The History Of Rattrap

[Rattrap]

This is the history of Dr. David D'Rael. I'll be putting it in blurbs at a time, for ease of writing and for ease of reading. The reference to Bolgardia is of a city that is far north of Amasynia Province - snowy/ice north.

All the information is in a book, written by a one Roland Darkwater, which is somewhere lost in the clutter of David's office. It is possible that Aeri or Freya could have stumbled upon it.

So...here goes...

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It begins with a man named Jonathon D’Rael…

Jonathon D’Rael was a man who had high ambitions. He’d done a lot in his life, and he was one of the most respected names around the northern city of Bolgardia. Everybody in the province knew of his heroic deeds in battle, his cunning wit outside there of, the finesse at which he handled everything in the middle. He was charming, handsome, skilled at just about everything - he was nearly perfect. A great man in many respects, to use his abilities for the good of the people, when he could have easily done harm.

Jonathon had commanded an army in two wars, in both of which his soldiers always had striking effectiveness under his orders. He himself had slain hundreds of enemy soldiers in combat, and all he had to say for it was a couple dozen scars. No one had been good enough to injure him with any permanence.

And he was well aware of all of this. So he decided to try and do something that hadn’t been done before, to knowledge at whole - he was going to spread his seed to every race of humanoids, from the dwarves to the elves to even the demons and angels in the burning hells and high heavens. In fact, the former couple were his first endeavors. Most would’ve written him off as insane if they’d knew he had planned to couple with a spawn of hell.

…but he did it. And not more than a couple years later, he succeeded in doing the same with the heavens.

The first two children, one that was born of fire and despair and the other was born of life, happiness and hope. The first child’s name was Damien D’Rael. The second, Alandial D’Rael. Quite naturally, the two never got along. One was a devil, after all, and the other was the opposite.

Jonathon was on a downhill slope after he’d conquered the seemingly impossible. But then he found a wrench in his plans. Love.

The father of two had met an elf named Valanthe. The Elvin were always beautiful by human standards, but nothing compared to Valanthe. It was an aged beauty, coupled with centuries of wisdom that Jonathon quite simply had not encountered before. The angels were a sight to see, for sure, but something about Valanthe just struck a chord in Jonathon. His venture stopped with her and their child, his third.

The child’s name was David D’Rael.

Jonathon had tricked the Hells out of a spawn; he would’ve liked to say he had done the same with the Heavens, but he was acutely aware it was purely Heaven’s bidding that allowed for the second child, and that all his cunning and cleverness had almost nothing to do with it, except perhaps that it opened the opportunity. But the third child wasn’t born with any outrageous goal in mind, but simplistic love. It was certainly a strange family, to say the least.

Jonathon had kept all his children. They’d leave at old enough ages, doubtless, to their respective realms. It created many years of…interesting childhood for any of the three.

Damien, the oldest, was cruel to either of his siblings, although more so to David, if only because he knew Alandial had the power to fight back in the same manner of his cruelty. He didn’t like his step-mother, Valanthe, but he respected her - she would, after all, forever be older and wiser than himself. A fact he resented, but again, respected. Perhaps he could change that in the future.

Alandial, quite naturally, was the exact opposite of Damien - kind to her siblings, especially to David. Damien didn’t care for kindness, so he didn’t get much. David always welcomed it, though, especially during the particularly brutal times Damien put him through. Many times Damien had just about killed David, but whatever torture he was putting the younger boy through was always promptly stopped by a parent - usually Valanthe, as Jonathon wasn’t home much.

David was just a curious boy who just wanted to be left alone. He hated his brother, and he hated the fact that he hated his brother. He wanted to love Damien, despite all the ordeals he put him through, but the older boy’s…demeanor, perhaps - to put it lightly - simply made David hate him. He was always tinkering with things, pulling at stuff, asking questions of his family. One question he asked Damien on a number of occasion was, “Why are you mean?”

His answer was always some variant of “Because it’s fun.”

[Rattrap]

At age four, David’s household suffered a peculiar problem, especially in light of the family’s status - a rat infestation. While the options available to them could have very well done away with the problem, they were not taken; Jonathon had bigger things to worry about and Valanthe really didn’t actually mind the creatures all that much. She could be found, though, depositing them a good distance from the house if she caught them in the stored foods.

Damien naturally found joy in killing and slaughtering the animals, through the most devious ways imaginable.

David, however, found them to be quite curious. He spent some time studying the rodents, watching the ways they reacted and navigated the areas in search of room. Eventually, he begun to devise traps and devices that would capture the creatures - yet leave them unharmed. They turned out to be so successful that eventually all the rats were relocated miles from their home, taken with Jonathon in a crate on one of his ventures. They did not return.

Damien and Alandial started calling David Rattrap after that. Whenever he started to create, they were all reminded of the things he’d made to trap the rats.

The name continued to have meaning when David became thirteen; it was on his very birthday that he finally struck back at Damien. But not in an open conflict; David would never win against Damien that way. He probably wouldn’t survive that way. He had been trying various things to trip his brother up, from the classics to the obvious - every time, David was foiled and generally ended up bloody. But this time was different - because this time it was a plan prompted on Damien’s violence.

Every time David took a swing at his older brother, Damien generally grappled the offensive limb and twisted it in some horrendous fashion. David’s plan counted on this - and the predictability of his older brother’s actions following the surprise he had in store.

David had lured his older brother to the docks, just a half a mile down from their home. He had loosened a board in the framework, although it was for Damien to step on. That was too elementary. Besides that, he’d probably notice the change in stability and move before it did him any harm. No - the plank was for David to step on. Or, rather, to be thrown on.

It was quite simple - David stood where he needed to. Damien came. David swung at his older brother, and the reaction had gone just as he expected - the outstretched arm was caught, but before even Damien could react, David was stepping back on the board - it swung up, catching his older brother at the elbow. There was a momentary surprise, and David took full advantage. He clasped his free hand on Damien’s grasp, falling backwards through the docks. The effect was as he had hoped; Damien’s elbow had been hyper-extended, and the plank had met it at the elbow. If Damien had braced himself for it, he probably wouldn’t have suffered as much damage as he had; if. David heard the distinctive crack as he plunged into the waters beneath and started immediately swimming away.

Damien did not follow, and things certainly took a change from then on.

But not as David had hoped.

[Rattrap]

Damien had vowed Hell onto David after the incident, and he proceeded to fill the rest of his younger brother’s childhood with it. Torment of varying kinds, from stripping flesh to breaking bones. He even once nailed David to a wall through his palms, to which he has the scars of to this very day. Both Valanthe and Jonathon had always put a stop to the torments the moment they discovered them; Jonathon in particular was as brutal as Damien was to get the point across. But they didn’t dissuade the boy. They couldn’t - and usually, David had already passed out before they found him.

When David left the house early to join the Bolgardian Army, Damien had taken the next step up - he had vowed death onto David. A vow he completed thirteen years later.

At eighteen, a year after David had left, Damien vanished. The family understood where he’d gone; everybody except David, who wouldn’t hear the news for another two years.

[Rattrap]

At a young age, Valanthe had started teaching David meditation techniques - mindsets that would help him deal with Damien's torture and whatever else life had in store. For the first few years Valanthe would sit with him every evening, practicing the meditation with him. When David was older, he started doing it on his own.

David was quite adept at it; he started meditating multiple times of day, and had gained the ability to keep himself calm throughout whatever tortures before he left home. Even during Damien's worst, David was able to simply keep cool, without a cry or shout to be heard. This fact generally made the damage worse, as the parents were slower to realize what the older boy was doing.

When war broke out, this ability had let him face death straight on and not flinch - the feat alone allowed him to cheat it several times throughout the course of a good number of battles.

Battles that took place relatively early in his life, and even then changed him from then on.