Xaephon Ateus was born on a dark moonless night that the people of Riversbend would not forget for a very long time. People said strange beasts roamed the streets that night and many a soul awoke the following morning to find their belongings rearranged as if by the hands of adolescent pranksters, while others merely found treasure belongs missing. But none could compare their discontent to that of the Ateus’s, whom found their new born pulled from his mother’s arms and replaced a sculpted log of an infant, its wooden face mockingly smiling in an insane grin.
It took many months for the young couple to discover the fate of their lost child but the adversity brought them together an soon they where on the path of Ateus. (Which was the name they had decided upon for their son in abstentia).With the help Magremnar’s divinations, an errant priest, they discovered fey raiders from another realm had abducted their precious son.
Armed with his god give knowledge the following new moon Magremar crossed the boundary between worlds in a cunning reversal of what the fey had done a year prior and just before the first light of the sun crept over the purple morning hills he returned threw the simmering gate with a figure in tow.
The were aghast, the man who Magremnar had brought back was nearly half their own age! Instead of a tottering infant a short adolescent with dark perceptive eyes and visible frighten bearing followed the towering cleric. Apparently time flowed differently in the faerie realm.
Despite their shock the Ateus’s were warm caring parents, the did there very best to make comfortable their alter child. Which for the terrified youth was much needed. For while he had escaped it seemed a fraction of the mysterious otherworldliness had accompanied him. From strange haunting dreams, to phantasmal animal and entities others could not perceive. Xaephon lived in a world wrestling between reality and fantasy and from him the boundary was all too indistinct.
Unfortunately Magremnar’s services did not come cheaply for the towering cleric was a servant of the maimed god of secrets, Vecna. And his price had been the Atues’s cooperation in providing the dark priesthood with dangerous and damning secrets.
As Xaephon aged and came to trust and cherish his family the realised just how much of a sacrifice and burden this pact was upon their noble souls. And it was his fault.One night he could stand it no longer either he would find away to break Megremnar’s hold or he would die in the attempt. Far to wise to attack the powerful man head on, he would bide his time, fate would provide him the tool or barring that surely he could find stout enough friends and one day return to shatter the prying clerics malignant grasp….
