Thorn Stacianodel

**Thorn Stacianodel** is a founding member of the Grey Order. He was a devout follower of the lesser goddess Stacia and his faith brought her and her power into the world of Urz from the Dread Realm Aist'yamën where he was born. He journeyed with Invellios Laire and Donovan Sloan - later to be revealed as Ryiomand CXLIV.

### Origin

Thorn was born to a world within the Unending Spiral, but not Urz. The only sources of information about the world — Thorn and Cameron Latimer — refuse to discuss it, so little is known beyond the vaguest details: a world of absolute gloom, torment, and horror. While traveling with Cameron, an arcane trap ripped them away from their Dread Realm.

### The Search

Immediately after the blinding flash, Thorn found himself stranded in a world far different from his own—and without Cameron by his side. Loyal to his companion until the end, his singular purpose became to find Cameron. Once that was done, they could determine where they were and how to leave.

This single-minded focus blinded him to the strange occurrences surrounding him. His signet ring, a crescent moon encircling a star, inexplicably now had three rubies affixed to gaps between the points of the star and the moon. More dramatically, though, a new moon had appeared in the skies of E'yané, always directly above him in the sky.

He soon fell in with a group of adventurers, including Donovan Sloan and Invellios Laire Varhuine, finding it easier to travel without drawing attention to himself if he moved with a group. Although his pale skin and dark hair didn't seem too alien from the elves of E'yané, the moon over his head and his relative lack of knowledge of the realm in combination with his appearance made travel troublesome. While traveling with a group of natives of the realm wouldn't hide the trailing moon, it would at least allow him to fade into the background when worldly matters were being handled.

Shortly after joining up with the group, the party was drawn into a great conflict. After a large battle, Alu'nsu Ro appeared, freezing each and every one of them. He passed over the rest of them before settling on Thorn. With Thorn unable to move or resist, the deity stole Thorn's signet ring right off of his finger with a taunting remark, "Without this, you'll never find \_her\_ or a way back home."

Once the party was released and Alu'nsu Ro had disappeared, a distraught Thorn blindly decried the realm and everything in it, even turning his rage heavens and directly at the moon hovering above him. He demanded to know why his goddess--if that was indeed the moon overhead--had done nothing to protect him from this abysmal fate. Stacia responded to his cries, but in no uncertain terms told him it was not her affair to meddle in.

*"Your fate is not mine to decide, my champion," Stacia's silken voice whispered into Thorn's mind.*

Furious, Thorn momentarily denounced his goddess in a fit of rage. The divide was brief and Thorn quickly recanted, because other than Stacia, what else did he have in this accursed realm? The experience, and the dramatic severing and re-establishment of his connection to Stacia, though, left its mark on Thorn. In the years following the events, Thorn's previously pale complexion gradually became a light silver, and his black hair changed to a darker silver tone as if the moon itself was altering him.

Although Donovan and the rest of the adventurers took note of Thorn's change, the conflict around them and Thorn's distant nature ensured that they didn't delve into the details. The conflict of the realm surrounding them was more urgent than the whims and changes of a moody elf.

After being abandoned by Raaji Einos and having the Regalia of the King of Thunder taken by the very man that had charged them to protect it, the party entered Caan and defeated him. With this deed done, Donovan revealed his true identity, Ryiomand CXLIV, and claimed the Throne of Fire.

While the Grey War continued on, Thorn and the rest of the party left Ryiomand CXLIV to do his duty. The party, now led by Thorn, traveled across E'yané via various jobs, which were in truth selected by Thorn primarily to advance his search for Cameron and a way home or Alu'nsu-Ro and his ring, now that the two pairs seemed inexplicably linked.

After nearly a decade of mercenary work, the group once again joined up with Ryiomand CXLIV in his pursuit of Nalan Balcard to the Cradle of the Priest's Tongue, E'yané's manifestation of Arcania.

Beyond the Wall of Sea and Flame, a battle of gargantuan proportions occurred; deity against deity, monster against monster, and man against man. Inside the island where the Heirophant's Stone rested, a battle just as fierce as the massive melee outside was fought. Alu'nsu-Ro and Aryiomand clashed as Raden Phere removed the Heirophant's Stone from its cradle. Through Raden, Alu'nsu-Ro commanded Invellios to wound Aryiomand.

Having lost once again to Alu'nsu-Ro, Thorn and the rest of the party emerged to find the grand battle still being waged. In the fray, Thorn saw a physical manifestation of Stacia, but no sooner had he seen her than he watched the departing Alu'nsu-Ro mortally wound her.

Thorn rushed to his goddess's side, cursing Alu'nsu-Ro with every frantic step. In her trembling hand, Stacia held Thorn's signet ring. Whether Alu'nsu-Ro had given it to her or Stacia had struggled with him to get it as he wounded her, Thorn could not be sure. With her dying breath, Stacia kissed Thorn and bequeathed the spark of her divinity to him.

No longer having a place in the battle, Thorn and the party sailed away from the island. On the boat, Thorn decided he no longer had a place in E'yané itself, either, and no desire to return to his hellish home for that matter. With a way out back on his ring finger, Thorn wished himself and Cameron--wherever she was--away to a peaceful realm.

### The Time of Peace

After receiving his dying goddess' power and having his ring returned to him, Thorn used one of the ring's three charges to deliver the pair to a new realm far away from the land of darkness they had originated from and the land of strife Thorn had been thrust into.

This new world, Aalican, was a land where elves, dragons, and magic were little more than fairytale and myth. So, for many decades, Thorn remained virtually isolated in the home he shared with Cameron and the surrounding forests, content with his new peace, such as it was. Memories of the worlds and people he had left behind and the roiling spark of divinity buried deep within him, however, tore at that peace of mind. The sight of his goddess' blood and the taste of the dying breath on her lips as she imparted her power to him were permanently burned into his memory.

He had never wanted this responsibility. He had never wanted divinity. He simply wanted to live a peaceful life after the torment of losing his friend and partner, wandering a realm to which he did not belong, and being tormented by a malevolent deity. The choice had not been his, however, and it had become his burden to carry. In order to find an escape from the incessant brooding that was quickly overtaking his life, he eventually ventured into Meailley, a small town nestled into the surrounding forest, creating quite the panic.

Was he an ill-omen? A mythical trickster come to life? A mass hallucination?

As the years wore on, the townsfolk adapted and accepted the silver fey, despite his very existence shattering their concept of reality for a time. Thorn and Cameron took note of one particular young woman, Morgan Keylley. Morgan had never shown fear when Thorn had first ventured into the town, and when the rest of her family was murdered by bandits, the pair took care of her even though she was an adult. Morgan quickly became a trusted friend and companion of Thorn and virtually a decades-younger sister to Cameron.

As the years and decades had past, the dilemma and tragedy Thorn long knew would come but had hoped to somehow avoid began to put a shadow over his quiet home. Even without his divine immortality, his elven lifespan would have left him to watch Cameron grow old and fade from the world long before he reached even close to middle-age. It was painful to watch his closest friend turn into a shadow of her former self. Her fiery red hair dulled to ash and her exuberant face slowly gained the lines of many years of struggle and exertion. Morgan's youthful energy had rejuvenated her for a few years, but soon, it too could no longer delay the inevitable.

When Cameron peacefully passed on, the brooding, simmering resentment Thorn had so long fought off finally overwhelmed him. What good was this spark of divinity and the power in the ring his goddess left him if he couldn't protect his closest companion from the ravages of time? He had left so much behind in his life, and still, the pieces he \_wanted\_ to hold onto slipped through his hands like sand. In his grief, Thorn attempted to use one of the two remaining charges in his ring to restore Cameron to youthful life and immortality.

His wish was successful, but not without dire consequences.

### The Chase

Cameron's life was restored, but she was immediately stolen away from this rustic world by the man responsible for his goddess' fall: Alu'nsu-Ro. He had appeared the instant the wish had left Thorn's lips as if this entire series of events had been preordained. He snatched her awakening body and disappeared, scoring a grievous wound on Thorn's troubled mind second only to the mortal wound he had given Thorn's goddess right before his eyes.

Morgan came to visit the pair from her home in town, but instead discovered a grief-stricken Thorn, alone, and immediately knew Cameron had died. It had been expected given her deteriorating physical condition due to her advanced age. The shock was in the revelation that Thorn explained he had restored her to life, only to have her ripped away from her.

Thorn quickly hatched a plan to recover his companion from his archnemesis, swearing to return to E'yanè even if it meant using the last charge of his powerful ring to do so possibly meaning he could never return to this quiet realm again. A human lifetime worth of studying the mechanics of his two previous jaunts across realms had given him the tools to calculate the proper celestial alignment for a targeted departure, rather than the "anywhere but here" trips of the trap and his previous wish. With the nearest date identified, he prepared to leave. Morgan quickly agreed to follow him into a world drastically different from her own and leave her life behind; Cameron and Thorn were the only family she had left after her parents death, and she wasn't going to let them both disappear, leaving her behind in a world with which she no longer had a connection.

And it was clear an incredibly and still-increasingly unstable Thorn needed the support--any support.

On the day of their departure, shortly before the precisely calculated moment of opportunity, a small dragon appeared from the ether inside Morgan's hometown, intercepting them before they could complete their travel to the departure point. Although Thorn managed to slay the fledgling dragon with a decapitating blow from his ancestral sword, Stacianodel, the diversion sent from another world had been more than enough of a delay to ruin their chance of making it to E'yanè.

Thorn returned to his home with Morgan and continued to brood and tirelessly search for another chance. Morgan moved into Cameron's old room to keep an eye on her friend and pseudo-deity as he teetered on the edge of destruction. After several days of frenzied study and calculating, Thorn discovered another potential opportunity to begin their journey; however, this opportunity was not without a large margin of error. It was certainly \_an\_ opportunity to get them out of this realm, but interference in the alignment of the realms made an exact target more of a hope than a guarantee. Desperate to recover Cameron and defeat Alu'nsu-Ro, Thorn glossed over the risks and planned to take the opportunity.

The curse of his luck--or some other machination--would not even let the risky opportunity come to pass without complications. A large band of thieves and bandits tried to ruin his plan and gain revenge for an earlier run-in with Thorn by kidnapping Morgan from the woods surrounding the house. A vengeful Thorn stormed through their base, allowing many to flee but killing the most despicable of the band. After recovering Morgan and purging the bandit scourge from the land as a parting gift, he finished preparations for his trip.

The following evening the pair reached the departure point and Thorn cast the powerful spells to transport them to E'yané. The total eclipse that followed was an ill omen for the trip that awaited them.

### A Troubled Journey

The spell, while successful in transporting them from Morgan's world, was unsuccessful in transporting them to E'yanè. Thorn, fragile mind fracturing a little more, resolved to find the nearest town and try to divine another way to leave. After poring through texts in the large city's library, Thorn discerned the best possible location for another attempt at catapulting through the realms to reach E'yanè and the pair soon resumed their travel once more.

It required them to travel across the entire continent, but time and celestial alignments were not a factor for this attempt. Despite the infinite window of time, Thorn pushed hard to the north as precious days and weeks slipped away. During the journey, Thorn began to realize that his divinity, the attention his alien appearance brought, and his conscience wouldn't allow this journey to be a simple straight line to the point of power serving as their destination to take him to E'yanè.

Along the way, the pair gained another traveling companion by the name of Aldin, an overtly cheery fellow whose demeanor belied a more sinister intent. After a few days of travel, Thorn found the rogue attempting to pilfer them of their belongings and abscond into the night. Thorn put the man to sleep and left him to wake in a tree without any belongings of his own.

At the center of this continent, Thorn found a realm in turmoil. A longstanding war blossoming out of some petty squabble a century before, had exploded into heated conflict and brought suffering and untold death to innocents. A siege was crippling the capital of the kingdom the pair needed to travel through, leaving the citizens inside the walls to starve and fight amongst themselves. Skirmishes broke out around the outskirts of the capital from reinforcements trying to break the siege. Men and women died in bloody combat, all over a nonsensical conflict.

Disgusted in equal measures by the needless loss of life and another obstacle in his path towards his singular goal, Thorn channeled the spark of divinity flickering inside of him from his dying goddess into a display of divine power and commanded the warring forces to stop the violence and death over a conflict started long before any of them were alive.

*"How many lives is a single parcel of land worth?" Thorn bellowed with a voice backed by divine authority. "How many generations? A life for every tree? A child for every crop to be grown?"*

The logic of the words and the display of a power beyond their understanding brought the armies to a halt. As the words sank in, the taste for further conflict turned sour. This miracle brought Thorn the favor of the King of the besieged capitol but the ire of the King's advisors, Cywan, a glory-hungry wizard who believed, irrationally, that he was the one meant to end the conflict--by annihilating the opposing forces. Cywan believed Thorn was a charlatan, a fraud, and a manipulator, and he swore to prove that Thorn was nothing more than a mildly talented magician with a clever story.

After a journey across the sea, the pair found themselves in a demon-filled, twisted forest, the pair were separated by an overwhelming swarm of the most dangerous of demons. As Thorn desperately searched for Morgan, one demon took on her appearance in an attempt to lure Thorn to his death, and when that failed, the demon used further illusions to show him what the most gruesome deaths the other demons were inflicting upon her elsewhere in the forest. At the implication of losing the last close companion he had left on this or any other realm, Thorn flew into another divine rage and eliminated the taunting demon. With divine wrath allowing him to effortlessly cut through demons with his runeblade, he carved a path through the wicked forest and eventually found a badly beaten and battered Morgan. Quickly, they made their escape from the forest and Thorn summoned a shelter for them to rest and heal their wounds while providing them sanctuary.

The stress of the day's struggles, Morgan's near death experience, and the journey as a whole brought to a head an issue that had been budding between Thorn and Morgan in the months since they first began their travel to E'yanè. What had begun as a close friendship became much more, giving Thorn a small glimmer of hope amidst the darkness quickly closing in on him, despite the fact that his fragile mind screamed it would only end in more loss.

The journey to rescue Cameron continued on relatively unchanged, despite their burgeoning relationship, and the pair pushed harder to the snowy mountain to make another planar jump, all the while being harried by by Aldin and Cywan, who had caught up to them and ambushed them and retreated at every opportunity. The conflict came to a bloody climax at the peak of the mountain, where Aldin and Cywan ambushed Thorn and Morgan as they were preparing to leave that world.

Morgan was wounded by a devastatingly precise throw of a blade from Aldin, which allowed Cywan to grab her and place a dagger to her throat while Aldin did the same to Thorn. The pair of villains wanted Thorn to renounce his divinity and sacrifice himself. Knowing full well from their brief encounters, and the freely shared tale of why the pair was on the journey, that loyalty to those closest to him overrode all else, Morgan sacrificed herself before Thorn could do the same for her. She elbowed her captor, inciting him to mortally wound her.

Once again filling with divine rage, Thorn took advantage of his own captor's surprise and freed himself, rushing to Morgan's side. Aldin and Cywan continually interrupted his attempts to tend to her wounds and save her life, but Thorn enveloped himself and Morgan with the ethereal wings his divinity had bestowed upon him, shielding them from blows long enough to heal her mortal wound. With the odds evened and an even playing field, Cywan and Aldin were hopelessly outmatched. During the melee, Cywan was sent over a cliff by trying to escape Morgan's blows, but Aldin's fate was much worse.

Thorn's wrath necessitated that he punish Aldin for his crimes. With the spell held in his blade, he froze Aldin in place and executed him, an action that would haunt Thorn's conscience for some time.

*"Had you simply attacked **me**, I would spare your life," Thorn said in a tone as icy as the cold wind of the mountaintop. "But you tried to kill Morgan to torment me. I cannot, I **will not** spare your life."*

With the unexpected battle over and utter exhaustion with this entire journey, Thorn elected to remove chance from the equation. Expending the last charge on his ring, Thorn wished for both he and Morgan to be transported to E'yanè, but once again, the wish came with consequences.

### Rapid Shifting

The world the pair found themselves in was not E'yanè, much to Thorn's agony. They resumed their travel, looking for a city where Thorn might again attempt to calculate the best way to take another step towards E'yané. He would not rest until he found Cameron, even if it meant traveling through a hundred worlds. The weight of his divine burden along with the seemingly constant loss and disappointment was wearing on his composure and sanity--already frayed at best--as the desire to reach E'yané began to override his sensibilities.

Before Thorn could even begin his studies to find a way out of this most recent world, though, he felt a tugging at the back of his mind, and moments later, the world around them melted away. After only a day in the next world, the same thing happened again. The third fell away after a few days.

With the fourth world came another surprise. As the new world shimmered into being around them, they were torn away from each other, stranding them in distant locations. Another cruel twist of fate of a world conspiring to isolate and torment Thorn, as far as he was concerned.

In this new world with no elves, Thorn was viewed as an abomination and monster to be hunted, again chipping away at his tenuous hold on sanity as he was forced to choose between slaying the misguided innocents and his own survival—and finding Morgan. Morgan, on the other hand, was stranded alone in a world far different than her own for the first time in her life. As she had her entire life, though, she adapted quickly and set out to find Thorn, both out of love and knowing his vulnerable mental state.

They both set out to return to the place they had both witnessed for only a moment before being ripped away from each other. Inquiries and descriptions gave them both individually a name: Tilara's Tear. After a long, trying journey, they both reached the legendary region, cutting through hordes of monsters to reach each other. Immediately upon reaching the spot they had arrived in, the world shimmered away again, and the pair finally appeared in E'yané.

### 50 Years of Unresolved Business

After his arrival, Thorn found himself searching out old allies. Time was a murky construct when planar travel was involved. He was unsure how much time had past in E'yané compared to the realm he had spent half a century in and months across other realms, but his fears were allayed when he found the man he had originally known as Donovan Sloan. A familiar friend was a welcome respite from the continual torment he had experienced on his journey to get back to E'yané. He took this opportunity to re-acquaint himself with this world.

His journey led him to Nalan Balcard. In exchange for removing one of the extraneous souls inside of Nalan, Nalan promised to retrieve Cameron from Alu'nsu-Ro; however, Thorn was faced with an unexpected dilemma beyond his personal quest to retrieve his companion. E'yané was in chaos as the old gods had stripped the world's deities of their power, throwing everything into turmoil.

The quiet cry of his conscience to help a world that had so greatly affected his life pushed Thorn to agree to help, and Nalan promised to keep Cameron safe while Thorn met up with many other adventurers and avatars to cleanse the world of Abominations and set things right.

After destroying several of the Abominations, a group of prophets approached the group, now known as an early incarnation of the Grey Order, while Thorn's group planned in an inn.

### A World-Altering Choice

Following a meeting with a group of prophets, Thorn and the rest of the group were informed that the choice was in their hands whether or not the gods would be returned their power, or more precisely Thorn's choice, since he carried his goddess' spark of divinity within him. This spark could return divinity to the gods or remain within him. The group bickered and bantered over the possibilities and the pros and cons. Tiring of the inane chatter after nearly an hour, Thorn excused himself and retired to the room in the inn he shared with Morgan.

After giving him a few minutes alone, Morgan joined him, and as soon as she entered, he had his answer. Her presence was the answer he needed. Without speaking to the rest of the group, he cast a spell to transport both of them to Arcania, the kingdom of the gods. It was E'yané's representation of this place where Thorn had seen his goddess mortally wounded—or so he had thought.

When he entered the temple, Stacia rushed at him and embraced him, but Thorn's focus had immediately locked onto a gnarled old man sitting off to the side. Stacia dragged his focus back to her and urged him to make his decision before the chance was gone. Indecision plagued Thorn, and Stacia continued to push him to look into his heart for the answer, as it had always guided him so well. The determination he had teleported with had faded away in the light which revealed his goddess was not dead. For half a century, the assumption he had operated under had been incorrect, and yet, he had not felt her other than the spark of divinity inside of him.

The mental strain of realizing the goddess he had been so utterly devoted to before her death was not dead at all and that the entire fate of a pantheon rested on his shoulders had pushed Thorn past his breaking point again. He began to verbally snap at Stacia as she continued to prod him and chided him for overthinking.

He could either return divinity to the gods, including ones that had tormented him, and resume a mortal life with his companions and his love, or he could become divine himself but forever be separated from those that mattered most to him--but the spark wouldn't go back to the capricious gods who tormented him.

Verbalizing the conflict that had made the decision such a struggle for Thorn, a teary Stacia finally asked, "Which is more important to you, Morgan or divinity?"

That juxtaposition made the answer crystal clear to Thorn. "I won't lose her or leave her behind," he snapped back. "Not her. Not anyone. Never again."

Much to Morgan's shock, Thorn submitted to this fate and threw his arms wide, shutting his eyes and waiting for the weakness he expected to come after having the divine power pulled from him after over half a century. Surprisingly, as Stacia grew stronger, Thorn did not feel that weakness. A part of Stacia was irrevocably a part of Thorn now, and no matter what choice Thorn had made, the remnants of divinity Stacia had imparted upon him were permanent.

It had all been a test--a damned test.

Thorn was furious. The hell he had been through, both of Cameron's kidnappings, all of it, had just been a divine trial to ensure Thorn could take his place as Stacia's champion and protector. Although Stacia was quick to explain she had not been responsible for Cameron's kidnappings, having only allowed it rather than perpetrating it, but to Thorn the two were the same.

But the truly crippling blow to Thorn's psyche was in the implication that she had *allowed* the kidnapping: the revelation that Stacia had been working with Alu'nsu-Ro. The deity that was supposed to be watching over him and protecting him had been involved in a wager with his nemesis. She had allowed Alu'nsu-Ro to torture Thorn to prove that there was a pure mortal. She had allowed him to torture him to force him to come to E'yané to save it and its people. Despite being a loyal servant, Stacia had allowed Thorn to suffer innumerable trials and tribulations under the auspices of determining his worthiness and proving to another god he was everything she had said he was.

While he had been filled with doubt, rage, and turmoil, he had never ignored the call of the downtrodden. He had stopped the war in Renthar. He had saved villages in his travels. He had healed the sick. He had done everything Stacia had bet he would, but for what?

He tried to move to kill the gnarled old man, the shattered shell of Alu'nsu-Ro, but Stacia's divine will and Morgan's strength held him still. Filling with rage once more, Thorn demanded he be released, and Stacia finally obliged. Thorn struggled for several moments with his desire for revenge and the world-shattering consequence that would follow such an act, before he finally collapsed to his knees, a broken man.

Stacia and Morgan shared an intimate conversation, where Stacia lamented Thorn coming to love Morgan more than her. As an attempt at recompense for the turmoil the divine bet had inflicted on all of their lives, Stacia imparted immortality to Morgan and Cameron. Eventually, Thorn recovered a tenuous grip on his sanity and returned to his inn room, preparing to unapologetically face the rest of their group.

The decision had been his and his alone, and he had made it, for better or for worse.

### The Final Conflict

Following the defeat of the last of the Abominations, Atavius set the Grey Order to name replacements for the deities that had not survived the Abominations' attacks. During this process, however, it was discovered that the replacement for the first Alu'nsu-Ro, the deity that had tortured Thorn for so long and willingly returned to mortality during the grand conflict, had recovered a shard of the Heirophant's Stone. The Order postponed the rest of their duty to retrieve the shard and defeat the second Alu'nsu-Ro.

As Atavius looked on and left the battle to the Order, Alu'nsu-Ro used the fragment to freeze the bodies of a majority of the party and used his divine power to freeze Morgan and Thorn, who as natives of other worlds were immune to the power of the stone. With a sadistic gleam in his eyes, Alu'nsu-Ro approached Morgan and executed her while shouting taunts at Thorn as her body disintegrated.

With Alu'nsu-Ro blatantly disregarding divine law, Atavius was forced to act. Unaffected by the stone's power himself, Atavius released the party from its power and warded them against its use.

Thorn, however, broke free of the bonds of Alu'nsu-Ro's divine power with a strength fueled by murderous rage.

Atavius made Alu'nsu-Ro mortal with his hammer, Amen Creber, but an enraged Thorn demanded the rest of the party stay out of the conflict. This deity, regardless of vessel, had tormented him for too long. It was his battle to fight. With ephemeral wings of moonlight unfurling behind him, Thorn rushed Alu'nsu-Ro in a blind fury and overwhelmed the unprepared, suddenly mortal former deity. Thorn wrestled him to the ground, but Alu'nsu-Ro simply cackled in his face. Thorn clutched at the cackling deity's skull, squeezing with all of his might. With a sickening splatter, the cackling abruptly fell silent as Thorn crushed his skull with his bare hands.

Now that the conflict had been resolved, Atavius resurrected Morgan from the ashes left behind by Alu'nsu-Ro execution of her. Thorn remained crouched over Alu'nsu-Ro's corpse with his bloodstained hands still spasmodically clenching and panting like a wounded animal for several minutes until Morgan cautiously approached him to calm him down.

With disgust at the world and the wicked whims it inspired, Thorn channeled the divine power still lingering in him to create a pocket realm, Thie Sheaynt, and teleported himself and Morgan to this new personal sanctuary.

After that day, Thorn swore to himself to never succumb to such brutality again, the culmination of an entire life's building rage. Even millennia later, he wears a pair of short, white gloves to cover the hands that crushed a man's skull. Centuries of torture and anguish had pushed him past the limits of self-control, and with the divine bet between Alu'nsu-Ro and Stacia and all of the trials that came with it now behind him, he has been able to keep his oath.