Emmendonius Steledznyzky's page

Slender, lightfooted, and bearing large, dark eyes with an alert but impassive gaze, Emmen has something of the look of a deer- but look closer at those wide black eyes, and you’ll see more of the shark in him. He’s pale-skinned, with thin, brown hair swept to the side of a high-domed brow. His mouth is small and straight, and humorless when not split wide in complete hilarity. He moves with an efficient, precise step and straight limbs, almost giving the suggestion of a clockwork soldier.
His dress favors straightforward, practical clothes, but sometimes fastened or arranged in eccentric ways that suit his habits better, such as tucking the leather apron skirt he wears in the workshop or laboratory over his shoulder out on the street when occupied with a project.

Emmen is a difficult man to like; even harder, most find, to argue with. A lifetime of scorn from his brothers and disappointment in the false promises of the Chelaxian order have left him inured to the opinions of others, and disdainful of convention. He has the savvy to hold his tongue in the presence of superiors, as all Chelaxians must if they wish to survive to adulthood. But among equals and lessers he tends to ignore shows of courtesy and solidarity, operating with a mechanical efficiency and utility that wins few hearts. This lack of amity isn’t a sign of bitterness or arrogance, really; mostly, he has little faith in the power of others to give him anything of value until proven otherwise, and concentrates his energies on his own designs.
Conversely, to those who have impressed him with their wit, imagination, audacity, or daring, Emmen is an ideal “partner in crime”: eager to escalate to ever-more brazen and convoluted schemes to disrupt and transform the stagnant order around them. He laughs rarely, but when provoked, does so with a raucous caw that tends to startle those not expecting it. Similarly, he’s surprised many a casual acquaintance for his reverence for the performing arts. While most Chelaxians of any station whatsoever should at least appear to appreciate the opera, Emmen’s enjoyment of it is nothing less than rapturous. And, even more surprisingly, he takes almost equal pleasure in the base japeries of minstrels and halfpenny street buskers. Those who know him well understand this: Emmen sees that stories are how all new things begin, in the imagining of a world not quite our own. Contrary to first blush, he values the ineffable dynamism of the arts just as much as the earth-shaking power of technology, so long as those embellishments serve to create new truths rather than prop up dead ones. Satire, if it is of any merit at all, rarely fails to please him; conversely, the most poignant morality play will earn a shrug, at best.

Audacious as he might be, Emmen is mortal, and as such, knows fear. His greatest horror is that of irrelevance, of passing from the world without leaving so much as a fading ripple to mark his leaving. He could face a horrific public crucifixion with manly resolve, if he thought it might serve to expose the weakness and venality of a corrupt order. But to be consigned to an oubliette, to live out his life in unchanging and meaningless darkness- this thought gives him night terrors. He knows that, if it comes to that, he’ll happily die a thousand times over before he’s brought to such an empty end.

Ideologically, Emmen has a sophisticated belief structure based on the concept of “punctuated equilibrium”- a historical process defined by stable holding patterns which are periodically disrupted at tipping points, minor changes which produce a radical change. Water heated to a certain point is simply hot water- but just one degree hotter, and it becomes something else entirely, called steam! These critical phase transitions fascinate him, and he believes that they represent something like “master threads” in a grand pattern of the universe’s inevitable unfolding. This is as close as he comes to piety; while he pays respect to Brigh, Norgorber, and Nethys when an oath or curse is called for, to Emmen the gods are as much a part of the Grand Design as mortals, and no more so its architects than himself.

Ancestry
The Stelydnyzky family has soldiered for the glory of Cheliax since before the rise of House Thrune, with unstinting pride and distinction. With deep roots in Kintargo, Stelydznyzkys have fought in almost every major engagement in Chelaxian history, from the famed naval victory over Taldor at Odrapayan Pass to the doomed charge of the Plain of Torabreyn. While never having risen to the status of nobility, the Stelydznyzkys are landed, well-respected gentry with an old name in the city and a reputation to uphold in the eyes of the Imperial authorities.
Emmendonius is the youngest of Barkoliu Steledznyzky’s four children. His father has enjoyed an uneventful but honorable career in the 148th Cavalry Battalion of the Chelaxian Imperial Army; primarily a ceremonial posting as commanding officer of the honor guard to various Chelaxian nobles. Still, his dedication to honor and tradition did not fail his ancestors, and he raised his children for service to the Thrice-Damned Throne.

Childhood
While his two older brothers grew up ruddy, hale, and full of the sententious pride of a true Chelaxian, Emmendonius was different. A sickly, willful child, his parents feared he might be a changeling of some sorty, with his too-wide stare and endless questions. While his older brothers played at being Hellknights and only let little Emmen join in as a slave or villain, if at all, he soon found he took more pleasure when playing alone- arranging and rearranging stones, making mock fortresses in the woods, burning things just for the pleasure of the flame. As a teenager, he’d watch the shipwrights assembling great vessels in the dockyards, or go to the opera with his sister. Despite an aptitude for magery which manifested at an early age, his father considered such pursuits beneath the dignity of a Steledznyzky man, and forbade Emmen from pursuing studies at an arcane academy.

Emmen’s revenge was to torment his father by turning the home itself against him- subtly repositioning doorhandles, swapping the places of similar household things, even some low-grade booby traps designed to look like bad coincidences. He had a knack for putting the right elements in place to create a minor disaster that couldn’t ever be directly traced back to himself, and Barkoliu’s “bad luck” didn’t change until he agreed to invest in a rudimentary alchemical laboratory for Emmen, which he still possesses in greatly expanded form.

This was only the most severe of the uncounted skirmishes that characterized relations between Emmen and his father in his tumultuous boyhood. His dealings with his brother were little kinder, and only his sister Ateliestria- who went on to become a notable tastemaker in Kintargan opera- was able to understand the visions he saw in the world, and the cravings he felt to see them acted out in concrete reality.

Early adventures
As a young man, and last of his family to rise to that role, many long shadows were cast over Emmen’s life and career. His eldest brother was an honored and dreaded Hellknight of the Order of the Pyre, and the second-eldest a distinguished captain and hardened veteran of the Chelaxian Imperial Navy. Emmen was eminently unsuited for an officer’s commission, and after much finagling on the part of his father, received a relatively lowly instatement as a cavalry sergeant. After a few humiliating mishaps- Emmen did not care for horses, nor they for him- he applied, under his own authority, for a transfer to an artillerist’s unit. There he served as a lowly sergeant, learning how to create and use machines of war.

Siege engineering was to Emmen as natural as breathing. He had an uncanny and intuitive understanding of what made things hold together, and therefore, how to take them apart. The crews he served on were always the first to assemble their trebuchet, and their deadly payloads always seemed to strike home at the critical point of failure for any wall or fortification they might be arrayed against. In his spare time, he used his salary and whatever money his family provided to purchase books on any subject possible- history, natural philosophy, the arts mechanical, or the secrets of alchemy. He was beginning to see the patterns of the world more sharply now, and the fascinating eddies that made them change completely, and a powerful sense of inspired thought guiding him toward the truth.

He first saw true combat at the age of 27, when an Isgerian warlord with grand ambitions overwhelmed a border fort and garrisoned it with lawless bandits, threatening a Chelaxian trade route. His regiment was deployed to drive out the brigand, root and stem, and make an example of him to all who would think to challenge the might of Cheliax. Emmen was placed under the command of one Captain Opriomus Jarvis, a hapless and unfit scion of a Great House of Cheliax who received his commission in spite of a complete ignorance of military doctrine. Emmen’s unit was ordered to deploy in the midst of a boggy field in a low depression, in order to reserve more comfortable and defensible ground to the division’s cavalry. Emmen protested as loudly as one could to a Chelaxian imperial officer and expect to survive it, to no avail.

As Emmen feared, the Isgerian saw the vulnerability, and capitalized on it. A small team of raiders stealthily infiltrated their camp at night, using the low ridges of the depression for cover. By the time the artillery unit knew they were under attack, it was too late. The soft ground made running almost impossible, and detached as they were from the main body of the regiment, they had no choice but to stand and fight.

It was brutal, bloody up-close fighting in the dark. The artillery crews fell like flies at first, before rallying with their backs to the erected war machines to prevent being taken from behind. Still, they were losing three of their own to every one of the attackers every minute. Emmen killed his first man that night, putting a crossbow bolt through the throat of a raider from close enough to have his face spattered with blood, and realized they were doomed without help from the cavalry, who had no idea yet what was happening in the camp.
Thinking desperately and searching for a plan, Emmen noticed something the made him pause. The raider he’d killed had a rare object in his belt- a pistol, and a horn filled with “black powder”. Emmen was familiar with the device only in theoretical terms, and had never handled one before. But he knew what black powder could do, and with the supply he’d taken from the raider he ignited the largest of the rock-throwers in the unit.

Within moments, the structure was engulfed in flame, and shedding a searing light on the camouflaged raiders, while also alerting the whole regiment that something wasn’t right. Emmen and a few survivors held out beside the flames, using the collapsing siege engine as a weapon of a different kind entirely- forcing the raiders into the path of billowing smoke and falling debris. They survived long enough for the light cavalry’s arrival to turn the slaughter around.

The next morning, when the main battle commenced, the artillery crews had been decimated. The fortifications of the enemy were still whole and sound when the first assault began, and while Cheliax won the day eventually, it was an uphill battle that cost many more lives than it needed to. Still galled over Emmen’s insubordinate behavior before, he charged him with willfully negligent attention to security, and ordered a 20-lash flogging as punishment. Emmen still has the scars on his back.
He emerged from that battle a different man, in more than one respect. A hopeless slaughter had taken place, all because men raised up by birth and a blind law could not roust themselves from their faith in their own entitlement and immunity from the unexpected. Jolting him out of his fantasies of proving his worth to the crown, his unexamined loyalty to Cheliax shattered overnight. A new design began to knit itself together in his mind- one woven of threads of cunning, inspiration, and above all: audacity! “Never again to be played as a pawn”, he swore to himself; and to this vow, he has never been untrue.

Beyond these rarefied epiphanies, there were others of a more base nature. The power of black powder had always fascinated Emmen from afar- now he had one an alchemical killing machines dropped right in his lap. Emmen tucked this find beneath his cloak, knowing full well to be found out risked execution (or worse)- a tactical blunder was one thing, theft from the Majestrix was another entirely. He was fully beyond the pale, now, but free of regret. A new horizon had unfolded before him, and he could no longer turn back from pursuing it, come what may.

He resigned from the army soon after, and following a period of wandering over a year or two, found himself a posting as a lay adjunct to the Citadel of Rivad of the Hellknight Order of the Rack. There he worked, patiently but tirelessly transcribing seditious texts, unauthorized research, fouling up raids and arrests with contrived accidents, and hampering the Order’s operation from within. Meanwhile, he took opportunities to practice his marksmanship in a disused dungeon of the Citadel, making his own black powder and working to the point he could take a rat on the run down in no more than 2 shots almost every time.
A few years passed in this way, before an uncannily perceptive inquisitor by the name of Vellimexius Ethriou came dangerously close to revealing Emmen’s blasphemous library. He resigned his post under a cloud of not-quite-damning suspicion, and for the first time in almost a decade, returned to his home of Kintargo.

Recent Events
With his father since passed, his mother declined into dotage, and of his siblings only his sister Ateliestria- now a formidable woman in her own right- residing in the city, Emmen has resumed his place in his ancestral home. Things are different now, though- there is a different smell in the air, the smell of flames and blood and something altogether new. He has a vision for the future; one of a Kintargo free of the Empire’s reach, and free to take strange new forms, whatever they might be.

To that end, he has prepared himself a sort of spider's lair from which to act- a hidden facility built into a secluded corner of his familial estate's grounds. A slab of rock, seemingly lain in place for centuries against a low hillside, revolves with a good shove on the right spot, and reveals a passage into an underground construction housing a workshop and laboratory, as well as a library where Emmen's copies of the forbidden texts he rescued while serving at Citadel Rivad are kept. The only sign of the ingeniously concealed site from the outside is a small aperture in the boulders above which occasionally leak smoke and other fumes from the natural chimney they contain.

Emmen believes now is the time for bold action, a thoroughly-planned and flawlessly executed masterstroke against the rotten and failing order of Imperial Cheliax. He sees in the nascent rebellion not a righteous cause, but simply the best available vehicle for the next turning of History’s wheel; and no matter what else might pass, he has every intention of remaining atop that wheel. Devils take the hindmost!