and to everyone else, come to think of it. i am ultra nervous about posting this, and am slamming a big WARNING on it - do not read this if you in any way ill-disposed to non-redeemed sarevoks. seriously. zan doesn't want hatred
this quiz theme got me thinking (good topic!), and as sarevok is up there with irenicus as one of my favourite BG characters, i was bound to write about him somewhere. this is the result. a ToB Sarevok, and his thoughts on the (good and righteous) PC who seeks to redeem him.
as for the backstory...i've taken the BG1 stance, mixed with a little of ToB, and a hefty dose of sarevok's own conclusions. above all, remember sarevok is a flawed narrator at best
i would love criticism on this one - strong as you like (and i mean that!)
and if you get bored, play "spot the gratuitous shakespeare reference"
(edited for spellings, and other silly mistakes)
What The Thunder Said
I have walked with you for over a month now, lain my blade at your command, tolerated these fools that surround you...and still you press me for revelations. It bores me more than I can say.
Shall I tell you a story, whilst we walk? Whilst we march on, towards the destiny you claim not to seek? A destiny that was mine by rights, till you wrenched it from my dead fingers on the floor of the Duchal Palace?
Very well.
Once upon a time, there was a small boy, with dreadlocks in his hair and golden spite in his eyes. No-one knew how he came to live on the streets of Sembia, but live there he did - till the day a businessman plucked him from the wild throng of street children, for no other reason than his wife wished it so. But the businessman and his wife were cruel and evil tyrants, who ruled their house with fists of steel; heaped scorn upon each other's name; terrorised their frightened staff; beat the little boy every day and sent him to bed without any supper...
Is that what you wish to hear? Is it? Some epic tale of tragedy, wrought from tears of silver and gold? At last, you think, an explanation...a reason behind the facade of madness and the murder, the pivot for the fragile house of cards. The moment when the curtain falls, and the demon of fire turns out to be merely a man with a painted face. That must be the reason why he was so! And so the blood is swiftly wiped away, the corpses are stashed beneath the stairwell - and the murderer is reborn a man, with a heart if not of gold, then at least of tarnished bronze.
Do not make me laugh.
The businessman was only as cold as his profession, finding love in numbers and the smell of old gold coins. He was not always that way, so my mother used to tell me, and I certainly knew brief moments of his kindness in my youth. The occasional ruffle of my hair; kind words after waking from a nightmare; brand new toys of clockwork and tin, that made the other children of the Yhann merchants desperate in their envy. And if those moments grew less frequent with time, what of it? Many children are neglected by their parents. Many children do not attempt to conquer the Coast.
My father was remarkable only for two things: his murder of my mother, and his sheer banality. Even the former was, by Sembian standards, not especially noteworthy; the assassin he hired for the deed was often used for such affairs. And since he shared the latter with most of the population of the Realms, it seems somewhat unfair to condemn him for it. His world could be constructed on the face of one gold coin alone; just as my mother's could be contained in the bud of one lover's rose, or your father's in the page of one dusty spellbook. Even you, in your youth, were bounded, your universe stretching only as far as the stone walls of your precious Candlekeep. And so on and so on, for every single caged soul in the Realms. Which of them bothered to look beyond their confines, to scale their walls and break them down to see the wide horizon?
None of them, of course. Neither did you.
And now you bid me rebuild those walls, in the name of something you call redemption. It is a word spoken almost carelessly, as if it were something one simply fell into, something that was as inevitable as the rise and fall of the sun. Redemption, however, implies a more desirable state to which to return; a condition to which one can point from the darkened valleys, and label a peak. I see nothing desirable in narrow-mindedness, and I was never made for salvation - especially one that is, if truth be told, a sin of its own.
You would break me, and shape me, and build me anew. Carve an idol in your image; the mould of the epic hero, adored from Amn to Kozakura. Beloved of housewives; saver of pets; giver of lollipops to small children. Pathetic. You would have me climb a stairway of sins to reach my salvation, when in truth I already look down on you from the sky, and wonder at your idiocy. In truth, I stand far higher than you can even see, simply because I do not lie to myself with every breath I take. I have stared the domain of our mutual father in the face, fallen into its jaws, and clawed my way back from its embrace. I, at least, I am honest with myself. You are a liar, and nothing more.
And this destiny that you pretend to detest is the greatest lie of all, both in your reaction to it and its unreality. There is no such fate for us. There are no pathways scribed in stone, no divine es muss sein...no shining streams and rivers mapped out for the children of a long-dead god. You are a fool to think it otherwise - but then I suppose it suits you, to imagine yourself being dragged this path, as opposed to striding its length and crushing all opposition beneath your feet. Oh, you cry, but I did not mean it! It was my destiny!
Destiny too, is a misused word.
Alaundo's prophecies spoke only of chaos, not of rankings or one rising higher than all others. The tune has changed now, of course. Solar, speaking for the gods, has insisted that you are the rightful heir to our dead father's throne - but did it ever occur to you, it might be in their best interests that this be so? You, a hero, born of insufferable goodness, are infinitely preferable to a twisted Bhaal priestess...or to a man who sought to ascend long before you even knew the possibility existed. You will be easy to mould. And yes, they will refashion you, even as you, distracted, attempt to transform me. I wonder who will be the more successful, hmm?
I suppose you do not know of the time before my rise on the Coast. You would not know the man on whom you so easily pass your judgement, only the golem of steel into which he carved his flesh. You, happy in ignorance, label my ambitions as the ravings of a madman - when in truth I was the most sane I ever have been in my life. Certainly more sane than when I was scrabbling my way up the fire-crafted walls of the Abyss, or slicing through tanar'ri and baatezu with a sword hewn from human bone.
Allow me to enlighten you. I came to suspect the truth of my lineage long before you had ever heard Bhaal's name spoken. From the age of fifteen, my dreams were scribed in blood, echoing with the promises of what I might become. I cut down any and all who had ever sought to slander me; walked through scarlet battlefields where corpses were piled high; and, in a vision of truly poetic justice, took a garrotte to my father's throat. I dreamt symphonies of murder that rolled like tides of blood, and whose notes broke my soul free of its waking cage, so it too might soar. You have dreamt much the same, I know, in tone if not in detail, but I am sure you do not recognise them for the masterpieces they are. To you, they are nightmares; to me, they were an affirmation.
Sembia was a dull land. A nation of cutthroat mercantilism, based purely in the material words of profit and loss. Certainly, its people were more to my liking than the flabby, idle nobility of Cormyr - but that is hardly saying a great deal, and I found the culture of trade stifling. I had always known myself to be more than that I was; more than the flawed mortal whom others, equally bounded, would have had me be. Where their spirits were built of ash and glowing embers, mine blazed and raged like a pyre. And yet the child was trapped in a petty land of commerce, where fathers loved only money, and mothers loved only the attention they so desperately craved.
But, I digress. The dreams. They simply provided more proof of what I had long suspected - and, in the end, a form of explanation. My sight was haunted by a symbol; an ivory skull ringed by tears of blood, whose eyes glowed with a golden light so fierce, it seared the eyes to look upon. And in every tear, I saw a different scene: a man with his throat slit, bleeding to death in a Waterdeep alleyway; a caravan of merchants, slaughtered in their sleep by a party of bandits; a war between two nations, crystallised in a twisted mess of fire and steel. Every minute portrait a perfect example of our dead father's domain, sending my own blood coursing like lightning through my veins.
And, armed with this image, I eventually found the information I sought. A book of the gods, one of the many unread tomes lining the walls of my father's study, there more for effect than for edification. But, whilst my father was too preoccupied with his own literature of accounts and numbers, educate me this book did. A page topped with the emblem I had seen in my dreams, detailing the reign of the once Lord of Murder, and his untimely death in the recent Time of Troubles. The author, somewhat biased, treated this as a cause for celebration, albeit tempered with regret at Cyrric's adoption of Bhaal's former domain. But at the bottom, printed neatly in italics, almost as an afterthought, was one quotation. The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his death he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown from their passage.
Alaundo's words. I knew enough of his prophecies even then, and would come to know more than I cared to in the months I spent roaming Sembia's libraries. I had always distrusted prophets, reserving a mild contempt for those who would act as mouthpieces for others. And it had always seemed to me that seers delivered obscurities alone; the interpretation, as ever, belonged only to the listener. They speak, or write, or chant, leaving the witnesses to understand as they choose, and generations of scholars to bicker endlessly over their words. Alaundo, though, was of a different breed. He truly saw what others did not, albeit it in a frustratingly cryptic form. But his prophecies had proven accurate in the past, and few had been as explicit as this.
And with that, my plans began in earnest. I hunted down a former priest of Bhaal, hiding in the Thunderpeaks range north of the Daerlun. It took many months to find him, and with the passing of his master his mind had retreated into madness; yet still he had his moments of lucidity, instants when he seemed almost to channel the remnants of his former god's power. A living prophet, no matter how unstable, is of far greater worth than one long since dead - and the priest Veladin was even more than a prophet in some ways. His belief defined him, made him a vessel for his master's will - rather a waste, given the circumstances, but most useful to my purpose. He taught me much of my true father, and bid me travel to the Sword Coast; to Candlekeep, the library fortress where I might learn even more.
The story is now, I am sure, familiar to you. I journeyed south, under the pretence of following my foster father - and Cythandria, my dreaming Pythia, followed me in turn. The rest has been told too often, in every tawdry tavern from Beregost to Waterdeep. It is a tale I have grown tired of.
And its epilogue? A would-be conqueror, fallen from the sky, dead on the floor of his throne room, struck down by his sibling's hand. You did me wrong, to take me out of the grave. Not because I do not wish to live, to breathe, to kill...but because I am now obliged to you. I carry part of your intolerable morality inside of me, rotten like a tumour, when in truth I would have clawed my own way back, in time. I would have climbed the walls once more, lurched forward from the earth's embrace, stood tall and proclaimed "I am risen". Instead, I found myself dragged up the cliffs by your ropes, pulled back to a weakened body in a world I was not yet ready to face. It took a fragment of your essence to make me whole, and I will carry it with me until my second death.
And I still wonder why you offered to me to begin with. You asked for no vow of allegiance, no guarantee of loyalty save my word. It is hardly worth much. I have lied before, and betrayed countless allies in pursuit of some greater goal. It is the way of things, for though we must be honest with ourselves, honesty with others is an overrated commodity. Even you could not claim your words are always true - and who is to decide if one lie is worse than another? There is only truth, and falsehood; the shades of grey are worthless.
I suspect I know the reason for your unqualified boon. Moral superiority. You can smile down upon me like a benevolent god, smug in the knowledge that you - yes, you, a child of Bhaal himself - showed mercy and honour beyond all expectation. You were wronged, and did suffer, and did forgive your tormenter as would a saint...and thus I am living proof of your philanthropy. It makes me sick to think of it, but I know it to be the truth. You, for all your noble principles, are a self-righteous hypocrite.
And here I stand, indebted to you for what semblance of life I have left. I could walk away today, tomorrow...murder you in your sleep as I left, even. But I do not. My interests in this matter run far too deep - and, having failed to win power on my own terms, I can only try to gain what I can under yours. The fallen idol walks in the demi-god's footsteps, dead fingers grasping what meagre boons they can. It is by no means an uneven relationship, though. You need me as I need you. We are reflections of each other. As one lifts their hand to the mirror's surface, so the other responds in reverse, and it is impossible to remove the parts from the whole; no matter how hard one tries, the coin remains a coin, and its two sides are just the same. We are fire ad ice, thesis and antithesis, light and dark. If you take one half away, the other becomes meaningless.
It disgusts me. I, the titan, the man who brought the Sword Coast to its knees, am tied to you by bonds greater than any of blood. I can only define myself in terms of you - your sibling, your victim, your one-time persecutor, your victory and your failure. And you, my confessor and oppressor rolled into one, treat me now as an irrelevance.
I was your life once, and your death. I tore your fragile world apart - a nightmare of barbed steel that would revisit you for months on end. But time shrank my place in your memory, my status superseded by a faceless fallen prince and his twisted vampire sister. The seasons rolled by, above and below - and now I am as insignificant to you as the dust you trail in your wake, on your relentless rise to the throne I only saw in my dreams. I look up, and find our roles reversed...victim turned to victor, idol to unwilling disciple.
You are everything to me, from now until eternity - and I despise you for it.
