Blue
Currently in the Plaguelands
Blue’s Secret Backstory
Blue, as she calls herself, was born about 120 years ago, somewhere in the Duchy of Maseau. She doesn’t quite remember where, exactly, having only fragmented memories of her childhood. She just remembers images: walking along the dusty Great South Road; ash storms that would blow in from the Plaguelands and force everyone to take shelter; the fortified ranches of the Marcher Lords to the south where cattle and sheep could shelter in great courtyards when raiders came.
As young as she can remember, people treated her differently, made worse by her pale blue skin and strange eyes. She was accused of carrying a curse from the Plaguelands, of being a fey witch. The only people who didn’t look at her funny or run her out of town were the mercenaries and soldiers who would ride out from the fortified castles when enemies were spotted.
So she drifted from place to place, earning some coin as a scout. From these war bands, she found community in the worship of the Warlord. But it wasn’t until she connected with The Rangers, and met Landrel, that she really felt at home. From Landrel, she learned many things, about scouting and survival and how to handle her strange background and appearance.
When the Third Hobgoblin War (Sembara) started with a surprise attack by the Shattered Ice hobgoblins, she found herself on the front lines, with The Rangers and the scattered armies that could be quickly fielded by the Maseau, among people who cared more about her talents than her supernatural appearance. However, she never got to see how the war turned out. She was captured in an early skirmish, and taken prisoner.
Blue remembers almost nothing of her captivity. Later on, she realized she must have spent nearly 100 years imprisoned by the hobgoblins, but thankfully she has few memories of whatever trauma she suffered at their hands. She does remember a one vivid image clearly: a red-skinned hobgoblin man, holding a sharp knife and a strangely pulsating blue-gray crystal, the knife slicing through skin and bone but strangely without pain. Somehow, she knows that the crystal is still implanted in her skull, and every once and a while she can still feel alien, confused thoughts that are not her own, but they are rarely coherent.
Blue does remember, of course, the day she escaped, nearly two years ago now. The hobgoblins had pushed her over the years to use the crystal, drawing on some kind of chaotic magic locked within, to create new sorcerers. Sometimes she was able to channel the chaos into a hobgoblin, or sometimes prisoner. They often died, but when they didn’t, they could channel magic, although rarely with any real control. More often, she was not able to affect any change in her target, and she was punished. The day she escaped, though, as she pulled on the magic of the crystal, she felt a scream growing in her mind, until it could not be contained and she was shouting in a language she could not understand, until she blacked out.
When she awoke, Blue found herself on a beach, blue sky above, sand in her mouth, the sound of gentle waves in the distance, and the fading echoes of a vivid dream in her mind, all of which she could remember was powerful sense of fear and danger associated with the name the Umbral Covenant. With no idea even what year it was, much less where she had ended up, Blue wandered, keeping to herself, but always on the lookout for any kind of information or clues about the Umbral Covenant.
Over the course of the next year, she was run out of more villages than she could count. She learned that she had appeared in a place called the Chardonian Empire, a realm far to the west of her homeland in Maseau, and that it was nearly 100 years after she had been captured, although she did not feel like she had aged at all in captivity. She also grew strong, learning to channel magic through her connection to the crystal in her skull, although she could not always control completely, and when he threw herself into her magic completely, her appearance became even stranger somehow.
During her wanderings, the one thing she held on to was the Umbral Covenant, and the whispers of anger, danger, and fear from her crystal, warning about them. She learned that the Umbral Covenant had the agressors in a war against the famous city of Chardon, the War of the Dark Rift, and were defeated more than 100 years ago, before she was even captured, despite having captured much of the Apporian Peninsula. She learned that the Umbral Covenant had emerged from deep in the mountains of Apporia, from a kingdom called Enderra, now assumed completed destroyed. She learned that the Umbral Covenant had corrupted dwarves and turned them into nightmare shadow servants, forcing them to fight. She heard many rumors of how shadows had emerged from the mountains, sweeping down into the coastal cities of Apporia with armies of ghostly dwarves who bled darkness and who could not be killed by mundane weapons. But every tale she heard told the same fate: the Umbral Covenant launched a Shadow Armanda against Chardon, and were destroyed, utterly and completely. And no tale seemed to explain why the crystal still seemed terrified of a threat that was defeated so long ago.
A few weeks ago, lingering along the most desolate section of the trade road to Voltara, Blue stumbled across the body of a messenger and his horse, who had apparently fallen in a ravine and died, unnoticed. Uncannily, in his messenger bag was a long letter, addressed to the Silver Tempests in Voltara, containing research concerning strange sigils and a possible connection to the Umbral Covenant. Intrigued, Blue decided to deliver the letter herself.
Chronology of Blue’s Life
- Jul 03, 1748 DR: Blue heads north towards Lake Valandros and the frontier
- Aug 30, 1748 DR: Blue finds a dead messenger on the road north of Lake Valandros, with a letter about the Umbral Covenant addressed to the Silver Tempests in Voltara, and decides to deliver the message herself