Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Dossier: Trian Arkwood
Age: 25
Hair: Yellow
Eyes: Brown
Hometown: Waterdeep
Weapon of Choice: Large Waterdavian Mark II Crossbow
Status: Deceased

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Dossier: Kristof Arkwood
Age: 30
Hair: Yellow
Eyes: Brown
Hometown: Daggerford
Weapon of Choice: Cormyrian Steel, Masterwork Long Sword
Status: Deceased
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Prologue

"Can't choose the cards you're dealt, just how you play the hand" -Trian.

They are nothing alike, their father told the abbot on his deathbed. Kristof will be strong for his country but Trian doesn't have a trade Abbot, he told him. The Abbot bobbed his head in nods as the other monks prepared the man for his anticipated death. The cleric with them said he had seen shipsmen like Ronald Arkwood die all the time to the disease, and the depression lingers even beyond death, should they be so unlucky. Ronald's skin was yellow, and his teeth had been falling out for eight weeks. When he pressed on his skin, blood would seep through his arms and legs like a sponge. Yes, we see it all the time, the cleric said to the abbot, and at this stage, it is beyond my capabilities, he should have been treated in Waterdeep, he told him.
It could have been stopped had he ate a tangerine. Ronald Arkwood died in the Abbey, where he was born.

The Present

Trian walked, and talked like a stranger. In his arms, he carried the crossbow from his life before, back in Waterdeep. At his belt was Kristof's sword.
He boarded in Baldur's Gate for a few days as the trail on the man with the black sun tattoo had finally gone cold. Doubt and worry caused him to sink in the streets. He is either here, or further south, Trian told himself. All the right directions lead him so far, honestly. And he had got a good look at him just once. Black hair, long beyond his lips, and that damn tattoo. He could be anyone though, any damn peasant, mage, or rube with new clothes and a disguise. But that tattoo would burn into Trian's mind like a cancer baking in a dying man's chest.

Trian was not dying, in fact, he felt more alive these days than his lounging time, playing on every trade he could get a hand at. Gaining a whole deck of cards worth of skills, and not one exceedingly more interesting to him than the other. Yet, hardly a renaissance man after all that. Perhaps, a mangy (fun person), and an old hand when it came to stealing, or springing a trap. Out here, he was an unfamiliar, even, exotic. He felt like an adventurer...

All the knightly qualities had been left with Kristof. Who would become a knight himself as Trian had told travelers. Chivalrous character, and twice as charming, Kristof had become the knight of the pair, that they both dreamed about as children growing outside the abbey.

Trian felt alive out here too, because in the lurid moments of night, and in certain circumstances, he would sometimes see Kristof's ghost, taunting him to continue to search for the man who killed his brother. The black sun.

Prologue

Kristof took his father's home, there, outside of Daggerford, near the abbey.
His conscription as a knight led him to travel by mule most mornings and nights, on the long road to Waterdeep where he trained. The road could have been more of a test for him than the actual work in the city. When a comrade asked him why he would not move into Waterdeep, he simply replied, I come to Waterdeep to be alone, not to live.

It was said the monks of the abbey were for Lathander. It was said, that they were closely involved with the community and only paid their services to those they knew well, to the family's that have known them better. Strangers and vagabonds they would feed, let stay the night, but send them on their way with no greater enlightenment, no bag of answers, no blame. Kristof spent his evenings with the monks for supper, when he may be too tired to cook, and never did he take a wife to prepare a meal for him on his return. So in some sense, he felt the monks were his only living family, save for his brother, who he never saw.

The last time Trian and Kristof met, it was in Waterdeep in one of the Calimshani restaurants in Virgin's Square. The encounter was an hour of some brief words, washed away from memory by the tide of some summer's ale. How are you holding up in the city?... Good..Good... What about that girl you were seeing?... Oh no? Too bad Trian.... No, I'm not seeing anyone.... Well, we should meet again like this. Take care of yourself.

Prologue

Trian stood over the murdered corpse of his brother, Kristof. It was not a death one would like to remember. Before he was strangled, barbed thread was tightened around his eye sockets, blinding him, and making his tears run red. His hands were bound behind his back, and he hung above his father's fireplace mantle, from the crook of the deer's antlers that Trian and his father shot when Trian was twelve. Then he was strangled to death, from this height. Left, with no name to tie his murder too, but the archaic symbol of a black sun, charred into the wall of the fireplace. Trian however, saw that man flee: Long black hair, and the same marking on his forearm, and he gave him chase. His brother would be the catapult which would lead him to vengeance, on every road, on every passing caravan, he stopped and scrutinized for clues.

It lead him through Daggerford, through Waterdeep, for some months, then south, as far as Baldur's Gate, where that trail which he once followed was snuffed by the broad horizon of gleaming hills and valley, sea, and desert beyond. The entire world he never knew, was this man's hiding place, and Trian was lost without a trace. It was time to be careful, he reminded himself. Really ask around, he thought, really learn about who he was. Someone must have seen him. He reminded himself of the chance of it, but neglected the odds, even though in the back of his mind, traced and formed as some spectral watcher, his brother's ghost, without eyes, or hands, and burning fire below his feet, crept among him like night on day, seizing him to the moment, to perhaps, the volatility of some alchemist's design, causing Trian to panic, sweat, and lose his sleep. The answers would not come to him here, but in the hard scraped past that he kept locked away in an attic, from the world to recognize, even from himself.