Bard the Priest - Death In Service to the Lord

[Thaldrac]

An old man in his twilight years, finally goes to his Lord's gates.

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Bard had been a man long past him prime for many a year. As a young man, he carried the fire of the Lord in his sword, shouting cries as he defended the land side by side with others like himself. As the years went on, there were less and less of them - til it was just him. Looking around at unfamiliar faces, he laid down the sword he had carried for so long, and travelled as a preacher, bringing succour and peace to those who could not find it themselves. He found peace within himself then, hair threading with grey 'til it mirrored the wrinkles that spread across his weathered face.

The fire for preaching long since gone, in his final era, he donned once more the armour and blade and returned to the Ward, to fend off the encroachment of evil wherever it may be.

In unrestrained service to the Ward, he took part in the hanging of a Necromancer, alongside those of Blackhearth, Greywood and others. Upon his death, the fiend's amulet shattered, bringing forth tortured souls who ripped the dead from the ground. With sword and a prayer, they fended off the dead and put them back to rest. With a prayer to his Lord, he set to consecrating the ground to let those disturbed sleep once more. Gifted new armour by a friend, Wolfgang Cholers, he set out to protect the common folk wherever he could.

With a planar invasion from the Slaad, he rallied men and women of sword and sorcery to the gates and fended them off. They travelled to the Rifts and into a seam to where the Slaad dwelled, those of rot fighting those without. Carving through them they encountered a Slaadi God, towering over them. It invited some of their number onto it's hand where they were transported on a journey. Far too lawful for such, Bard had his suspicions about those who travelled, and sought a way to lift a seeming taint from those who had gone through the planes with the God.

Warning others of the threat the Slaad may pose, he came to blows with Manir Torr, a Glittsman. Refusing to fight, it was eventually broken up by others - but not without a good deal of healing ash gone.

With the Vault looming, Bard prepared a final note in his pack for those who may look, and set himself to the grim task. At the Vault itself, nary a man from the Ward stood forth except a Velstran Winespill, who displayed his cowardice in withdrawing his stance upon seeing his Recondite opponent. Donning the mantle of the Ward's champion, Bard stepped forth with the power lent by his fellows, and was gifted temporary blessed armour for the contest. Putting up a fight for King and faith, he fell - but a miracle raised him from the edge of death itself as the Vault opened.

Entering the Vault, Bard took the fore with others reluctant to. Taking blow upon blow on his Moonspear armour, he rallied those through winding paths until misfortune struck. A first successful cast of Flesh-To-Stone was averted by an Orzan dwarf - others having failed to stick -  but a second pierced his defences not long after, rounding a corner at the head of the force. Frozen in stone, he crumbled beneath the blows of spectral horsemen as others ran to preserve their own.

It was a pleasure to play Bard, though sad he died as I'd just gotten into the swing of things! Thanks to everyone who played alongside me, to Wolfgang, Zchublek, Stavros, Dela, Lalena, Arthur and others I may have missed - and to Vaust for being a pleasant target for my Slaad-related ire!