Zadown Posted September 26, 2004 Report Posted September 26, 2004 Brief Description The Dreamer is a planewalker, an immortal of great power. His cold ruthlessness is legendary in the Pen Keep, and most people generally keep away from him and even from the little door to his Astral Harbour, his own "room". He is 6'6" tall and thin, wears a wine-red chaotic armor that shifts and changes shape like a living thing, a perfect match to his eyes that shimmer and flicker, switching color according to his mood. On his head he wears an unadorned iron crown that keeps his grey hair down, on his feet he has a pair of dark dragon-leather boots. He wears no cloak nor gloves. His bearded and moustached face is a map of scars showing all the fights he has lost, but the rumours that abound about him on the Lost Paths mostly remember the fights he has won, the god he killed and the planewalkers he has managed to send to their last, utter and permanent Death. On his back is the scabbard of Pain, his spectral no-dachi that cleaves spirits as well as bodies, makes the victims bleed their dreams and memories out. Even if he is not a nice guy, he is generally polite and calm if not provoked. People tend to be wary around anybody who calls them "puny mortals" and has the ability to rend their living souls out of their bodies, however.
Zadown Posted March 16, 2005 Author Report Posted March 16, 2005 History Most of the Dreamer's early history is obscured or forgotten. He is slightly over 3000 years old, but he usually does not tell many stories of his pre-wakening (which happened 2451 AADE) times. In the May of 2443, he fought a god of dreams and won, but fell into a deep coma. During his long slumber he dreamed up several shards, less powerful copies of himself: the Brothers Zadown, a curious group of individuals scattered across the known multiversum but tied together with the ties of blood magic, most sharing the original Dreamer's tall and thin build but little else. Once he woke up in the July of 2451, his first action was to hunt down his shards to absorb them back into him. He found the greatest concentration of them in the Pen Keep, where he eliminated several of the Zadown brothers during a short battle. Absorbing them into himself, he felt obliged to continue what they have started and eventually set his headquarters into the nearby Astral with a connection to the Pen Keep proper. During 2451 he also met Valdar and took him as his apprentice, an event that triggered an adventure which ended by him swearing loyalty to Chaos and promising to find the Grail for them. He was harried by the agents of various gods and other distractions, however, and could not properly move on with his quest quite yet. In 2453 he slew one of his hunters, the hybrid dominion-god Sarnael - an impressive milestone on his recovery from the coma and a clear example of how his powers had strengthened under the flag of Chaos. He was nevertheless still clouded by indecision and visions of the past, not fully activating himself to work towards the goal of finding the Grail until a year later, in 2454. In a year-long quest for the Grail he was then first foiled by one of the Runelords of the Law, then trapped by mere mortals, a crime he repaid by eradicating the entire offending city from the multiversum by drowning it in elemental flames. The Dreamer halted his quest for long enough to rebuild Tlaenor as a city of undead shades before continuing tracking his prey, Mistress Sherishsen and the Grail. He reached and killed the former in 2455, but the latter literarily eluded his blood-soaked grasp. He continued to be very busy through the whole year 2455, rebuilding his assets and beginning the raising of a ward who would be able to handle the Grail, a girl called Jankiize Towikae Vangaijuua. He clashed against Sir Owiric of Chaos and met Faaye, one of Law's most respected planewalkers. The next dozen years saw the escalating of the Law - Chaos conflict, something that the Dreamer observed from the sidelines at first but later got more and more involved in while protecting his ward, Lady Vangaujuua, and searching the Grail. His patience was rewarded in 2467 and he gained the Grail, something that very quickly turned the tide of what were afterwards called as the Grail Wars. The Dreamer and his ward both played a great part in the conflict to the very end of the wars in 2472, when the Grail vanished and the Law struck back against the shaken Chaos armies. The catastrophe ended the Dreamer's short carreer as the Supreme High Commander of the Chaos armies and sent him back to seclusion.
Zadown Posted March 16, 2005 Author Report Posted March 16, 2005 Personality Complex would be the best word to give an overall impression of the Dreamer's personality - he has a set of personal codes of conduct he tries to follow, but to any casual observer his actions may seem highly chaotic and irrational. His basic state is one of cool, polite detachment, but it can very quickly change into cold anger, sudden mirth, raging bloodlust or tranquil contemplation when provoked in any manner. His personality used to be very volatile right after he woke up from his coma, but lately he has gotten himself under better control and no longer suffers from uncontrollable fits of rage. Despite his aggressive tendencies, he has no qualms of fleeing situations that he deems too dangerous compared to the rewards at hand. The few deadly risks he takes are carefully calculated. The Dreamer considers mortals to be beneath him, but worthy of attention if they go through the trouble of talking to him politely and if they exhibit courage, curiosity and respect in proper measures. If insulted or attacked, he will respond with deadly force very easily, considering it to be almost the same as if a human would kill an offending mosquito. Even then he doesn't always really care if his targets die or are merely maimed - revenge against lesser forms of life is beneath his dignity. Due to his uncompromising, cold manner, he does not have many allies and even fewer friends in all the worlds, but he is loyal to the few friends he has.
Zadown Posted March 16, 2005 Author Report Posted March 16, 2005 Items Only two items that have practical value to the Dreamer are his two swords. Pain was the sword of one of his shards who clung to existence even through an Armageddon of Terra but lost his bodily form. That shade, Inhumatus, also clung to his no-dachi, and carried its ghost with him. That spectral blade was later named Pain, and in some ways it is more powerful that its wielder was - it can cut through spirit and body alike, inflicting so horrible wounds most mortals die of one blow, no matter how trivial the actual visible injury looks like. The Benefical Dragon was what the Dreamer used before his long sleep - a long slender katana made of jade, its sharpness and strength a function of the old magics that bind the blade together, not qualities of the material. He quested for it during his youth, after he passed the Rites of the Planewalker in BADE 431. Other than being highly magical artifact and slightly influencing its users luck to the better, it has no obvious powers. The Dreamer's clothes, even his blood-red chaos armor, are mostly decorative and hold no enchantments that would really help him. If any of the items would be removed from his possession, they'd be so infused with his aura of power that they would be in effect magical items of considerable power.
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