Bio

Update…

Since being elected mayor of Sayre by unanimous popular vote, Erdanen’s pranks and jests have calmed somewhat, though he still loves to let his opponents feel the sting of his wit. He takes his position seriously, although he tends to consider Amyria’s goals to have much greater priority. His reunion with Jett only increased the brotherhood-like bond he shared with the genasi, and is perhaps the only reason that Erdanen feels at all comfortable working in the current group.

Surrounded by less-than-familiar faces, Erdanen’s made it his business to lay out his ambitions and beliefs on the table, in the hopes that his allies (new and old) will do likewise. He values the power of teamwork, and works tirelessly to abolish feelings of unease or distrust between the party members. His strength lies in the arcane, but his heart often lies in the divine, and he takes a great amount of pride in the few paladin tricks he’s learned from watching Amyria. He likens this divine power to the archetypal white knight told of in countless legends, striving to live up to its selfless, just, chivalric ideal. However, anyone will tell you this is far from how he comes across normally – a down-to-earth smartass.

A lighthearted half-elf with a love for prose and wit, Erdanen is the picture of levity. In the darkest of dungeons and against the most twisted foes, he has never lost his humorous composure. His cheerfulness may very well be at the center of his power – he seems strongest when his allies are laughing and his foes are cursing in frustration, but that might be simple coincidence.

Erdanen’s equipment and style seem to change as often as his mood. He’s wielded swords, wands, daggers, bows, and shields, and seems to pick up tips on spellcasting from his closest friends. He’s probably never read a single tome of spells in his life, but scholarly observers tend to think he knows a great deal more about magic than he lets on, due to the sheer variety of spells at his command.

Erdanen worships Avandra when he finds the time – recently, he’s even begun to see himself as something of a knight-errant in her service. He is not overly religious, but his views match hers more closely than any other deity. He values life, but tends to enjoy struggle – seeing conflicts as opportunities for personal growth. He is overly critical of his friends at times, as he holds himself and his traveling companions to sometimes-unrealistically romantic ideals. At the same time he is blinded to his own flaws, namely his attraction to the finer things in life – good food, clothes, and company.

Although he jokes far more than most, his devotion to the cause of the Coalition’s War has manifested itself in a more serious facet of his personality that shines through from time to time – a kind of aspiration to mirror the deeds of the heroes immortalized in story through his own accomplishments. He feels especially close to this goal now that he’s been knighted by Amyria.

Many bards find their creative outlet in music or song, but Erdanen rarely has the urge to do more than hum a short melody. Instead, Erdanen excels at storytelling, and he turns any accomplishment of himself or his friends into epics. But only the lucky get to hear Erdanen’s story of himself, written below just as he’d tell it.

Erdanen’s Tale

Magic runs the world.

Sure, there’s something to be said for a keen grasp of battlefield tactics, of stealth or swordsmanship, but even the mightiest warrior is nothing without his enchanted armor and flaming mace. If you want greatness, you need magic. All those who wield magic know this truth, though some don’t know that they know it.

Scholars and artisans of magical services, trades, crafts, or callings will all tell you much the same thing. Magical energy, or mana, is the nigh-infinite force behind all supernatural effects. Woven into our world, our blood, our very reality, it is the balancing force in Creation responsible for all that is arcane or numinous. Anything that occurs without the aid of mana is natural, or as the gods and primordials first intended things to be. Things tend to fall out of balance when mana is disrupted, either when it’s flowing irregularly, or when mana is being controlled and used in a way that does not occur naturally.

Simply put, magic lets you rewrite the way the world works.

Everyone seems to wield magic differently. Wizards and Swordmages learn magic. Clerics and Warlocks are granted magic. Invokers demand magic. Sorcerers are magic. Druids and Shamans live alongside magic. Warriors met magic once at a party a little ways back and they’re sure that magic has a great personality or whatever, but quite frankly, they’re just not interested.

And me? I hear magic. I feel it. I write, speak, and sing it. Does that make sense?

Let me put it another way. Magic comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s a flaming mace. Other times it’s a light without a flame. Still other times it’s a strange creature or a flash of energy, even a place… But what if it was something no one else thought it could be? What if it was a word? A song? An emotion? What about a time?

I’ve been a bard for a while, perhaps before I first realized it. I just have this innate gift to use magic as it suits me, though not always in the most straightforward or useful way. A studious mage can pore over a scroll for a few days, and he learns exactly what the spell is, its name, who designed it, and what it does. I pretty much have to wing it. It’s a subtle and unpredictable art. I’ve had to find the unwritten rules. Nobody ever tells you how to write a story that doesn’t suck, or how to play a song without sending everyone’s hands to their ears.

You have to do it a few times yourself, until you just know. And trust me, I know. Of course, I didn’t always know.

I lived the good life under rich parents. They weren’t nobles mind you, or merchants. Just rich. The money’s been with my family for generations, and thanks to frugal spending and wise investments, it never seems to go away. My parents spent my formative years preening me and preparing me to inherit my father’s fortune and my mother’s good business sense. Many a soul would have been perfectly happy to stay put, but I couldn’t stand it. The stuffy clothes, the wasteful living, the lack of real connection with other people, it just got under my skin and made me hate who I was. The moment I was old enough to have hair on my chin and pass myself off as something other than a lost child, I was gone.

With my family’s fastest horse, a pack full of finely-cooked food and the most expensive liveries I could find on my back, I rode out of that life forever, saddlebags full to bursting with far more gold than what was like to be necessary.

Like any red-blooded young man, I spent much of my newly-liberated wealth on wine and women, but I was at least smart enough to travel to the next town every morning after a good party. Ironic that I escaped from a life of luxury only to spend my ill-gotten gold so selfishly, isn’t it? They say that when you’re young, nothing needs to make sense. When the money started to run slow, I just schmoozed my way into the pockets of rich girls, or convinced the lord’s sons that they’d never throw a successful wet-tunic contest without yours truly around.

With no embellishment whatsoever, I can tell you that I was the talk of several towns. I knew who to talk to, how to talk to them, and what to say to get them falling over themselves to give me what I wanted. I didn’t realize it then, but what I was doing was magic. I wasn’t bad looking and I certainly knew how to get people to have fun, but it takes more than mundane people skills to get the king’s cousin to host your new friend’s bachelor party after the last one practically destroyed his house, his reputation, and his marriage.

Eventually, the trail of beer, gambling and satisfied ladies o’ the evening led my father’s pursuers straight to me. Actually, he only bothered to send the one, but the city watch showed up that night alongside him, content to finally have a legal reason to throw me out of town. He was known as Sir Gauph Taramin the Persistant (well, perhaps only I knew him as that). A knight who often freelanced for my father, he was honor sworn to return me home posthaste. But I had a plan.

During the long journey back home, I made every attempt to get to know Sir Gauph. I wanted to know what battles he’d fought in, his personality, his style, his victories and defeats. I began composing a series of epics, songs, and lymericks aggrandizing his military career, painting him as a valorous knight worthy of immortalization in stories told to millions. After completing a few, I paid a fellow performer to travel to the next town before us and tell nothing but the tales of Sir Gauph until we arrived.

The plan worked. As soon as we arrived in that tiny little town two days later, we headed to the settlement’s only inn. You should have seen the look on everyone’s face when Gauph gave the innkeeper his name for the room. Everyone lept up, clapping and cheering like he was some big local hero. Even without any further encouragement from me, the people wanted to have a feast in his honor, and they wouldn’t take the humble knight’s polite decline as an answer. They put him up in the finest room, gave him gifts of fine food and clothing, and the troubled among them entreated him for aid against the tribes of hobgoblins that had harried the town for months.

By the end of it all, I told Gauph what I’d done, and he decided right then and there that I was worth far more to him than the reward my father had promised. He took me on as his squire, and I accompanied him on all sorts of noble quests – slaying small dragons, chasing away kobolds, rescuing damsels and whatnot. Whatever we did, I turned into prose, and exaggerated the hell out of it. Sir Gauph and the Bard we became, and I yearned for nothing as I lived a life of adventure with him. He even taught me to handle a sword, as I taught myself how to use my unique brand of magic. Many a tournament was won by Sir Gauph due to my finely-tuned insults that sunk almost as deep as the knight’s own lance.

But it could not last. Drunk beyond the ability to consider his surroundings, he stumbled back to me one night and couldn’t help but confide in me. He told me how much he adored the limelight, but he’d begun to see his fame as his own. He knew how I helped him be seen in such good light by the people who flocked to see him, but he boasted that at this point, he’d become so famous that he might not even need me anymore. He thought it was hilarious that someone so important like him had to be announced by someone so unimportant as I.

He was right and wrong. Sir Gauph was no knave, but far from a hero deserving of the praise I’d so painstakingly arranged for him. By emphasizing to the world his so-called bravery and valor, I had written myself into the margins of my own autobiography. If I died in my sleep, no one would remember me by any name but ‘the bard.’ And not even Gauph would thank me for it.

Less than an hour later, I ran away from a life of comfort and wealth for the second time in my life, leaving Gauph with little more than a spare change of clothes and a series of life-destroyingly ugly rumors (some of them were even true). Filled with wanderlust, I traveled the roads of the realm, singing for my suppers and dispelling the glories of the foolish knight. Eventually, I ran into Jett, who filled in the blanks of my swordsmanship and arcane skills, and offered me one last chance for a life of adventure. Neither of us served the other, and we shared our glory, defeat, and treasure.