Difference between revisions of "Seadragon"
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Lethrys, dismayed by this revelation, renounced his false god and resigned himself to his fate. And although he had been revealed as an imposter, Y'zgghua was not so quick to relinquish his hold on his champion. | Lethrys, dismayed by this revelation, renounced his false god and resigned himself to his fate. And although he had been revealed as an imposter, Y'zgghua was not so quick to relinquish his hold on his champion. | ||
| − | + | Lethrys found himself falling back into old habits. Once again he donned the mantle of the Seadragon, but for his own reasons - no matter how much Y'zgghua's amused chittering asserted otherwise. What at first seemed to be a run-of-the-mill act of piracy became the turning point in his career. He snuck aboard a cruise liner in order to relieve it of its cargo, but as it turned out a roving band of karkaradons had a similar idea. They clashed and he singlehandedly fought them off. The captain rushed to the deck, mistook Seadragon for a superhero and thanked him profusely for his efforts, even - in an ironic twist of fate - offering him some of the very cargo Lethrys had been planning to steal. Humbled, Lethrys politely refused and took his leave, returning to the depths. | |
| − | + | In the following weeks, trying his best to shut out the voice of his former master, he'd dramatically re-evaluate his life. He could never return to Atlantis - he doubted he could ever face his people ever again, and his actions had driven him from the sight of the ''true'' Poseidon forever. But he could make reparations with the surface world. And he could search for a way to rid himself of Y'zgghua's influence ''forever''... | |
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Revision as of 21:04, 10 October 2013
History
Descendant of a noble lineage that could be traced back to Atlan himself and blessed with a mutant physiology that enabled him to shatter boulders with his bare hands, withstand the intense pressure of the deep ocean and rise above the waves without suffocating, Lethrys was born with the proverbial oricalchum spoon in his mouth. Inquisitive and impressionable, he subscribed to the unpopular - nay, borderline heretical - view that Atlantis should not content itself with a tiny stretch of the wide ocean while Lander civilisation flourished above, that the great god Poseidon would look favourably upon expansion and - dare he say it? - conquest? After all, was Poseidon not the god of all seas? And as his chosen people, did they not owe it to their lord to spread his teachings far and wide? Surely he had gifted Lethrys and others with great power for a reason?
Of course, it was mostly just youthful bravado and hot steam - Lethrys had the means and consequently the desire to explore the world beyond the walls of Atlantis, yet his traditionalist family stubbornly held him back. They decided service in the Atlantean army would quell his hotheaded tendencies and impart some old-fashioned military discipline, all the while putting his considerable power to good use. By all accounts he acquitted himself well and the warrior's life certainly agreed with him, but ultimately did little to curb his outspoken views. In fact, it endeared him to other likeminded individuals, more fervent in their conviction - but more subtle in their displays of it. A heretical cult that called itself the True Sons of Poseidon. As cults went, they were pretty inconsequential - but they hoped a noble figurehead could change all that.
The one piece of evidence to support their claim of Poseidon's favour was the possession of an ancient oricalchum helmet known as the Mask of the Seadragon. The legend goes that the helmet was forged by Poseidon himself for his chosen champion and his chosen champion alone; any others who dared don the Mask would suffocate until it was removed or they died. While the helmet itself was probably a random curio looted from a vault somewhere, that part of the legend held true - and, shocking absolutely no-one remotely clued up on origin stories, Lethrys was the only one who could wear it without choking to death.
Not that the revolution ever really got off the seabed. All it took was one cultist getting a little too vocal after too much seaweed wine for the authorities to go knocking on doors and making pointed inquiries. Atlantis had quite enough uprisings for once century. Lethrys was detained for a time and questioned. After it was ascertained that he hadn't actually done anything illegal per se, merely donned a silly hat and attended a few rituals and ceremonies, he was released - and barred from military service. Having shamed his family name with his heretical ways, the disgraced scion left Atlantis to see the world - but he took the Mask with him.
As it turned out, he had a knack for adventure. After a year of aimless wandering, living off the land and leaving a trail of battered sharks, barbarian hordes and gigantic sea monsters in his wake, he began to recieve strange dreams. It was always the same: swimming alone through a sunken city, one far different to Atlantis. Empty winding halls reduced to desolate ruins, crumbling spires twisted into puzzling configurations that brought stinging tears to his eye, the remains of silent statues that had precious little to do with the human form - some menacingly clutching tridents, others with heads uncannily reminiscent of Lethrys' Mask. Despite the unsettling alien architecture, one familiar sight always awaited him before he woke, after spending hours of swimming through the murky waters - the briefest glimpse of a statue of Poseidon.
He always awoke from these dreams burning with fever and wearing the Mask - regardless of whether he had donned it prior to falling asleep. He took the dreams as a sign, a portent - perhaps even a summons. He was meant to find this lost city, and the Mask would show him the way. There was no deductive reasoning behind this notion - it just seemed right. And it was.
His search spanned the better part of a year. He found what he was looking for in the deep ocean, where the intense pressure taxed even his enhanced body and no conventional building should have been possible. But there it was: on the outside the temple was a small, squat, ruined thing, although it nonetheless exhibited the same alien architecture he recognised from the dream city - just in miniature. But on the inside... It stretched into infinity.
The city was even more staggeringly incomprehensible than it was in the dream world. Lethrys got the distinct impression that the Mask in some way filtered his perceptions, allowed him to traverse a realm that existed far outside of the mundane three dimensions. Wearing it, he could - with some difficulty - trace a path through the city. But without, he'd be no better than blind - or go stark, raving mad on the spot. Time slipped away as he wandered that crooked labyrinth. Perhaps mere hours passed. Perhaps days or weeks, months or even years - it lost any semblance of meaning. And those streets were far less deserted than they were in the dream world; shambling, vaguely cephalopodean, horrors stalked the shadows. They were for the most part content to silent watch the visitor, but a few tried their luck - but despite their freakish strength, Lethrys refused to be bested.
In the end, he found the statue that had haunted his dreams. And to his amazement it spoke to him. In a resonant, sonorous voice that came from everywhere and yet nowhere, that caused the surrounding masonry to crack and rumble, it announced that it was Poseidon, and this was his realm - or what was left of it. The negligence of his chosen people and their misguided beliefs had reduced it to a twisted mockery of its former splendor. But should Lethrys pledge himself to the service of his god as chosen champion and worldly conquerer, should he go forth and spread Poseidon's influence to every inch of the ocean, it would be great once again. There really was no question. Upon bowed knee, Lethrys accepted his charge.
The world blurred and he found back in the world he recognised. And while he hadn't noticed it from his time in Poseidon's realm, he had changed. His green skin had darkened and was now encrusted with a fine layer of fishlike scales, his eyes shone with a sulphurous bio-luminescence, his hands and feet were wickedly clawed and - perhaps most importantly of all - his strength and speed were beyond anything he had previously known. As long as he remained beneath the waves, he could hear Poseidon's voice, deep and watery - as if the god coaxed the sea itself to speak on his behalf. But that wasn't all - in his hands he clutched a great oricalchum trident, fashioned to resemble a series of twisting, intertwining tentacles. This was, the voice explained, the Sceptre of Poseidon - with it, Lethrys could bend and shape water to his whim and open swirling vortices to the sunken realm Beyond.
Lethrys' first act of business was to dub himself the Seadragon, and use his newfound power to raise an old shipwreck from the seabed to serve as his vessel. In time, he would return to Atlantis a conquering hero, but for the moment he knew that they'd never accept the truth of what he'd seen and heard - that he'd be branded a heretic and locked away. So he recruited from the known barbarian tribes, promising untold glory and riches to all who would serve on his crew. It started small - random acts of piracy against ships unlucky enough to cross his path. He typically let his victims survive to carry word back to the Landers, the legend of the Seadragon grew. That was his plan: they'd learn to fear him and by extension they'd fear his lord - and with that fear comes belief. Poseidon would grow strong again.
Years passed.
He faced many challenges during his campaign - Lander heroes, the Lemurians and others - and while there were often setbacks, he rose above them all. But his winning streak couldn't last forever. After one particularly gruelling battle, he and his crew were defeated and dragged back to Atlantis to face judgment under Atlantean law. The Seadragon's activities had become something of an obstacle to Atlantean diplomatic relations and in order to smooth things over with the Landers, to prove without a shadow of a doubt they had no involvement in this, a public condemnation was felt the wisest course of action. Not the homecoming he had in mind.
From his cell, Lethrys raved about what he had seen and heard, how Poseidon had made him his champion and set him to plunder in his name. But his protests fell on deaf ears - all who deigned to listen regarded him with a mixture of shame and pity. 'Poseidon told me to do it' is not exactly a solid legal defense. All save one; an elderly scholar who listened intently, pressed him for details, elaboration. With a sad shake of his head, he revealed that Lethrys had been decieved, that it was not Poseidon to whom he had pledged his soul. Surviving fragments of ancient scrolls from past millennia spoke of Atlantean sorcerers inadvertantly making contact with an extradimensional entity. He held many epithets - Speaker of the Thousandfold Lie, Face Dancer, the Chittering Dark, the Drowned King, God-Eater, but his name was Y'zgghua. (Ih-zug-hoo-ah)
Y'zgghua was believed to be a deity (or perhaps, to those more knowledgeable about the multiverse, a dimension lord) of a dying, aquatic realm that had found a way to subsist on the belief of other universes by impersonating water gods and stealing their followers - a kind of divine parasite. The Mask and Sceptre were its artifacts, and it had preyed upon Lethrys' ambition, insecurities and naivete, taking advantage of his need for validation. There had also been a degree of brainwashing stemming from his time spent in the mind-warping city but it was felt that Lethrys' choices and actions were ultimately his own - and any true follower of Poseidon would have known the deception for what it truly was.
Lethrys, dismayed by this revelation, renounced his false god and resigned himself to his fate. And although he had been revealed as an imposter, Y'zgghua was not so quick to relinquish his hold on his champion.
Lethrys found himself falling back into old habits. Once again he donned the mantle of the Seadragon, but for his own reasons - no matter how much Y'zgghua's amused chittering asserted otherwise. What at first seemed to be a run-of-the-mill act of piracy became the turning point in his career. He snuck aboard a cruise liner in order to relieve it of its cargo, but as it turned out a roving band of karkaradons had a similar idea. They clashed and he singlehandedly fought them off. The captain rushed to the deck, mistook Seadragon for a superhero and thanked him profusely for his efforts, even - in an ironic twist of fate - offering him some of the very cargo Lethrys had been planning to steal. Humbled, Lethrys politely refused and took his leave, returning to the depths.
In the following weeks, trying his best to shut out the voice of his former master, he'd dramatically re-evaluate his life. He could never return to Atlantis - he doubted he could ever face his people ever again, and his actions had driven him from the sight of the true Poseidon forever. But he could make reparations with the surface world. And he could search for a way to rid himself of Y'zgghua's influence forever...