1 The Noble House of Cellric
The noble house of Cellric, an esteemed house of nobles directly under the King's command and one of the most well-known, for being in the King's highest regards. The Cellric's is a house of magic and powerful mages. The head of the house is Darwin, who is considered to be one of the greatest if not the greatest and strongest mage in all the kingdom of Bulataria. Darwin is also speculated to be the one to gain the favor of the king in the next voting of the head of The Ministry of Magic, seeing as Darwin gained quite the list of feats in the last war against Grimgar.
The vote about whom to be head of The Ministry of Magic is yet to be decided and many great mages are aiming to achieve the biggest challenge of them all and that is to sit at the top of the world of magic. To put it into perspective the head of the ministry is on par with the King and that means the mages at this peak, could finally get the last of all the knowledge in the world he or she could ever yearn for in the entire world. Becoming the head of the Ministry of magic means absolute power and endless knowledge and the political power to achieve just about everything.
Most mages in the kingdom of Bulataria even goes to as far as to scrap the idea of the actual real King, who was no longer the true king in their eyes. All they saw was a weakling who didn't possess knowledge and knowledge was pure and undistributed power and forever absolute. Some mages were even bold enough to call him a simple man and just a muscle head. Unfortunately for those mages the guards usually don't take kindly to such bold and empty words and they either went to the gallows or got a trial and were sent straight into the dungeons for the quite vulgar opinions and insults to their king. Some of the mages even doublet up and got trialed, sent to jail to wallow away for years to then finally meet their end at the gallows.
The King of Bulataria was known as the benevolent king and a man of vigilance and of the people. The part about peace had sailed many years ago, which to some's dismay and to other's joy, mainly the merchants liked war because that would give a great opportunity for wealth and prosperity. But now with no war, the adventures had returned from their country duties, and out for adventure they went again.
Adventures were a weird bunch and mysterious, always having alternative agendas. To most commoners, the adventures were the way to get things done, that they themselves did not have the skills for. e.g. killing monsters, escorting, and otherwise help with anything commoners needed if they had the coin. There was always a price for everything they did for anyone. This included nobles and even the court of magic and the king himself would eventually have to pay up somehow. Must adventures knew that they were dependent on and this sometimes leads them to greed.
Merchants also had a lot of power the corporations and factions that the merchant had made, made the merchants quite the force to be messing with due to their control over the stocks and what price the market sells them at. The merchant even controls the auction house around the kingdom of not just Bulataria, but in other nations as well.
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Demons, entities from another realm of existence, where space and time are convoluted and bends reality. These demons exist roaming this endless space of nothingness for eternity otherwise finding a demon of a higher power, like a demon king who is both stronger and can open the gap between the worlds and engage in jolly collaboration with other demons to wreak havoc upon mankind. These events of demons crossing over are called many things, but for most, it's "The Harrowing".
Luckily for all the mortal races, there are plenty of heroes of light as they call themselves, others tend to disagree with the whole nonsense of we are God's chosen children and all that. The church yearly picks a bunch of their most dedicated follows and train them to become paladins of the order. These paladins often offer help to fend off the occasional invasion of demons. Since the church has trained many paladins over the years they have slowly been climbing in power and have risen to higher levels of political power with their new Pope.
Another thing about the believers of God in the house of Pope despise magic and say that it is the work of demons and witchcraft from the first invasions of the mortal realm. It is not uncommon for there to be occasional trouble and banter between the Church and The Ministry of magic especially at the round table meetings in the castle hall. At times the leaders of each respective guild will have a meeting of business in the castle called by the king himself to keep tabs on whether or not they doing something dumb or are just making deals.
Although Alistar Morrinshield, the king of Bulataria is seen as a benevolent king he is not afraid to attack factions such as the Ministry of magic or the house of God. Alistar is both loved and feared. Loved because he put an end to the 4 year-long war and feared as he is well-known to strip nobles of titles or straight up kill some of them due to suspicion of traitors to the kingdom and plans to overthrow the nobles and with them king Alistar.
Over years of demons invasions, some of them learned, how to bind them to the souls of the living. They did this through what is know universal as Darkness marks made by demons. These marks were first discovered a couple of hundred years ago, people unfortunate enough to be marked by demons went through a lot of scientific tests which in most cases ended with the deaths of many humans and other mortal races alike. To this day no one knows exactly what these mark of Darkness do, but what is differently know is everyone with this mark are bound to live a life of solitude and some believe the bearers of this accursed mark will themselves become demons. Thus beares of these marks of solitude and death hide in plain sight of humanity to lead normal lives.
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The story begins in the noble house of Cellric as a new baby is born into a new fascinating world of magic and wonder. This little baby is to be called Kellen after his grandfather. Darwin sat at the bed with his wife and since he was such a high-status mage he had dedicated his whole life to research, not really having a fatherly figure at all. Nurses walking around stressed about the birth of their newborn son and working hard. Darwin sat there and watched from afar with a static face of zero emotion like he always looked. Darwin only thought of this as a backup heir to his position as head of the ministry of magic, he already had one heir, who was about 2 years old by now, or was it 3 years?
Darwin had always been an insightful mage, but he would never in his life had predicted what was happening in front of his very eyes. Darkness filled the room faster than the light could shine back and as quickly as the darkness came so did the fear and dread of never-ending doom. Caos spread quickly throughout the nursery as people did not know what was going on, attack from demons? Not quite. As the Darkness and dust settled the baby was fully out of the screaming mother on the bed. Terror and disgust formed on Darwin's face as he saw the dark spot on his newborn son, what looked like a bunch of dark squiggles turned out to change Kellen's life for the worst.
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*Knock knock*
"Master Kellen, your father requests your presence in the Study" a fragile, but firm voice sounds from the outside of the door to Kellen's room.
"Master Kellen? I'm coming in!"
A beautiful maid opened the door and was greeted with the snoring of the very same man, that was requested to show in front of the head of the house of Cellric.
"Master Kellen wake up, your father requests your presence in the Study and he doesn't want to be kept waiting the entire day, because of you falling asleep everywhere. Have some dignity"
All the sleeping man responded with was a long sigh as he continued to try and sleep. The maid's face was red as a tomato with rage that was about to erupt like a volcano. Just as the maid was about to bitterly repeat herself, she was interrupted.
Kellen put a finger over her lip as he sluggishly rose from his chair in front of his table full of study books about demonology, specifically curses associated with demons. "shhh, just shush. I heard you the first time, now run along and mob the floor or something like a good girl. I'd advise you to not start with the toilet, one of the visiting nobles had something for lunch, and well..."
just as she was about to protest, she was showed out of the door, by force and seen off by a taunting bow from Kellen saying "Always a pleasure".
'Why does the old man always have to call for me, when I'm studying'. Kellen walked over to his study and put some of the books away, that he rather not have others see. "I better go see the old man before his patience slips up again". Kellen opened the door and went into the corridor. The Cellric estate was a castle more than anything else. The corridor was so huge, that there could be ridden carriages through, if necessary. The walls were made of stone mainly, with gems and accessories. Along the way to Darwin's office, you could see paintings along the walls, these were mainly of heads of the Cellric house and the newest painting, of course, being Darwin himself. Kellen usually stops here when he has the time to look at the paintings. But not all of them, he only stops at his grandfather's painting, this is because his grandfather was a great man and had taken care of Kellen since his father did not even bat an eye if he needed help in any shape or form. For Darwin the only thing that mattered was either obtain immortality or leave behind an heir to the house, that was stronger or as strong as himself. This coursed Kellen's little brother to be very spoiled and protected. His brother Jericho has been changed by this a great deal and has started to hate Kellen a lot.
Throughout the corridor, you could also see statues of each head of the Cellric house, Kellen had been told that if the estate was under attack the head of the house would have been taught a spell that would wake the statues back to life with magical power almost equal to, what they had had when they were alive. Kellen often thought about, how big of a danger previous ancestors had expected in the past to start such a tradition. The only thing powerful enough that Kellen could think of was a Demon king army and dragons, yet such things were so unlikely to attack this place, not to mention dragons were now turned into creatures only heard in stories around the campfires. There are so many protection spells and guards in this place that you could easily confuse the estate with a military base big enough to fight in its own war.
Kellen walked past a window and stopped for a moment, to take in the view over the city of Dragon Spire, even from here he could see the sprawling mass of people going through the alleyways and merchants shouting at standby people telling them, how good their wares were and why they definitely needed the specific products. Kellen looked down at the training grounds to find his brother training and chain casting spells together in various ways, most likely training for the exam, one in which I am also participating, unfortunately.
"I should go see if there are any knights training today, might as well get the last bit of training, before the exam. Maybe I'll find quartermaster Arthur in the stables today, but first the meeting with father".
Kellen stood in front of Darwin's office for a little while, just staring a the door gathering courage and taking a deep breath, until finally knocking on the door. After a moment of waiting a voice could be heard telling him to come in. Kellen entered and saw his father deep in thought and research, by the looks of it he had not gone to bed last night as there were big bags underneath his eyes showing the fatigue.
"You called for me father," Kellen said after looking around in the mess his father had built overnight. "Yes, yes come sit Kellen" Darwin gestured for Kellen to take a seat in front of the office desk. "I have a proposition for you concerning your brother" Darwin opened up. "Great" Kellen said in a very unenthusiastic voice. "I would like to ask you to be Jericho's sparring partner, for the time being until the exam, he honestly lags any form of real combat experience, I would like for you to do this for me since I believe that most of the other students trying to get into the academy would be too scared to fight with him even if it's only sparring or otherwise make him too arrogant at his staggering performance. You will do this for me, yes?"
After a brief pause, Kellen stood and said "I might if I have the guarantee to not be blown sky-high without medical support". Darwin thought about it for a moment "Of course, that I can promise". Kellen left the office in a hurry wanting to get back to his study again, to find a solution to his problem. Kellen's magic had begun fading ever since a few years ago when he had just become an engineering apprentice. Ever since Kellen had been searching for answers, but never found any. Kellen had tried what he would consider everything, but the conclusion he had come to was ever since the appearance of the black mark around his eye, Kellen's magic slowly started to go away day by day, month by month, hour by hour. Kellen had been consumed in his research ever since only leaving his room for training and making more weapons for the shop. But around a week ago Kellen had finally given in to despair, all of his options were exhausted and all that was left was Kellen's craft and training his mind to peak performance.
Kellen finally left his study for good and went to the training grounds. Down at the training grounds, he found that the knights had started their training.
