Name: Kazren Alash, Warbreaker
Gender: Biologically neutral, though he still thinks of himself as male.
Description: Prior to death, Kazren was little more than a westlander in his middle age. He was tall and strongly built, but not exceptionally so. His face was plain and worn by years in the wastes, age just beginning to silver his wood colored hair and crease his sun darkened skin. He had a strong face, but, even in the days that he was alive, his features were too rough and blunted to be considered handsome. Yet, even caught between life and death as he is, the most memorable part of him remains; his solidity. There is a benign implacability about Kazren, the power of the storms that bring rain, of the great trees that provide deep shade, of the ancient and protective walls of the elder places. Though he can no longer smile, there is still an aura of sheltering kindness in the way he speaks and moves.
Kazren's new form, given to him as an unasked and unwanted gift, is a great wonder of the old arts. Regenerating bio-alloy sheathes him from head toe, a gleaming construct of silver technology bolted into dead marrow and wired into a nervous system supported more by spark than breath. The form, while humanoid, is still far from human. Kazren's face is simply gone, his bluff but comforting features replaced by a shining plate of living metal and integrated sensors. Four wings of gleaming silver, far too heavy for flight, but as strong as any of his armor, sprout from his back. Kazren does not understand why he no longer needs breath, or why it feels as though his entire body vibrates when he speaks, but he has learned to work with his new body until such time as his 'patron' allows him to die.
Combat is Kazren's last resort in almost any situation, preferring to use all peaceful means necessary to overcome his opposition before fighting. When he fights, however, he fights in the thick of battle. He carries an immense shield of the same material as his body, but no weapon. When he strikes, he strikes with his fists or with his blunt wings. He still holds to the oaths he swore in life, and will never bring a weapon to bear against another human or creature of intellect. The sheer strength of the living metal, however, makes his blunt blows as crushing as those of any great maul or force weapon.
Kazren was, and still is, a Preserver. Even after he was made into a Warbreaker by Rennahn, he still acts to protect, to uphold, and to shelter rather than to destroy. His metal hands have given more bread than bone shattering blows, and his silver wings have given shade and protection more times than they have crushed men.
Background: Warbreaker Kazren was once Preserver Kazren Alash, one of the wandering men and women dedicated to law and the practical knowledge of man. Raised to the order, Kazren swore the oaths by the time he was thirteen, and earned the right to teach alone at the youngest age possible. He has wandered the wastes all his life, teaching effective methods of agriculture to starving villages, aiding the crippled or weakened, settling disputes between rival families or settlements, and, when necessary, carrying out justice as well as mercy.
Kazren's personal demeanor of good humor, sincerity, and determination worked well with his order's reputation for honesty and impartiality, and he was known and trusted in the waste settlements that he frequented. Kazren's devotion to justice was unwavering, but seldom was he ever seen as unfair, and his arrival was always cause for more celebration than fear. After a decade of travel, Kazren could count on having a clean room and warm food given to him freely in any of the settlements he serviced. He was considered to be a good man, as good as any out in the wastes.
At least, those native to the region thought of him so.
A stranger, a man from far to the north, came to one of the outer settlements that Kazren frequented. The man had some rank with a wasteland god, and had been given powers to... enlighten the settlement. The settlement burned in fire that was not fire. The citizens were given the choice to be consumed with all they owned, or to join the cabal of the stranger's god. Kazren arrived in the second day of the enlightening, when the villagers were all but broken. When they first saw him, they called his name with cheers. He had always been an object of some awe, and common rumor had it that his uncanny knack for resolving dispute was the work of the divine. He, a mere mortal, was hailed as a savior against the dark stranger.
Kazren died before he could open his mouth. Fire that cut like broken glass struck him down before he even had a chance to confront his attacker. The stranger killed him to kill the hope of the settlement, and for a very still minute, he succeeded. Kazren's death was met with a stunned silence. Only an old woman, a spinster of the settlement that had often given Kazren shelter, dared step forwards to inspect Kazren's fallen body. There are many rumors of what the old woman said, if she said anything at all in the wake of Kazren's death, but the events that followed her inspection his corpse are far better known. The old woman said a word, and the fire that was not fire twisted madly. The stranger had a moment to beg for his life before the cutting flames turned back on him. Kazren was left a bloody corpse by the fire when it had struck at him, but nothing was left of the stranger but a red smear across the already red wastes.
Some say that the old woman touched Kazren's head and they disappeared together, others say she packed all the pieces of him up into a canvas bag and dragged him off to the setting sun, but all records agree that the old woman took Kazren's body and left with supernatural speed. The old woman, Rennahn, Goddess of Philosophy, Compromise, and Justice, took Kazren back to her moldering spire. She had watched him for years, fond as a grandmother of a favorite heir, and he embodied ideals that she'd stopped believing in years ago. She rebuilt him in the image of the ancient Warbreakers, men of Justice from so long ago that even the Gods barely remember the times they used to police Elysium. Kazren awoke, neither living nor dead, more silver than flesh, to find himself in the service of a God with no faith. Yet he still serves. He finds his current existence an abomination, but he cannot allow himself to die when there is still work for his hands. He cannot allow himself to die while the Goddess of Justice believes Justice is dead.
Patron Name: Rennahn, Goddess of Philosophy, Compromise, and Justice.
Patron Description: Rennnahn is an old woman, in body and soul. There was a time when she was a vision of justice, a time when she ruled a kingdom with a firm but gentle hand. It was a kingdom built by pacts and law, not treachery and blood, a kingdom to stand as an example for all time. Yet it did not stand for all time. That kingdom is forgotten, its name lost and its stones dust. Justice and Reason proved a poor defense against capricious Gods that wanted nothing more than to watch Rennahn's kingdom burn simply for the sake of watching her holier-than-thou morals fail. The fall of a city, even the fall of a kingdom, is something inconsequential for a God in the long term, but the destruction of a God's ideals... If one can make a God stop believing in themselves, one has the power to kill a God.
And Rennahn no longer truly believes in the existence of Justice. She abandoned her spire and her remaining followers after her Kingdom was crushed by ravening hordes without reason, culture, or law. She stopped being a God. She still carries the lost art of mentally overriding and manipulating the ancient technology, she still retains her superhuman speed and strength of form that isn't quite flesh, she still has all the powers of her past, but she barely uses them. Until she met Kazren, she lived as the silver haired woman that she resembled- ancient and stooped by the weight of centuries. Were it not for Kazren, her spire, a slender tower without door or window in the center of an ancient and forgotten city, would remain nothing more than a dusty curiosity for travelers.
Kazren is a last light for Rennahn, a natural evolution of the ideals that she once tried to enforce. For him, or rather for what he embodied, she brought her spire back to life. For the potential Kazren represented, she brought back him back as a Warbreaker, as one last echo of her Kingdom. Yet Rennahn's belief in her own divinity remains broken. Kazren, her champion and sole follower, believes that she is a God, but reveres her ideals more than he revers her.
Rannahn is a Goddess with a spirit kept from breaking by a thread, and her sole follower, a man who has already died, is that one thread. She is Goddess whose sole follower has more faith than she herself can summon.
Well, that was fun to write, if nothing else.
EDIT: I had considered giving him the ability to channel some amount of stunning energy from his bio-alloys into his melee attacks, but I can't decide whether that's too much or not.
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Topic: Elysium - A World of A Thousand Gods (Chapter I) (Read 16025 times)