In an Earth-like world known as Aerina, where humans are enslaved by elves and dwarves, colonies of orc and ogre populate the plains and deserts, and plenty of other monsters like dragons are hunted, Falian was born to an old-blood elven noble family known for their dabbling in the fringe sciences in hopes of finding the cure to death. For centuries, House Athdurall dedicated themselves in the studies ranging from medical and medicinal to alternative realms and the afterlife. It was said that their true goal was to find the key to keeping a soul long enough to allow a badly wounded body to heal. However, it's obvious the paths that they would need to cross to get to that sort of a goal. Blood magic, necromancy and the like. Due to the actual medical advances and innovations that came from their work, the greater public were thankful and willing to give a benefit of a doubt to the ways that brought about their means. But, of course, this didn't stop them from being the center of many a ghost story. Respect, notoriety, wealth. Centuries of hard work had earned this for the House of Athdurall.

And then Falian's parents came along. He starts this story with a different name.

Falian was born Thelraen Mithandurun Athdurall to Corvan and Farrah. Throughout his childhood, he was shoved into the hands of others. First, into the hands of a wet nurse, and then passed on to his many tutors, whom were poor at their jobs but straightened up to be presentable at the presence of Corvan and Farrah's loose coin bags. Corvan and Farrah themselves were debauchees and fiends. They held parties at the manor every night where people engorged themselves off of the ever diminishing wealth of the Athdurall name, and were much too blind (or drunk) to witness their names being dragged through the mud. Little Thelraen was disgusted by this. And because of this, the majority of his childhood was miserable. Perhaps the one and only thing he had gleamed from his family was a love of archery, and the sword training he had gained from the master-at-arms.

What little of his childhood wasn't stained with embarrassment and disgrace was that spent with a little blind elven girl named Authen Hemlock. As the daughter of a merchant from the municipality governed by Thel's family, she was often an escape from what Thel was raised to believe the life of a nobleman was like. Often, he fled the confines of his family grounds only in hopes of finding Authen and escaping with her into town, where they surveyed the goods of the various traveling merchants and tinkers in the square, begged for stories and songs from gleemen and bards, and fled to the rolling plains and the thick woods beyond the boundaries of town. Over the years, Thel learned that Authen wasn't truly blind. She was only blind to the physical world that everyone else could see. What she could see was the spiritual world, where everything glowed with the various colors of their soul.

Over the years, their friendship grew stronger and stronger. But as they matured, their feelings for each other shifted into something else entirely. This was plain to see with all of the villagers about them. Everyone whispered that one day they would be wed, regardless of their social standings. Thel had plans to make that prophesy come true.

One night when he was 16 years old and he was finished with life in the manor, he and Authen ran away from home. They took refuge in the massive Brenclan Forest where they found an old abandoned hunting lodge and decided to use it as they thought up their next steps. Authen revealed a long held dream of hers to study at the College of Faldenheim and perhaps one day become a professor. Thelraen, whom had decided that he would build them a home and become a game hunter, was delighted by her little dream. So together, they set out to the college and their future.

One night, when they were about half way through their journey, Thel took Authen to a nearby glade in the wood, where the tall grass was alive with lacewings and fireflies. There, with the moon and stars in the heavens above as witness, he swore himself to Authen for the rest of his their lives. She returned his vow, and they considered themselves married. Just as Thel was beginning to see everything fall in to place, tragedy struck: they were ambushed by bandits.

At first, Thel tried his best to convince the bandits that he hadn't anymore coin. This proved to be fruitless, as it seemed that at least one of the bandits seemed to know exactly who he was and what family he was from. They decided to hold him ransom. After a few hours of arguing, Thel convinced the bandits that his family didn't care for a hair on his head, and would never respond to a ransom. Because they had no money themselves. The bandits knew this to be likely true. However, they decided that they were going to make even on this expedition one way or another. So they placed a magical blood curse on him, binding him to steal a chest full of loot from a rival band of bandits. Somehow, Thel did it. This was much to the surprise and disdain of the bandits, whom had no intention of keeping up their part of the bargain. They now had two people to kill. On his arrival, they pinned Thel by a spear thrust through his shoulder down into the ground, where he was forced to watch as they raped and ravaged Authen until they were all finished and they slit her throat. As he lay dying, his vision tunneled on the pale, bloodstained face of his childhood friend and lover as she gasped her final, horrified breaths. They left him there, not knowing that he wouldn't bleed out for quite some time. His wounds had sealed quite nicely around the spear that pinned him. The crows had begun feeding on him and the wolves had began to circle and set in when finally began to lose consciousness.

In his state of coma, he had dreams of a great serpent beast bursting through his flesh and calling him to fight. The beast called him Falian, and that filled him with rage and fire. He told Falian to live, to heal, and when he was ready, to kill. It wasn't until he awoke that he found that he was much more than the elf that he thought he was. There was only one type of being that could make it through the other side of physical trauma that he had sustained: A dragon.

He was able to use what little of his strength he could muster to pull himself from the spear and stumble to a nearby farmstead where again he collapsed. The owners of the land were kind enough to take the boy in and give him shelter to weather his physical and mental storm in silence. One night, he burned down the guest house that they had allowed him to live in as he recovered. He had been in more wrathful dreams, talking to the dragon. As he grew stronger, he helped that family rebuild that guest house, letting ever hammer of the nail, ever cut of a board be his momentary vengeance against the men that had wronged him. When the home was rebuilt, and Thel was strong enough, he left the farmstead behind and went in search of those men. One by one, he hunted the members of that bandit group down. He tortured them, and when he was satisfied, he killed them.

The last one of the bandits he had tracked to a fort village south of his home time. As he approached, he was engaged by the towns guard. He didn't see them as bystanders or innocents,. They were merely obstacles between him and his just reward. After all of those men had died, he finally made it to the man he came to kill. And when he was finished, much of the town had been raised to the ground. Most of its inhabitants had been able to flee, but at the site of a boy linger over the body of his father whom had been a member of the guard, Thel realized the damage that he had truly inflicted in his anger. Such a realization seemed to wake him from his frenzied rage. It was there that Thelraen Mithandurun Athdurall perished and Falian Alister was born. He had taken on the name that the dragon had branded him with.

Naturally, due to the nature of the damage he had done, there was quite the sizable bounty on his head. For a long while, as he struggled with the fact that his vengeance hadn't made him any happier with his lot in life. He flirted with the idea of ending his own life to be free of his grief and guilt. At one point, he found it poetic that he should turn himself in and face the gallows after he had dispensed his own justice. But after a while of silence in the wood, Falian became resolute to tackle his problem from a different angle. During this time, he had become a proficient hunter and tracker. Given his skills with the sword, he decided to pay off his bounty with the bounty of others. And so, he took to the bounty boards and started working. After twenty years of this work, he finally paid off his bounty and freed his name from guilt. He had already began dabbling in monster hunting by this point.

Fast forward a couple hundred years and he had manged to build up a bit of fame for himself. After some time of hunting monsters, he began to realize that monsters were just living beings like the rest of the elves and humans and dwarves. They had their own thoughts and dreams, their own cultures and religions. Because of this, he took to entreating with them, getting to learn their ways. He began gaining more and more control over his dragonside, and the power over fire that it gave him. As he did so, he started taking on contracts that he knew that other men would fail to complete. Some of those contracts may have suggested that an innocent party be killed, simply because they were what other's would call a monster. He would investigate the matters, come to the truth of the discrepancy, and if the target was truly a danger to everyone, he would fight them, and he would kill them. If they were not, he would make their case to his clients.

Around the age of 600, Falian no longer wished to fight and kill. He had slain many a man, ogre, orc, and giant. He had helped to start colonies for those infected with vampiric or lupine diseases filled with those that would help them control their cravings. He had narrowly survived a failed hunt against a Kraken in the sea. It was time for him to rest. At first, he had thought of going to the college and enrolling, spending the last of his days in the books in Authen's memory. But in the end, he realized that he would much rather live in seclusion, far from politics and nobles that might tug on him and pull him back into violence. So he gathered some of the riches he had amassed over the centuries, bought a plot of land on the cliff side of a mountain overlooking a vast and deep lake, and began building a cabin.

This was when he met the knight Emily Whitake.

Building Dragon's Perch took an awfully long time. Sure, he could have used some of his funds to purchase a few hands to build the cabin. But that ultimately defeated the purpose of the cabin in itself. He first set towards clearing the lot of trees and under growth while trying to find a level point in the ground to start a foundation. That first year, he had just barely managed to clear the lot by the time winter set in. By now, he had run out of much of his coin. So in order to do things like mill lumber or purchase precious few comforts like warm food or ale, he would take to the woods and hunt so that he could bring back meat, medicinal herbs, and pelts to barter. Because of his constant contributions as well as friendly nature towards an old book store owner, he was allowed to stay in a storage room that had been turned into an apartment when the elements got too extreme to last in the wilds. But on this particular night there was a blizzard.

Falian had been caught out in the woods hunting with the winds started. Having bagged a buck that he was going to use for his own food, he soon decided that it was best to head into the town with the buck and wager for a nice night inside. He went to one of the usual taverns just as the snow began to collect. The innkeeper was pleased. The coming storm had blown many wary travelers off of the main road and into town to seek shelter, and he was quickly running out of meat. The venison he was handing in would work wonders for the plain vegetable soup they were going to have to resort to. Satisfied, and with a heavy bag of coin in hand, Falian headed back out to the bar and took a seat. It was there he met a young Knight named Emily Whitaker. She had been on route to an assignment to mitigate peace between some farmers on the countryside disputing property lines and boundaries. They spent hours into the night swapping stories of hunts and battles, impressions on allegiances and houses. Soon, Falian grew tired, and he longed for that room he knew was waiting for him. It was then that the tavern owner came out and informed Emily that he hadn't any rooms for her, even if she was a knight. But he would give her horse a stall if she could find somewhere to stay. Being that he quite enjoyed her company and knew that if he hadn't that apartment he would be in the same boat, he offered her a place to stay, and she graciously accepted.

From that point forward, if Emily was passing through, she would stop at Falian's Cabin. For the most part, their relationship stayed platonic. There were a few times where they fought together, and found that they were incredibly lethal as a team.mSex was involved on several occasions, but they were both often too exhausted for such activities. To make things worse, even 600+ years later, Falian found himself morning Authen and the life that he could have had with her. There was something about Emily that seemed to help with that. Inch by inch, she began to pry open the shell of Falian, to heal the long infected wound that remained. Falian soon found himself caught up in a crossroads, where he remembered his oath that he made with Authen, and yet found himself in love with Emily.

One day, Emily asked Falian to return home with her and meet her family. Falian did so happily. There, after he met her father and her mother, she proposed to him. He was shocked that she was the one to make such a huge move. But though he felt that he should have been the one to get to that point, he knew that this was the kind of push that he needed to move forward in his life and heal. So he instantly accepted. They were wed within the month.

When on their honey moon. Falian was intercepted with a message. There was a Kraken in the bay of the capital with a legion of merfolk that were laying waste to every ship that came in to dock. Once they had closed off the port, the Kraken had started taking to land, setting the merfolk loose on coastal towns and settlements. Falian was requested to take on this hunt so that they could be rid of the Kraken for good. Having already went toe-to-toe with a Kraken and nearly died, Falian wasn't excited about the challenge. However, he knew that if he had failed, there would only be more wreckage, and more, incapable men would die trying to take down the beast. So, Falian agreed. And though he pleaded for Emily to stay behind, she refused. So together, they traveled to the capital.

Emily stayed on the beach of the bay to help defend against the merfolk while Falian sailed out to confront the Kraken with a massive combined force of pirates and royal navy. They had nearly scared the Kraken off before Falian, whom had taken to the skies to blast it with fire and keep it distracted, was swatted out of the sky and fell to the wakes. In a matter of moments, The Kraken reached into the sea and pulled Falian out before popping Falian into it's mouth. Once inside, Falian nearly crushed to death against the roof of the beast's mouth before he was swallowed. He lodged himself in the Kraken's throat and tried his best to climb out, but knew that there was no going back at this time. Even if he managed to climb up the tongue, he would only be ground to meaty pulp and the entire mission would have been a failure. But he was inside the beast now. So he had a chance to do some really damage. So he ignited his body, and with all of the force he had left, he forced the flames outward. The Kraken didn't stand a chance as Falian cooked it from the inside.

In a final attempt to escape, Falian tried to direct as much heat as he could forward, so that he might burn a hole through the creatures throat. He succeed, however, what he hadn't known was that the beast had taken to the depths. As the water flooded in, Falian was able to pry himself from the creatures corpse. With his right shoulder shattered, and his left hip dislocated as well as several breaks throughout his body, he tried his best to swim to the surface. Soon, the darkness took him. There, he died.

After his death, he thought he could hear an array of voices. A few of them seemed to be talking about him. A shame, he thought. He could hear his funeral. What he soon found out was that those voices were that of God's from another land, who were impressed by Falian's accomplishments and decided that it would be a waste for Falian to die there. So they brought him to their world and resurrected him there.

When his eyes opened, he was in Caido. He felt weak, which he first attributed to the fact that he had died. And then he realized that he wasn't as warm as he usually was. After a ton of attempts and experimentation, and quite a bit of anxiety, Falian found out that the price for his life seemed to be his dragonside as well as his control over fire.

This is where his story begins!

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