I thought I'd write up a bit of backstory for my DnD character, right up to the point when her future colleagues come to whisk her away to the Nentir Vale for adventuring shenanigans I just kind of pumped this out, so I'm not expecting many marks for originality ;)
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His bloodlust sated, he looked upon his work and was horrified. The death that surrounded him struck him to his core. He could no longer tell slaughtered foe from murdered friend. From that day he vowed never to harm a living being. He travelled across the planes for long years, protecting the weak as he went, but never harming another, instead attempting to dissuade potential foes through persuasion where he could. At the end of a long and peaceful life, his divine mother, impressed by her son's deeds took him to her side, and allowed him small dominion over life.
As a god he was followed by the many who sought protection from death, for themselves or loved ones. All he asked of his followers was to view life as sacred, and while not to fear death, do protect any and all threatened with it. A humble god was he, and would demand no more of his followers than was reasonable. However centuries past and he grew exhausted with his task. Life was taken daily. He grew jealous of the influence of other gods, and aggravated with careless mortals who would ask for his protection, and throw themselves into harm's way. So he began gathering the souls of his followers to him, imprisoning them that they may be saved for eternity from their carelessness.
His mother saw what her son had become and was filled with grief. She could not kill him, but instead cursed him, tearing from him a sliver of his divinity and flinging it to the natural world, judging that whomever should find the sliver would be destined to find her son and replace him. The captured souls were freed, and she bound her son far away from influence to be forgotten, leaving him to await his eventual doom.
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In the natural world, a girl was born in the less auspicious parts of town. She grew up fighting to survive, literally and figuratively. She was driven to get the most out of survival and was not above harming others to do so. She ended up on the wrong side of judge more than once until she was given a choice. Join the local military, or exile. It was wartime so either was meant as a death sentence. She chose military. Why not play to her strengths, after all?
As a soldier she was ruthless, and it earned her both the fear and respect of her allies. She would lead into battle and they would follow, though whether through trust that she knew what she was doing, or fear of being on the retributive end of her blade was up for debate.
Following a skirmish against an attacking group of bandits, she hear a whisper. She looked around and found no source. Another whisper and she felt it in her head. It bade her walk beyond the battlegrounds. Compelled to follow, she walked. She walked across hill and field, river and road until she came to a clearing in a forest. During her journey here she had been told what she'd find, and sure enough there was a staff, half buried and orthogonal to the ground. Ever the bold one, she immediately strode forward and grabbed hold.
Every death that she had orchestrated poured through her in that instant. Though she held it for but a second, a lifetime of pain and demise and fear ripped her up from the inside. Her head was filled with the face of every sapient life she had ended. Amidst it all a voice spoke in words that shattered her psyche:
"I charge you to know the pain of every life you have taken, to feel it drain from yourself a thousandfold. Know this terror well, and learn."
She let go and, driven near insane with guilt, she ran.
She ran for days, a maddened creature in the wilderness. Her mind was in ribbons, the ghosts of a thousand lives lost etched into her. Exhausted by sorrow, she sought to end her life, and jumped from a cliff. As she fell, a voice spoke again to her, kinder than the one previous.
"This is not how your story ends."
Her body was found, broken, but alive, by a party of adventurers. They bickered about what to do, as adventurers will, but eventually the will of the party's Paladin of Pelor, far from home and weary from travel, outed. She healed the fallen soldier and took her to a temple of her order to rest. When she awoke, the Paladin and her party had long gone, and as the clerics told her of her story, she wept with immense gratitude.
She spent many years in that temple, learning the ways of the cleric. She felt the scars of her mind still, but less sharply than before. However she was mindful of them, and resolved to amend for the brutality of her past, revelling in the art of healing. Not so naive was she to believe that she could forsake violence completely, she took an oath to her new god, never to personally take another life, lest she risk the retribution of Pelor, and to protect those in need of her help.
Eventually she left the temple, intent on making good on her oath. She travelled far, and helped many on her way, never mentioning her past. So it was until one day, as she walked the wilderness between towns, delighting in the afternoon sun, the air around her crackled with arcane energy, and a portal split the air before her...
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