How many roles have I played? They blur together in my mind.
I was a victim from the moment my life began. An attacker came for my mother even as she gave birth to me. He possessed Garrus, a simple stable boy and used him to sneak up through the inn to my parents room. He tried to get close to my mother, to attack her at her most vulnerable. My father fought to stop him. The details are unknown except that a battle occurred in the room and my father was struck a mortal blow. With his last breath he uttered a holy word that destroyed the spirit possessing Garrus and collapsed the entire inn.
My mother died in the collapse, my father died from the attack. The stable boy was pulled from the rubble, one arm was crushed but he appeared otherwise healthy. My soul fled the dying infants form and took home in his newly evacuated body. I was born into the body of a teenage boy.
The innkeeper raised me, teaching me as if I had simply forgotten my life and in a few years I served him well. He raised me as he rebuilt the inn. But I always knew that Garrus wasn’t my name and I listened intently when those that survived the collapse retold the story.
We didn’t know much about my parents. But my father wore the yellow robes of a priest of the Empyrean. There was a small temple to the god in our city and when I was ready I joined their ranks as a disciple. Within the clergy my identity didn’t matter, I was simply a child of Lugus. My superiors praised my empathy, questioned my maturity and laughed when I said that I thought I was the son of a priest. They claimed no such priest had visited the city and considered my thoughts the wishful thoughts of boy with too much imagination.
My right arm was still crushed, by this point it was shriveled and permanently wrapped against my side. When I asked if it could be healed the priests prayed over it, but it never got better. Others came and received healing, nobles, merchants, beggars, soldiers. But I remained maimed.
One day in early Aedrini the temple was in an uproar. Priests barked orders, disciples scurried about trying to look busy, no one had thought to wake me. After many questions a priest finally gave me my answer.
“Luridus Chalid is coming child, stay out of the way.”
I began to retreat to my chamber when he yelled after me, “And don’t bother him when he arrives!”
That next day a single man arrived on a dappled grey mare. He rode without an escort and though he needed no guards on the road, he could have used some outside of the temple. He was immediately mobbed by well meaning disciples, genuflecting priests and hordes of gawking townspeople. He wore the robes of a Luridus and I wondered if my father wore the same.
He spent the next three days in our hastily constructed council chamber. The chamber was open for anyone to hear the deliberation and speak in an orderly manner. They discussed the towns role in the Overcouncil, local legislation and a problem with brigands in the area.
The council meetings always went well into the night, and Chalid attended every dawn ceremony. He only had a few hours between to get some sleep. I was hurrying to the dawn service one morning when I found him standing alone in the refectory looking out the windows toward the east. The morning bell rung, signaling the dawn ceremony was about to start and Chalid turned to find me staring at him.
“Morning disciple, are you ready to receive our lords blessing?”
I managed to stammer something unintelligible out. Despite that he smiled at me with true affection and clasp me on the shoulder. That was the first he noticed my withered arm.
“Do you have something to ask me?” he said.
He expected me to ask for healing, but that didn’t matter to me. Instead I asked, “What sort of spirit attacked my mother?”
He put his arm around me and we walked to the sanctuary together.
“Let me pray about it” he said.
The service was exactly like all the others but I paid little attention. Instead I watched Chalid. He looked confused as he prayed, sometimes pained, sometimes resigned and I imagined that it had something to do with my question.
I waited after the service. Chalid spoke briefly with the vicar who had performed the service and meet a few of the members. And then he left the sanctuary and went into the council chambers.
I spent the day neglecting my duties and waiting outside the council chamber. But just past nightfall the towns warning bells rang out, guards ran through the streets yelling that brigands were attacking.
Everyone flooded out of the temple. At the edge of the town shapes rushed through the darkness. Black tipped arrows cut guards down where they writhed screaming in pain. Guards brought torches and under the cover of shield men they retook the fortifications while the shadows simply moved to attack at another point.
A voice from the darkness called, “What good is a god that abandons you every night?”
Chalid ignored the taunt and ordered the men back within the cities lantern light. He alone bounded over the wall and in to the darkness at the cities edge. His mace glowed faintly in the starlight and though we couldn’t see any attackers on the open field we all knew they were moving in on him.
Chalid prayed and an aura of golden fire burst up around his head and dark men caught fire on the field, on the walls, and even a few that had snuck into the city. The holy fire consumed them and guards rushed in to beat or capture the men.
But one was not distracted by the fire. It clung to his black armor and that of his steed but he rode soundlessly towards Chalid, like a shadow of a dark god stretching out to touch him. Chalid raised his mace up, and then back down and the field was lit up as if it was day. A pillar of golden fire, like the sun itself but full of righteous fury, crushed the rider. There was a horrific scream and then when the pillar retreated back up into the sky the rider was gone.
I spent the night tending to the guardsmen wounded in the attack. Their wounds festered from poison and the men passed between fevered dreams and anguish when awake. There was little I could do but try to keep their wounds clean and try to make them comfortable. Chalid and the priests prayed over the men and some were healed, but too many were injured.
That next morning I returned to my chambers to wash up and change into fresh clothes, as did most of the temple. I headed again to the dawn ceremony and found Chalid alone again in the refectory looking out towards the east.
“You saved the town.” It sounded hollow when I said it. Unsuited to the miracle I had witnessed.
“I only had faith that Lugus would protect me, he did everything else.”
I smiled, the warmth Chalid had shared with me yesterday was gone now. He looked troubled but I assumed it was just the events of the long night. I know he hadn’t slept either.
“Did you find out anything about my mother?”
Chalid looked at the floor, the morning bells rang though neither of us moved.
“I should lie to you” Chalid said, “the mandate of truth is sometimes painful. I am sorry. I won’t lie but I will warn you, it would be better if you did not know.”
“I want to know” I argued with more passion than I intended, “Knowledge, truth, revelation are the precepts of Lugus. I should know my own past.”
“The woman’s name was Magda de’Vala” Chalid started, “The man wasn’t her husband but her guardian, though he was a priest of the Empyrean. The child was prophesied to be a great hero, which is why many sought to kill Magda and her baby.”
He paused, but I only waited for him to continue.
“The stable boy Garrus died three days before the attack. That which killed Garras, that which killed Magda’s guardian and caused the collapse that killed Magda and her baby. That was you.”
I was furious and I rushed out of the refectory. Chalid watched me go then headed into the sanctuary. My thoughts went back to those early days, I never felt like I was the stable boy. And for the first time I questioned my origin. Would a babies spirit in a boy’s body be able to adapt that quickly? Could even a possessed stable boy be able to overcome a priest of Lugus, or was that creature something darker? And was I that creature?
I stopped in the temples infirmary. Except for the wounded it was empty, everyone in the temple was in the dawn ceremony despite those laying here near death. There was only one man awake, a bandage covered his left thigh. I knelt at his bedside. When I saw the torment he was in I forgot a bit of my own.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Abin,” he said, “I’m a jeweler who pretended to be a city guard.”
That wasn’t unusual. Our city was too small to maintain full time guardsmen so most were volunteers with other jobs.
“Either you are too good at pretending, or not good enough.”
He gave me a weak smile.
“Can I pray for you?” I asked. He nodded.
I placed my hand on him and closed my eyes. I have seen many healed but I had never performed a miracle myself. If I could do this, if I could heal this man and channel the power of Lugus then I couldn’t be whatever creature Chalid thought I was. Maybe I was the holy child, maybe the attack on Magda de’Vala failed.
I could feel his labored breath. I could feel his pain, feel his love for his large family of nieces and nephews. His quiet store and hours spent working on small intricate jewelry. And I felt him die.
Then I felt the poison strike, it burnt through my body focused on the wound in my left thigh. I stepped away from the bed in shock. I was taller and my robes, which were big on me, were now tight. And my formerly withered arm was now trapped uncomfortably in its folds.
I loosened the robe and held out my full, strong arm. But it didn’t look like my arm, it was the jewelers arm. And as I looked at myself I realized that I was identical to the dead body of the jeweler that lay in the bed in front of me. And then the poison struck again and sent me to my knees. I picked myself up and fled the temple in pain and confusion.
Pain will drive you mad and it only took a few hours of suffering like this before I found a farmer out working in his field.
“Blind goats Abin!” he said, “what is wrong with you? Why are you wearing a disciples robes?”
I threw him to the ground and held him, smashing him once in the face when he tried to fight back. I felt for that closeness, I reached out to find everything that he was, and the pain drifted away. When I opened my eyes I saw him staring up at his own reflection in horror. The last I saw him he was running toward his farmhouse, I started running as well. I don’t think I have ever stopped.
I still don’t know what I am. All the roles that I’ve played since then blur together in my mind. I’ve gotten better at reading people and worked for a time for an assassins guild, simply for reading people I touch. During other times I steal the lives of those I wish to share. I tried the lavish extravagance of princes and wealthy merchants, but there is little to envy them for once you understand how they truly live. The best stolen lives come from the simple fathers of large families, those that have the love and respect of everyone in their lives. Dump the body of one of those in a shallow grave and I have a few good weeks of fun before I become bored and move on to something else.
Maybe Chalid was right, maybe I am a monster.
but can not move from their location because they can not enter any terrain. The movement is added in so they can heal and so they can be activated once they gain a promotion.
2 
1 
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
