acostrob

Aranur was born to a family of merchants in the kingdom of Renelia, back on Atlas, before the migration to Arcas. Ever since his birth, he was always bored with trading, which was his family’s business. He preferred swordfighting, or travelling the lands in search of adventures and money. His uncle – Balthen Viraeus, an old elf, so old in fact that he remembers the Imperial invasion of Malinor. He chose to be a hunter, as he too, was bored with Aranur’s family business, and was angry at them for forcing the boy to become a merchant, even though he told them countless times that he doesn’t want that.

When he was 100 years old, already working as a merchant for his family, he was very displeased about his situation, and would do anything to get himself out of there, and he would have a chance soon...

One day, Balthen came to pay a visit to the young elf,  and while they were talking, the conversation came to Aranur’s feelings about the job.

They decided to make a plan of escape for Aranur, Balthen would hire a mercenary band and disguise them as bandits, so the family wouldn’t realise that they were hired sellswords, and send them to “kidnap” Aranur, and when they escape with the elf, they’d set him loose.

There was a lot more planning to do, as the stronghold of the Rilis family was heavily guarded, and Aranur’s uncle didn’t have the money to hire enough mercs, and buy the disguises.

Aranur also had some tailoring experience, as it was pretty much the only thing, besides reading, he could do in his free time, so secretly, he sewed the disguises himself.

Balthen didn’t visit much, as he was fully focused on earning enough money for hiring the company of mercenaries, but when he did, Aranur always gave him half of his paycheck, to make his uncle’s work at least a bit easier, but it still took a really long time for a single elf to earn enough money for a skilled company of sellswords.

When Aranur turned two hundred years old, his uncle came again, extremely excited, bearing good news.

He had made enough money to buy a company of battle-hardened, strong mercenaries. Of course, Balthen wouldn’t leave anything to chance, so he told Aranur to make one more disguise for him, and decided to join the mercenaries during their assault, so he could make sure everything went according to plan.

2 months later, the mercenary company was on standby, waiting for Aranur to have a chance to smuggle the disguises outside of the stronghold.

When he did, he also gave one of the mercenaries who was waiting to take the disguises from him a letter and a map.

The letter detailed the hours at which guards change shifts, and the map was a layout of the entire stronghold, including two secret exits, allowing the mercenaries to take a stealthy approach instead of a siege.

Then came the day of the operation, at evening, when the guards changed shifts, two small groups of disguised mercenaries entered the manor through the secret exits, while the rest hid outside the walls as backup, in case anything went wrong.  

The mercenaries moved silently through the enormous building, looking for Aranur, when one of the guards spotted them, and managed to raise the alarm before being shot in the head by one of the mercenaries.

The backup team quickly broke down the stronghold’s gate, and charged in, trying to make a distraction while the other two teams make a run for it. Aranur, hearing the alarm, already knew what was going on, and ran as quick as he could towards one of the hidden exits, so he could meet up with the mercenaries. He managed to escape, but a lot of the mercenaries died, and their captain demanded a compensation, but neither Aranur nor his uncle had any money left, so they beat up Balthen so bad he fell unconcious, and kidnapped Aranur to later sell him into slavery.

After spending 195 years as a slave, Aranur learnt a few tricks from the other slaves, for example how to effectively defend himself with a sword. He also heard that his uncle had actually survived, and was looking for his nephew the whole time, and it filled him with hope of one day meeting his family for the last time, just to say goodbye, he did hate them, but they were his family after all, and respecting your family is the highest value of any Dark Elf.

Two years later, Balthen actually came. He silently freed all the other slaves to create a distraction, and freed Aranur.

They both escaped safely, and made their way back to the Rilis family stronghold.

But once they got there, what was once a majestic, heavily defensible fort, was now a burned ruin. As they learned, shortly after the mercenary operation, an actual heist happened, while the guards were still in disarray, with most of them dead, and the front gate destroyed.

The heisters took what they could, murdered the family in cold blood, and burned the place down. Strangely, Aranur’s old robes remained, almost untouched. He decided to wear them with pride, to honor his Ancestors, as every Dark Elf should.

Aranur stayed with his uncle for a couple of months, to perfect his swordfighting skills and learn a few things about hunting and survival, and then moved on, to start life anew in Arcas, while his uncle decided to stay on Atlas, alongside the spirits of his own Ancestors.