“So this is how if feels.”
“This is how it feels to be you; to lose a daughter, to be a god.”
“When I was a child, an orphan on the streets of Aspenthar and, later, Merab, the alchemists to whom I was ‘apprenticed’ frequently drained my blood, thinking to discover some arcane secrets from its elemental nature. As an adult, I joined the Water Lords who destroyed a caravan I was hired to guard. They introduced me to the divs of Thuvia’s deep deserts. They proved the alchemists to have been fundamentally correct.
The divs drained my blood far more completely than had ever been done before, wrenching every last drop from my flesh and sustaining my life artificially while they twisted the vital liquid, altering it with their corruption and unlocking potential I’d never known existed. This was the first spark that would ignite my burning obsession for greater power which grew to a consuming blaze, matched only by the inferno of my love for Ireth.
My desires brought me to seek more and more from the divs and eventually from Ahriman himself. In the end I sought mastery of the divine as well as the arcane. I wanted to bend space and time and the elements and all of reality to my will!"
“So I bargained to make myself Ahriman’s third herald.
Already the tribe’s khan and known as the Mogh of the Deep Deserts for my association with Ahriman’s minions, I took upon myself the title of The Unomened and promised the Lord of the Divs my firstborn’s soul. Little did I know how prophetic that title would prove."
“She was nearly four when I performed the ritual, did you know that? Though we ifrit mature more slowly than you with your short lives, Sameena wa already walking and speaking simple phrases. She was no mere mewling newborn, but in my quest for eldritch might, I barely gave it a second thought when I sold her to the Prince of the House of Oblivion. Had her mother not intervened, much would have been different.
Now, though, I wonder if even that was not also Ahriman’s doing? It may be that the deal would not have been really complete if I did not truly understand what I would be sacrificing. I know that Thundaralon acts alone and is not subject to the Oblivion Prince’s will… I think… but I feel, at least in part, as though this all falls in line with His plans, for me and for the world and the planes beyond."
“With the pact broken, I was a hunted man. I was forced to give up not just my ambitions, but all that I had achieved and all I held. It was more for Ireth’s sake and memory than for Sammena’s that I took my daughter with me. I raised her as well as I could and kept her safe, but I was purposeless and wandering in the desert.
At long last we settled in Passhow, my favorite of Thuvia’s city-states. I found my interest sparked when revolution presented opportunity for wealth in burgeoning countries the world over and worked through agents to build the trade routes that would make me rich, but soon even that passion waned and I retired myself to a partnership in a small shop in Passhow. Decades after fleeing the divs, I at least renewed my studies into the arcane. Never in that tower was my fascination with power what it once was, however.
When Sameena was invited to travel to Qadira, I followed her, both to protect her and in an attempt to rekindle a mercantile interest. I thought myself lucky to perhaps have a chance to meet the Satrap face to face and expand my influence and trade into the empire to the east. Do you realize how rare such an opportunity is? The only single comprable event since Earthfall was the death of Aroden and the chaos that ensued fromt he collapse of Cheliax’s holdings, which I used to first build my network of ships and caravans. To be able to expand like that twice in one lifetime, even one as long as mine, has never occurred in all history!
Instead, we were set on the road of events that has led us… here."
“When we were first attacked by the genasi, I was… exhilerated. When they poured through those portals at the fissure, I was laughing. Even when Lai Xin sacrificed himself to cover our escape, I was delighted. This whole time I have been thrilled to again be bathed in blood and glory and triumph, to feel the elemental power surge through my veins, and to call out words the divs taught me to remake the world to my whims. I had not battled more than a scorpion since Sameena and I fled into that desert night. I had not fought in nearly forty years. It was joyous. I had passion again, and with it, a renewed lust for power such as I had not felt in decades!
That is why I helped to reactivate the Firtinaryan and worked to learn it’s functions. That is why I wanted to take into myself the nanites you received from the Unconnected, along with the knowledge and abilities they grant. That is why I bargained with Galantendrix’s lackey for the wizard to warp me much as the divs had done, though that never did come to fruition. That is why I sought to understand how that traveler passed through time to warn us of the future, why I was frustrated to learn that I was little more than an afterthought to only one of several potential groups in the prophecy we, Galantendrix, and that secret order work to fulfill, even why I seek to learn about these rifts even as we strive to close them and drive back the threat to our very existence.
We have traveled to Qadira, my homeland of Thuvia, Cheliax, Numeria, Belkzen, Sargava, and even Tian, other worlds, and other dimensions these rifts open on to. In each place I have sought to increase my own strength and influence. You fight to better your race, Rakkis fights for the glory and the legends, Roak fought because he was called by prophecy, and Lai Xin fought to save the world. I fight only for my own ends. And I taught Sameena to do the same."
“It took time, but I convinced myself that I was fighting to protect Sameena. Even after I gave up on the idea that I was working to save Golarion, when the few surviving gods told me that I was an addendum to the things Rakkis and Sameena were destined for, I was there to watch over my daughter. I went so far as to help her towards her own ambitions of divinity, believing that I had given of myself to aid her, but truly knowing I worked for my own ends and to share in her station should she achieve it.”
“You must understand. This is not to say I did not, do not still, care for her. I see the look in your eyes, but for much of my life she has been my sole reason for all I have done, at least consciously. Now she is gone, her soul held in suspension until the prophecy is completed… and I FEEL. I feel loss, desperation, and despair. I burn with hatred and a need for vengeance. I feel emptiness and oblivion such as I have not felt since her mother died to save her.
But the worst part…
Now my bargain with Ahriman is FULLFILLED!"
