Difference between revisions of "Jarod Nightingale"

Revision as of 22:19, 11 March 2007

Parents

Jarod was born the only son of Ilana Nightingale and Hai Chenglei. His mother, a native of Derry, was the beautiful daughter of a skilled healer, and in addition to picking up some of her father's skills, she became a weaver and an herbalist. She was well-liked among the people of her small town and could have had her pick of suitors, but in the end she surprised everyone by eloping with an exotic travelor from the far East and running away to live with him in a small but well-built and homey cabin in an isolated part of the Sikasoon Mountains. This, of course, was Jarod's father. Chenglei was the first-born son of an Eastern noble family, and would have inherited rulership over his family's province but for the fact that he despised court life, both for its hypocrisy and what he saw as the restrictiveness of an indoor lifestyle. Chenglei had developed a close relationship with his grandmother, a Sarkan (a tribe of bastet, or werecats, native to the Northeastern mountains and closely related to snow leopards) elder who took him under her wing once it became clear that he too had inherited the gift, and when she died he simply saw no more reason to remain at home, so at the age of 20 he set off traveling. His journey eventually led him to Amasynia, and Derry, and of course Ilana.

Early Childhood

Six months after moving into the mountains, Jarod was born. During his early years, Jarod was doted on by both of his parents, who adored him beyond measure. Those were happy times for the young boy, but sadly they would not last long. A rumor had begun to spread through neighboring towns and villages that the famiy in the mountains were dangerous witches. It was not normal, they thought, to live so isolated, and in such inhospitable terrain. Whispers were made about a man who could turn into a white leopard, and soon these rumors reached the general of a band of crusaders who had been traveling through the area. No one really knows why the crusaders altered their course to pay visit to Jarod's family, or if they had intended to slaughter them, or simply put the fear of God into them (so to speak). Not even Jarod knows, for he had gone to collect herbs for his mother and was not present to witness the deaths of his parents. When he returned home, the ground was covered in blood and the lifeless bodies of a handful of soldiers... as well as those of his mother and father. Jarod was ten years old.

Jarod did the best a little boy could at giving his parents something resembling a proper cremation. At least, what he understood a proper cremation to be. The whole process took about two days, and afterwards he decided he had to get as far away from his home as he could, to run away from the nightmare which had become of his family. His father had taught him well how to survive in the wilderness, but he was only a child and winter was fast approaching, so he did not fare well during the month he spent wandering about on his own. When a slave caravan found him in a small cave off the side of an ill-used road, he was half-starved and in no condition to put up much of a fight. This was how he came to be captured and taken to a city very far from home, and everything he had known of the world until then.

The Golden City was capitol to one of the wealthiest provinces in the world. Located on the Southernmost tip of the continent, their major source of income was a tremendous gold mine which gave the city its namesake. Slaves were particularly popular in this region, as most of the citizens could afford at least one or two, and the wealthier townsfolk regularly made use of child servants (some for menial tasks, some for less savory ones). Jarod and the rest of the adults and children in the caravan were put on display at a market in the center of town and sold to the highest bidder. Had things turned out differently at this point, Jarod may have had a very different life. As things turned out, however, a buyer for Castus Auratus, the King himself, was there that day, and he spotted Jarod almost immediately. It was commonly known that the King liked to surround himself with beautiful boys, and Jarod was, even at that age, uncommonly beautiful, so he was selected along with a handful of others to be taken to the palace.

(This page still under heavy construction... more to come soon.)