The Walkers of the Light

Name: Cleric Aquila

Age: 25

Sect: High Lord Cleric of the Church

Personality: Highly dedicated to the Church, a loyal friend, mighty warrior and caring teacher Aquilam has all the advantages of youth and age combined in one body. Wise beyond his years due to the teaching of his deceased Master, the former High Lord Cleric Azaih, Aquila has been High Lord Cleric for four years and under his rule the Cleric’s have regained some of the status they once held. Sombre and quiet when alone he is haunted by the horrors of the war he’s been forced to fight in since birth. But knows the light of the Church is always behind him and he is God’s ordained warrior against the Vampire Menace.   

Appearance: Six foot four inches tall, spiked blonde hair beneath a cowl of cream and gold fabric, dark haunted brown eyes, wide face with a strong jaw, clean shaven, blade like nose, with the golden cross of the Cleric’s tattooed across his brow and bridge of his nose, broad and well muscled from years of training, chest and arms laced with scars from Vampiric claws and the blades of their Familiars.

Background: It is written in the ancient scriptures of history that on the first full moon of the Great Winter during the Age of Bronze a great prophecy was foretold by a powerful tribal mystic of one of the ancient clans of Man. His words are recorded in cave paintings discovered amidst the Pearl Shore, they tell of a powerful warrior that would be born of battle beneath the screaming light of a fish tailed comet. Before such teachings were disbanded and proclaimed as heresy by the Church many believed this great warrior would bring the Everday, the time when sunlight would burn as brightly as a forge and destroy all of vampire kind.

Millennia later came the strongest Vampire invasion since the inception of the Clerics. Hundreds poured from the mountains and ravaged cities and villages alike. One village imperticular was hit harder than any other, its population wiped out entirely, but beneath a night sky ruptured by a twin tailed comet, a baby wailed to the silence of his burning village. The babe was found by High Lord Cleric Uriah, ninth High Cleric and bearer of the Sword of Saints, wizened as he was in the ways of ancient history Uriah believed the babe to be the great warrior foretold millennia ago. So pried him from the frozen grip of his mothers corpse, and named the baby boy Aquila, the Eagle of God.

It is written that although Uriah gave the child to the Church he trained him personally, later writings would state that Uriah taught the boy heretic teachings such a philosophy and other histories differing from those approved by the Church, whether such is true none can say but Aquila. All that is known is the babe became a mighty Cleric, killing his first Vampire at fourteen and entering the brotherhood at only eighteen after Uriah was finally brought down in combat. The young Cleric quickly made a name for himself with uncanny skill at detecting Familiars and killing Vampires, so much so that at only twenty-one and two-and-twenty days of age he became High Lord Cleric after his valorous actions against the Vampires during the Battle of the Burning Plains.

His Chronicle is already longer than most of his age but strangely he has only taken up one disciple to train. A teenage girl from the Darkwood Forest of Sakar. Her true name is not known but her Master is heard to call her by Sarai.

The Walkers of the Darkness 

Name:  Eolian [Ee-ohh-lee-an]

Age: 25

Sect: Familiar to the Queen

Personality: Roguish and arrogant.  Temperamental, easily provoked, and restless; snide disposition with ego-maniacal tendencies; severe authority complex, bloated sense of self-worth, and a notable lack of conscience.  More greedy than generous, with a disturbing black-hole where he should have concern for others.

Appearance: Hard set features, long jaw; slate grey eyes, slightly crooked, thin nose, narrow mouth.  Short-cropped raven black hair, usually somewhat scruffy/unshaven; hyper-extended canines.  Naturally stoic default expression.  Roughly six-foot-four; lean and muscular; broad-shouldered, with a narrow waist.  Scars littering his arms and back; one long scar along the left side of his neck.

Background:  He was ten years old the first time he came in direct contact with a vampire; it was the night that his sister and father died.  He had never been able to recollect by what narrow margin he had survived.  Even after, his mother refused to give up their house on the outskirts of town, and soon Eoh had no choice but to learn to defend himself.  What had once been idle rumours had become his life.

During a particularly gruesome subsequent attack, the night after he turned twenty-five, he was held in a chokehold by a group of Familiars while a cluster of vampires ripped his mother limb from limb.  Sent into a frenzied rage, he killed half a dozen Familiars and four of the vampires before everything went dark.  

When he woke up, he was in a wrought-iron cage half a size too small for him, with the rancid stench of vampire breath leaking through the gaps in the iron.  Blood, still hot from the vein, was flowing freely down the front of his shirt; he could feel the wound on his neck pulse with every beat of his heart, but if there was any discomfort, he was not aware of it.  Before him was a vampire the likes of which he had never before seen.  She was linen white with delicate fangs that protruded from the same mangled orifice the vampires were known for, as blind and ghastly as the others, but her movements were smooth and graceful. 

One of the Familiars nearby said, “He killed ten total, your highness,” but no response came.  Eoh watched the female vampire carefully, scrutinizing the fold of her limbs, the way her skeleton seemed somehow different from the others.  Daintier, he thought. 

The Familiar spoke again, as if responding to an unspoken question, “I know, your highness.  We don’t know how.”  There was a pause.

The vampire Queen sniffed at him through the bars of his cage.  Her head tilted to the side, as if she really could see him with a sight he did not understand, and the reality of the conversation happening in front of him slowly began to make sense.    

The Familiar said, “He may very well prove useful one day, your highness.  I was wrong to try to kill him.”

There had been pain; more pain that he could will his mind to imagine, more pain than he thought a body could survive through.  There had been an ocean of pain, but the anguish never broke him.  That was a long time ago, though; and Eolian had been a different man, a different creature entirely.  Since then, many things had changed.

Himself, primarily.

Amendment: All knowledge on the Darker forces of this chronicle have been compiled from eye witness accounts, Familiars who have been put to the blade and stories and legends from the local populace. Although all effort has been expended to try and achieve the upmost accuracy, all facts relating to the Dark Dwellers cannot be greatly relied upon.

Written in the Holy Scriptures of History, attributed to Holy Scribe Bartholomew, circa 1543

To go against the Church is to go against God

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*Closed Collab between Lilley and rhetoric*

In a world where Man and Vampire have long been at war the Clerics are Humanity's only truly great weapon against the Vampire. But when the Vampires are fleeing from their mountain strongholds one Cleric must turn his back on the society that raised him...and side with his ancient enemy in order to avoid a full scale war.

But the new enemy they find themselves fighting against, is like nothing either species has seen before...

Name: Cleric Aquila

Age: 25

Sect: High Lord Cleric of the Church

Personality: Highly dedicated to the Church, a loyal friend, mighty warrior and caring teacher Aquilam has all the advantages of youth and age combined in one body. Wise beyond his years due to the teaching of his deceased Master Aquila has been High Lord Cleric for four years and under his rule the Cleric's have regained some of the status they once held. Sombre and quiet when alone he is haunted by the horrors of the war he's been forced to fight in since birth. But knows the light of the Church is always behind him and he is God's ordained warrior against the Vampire Menace.

Appearance: Six foot four inches tall, spiked blonde hair beneath a cowl of cream and gold fabric, dark haunted brown eyes, wide face with a strong jaw, clean shaven, blade like nose, with the golden cross of the Cleric's tattooed across his brow and bridge of his nose, broad and well muscled from years of training, chest and arms laced with scars from Vampiric claws and the blades of their Familiars.

Background: The sole survivor of one of the largest Vampire incursions in the last century how Aquila survived his whole village being slaughtered when nothing but an infant in his mother's arms is a mystery. But his survival was seen as a sign from God by the Church and the young infant was taken and trained under the then High Lord Cleric. With unnatural skill at arms and sharp innate reflexes the High Lord Cleric took a special interest in his newest disciple, training him day and night as well as teaching him the arts of literature, painting, philosophy and spirituality. His Master died when Aquilam was only eighteen and he was left abandoned in the world of men, but the young Cleric quickly proved his abilities at tracking Familiars and killing Vampires. So at the young age of twenty-one he was made High Lord Cleric, the youngest in the history of the Church, and a position he has taken to with a great amount of dedication.

Name: Eolian [Ee-ohh-lee-an]

Age: 25

Sect: Familiar to the Queen

Personality: Roguish and arrogant.

Temperamental, easily provoked, and restless; snide disposition with ego-maniacal tendencies; severe authority complex, bloated sense of self-worth, and a notable lack of conscience. More greedy than generous, with a disturbing black-hole where he should have concern for others.

Appearance: Hard set features, long jaw; slate grey eyes, slightly crooked, thin nose, narrow mouth. Short-cropped raven black hair, usually somewhat scruffy/unshaven; hyper-extended canines. Naturally stoic default expression. Roughly six-foot-four; lean and muscular; broad-shouldered, with a narrow waist. Scars littering his arms and back; one long scar along the left side of his neck.

Background: Forced into being a Familiar after his last remaining relative is killed, Eolian has lived on the brink of self-destruction for the greater part of his life. Never quite able to come to grips with the tragedies littering his past, he spends most of his time desperately seeking the secret of his narrow survival. Trapped in servitude to a Queen he fears more than he loves, he finds himself the superior beast in a herd of domesticated pets. Eolian is a high-functioning machine, and more often than not, he is certain that is all he is capable of being.

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updated Mar 1 by Lilley