Isaac's page

A foul-tasting concoction of beetle secretions. When drunk, your skin darkens and glosses over into chitin. Antennae sprout from the forehead. Drinker gains 60 ft darkvision and gains a +2 AC bonus (counted as natural armor). 12-hour duration.

Isaac was raised in Ashbough, a small town built on Yggdrasil. His parents were a settled pair of adventurers, tired of the pointless fights and struggles throughout the Planes (though they never quite lost their wanderlust, which may explain settling down on the World Ash). Young Isaac had a happy childhood and was well-liked, though he developed a wry sense of humor and biting sarcasm, seemingly out of nowhere. Though he had a lot of friends in Ashbough, his favorite person was a friend of his parents': an old human named Fernbeard. Fernbeard was something like a priest of Yggdrasil and an ardent member of the Godsmen. Isaac would sit for hours, listening to Fernbeard's long, rambling stories about the Planes, his wanderings, stories he had heard, past lives that he believes he had. To this day, Isaac doesn't find enough devotion to worship a Power, but he holds a special reverence for the World Ash and can understand the language of the ratatosk (in fact, he believes that he was a ratatosk in another life, though it should be said that it's a very old, tired joke of his that he can almost remember being almost anything).

It was around puberty that Isaac started dreaming of what he may once have been. Isaac recalls being a hopping mouse in a desert, startled by the cry of an owl and waiting, tense, for the cry of another small mammal in the dark to signal the predator's passing. He recalls the razor barbs of the predator's talons in his mouse body as he is lifted away and devoured. What did he feel? A certain annoyed resignation. "Ah, great,"the mouse probably thought,"this is just perfect. Right at the start of breeding season and I couldn't even get a good poke in. Life sucks and then you die."

Isaac recalls being Isaac on his eighteenth year. He's leaving Ashbough to work with the Sirroc'ran Tiraith ("The Razor Wind") an elven/aasimar group of mercenaries and adventurers. On his first job with the team (recovering a manuscript from an old tomb for some rich Guvner) he almost dies to a mob of skeletons and zombies. The rotting flesh, the moans created not by a tortured soul but gas escaping bloated intestines to release a noxious reek, the grinning skulls that leer even as they chop into you with their rusty hatches and scimitars. Isaac recalls a serious hatred for the undead after that day.

But he kept with the job, took a short sabbatical to work the forges at the Great Foundry and work his way into the Godsmen's ranks ("Aye, a vacation sweating rivers into a forge while a foreman cusses you out in a language you don't understand. Ain't life grand? At least the philosophy's good and the work songs are decent enough."). Even met a nice ladyfriend: a tiefling named Alissa, a warrior with the Sensates. For a couple of years, things were great: do a job, come back and spend time with his lady if she were also around ("You know, she had a foul mouth like no one I've ever met? I'd set her off and she'd lay into me like nothing else, flay the skin right off my back. I could keep up for a little while, but she was an expert. Ah, sweet sweet domestic bliss."), trade stories, meet some interesting folk, go on another job, repeat. Things started getting serious: Isaac made a set of iron rings at the Foundry and they each took one, so they would always have a reminder on their finger that the other was out there, somewhere, waiting to be reunited.

Isaac recalls being Isaac when he was very, very happy.

But it never lasts, does it? It was one day on a recovery mission in Acheron ("Berks are always losing things in battlefields or coveting things in tombs and thank the Source because we'd all be broke otherwise!") looking for some war horn or other dropped on one of the huge battlefields that things went seriously south. Goblins and Bladelings and Bugbears ambushed the team, took most of them as slaves. For a good eight months of hell, Isaac worked in goblin warrens, polishing and repairing war machines and reforging snapped blades. With the distance of time, he can realize that this was just a tempering period where he was hardened for the future. But at the time, it was outright misery.

Isaac recalled being a Swallow and flying free. He dreamed as a bird and gazed at his iron ring and thought of the fiend-blooded woman that wore its twin. Was she thinking of him? Did she think he was dead? Isaac had to get out, preferably with as many of his allies as possible (some survived, others were not so lucky or hardy). During a raid by a rival tribe or whatever of Bladelings, Isaac broke his chains and drove a piece of shrapel through his overseer's throat. With tools from the forge, he released a lot of the other slaves and sabotaged a few machines. Like the hopping mouse, he snuck through the tunnels in the great iron cube and found as many of his allies as he could, including the priest that knew the way to a portal back to Sigil. The key? A simple iron ring.

A lot changes on the Planes in eight months. The Razor Wind had given them all up for lost. Isaac was pretty direct about how he felt about that. He got his back pay and burned his bridges with the Sirroc'ran Tirraith. He looked for Alissa where she usually spent time, rattled his bone box to a few of her friends, tried to get the Chant. But she was Out of Touch or Out of Town or, maybe, Penned in the Dead Book. No one really knew the Dark of it: one day she was there, the next she was gone.

Isaac recalls being Isaac and hating himself for even asking, though he just had to know: Was she with another man? Her friends that liked Isaac tried to say no, but her friends that didn't like Isaac were more than happy to say that, yes, they had seen her with a new man here and there. Possibly a few different ones.

Isaac recalls being Isaac when his heart was broken and wondering: "What must I have done in my last life to deserve this?"

His kip was turned out, his lady was gone and he didn't have a company to work for. He looked up some friends, got drunk and picked himself up. ("Hey, there's another life after this, right? And I want to make the best of this one so that I can get a decent one when it comes around. I'm thinking... Personal Man-toy of Sharess? Aiming too high? Aiming too low?") Isaac went back to the Great Foundry and started earning enough money to get on his feet, sleeping in one of the supply sheds and making his own weapons when he could scrounge some materials. He amassed a new store of equipment (though he kept the crowbar from Acheron that he used to sabotage a few goblin war engines; mostly for sentimental reasons) and started hunting for some more mercenary work. He's mostly back to his normal wry, sarcastic self but there's a sorrow behind it. Sometimes he stares for a long time at the iron band on his finger and when he does this Isaac may well be living a whole different life.