The Memoirs of Radeek Andoran, a Partial Telling

I have lived a life filled with rage and hate, loaded with regret and sorrow, driven by the need to avenge my people, a life that was not my own to live, forced upon me in my youth.  Sometimes we just aren't given a choice; destiny overcomes want, and need becomes the over-riding factor, until it becomes too late to change.

I came from the Sea of Fire, for, you see, I am Tehir.  My life has been difficult and, at times, nearly unbearable.  Until quite recently I never knew who my father was, and I lost my mother at the age of seven to an Imperial raid upon my camp that killed everyone but myself and one young woman, who I killed out of mercy; her injuries were far too grievous for her to live and she was in agony.

A Tehir raider named G'Arrone found me, and he and his wife, K'miza, adopted me.  Both are wonderful people and I could not have asked for better second-parents.  They taught me all I needed to know about survival, right and wrong, good and evil, and, most importantly, what it means to be Tehir.

But no matter what they taught me it seems my life had been pre-ordained and not my own to live.  There was a prophecy, whispered to me by my dying mother that spoke of my life to be and what I was to become.  Her words to me had been forgotten, possibly due to the trauma of her loss, and were not remembered until my final Trial when I was given a hallucinogenic drink which brought it all back in the form of a vision, or, as the Tehir call it, golbuir fiier, Riding the Veil, or, as others would call it, a Spirit Walk.

This vision cost me dearly.  I was ostracized from my adopted clan; I was seen as unsuitable for clan life.  I was sixteen years old and I was alone in the Sea of Fire; this in itself was not a problem, I had been taught how to survive in this environment.  The greatest loss was that I now had no people, I belonged nowhere, and I was alone, again. 

After a time I got on with a caravan that traded within the Sea of Fire, and I stayed with it for almost two years.  I then travelled into the lands of the Empire, eventually making my way to Wehnimer's Landing and Icemule Trace. 

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We live by the choices we make, we are judged by our actions, and we live with the results.  Life is relatively simple if you are willing to accept your life as it is.  Things only get difficult when we try to change things, for whatever reason; therefore, I believe my life is quite simple, since I have never wasted my time denying what I was, nor what I am.

There was once a time when I was seen as honourable, the knightly sort of honourable, chivalrous, polite...even nice.  Those days are behind me now, they are long gone; circumstances changed everything and one decision, one choice, made me into what I am now.  I will not say that what I did was a mistake, even though there have been many times over the years that I have looked back and wondered how my life might have turned out had I gone the other way, had I let my friends and compatriots be sacrificed at the hands of an alliance founded in darkness.

I have often asked myself if I was ever given a choice to go back and change my decision, would I?  Believe me, I have been tempted many times by this thought, but each and every time the answer has always been "No."  I am what I am because of what I did and the reasons I did it; I can be nothing else.  To arrive at a different decision would not have been who and what I am; my honour would not allow it to be any other way.

I bent the knee once, I took the oath, received the blessing, and "POOF," I was knighted; and then, I wasn't...and my life was changed.  As difficult as it was for me to accept, as angry as it made me, it really could be no other way, and, as my people say, "it is the way of it."  I try very hard to live life as it comes and not dwell on the past, but once in a while I catch myself imagining what my life as a knight might have been like, had I been allowed to walk that path.

Instead, the life that I was "blessed with" led me through blood, pain, loneliness, death, and shadow.  But it also gave me Phever, Eclipse, and the few true friends that I have; I call that a fair trade, and I would do it again, without a second thought.

When I was told that I was not to be a knight, that it was as if it never happened, I grew angry.  Feelings that I had thought buried, resurfaced, and it brought back my hatred for the Empire, especially knights. 

The title Knight has never been what I hated though, it is the grand illusion that some of them perpetrate about how their vows are so binding and so very right, and how all others are trivial, at best.  I had not seen this broken until the Order of the Silver Gryphons stood up to defend Wehnimer's Landing, and this gave me a newfound respect and admiration for their Order, but only their Order, and none other. 

My actions in the Taladorian War, and the War against the Shadows that followed, closely mirrored my service in the Griffin Sword War.  I was violent, in the extreme, but the benefits of being such far outweighed the costs.  I was once labelled as something undesirable in the ranks of the forces that defended those who fought in the side of "right" and "good," and I wore that label once again in these wars.  Unlike the Griffin Sword War, this time I did not let it stop me or change my path in any way, I embraced it and used it to my advantage.

I fought with a fury that surprised even me, and though the cost to those close to me was extremely high, I feel I made a difference.  My choices were never justified; I didn't care about justification to others, only to myself.  I fought, bled, and died time and again for a cause, yet in the end few saw that; but I will know, as will those close to me, and that is all that matters.  I've never been one to appease the majority, most won't make the hard decisions anyway; so, people like me make them for them, and we act upon those decisions as we see fit. 

I was called Bloodthirsty and Warmonger by those who either could not, or would not, understand my methods, yet those who spoke those words knew little to nothing of me, nor do they really know the meaning of those words.  Truly, I felt them cowardly for their methods; some even sided with the enemy at various times... some were even my friends.   

Bloodthirsty people cannot cope without strife; they need to spill blood to justify their existence.  I do not have that need, I just don't hide from the fact that I am very good at killing, and I never shy away from it.  Warmongers WANT war; I have never wanted it, even though I do seem to thrive in it and take no small measure of satisfaction in serving in it.  I do not go out of my way to cause war, but I will go out of my way to see that people who cannot defend themselves are protected and kept from harm, even if it means appearing to love war, which I suppose I do, just a little.

My choices during the Griffin Sword War sprang from a need to protect those who would have been sacrificed to bring about darkness.  I killed Dark Alliance members whenever and wherever I found them; those were dark times and desperate measures were needed.  I take no pride in what I did, other than the knowledge that I saved people who would otherwise have been put under the knife for the purposes of evil.

Time and again, my arrows and thorns found their mark, and loud was the outcry against my methods.  It never ceases to amuse me that when people side with evil, most of them can stomach just about anything that is done to innocents to further their cause, yet, for a vast majority of them, when the time comes to pay the piper their whining is nearly constant.  I must admit though, it did come as a surprise when most of my own friends and acquaintances turned on me and ostracized me, citing my methods as evil and counter-productive, even when the innocents I set out to rescue were saved, unharmed.

For many years after the Griffin Sword Wars I was alone, few would even acknowledge me.  My anger was like a cancer, eating me to the bone, slowly devouring the Ranger of Phoen from within.  I lived on the fringes; welcome nowhere, barely tolerated to even walk through the gates of any town.  It was a lonely time for me, and, on many occasions, I had considered giving up, walking away, and never returning.  I turned my back on the side of light, I spurned my deity; after all, I thought, what had the Lord of Light done for me, except ignore my prayers and watch my descent into shadow. 

I slowly became that which I despised most...a man without a cause, with no purpose other than to exist, unless there was a war.  It was during these times of war and strife that I excelled.  Perhaps I had a death wish, I don't know.  What I do know is that people like me fight for those who, for whatever reason, can't fight for themselves. 

People like me do ANYTHING to win; victory can never be achieved with clean hands; the enemy must be made to understand the costs associated with warfare, they must be made to bleed.  The screams of dying people, their civilian populace, and not just their soldiers, must be heard throughout their lands; though the killing of civilians is distasteful, it is a necessity.  If the enemy sees themselves as invulnerable then they have the notion that they can do anything they want, and it is up to those who think as I do to make them fear us, to make them wish they had never been born.  Then, and only then, can true victory be achieved.

Two things stick out in my mind most while fighting the Taladorians.  The first was the raid on their logistics train, and the killing of those that our own bleeding hearts saw as "innocents."  Had they been innocent then they would have remained in Talador; they were part of an invading force and, as such, they bled, as they should have.  Did we massacre them?  I'm sure the people of Talador see it that way, even though I doubt anyone who says so has ever looked into the eyes of an orphaned child of Wehnimer's Landing.  Yes, we killed them, by the score.  No mercy was shown, as none was shown to our town by those same invading forces.  We did what we needed to do, nothing more, and nothing less.

The second was the raid on Talador in which Cosima, aka the Songbird, was taken prisoner.  This was, still is, and probably always will be, a very touchy topic, for myself and anyone who took part in this.  We all knew going into it, that this was an unpopular undertaking.  We also knew that our chances of success were not good.  What we did not know was that some members of our own town, people we had fought beside, would take it upon themselves to attempt to stop us.  This was the only part of this raid that sickened me; to know that people I had bled with, and for, were fighting against us and, in my opinion, aiding the enemy.

Drangell later burnt Cosima alive; I tried so hard to end her misery with one well-placed arrow, but, it was not to be, and her screams went on, and they still do when my dreams come.

I regret neither action; I believe both hastened the war to a speedier end, which ultimately saved lives, on both sides. 

After we defeated Talador, we were a broken town; not only was the town shattered, but so were old alliances.  We had more factions than we had broken buildings it seemed; there was no unity whatsoever.  Our one unifying aspect, our leader, Walkar Wellington was gone; turned into some sort of demonic being after he burned the army of Talador to ash.  His loss hurt me, I respected the man Walkar was; and I shall carry his memory with me always.

While our town was still reeling from our "victory," we had to deal with the Shadows and the being known as Althedeus.  Honestly, the things that happened to me, and to those who are closest to me, I would rather forget.  My mind was nearly broken, I was physically exhausted and emotionally drained, and I made mistakes that I would not have ordinarily made. 

During the war I had prayed so much and so often to my deity, but there was never a reply; that I suppose I gave up on ever getting an answer, so I ended up taking matters into my own hands.  It seemed to me that the answer was in the power of blood, and this was proven to me again and again throughout the war.  I guess that was the beginnings of my quest for the legacy, my heritage if you will, even though I didn't know it at the time.

Elithain Cross, who, as it turns out, was a powerful blood mage, held an amount of appeal to me.  He was promising to make sure that Wehnimers Landing was free from the influence of the Empire and at this stage in my life I probably hated the Empire more than I had ever before.  So I decided to join with Cross, but it was stressed to me that I needed to be protected and that I could never allow him to have any of my blood.

An aspiring bloodmagess in the Landing offered her services to protect me from the power of blood magic that may be wielded against me by Cross.  In a blood magic ritual she bonded Phever and I with the power of blood and love, two of the most potent forces that exist; I was effectively given the most powerful protection available, so long as my blood remained my own.

I went when Cross called, I was well on my way to joining the ranks of those who oppose the Empire, or so I thought.  When we all gathered to pledge our loyalty, Cross demanded a tribute, to be paid with our blood.  I refused, which was probably the smartest thing I have ever done in my entire life.  I was immediately cast out and from that point on I was regarded by those who followed Cross as a traitor to their cause and as unreliable and untrustworthy by those who defended Wehnimer's Landing.

For a while I was nearly totally without allies…it was a very difficult time for me, though not as bad as after the Griffin Sword Wars.  I continued to fight though, I still had my own honour, and I remained unstained by any blood oath.

Then the unthinkable happened…Cross took Phever.  Not only did he take her, he maimed her and used her blood to raise minions that did his bidding.  Phever, the love of my life, had been taken from me, and I was powerless to stop it, and I couldn't get her back.  Her plight was projected into my mind, I heard her screams, and I felt her pain as if it were my own. 

On that night, Elithain Cross broke me, just as sure as if he had done those things to me instead of Phever.  He took my will to fight and frankly, I didn't care anymore.  I thought of myself as being ineffective and I played the part very well.  How could I protect the town when I couldn't even keep the one who means more to me than life itself safe?  To add insult to injury, the followers of Cross were as welcome in town, perhaps even more so, than I was.

This went on for weeks, and each and every time I saw Phevers face, those scars, I was reminded of my failure…and the self-loathing grew.  I became erratic, even more than I had been in the past.  I cared little for anything, I couldn't even muster enough emotion to swear vengeance against Cross; I wanted to die.

They say that time heals all wounds.  Well I can tell you from experience; that's a whole wagonload of Yierka dung.  Time only made me hurt more and I sank deeper and deeper into despair.

Somewhere in all this Althedeus was defeated, but not before the Shadows had done their worst to me.  My mind was invaded, and neither my body nor my soul was my own anymore; but I didn't care.  The same thought kept echoing repeatedly in my mind.  I was a failure.  I was a failure.  I was a failure.

Then my own race saved me from myself and, more importantly, restored Phever to her former grace and beauty.  Teuriz was a bloodmage of great power.  He was also Tehir, like me.  His name means "godless" in the language of my people.  Through a blood magic ritual, using my blood drawn by one of my own arrows, he restored Phevers physical perfection and then he gave me back my faith in myself.

I still carry the scar from that ritual and I have the arrow he used, which was transformed by the process into a very unique arrow, which I shall never part with.  A very welcome side affect of the ritual was that, for a short time, Phever had the ability to speak and understand Tehir and I was able to express my feelings to her in my own language, which I am quite eloquent in, rather than my own fractured common.  For these gifts, I will be eternally grateful to the Tehir bloodmage.

Because of the touch of this bloodmage, or perhaps due to the encroachment of the shadows upon my mind, or a bit of both, a new want began stirring within me.  My birthmother had been a powerful bloodmage and seer among my people.  As her direct descendent it was up to me to assume the legacy of her bloodline.  I had spent years denying my birthright, because of fear more than anything else.  I didn't want this burden; I felt it wasn't mine to be saddled with.

But after my encounter with Teuriz, or perhaps because of it, I began to desire more to my life.  During the ceremony with Teuriz he told me to "hear the wind".  Soon after the ritual I began to hear whispers, very faint and most of the time unintelligible, but there nonetheless.  As time went on they began to get louder and I could distinguish the words more plainly.

One day, soon after hearing the wind truly speak to me, I made the decision that will forever change my life.  I rummaged through all my storage lockers in every town until I found it…my mothers kit, including her scrying bowl.  I had not seen it in years; it was buried deep in my locker in Icemule Trace. 

The decision has been made.  I will travel to the land of my birth and seek out one who will teach me all I need to know of my duty to my people and my legacy given to me by my mother.  I will become that which it seems I was always meant to be; I will become a seer and a bloodmage.

My training was difficult and tiresome; there were times when I didn't think I'd be able to endure it.  But somehow I did and I returned home to Wehnimers Landing a changed man. 

During one of my earliest attempts at scrying using my mothers bowl, I somehow was exposed to her spirit.  I am sure it was her power that made this happen, I am far from being that powerful.  During this "encounter," she relieved me of my burden of vengeance for our people.  She gave me my life back; I could now live my own life without feeling the need to decimate anything relating to the Empire when I encountered it.

I am Tehir, and now, I am free.

General Radeek Andoran
Black Raider of the Mir'Sheq
Drakes Vanguard
Defender of Wehnimers Landing