Christian Theodericson

Christian’s father, Theoderic of Olden, was the fifth son of Count Christian of Olden, an affluent land in the fertile, populous southern crescent of Impiltur. As tradition dictated, his elder brothers had become, in order, the inheritor of the family’s holdings, a knight of Imphras II, a public servant of the Law, and a minister of the Public Good.

This left Theoderic with only his heart to guide him. His youth he spent whiling away his allowance in cosmopolitan Lyrabar, searching for his passion in life. Those in his position are often encouraged to become an artist, a musician, or even a scholar. He tried all three, and lots more besides, but found the pursuits wanting.

Instead, he found love. The wealthy daughter of a Chessentan merchant prince, Helena, stole his heart at her debut in Lyrabar. He had much competition from first sons, accomplished knights, and successful merchants; however, his passion overcame his difficulties, and, with the help of large sums of money from his generous eldest brother Torvald, he won her heart and her hand in marriage.

It was her wish that their home be in her native Chessenta, that she remain near her mother’s family. Though this put even greater financial strain on Theoderic, he heartily accepted. On the beautiful coasts of the Bay of Chessenta, they erected a comfortable and lavish home. They lived happily there for nine years, and she bore him five sons. Christian, the last, was born on Nightal 17, 1352, the Year of the Dragon.

The family’s needs were great, however, and was difficult for Torvald to support them. As he put greater and greater limitations on their income, Helena grew more displeased. Her mother counseled her that Theoderic, charming and handsome as he was, was nonetheless unfit for her due to his failure to establish himself as a man of means. She encouraged him to take up the mantle of the Chessentan merchant, a profession for which he was well-suited, but his heart was in the glorious pursuits of his knightly brothers and cousins.

In the end, she invoked the right of all noble Chessentan women—she refused him, and turned him from her house. By right, his sons were his; she had no daughters to claim. He returned to Impiltur with his sons, and saw them apprenticed in their rightful order.

Christian’s eldest son Dane was to be the inheritor of the family’s business. As Theoderic had none, the two worked together to establish a trading company. Dane had his mother’s head for figures, and a good sense of the mutual needs of both Impiltur and Chessenta. To this day, Dane’s company, the Banner of the Heron, maintains steady growth and profit, trading between Lyrabar and points south.

Aren, Christian’s next eldest brother, became squire to Lord Valdemar of Causten, and is now a respected Knight of Imphras. The middle son, Dorian, became a public servant of the Law, and currently serves with a senior barrister on retainer to the Council of Lords, counseling them on matters of political legality. The youngest son save Christian is Lysander, who in his apprenticeship to the ministers of the Public Good was found to have magical talent, and currently attends training in the Vaunted Halls of Soargalan under Magus Deneith.

Theoderic and his sons departed Chessenta in 1355, when Christian was but a babe. They lived in Lyrabar until 1358, when along came Odessa, a Knight of Imphras II, come to Lyrabar to aid in some of the relatively minor magical catastrophes that occurred there. She saved Theoderic from a ravening lamppost, and he in turn offered her repast and respite in his city home. The wizard weather had worn her, and she accepted.

They were of an age, and quite taken with one another. She was of Damaran stock, but born in Impiltur, in the sleepy northern town of Corum. Her knightly duties had been restricted mostly to mediating disputes and patrolling known safe trade routes. In this time of troubles, however, even the weaker sex was in need, thus her mission to Lyrabar.

When the turmoil ended, she was to return home, and Theoderic decided abruptly to ask her hand in marriage, and to move with her to the north. She accepted, with reservations about the future of his family. Dane, a very mature 15, bade her not to worry, that the business was secure, and he really didn’t mind so much his distracted and meddlesome father going far, far away from the money. Theoderic put it to the children to decide whom they would follow; of them all, Christian alone chose to go with him.

Christian claims to hail from the town of Corum (population 780). Corum is a town with a small keep, with no particular claim to fame. Closer to the Damaran border than to the nearest large city of Baytown (about four days overland or two by the river, when navigable), relatively little of consequence happens there. It boasts long, warm summers and a cool, wet winter punctuated by brief and sudden downpours of snow, an effect of the large lake and mountain range nearby. Nearby iron mines occasionally produce excesses of metal, but mostly the town subsists on its own production.

It was here that Christian, his father, and his stepmother lived for the length of Christian’s happy and lively childhood. His mother, still bound to serve in times of great need, was otherwise retired in the wake of the Time of Troubles. Though she of an age with his father, she yet bore three healthy children: a daughter, Cassina, and two twin sons, Alexei and Vani. Christian, once the youngest of five boys, found himself the older brother of three very young children.

While his parents found solace in the peaceful life of farmers, living on a well-appointed country estate funded by his mother’s considerable pension and his uncle’s continuing generosity, Christian enjoyed the life only a privileged country boy could. Well…until he realized how different he was.

The local boys were big, strong, and gruff, not to mention pale-faced and light of hair. They fit together like peas in a pod, and in that pod he was the black pea. A runt of a boy, with coffee-colored skin and black hair, he looked his deep southern heritage. With his pompous accent and city slicker ways, he found socializing with the neighborhood youth difficult. Until, that is, he met her.

Amalia, daughter of Lord Barov, Keeper in Faith of Corum, was a stunning beauty, beloved by all. She was of an age with Christian, and, like him, she never quite fit in with her peers. In her case, her penchant for adventure and excitement earned her no end of admonishment from her matron and caretakers who meant to civilize her. In his, a bookish city boy set apart by his lack of physical prowess. They fit like a hand into a glove.

Their friendship went unresented by Lord Barov, who knew of the nobility of Christian’s blood, and the great honor of his stepmother, though it was assumed their friendship would remain just that. After all, he had greater things in mind for his beautiful daughter than to marry the fifth son of a fifth son.

When Christian was but 10 years of age, he was urged to seek a path for himself. This he did; he would follow his stepmother, and become a great Knight of Imphras II. When everyone stopped laughing, he explained just how enthusiastically he would seek this goal, and he gained his parents’ blessing.

This infatuation of his did not go unmocked by his contemporaries. It was common for boys of Corum to aspire to little than farmwork or perhaps militia duty. Though many might be able to withstand the physical rigors of the holy service, the financial and political connections required to gain entry made it seem impossible to them. And, truly, precious few had the intellect and strength of character, and they knew it.

Though he’d gained some begrudging respect from the farmers’ boys of Corum, they grew ever more distant as he became more evidently closer to his dream. They knew he had greater things in store, despite his small stature, and could not bear to compare themselves to him even as they took the mantles of their fathers.

As all this went on, Amalia was discovering things about herself. When she was 11 years old, she began to experience strange and powerful dreams. She could not recount the details, but knew they were very important. Over the coming years, strange occurrences began to plague her daily life, worrying her caretakers to no end. It was obvious to all; she had the Art.

She took to this calling with as great a zeal as Christian had ever shown to his. By the age of 14, they were to part ways, and had come to terms with it. Unbetrothed, uncourted, she would go to Soargalan of her own will, to seek a higher calling than political marriage. He would journey wherever the Knights wished, and undergo rigorous training to face the trials of knighthood.

Their last day together in Corum was Highharvesttide, 1366, when Magus Journeyman Alace came to escort her to the Vaunted Halls of Daergalan, where she would begin her four-year training. Months later, on his 14th birthday, Christian was escorted to Castle Damask, in the mountains not far from Corum, the headquarters of his mother’s order, The Knights of the Trinity and Rose.

Home to ninety-some knights and hundreds of supporting personnel, Castle Damask is a city in its own right. Farmers tend to a small valley concealed beyond the pass in which the castle sits. Inside the fertile bowl is a small town for housing the field workers and servants of the castle, an abbey of monks of the triad, a barracks and training grounds for the knights, and, of course, a grand cathedral.

The Knights of the Trinity and Rose are sworn to Tyr’s Law and Torm’s Sword, but interpret the ancient texts differently than most servants of the Triad. They see Ilmater as a feminine figure, a virgin mother to Torm, characterized by sacrifice in the name of her son’s well-being. It is she who gives Torm his heart, that which makes him more than an instrument of pure righteous might. She bears much similarity to Sune, and the sages of the order acknowledge this, though they still refer to her as Ilmater, or “The Mother”. Together, they refer to the whole of Tyr (the Father), Ilmater (the Mother), and Torm (the Son) as the Trinity.

They also venerate a concept known as the Rose. Essentially, the Rose is love, passion, and beauty—a deep and profound joy in the simplest aspects of life. It is similar to the monkish concept of enlightenment; rather than a simple appreciation for outward appearance, it is the ability to see the sublime beauty in all things, the perfection of all things natural and artificial, the eternal truth expressed in the simplest of things.

The Rose is very much a different concept than The Mother, though technically an oversimplified observer might combine the two into a facsimile of Sune herself. Therefore, they might rationalize the split as an attempt to diffuse her apocryphal presence in the most holy Triad. Opponents of the Order of the Trinity and Rose have hinted as much, but most reasonable folk laugh it off. The Sons of the Mother, as they are often called, are generally so amiable and conscientious that it is difficult to find fault in their methods or beliefs.

Among this order, Christian thrived. His upbringing was hardly traditional by Impilturan standards, so he found kindred spirits among the mildly apocryphal Sons. Still, while their beliefs were unorthodox, their methods were every bit as rigorous and exhausting as the harshest of knightly orders. Christian had to make up for his small size and lack of martial talent with pure enthusiasm, and this he did.

He impressed his sparring mates not just with tenacity, but with great cunning. He was able to make up for his physical disadvantages through brainpower, spirit, and a dash of luck. He had an excellent sense of the battlefield, and found himself able to read the intentions of his opponents before they acted. His combat style became one of defend-and-riposte, and he infuriated many a greater foe by earning victory with this method.

If his martial training went well, his scholarly accomplishments were beyond excellent. He was brilliant and clever, engaging his lecturers every bit as much as they engaged him. He made fast friends with many of the sages of the Abbey, and earned respect from most of the resident knights for his understanding of their ways that transcended his years.

After three years of training, he asked the Knight Commander of the castle for permission to seek the Blessings of the Triad, to undertake the Three Tests. It was unusual for a boy so young or so early in his training to make such a request, but his progress had been so markedly excellent, the commander acceded and bade him travel to Ilmwatch.

In Ilmwatch, center of the Impilturan faith, he threw his life on the mercy of the triad, and beseeched a Holy Tribunal to allow him to take the Three Tests. For such an upstart, only the harshest of tests would do. To prove his humility and patience, he was made to tend to the ill of a leper colony, to face the most unsettling and unfair death that men can face, for months on end. To this task, he took with aplomb; he called upon the compassion of his mother, of his order; he did not shield himself from the sadness, but let it overtake him without falling.

With this task complete, he was made to satisfy Torm by proving himself in battle. He sailed with the army of the crown to the shores of Narfell, where a band of marauders lairing in the Rawlinswood were savaging local villages. In the battles to come, he had to face the realities of war, the hard decisions made by a soldier, and the meaning of victory and defeat. He commanded a small unit of troops to great effect, though he was chastised for taking too zealously the Tormtar duty to put himself in danger before others. In the end, he learned to count on others who, like himself, were willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, and in their unity, none had to be sacrificed.

The final test, that which breaks more candidates than all the others, was the Test of Execution. Years of study had seen him a master of the basic tenets of Tyr’s Law. What remained was the execution of that law. Most aspirants, for this test, are made to preside over a case of theft, of wrongdoing to mankind, or other crimes for which the punishment ranges from fines to imprisonment or exile. It is a hard thing to sentence a man to a terrible fate, but harder still to kill a murderer.

This he was made to do. His case was a man who had slain his son in anger, who had destroyed his family. A man of vice, he had whittled away his merchant’s income on pleasures of the flesh, and hidden it from his wife and child. A man prone to drink, he would become violent when drunk and questioned on it, and was known to strike his wife for daring to point it out. In this case, his son tried to intervene, and was killed.

Under any other circumstances, the man would be rehabilitated, perhaps through service to Ilmater, or even a military career. However, the murder of a child has only one punishment in Tyr’s Law: death. And Christian had to carry it out himself.

In the war against the madmen of the Rawlinswood, Christian did not have to slay anyone. He wounded several men, and even saw some of his own fall; it is even likely his orders caused the deaths of others. But he did not directly slay anyone in that conflict, as his goals were focused on defense and morale.

In the Test of Execution, he was to judge the man, pronounce his sentence, and carry it out himself. With Torm’s hand on his shoulder, he executed the will of Tyr, with undying compassion for the life that would be lost. He passed the test. This would not be the last he thought of it.

Accepted by the Church of the Most Holy Triad, he was now meant to prove himself to the crown, and the Council of Lords, and become a Knight of Imphras II. He journeyed to Lyrabar, and sought the audience of the council. Since it would take some time, a matter of tendays, he had ample time to rest and visit his family.

By the will of fate, he happened upon Amalia while dining with his elder brother in the city. They had both seen much change in the past four years. She had blossomed into a woman, and carried herself with all the grace and dignity of a Magus Journeyman. He had grown into a man, though no taller than she, he was his mother’s son in both aspects. As she had earned the respect of independence, Dane invited her to join them at his home to dine and reminisce.

Her stay was brief, as she seemed eager to return to her studies. She was researching a ritual magic “to restore balance to the Weave”, and found it very challenging. Her relations were cordial, though not without warmth, and Christian hoped they might find a way to meet again.

When he won an audience with the council, they considered him coolly, and assigned him a task that seemed too easy; he would accompany a magician to a known site of dead magic to satisfy the Duty of Destruction