So, I returned to the forums to find this glorious gem awaiting me. Gosh golly, but this is one exciting clusterfuck of mythology. I was wondering if I might still get in at this late stage? I'm aware that he hasn't been Touched by Fate as such, but if it's in the cards I would like to submit a mortal character...
Prospective Ascendant
Name: Gren Garnsson
Sphere: N/A (Mortal)
Traits: Drakehunter (+1 vs Supernaturals, +1 in Jungle Fights) [Was part of the Dwarven Army]
Seaspawn Spear (Can harm Shades) [Gained during the Dwarven Army's march along the Ninth Coast]
Description: Gren Garnsson was born of the line of Udil, the Giantslayer. Quite far down the line, since Udil did have 400 years to spawn progeny and for said progeny to do the same before Gren arrived on the scene (Udil would be something like Gren's great * 4 uncle, four times removed).
Gren Garnsson followed his father's footsteps and joined the dwarven army, performing well but not excellently at his tasks and training. He spent two decades in various minor guard positions before the announcement came that Udil was arranging a new personal guard, the Stone Guard, to spearhead the crusade against the drakes. Gren's appointment to the Stone Guard was more political than meritorious, but after completing the Rite of Udil at the Lifestone he became as mighty a warrior as he could be.
As the Stone Guard discovered in the Ninth Jungles, strength, agility and longevity counted little against swarms of bloodsucking insects and the constant disease that permeated the foul region. By the time Garnsson earned the prestige of slaying the last Fangdrake, he was already succumbing to several persistent diseases. Of the original five hundred Stone Guard that went on the Crusade, less than fifty returned alive even though less than fifty were actually killed in combat with the drakes. Disease and parasites had taken the rest. Given the sheer number of diseases and parasites that attacked Gren, it seemed that only fortune, fortitude and the blessings of both his Giantslayer breeding and the Lifestone kept him alive.
Garnsson had been greeted on the Coast at Skengrad with a hero's welcome, but the feasting and frivolity had been short-lived and little welcomed. Gren had been violently sick with vomiting and dysentry at the time, as well as developing several alarming rashes, and after a few partygoers who had made too close contact with him began coming down with similar symptoms the guest of honour was effectively sequestered from the feast. Gren frankly had little desire to complain, hoping to keep to himself until he either died or the sickness passed.
The sickness did not pass and soon enough the army was on the march again. For years, for decades after Gren was wracked by one trouble or another, some sort of disease or parasite, but never were they enough to kill him. Despite this he often found himself in service as a Stone Guard on the battlefield; the First amongst Drakeslayers was not so easily set aside. He continued marching for the Dwarf-father until the day came when he turned against their longtime ally and protector Az-Sho, the day the great Mountainhomes crumbled and near all dwarvenkind was wiped out.
Gren Garnsson was one of the few thousand survivors that had travelled with Udil as his army, and one of those few thousand who was transported safely by the intervention of a higher power than their god-king to the safety of the Sixth Continent.
Udil, to the knowledge of the dwarves, was dead or good as dead. They had been saved, perhaps, in his last divine act, but everything they had worked for or owned was gone. The Lifestone, Emberhome, the Coasthomes, the Mountainhomes, hundreds of years of craft and industry wiped out in an instant.
The Stone Guard disbanded. There was no reason for Gren to stay around and no reason for others to tolerate him. He found himself exiled, moving from scattered dwarven settlement to scattered dwarven settlement, always sick, always coughing, a disfigured vagabond in rags and pockmarked skin. And more often than not, where he went his diseases followed.