nonchalantly beside him. Her leathers were of a make he had never seen, and although unknown in their make, he was certain they were made from Red Dragon skin. Her curves were a thing of beauty, and her auburn hair was long and wind-swept. She mesmerized him, and he could form no opinion save one - this lass was not what she appeared to be.

"Greetings to you, Sir Typhoid."

The warrior did a double take at the mention of his name. Who was this person to address him by name, an unknown entity?

"I bring Balthazar's blessings, and his will. Submit and be blessed. Defy and be smited where you stand."

Sir Typhoid knelt without thinking.

"I kneel in reverence, oh lord of the blade."

Sir Typhoid was suddenly elsewhere.

SOT · Aug 26, 2005, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Sir Typhoid just died. His entire realm of existence was uninstalled, as the old god who was his maker is getting a divorce, and moving far far afield from the cable modem he was born in.

He will be back. In time.

- Saluud

SOT · Aug 30, 2005, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Sir Typhoid is between the rift and Tyria, and as he awaits his glorious return to the Tyrian realm, he ponders his recent fortunes. The guild is alive, but has been emaciated in his abscence. From within, traitors rose and took root. Their treachery will be rewarded in due course...