Teralis, Ninja Hero

Irony, the often bitter knowledge that something is other than as you expected it would be, spares no one from its humor. A cruel humor it must be, indeed, for a young man of the light to find himself on trial for his life - on the charge of attacking one of his brothers. Even crueler it is when the charge is true.

Teralis was but a student when the dark mages of Miruvhor launched a brutal assault against the Temple of Sreyb and the school being run there to train young warriors of the Light. Had he been there, he would have surely perished. His life could not be so easy, however. At a movement in the shadows, the young man struck out and killed not a foe standing watch over the Temple, but a young paladin, coming to the victims' aid.

Damnation for that was swift. Forsaken by the Light, Teralis was stripped and left for dead on the streets of the S'handor Fortress. Though staked to the ground with the cries of the wraiths around him, Teralis was left untouched. Where his brothers had abandoned him for his failing, the darkness embraced him. Teralis learned Irony's lesson well.

Applying the skills earned within the halls of the Temple, Teralis soon became a Master of the Miyama Ryu, an elite among those trained in the arts of assassination. Vengeance became his motivator and thus, Teralis used Irony for his own devices. He went before Lord Azareth to be given the powers of the unlife, the same powers that his brethren had hoped would kill him in S'handor.

The transformation was slow and before it had fully transpired, Teralis sought to foolishly test his powers against priests of a strange pyramid deep within the Blasted Lands. They easily rendered him immobile and put Teralis to a far crueler punishment. With a keen irony, they chose to mummify his unliving shell, and imprison him within their tombs. Key to holding back his strength was a small ankh, enchanted with magics meant to keep his powers at bay.

Irony, however, would not be so easily ended. A priest of Val Miran uncovered Teralis's remains and sought to use the power of the ankh to compel this creature of evil to fight his dark enemies. As they moved further from the pyramid, however, the power of the ankh weakened, allowing Teralis to break of its hold. The priest died, then, at the hands of the power he sought to command rather than destroy.

It was when Teralis rose to Eldership of the Nexus Hordes, that he was elevated still further as Hero of the Ninja Guild. To this day, however, he still bears the bindings from his imprisonment and walks the lands as a mummy of unlife - the same lands, he once walked, as a living man of the light.