Raven Nevermore

Aliases

• The Ghost of Nevermore — sole survivor of a noble house erased by plague, haunting the memory of what was lost

• The Healer with a Sword — known in plague camps and border towns for tending wounds with one hand and defending the vulnerable with the other

• The Unknown Variable — a wild card in the eyes of court and criminal alike, immune to the plague and untethered from legacy, driven by a fire that justice alone can’t cool

Class: Rogue / Warrior / Magician Origin: House Nevermore, Far Coast Alignment: Neutral Good Known For: Surviving the plague that erased his house, resisting corruption, tracing a shadowy conspiracy, and arriving in LaMut with nothing but questions and a name no one dares speak aloud.

I. Born of Mist and Memory

The rain had been falling for three days when Elyria of Elvandar staggered into the silverleaf grove. Her cloak was torn, her bowstring snapped, and her hands clutched a satchel of herbs and scrolls as if they were her own heartbeat.

Lord Thalen Nevermore found her half‑collapsed against the roots of an ancient tree.

“You’re safe,” he told her, though the war was only a day’s march away.

She didn’t answer. Not for three days. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, almost curious:

“Do the trees here have names?”

From then on, they walked the groves together. No courtship, no ceremony — just quiet evenings in the library, her fingers tracing the spines of books in a language he couldn’t read.

When she died giving birth to their son, Thalen said nothing for weeks. The steward, Maelric, broke the silence:

“She came with the mist,” he murmured, “and left with the dawn.”

II. The Grove and the Ghost

Thalen was an honorable man. Though Raven was born out of wedlock to a foreigner, Thalen never once denied him. He made certain the other members of House Nevermore treated the boy as kin, and he saw to it that the law recognized him as such.

In the candlelit halls of the Far Coast’s nobility, whispers followed them — mutterings about “a half‑blood heir” and “the danger of longevity disrupting the cycle of power.” Some feared that a son who might live centuries could hold the family’s seat far beyond the reach of their ambitions.

Thalen didn’t care.

“Raven is mine,” he told the council once, his voice carrying over the polished table. “And that is the end of it.”

In private, he would sometimes study his son’s face in the quiet hours, catching a tilt of the head, a glint in the eyes, a half‑smile that was Elyria’s and Elyria’s alone. He had to keep her with him as best he could. In his mind, he was responsible for what had happened to her — for the dangers she faced, for the path that had led her to his grove, and for the life she had lost bringing Raven into the world.

For years, the household was happy. Thalen’s second wife, Lady Marienne, treated Raven with a polite warmth. She was not his mother, but she did not deny him a place at the table. Lysa and Corren adored him, and the estate rang with their laughter.

He taught Lysa how to grind herbs into paste for poultices. He showed Corren how to wind the tiny gears of his clockwork beetles. They were happy. Until the plague came.

III. The Plague and the Ledger

It began in the groves, then the harbor, then the halls.

Lady Marienne’s Decline

It took her quickly. One day she was walking the gardens with Lysa, the next she was bedridden, her breath shallow, her skin hot to the touch. Raven tended her as he did the others — cool cloths, tinctures, whispered reassurances.

She never said she blamed him. But in her fevered moments, her gaze would linger on him strangely — as if searching for something she could not name. Perhaps it was suspicion. Perhaps it was simply the delirium. They had been a happy family before the sickness, and in her lucid hours she would still reach for his hand.

“Look after them,” she whispered once. “All of them.”

She was gone by morning.

Lysa’s Last Night

The fever had taken her voice by then, but her eyes still followed him as he moved around the room.

“You’re making that face again,” she rasped.

“What face?”

“The one that says you already know.”

He sat beside her, lifting the cup to her lips. She sipped, wincing at the bitterness.

“You always hated losing,” she whispered.

“Don’t lose yourself over me.”

When the last breath came, it was so quiet he almost missed it. He didn’t cry. He just sat there, holding her cooling hand, hating the steadiness of his own.

Corren’s Plea

“You’ll fix it,” Corren said, his voice thin.
“You always fix things.”
“I will.”

“Promise.”

“I promise,” he lied.

He tried everything — tinctures, poultices, whispered prayers in Elvandar’s tongue. Corren’s eyes fluttered open one last time.

“It’s not your fault,” he murmured. “You’re… just… you.”

And then he was gone.

“They said it was a fever. A curse. A punishment. But it didn’t touch me. Not the way it touched them. I watched my mother burn with it. My brother choke on it. I buried them with hands that didn’t tremble. And I hated those hands. Because they were mine. And not theirs.”

The plague didn’t just take his immediate family. It swept through the Far Coast like a scythe, cutting down every servant who had raised him, every cousin who had teased him in the orchard, every aunt and uncle who had smiled at him across the feast table. Villages emptied. Trade routes died. The silverleaf groves stood silent.

The Closed Door

One night, after Corren’s burial, Raven passed his father’s study and heard it — muffled, broken sobs. Thalen, the man who had silenced nobles and stared down warlords, was weeping.

Raven froze, his hand on the doorframe. He had never heard that sound from his father. It was raw, unguarded, and it cut deeper than any fever.

He clenched his fist until his nails bit into his palm. This will not stand.

Thalen’s Last Moments

The fever took him slowly. In his final days, he would sometimes reach for Raven’s hand and just look at him — as if memorizing the shape of Elyria’s eyes one last time.

When the end came, he was clutching a sealed, coded ledger marked with a symbol Raven didn’t know. His voice was weak, but the words were clear:

“I saw the name. I saw the mark. He paid for something… and we paid the price.”

Then, with a breath that was almost a sigh, he spoke one final word — his first wife’s name:

“Elysia.”

And he was gone.

IV. The Curse and the Variable

Immune. Alone. And holding a question that burned hotter than grief. He didn’t want revenge — not yet. He wanted the truth. And the ledger was the key.

V. The Man in LaMut

The road north was long, but Raven barely noticed the miles. His mind was a wheel, turning over the same images again and again — Lysa’s trembling hand, Corren’s rasped promise, Marienne’s fever‑blurred eyes, Thalen’s voice breaking on Elysia.

The plague hadn’t just taken them. It had hollowed the estate, erased his bloodline, and left the region scarred. He carried all of it with him into LaMut.

The Blue Wheel Tavern was warm, loud, and smelled of spilt ale and roasting meat. Raven paid for his room with coin the innkeep didn’t recognize. At night, he lay awake, replaying every loss. By day, he moved through the city like a shadow, asking questions in plague camps, back‑alley apothecaries, and the quiet corners of the docks. Silence was the most telling answer.

VII. The Healer with a Sword

Raven’s satchel was never far from his side. Inside were tinctures, poultices, rolls of clean bandage — and the blade etched with his mother’s sigils. To most, it was an odd pairing: healer’s tools and a weapon. To Raven, they were the same thing. Both were meant to protect life.

When he knelt beside the sick or wounded, his hands moved with the same precision he had used on Lysa’s fevered brow, on Corren’s damp hair, on Marienne’s trembling fingers. He could still hear their voices in the back of his mind.

Every time he bound a wound, he imagined his father watching from the doorway, silent but proud.

In a hamlet gutted by fire, Raven found a boy with a deep gash in his leg. The child’s mother hovered, wringing her hands.

“Will he walk again?” she asked. “If I have anything to say about it,” Raven replied, already unpacking his satchel.

As he worked, the boy whimpered. Raven’s voice was low, steady.

“My brother used to flinch like that. I told him it meant he was still alive. He didn’t believe me. You should.”

When the bandage was tied off, the boy managed a weak smile. Raven returned it, but his eyes were far away.

Raven never asked for payment. He never lingered for thanks. But each life he saved was another stone laid on the invisible cairn he carried for his family — a way to keep them walking beside him, unseen but never forgotten.

And when he drew his sword, it was with the same intent as when he drew a needle: to stop the dying.

VI. Haunted by Echoes

The market in LaMut was winding down, the air thick with the smell of baked bread and woodsmoke. Raven sat on the edge of a low wall, repairing the wheel of a child’s toy cart. The boy watched him work, wide‑eyed, clutching a sticky apple in one hand.

Boy: “Why’re you helping me?” Raven: “Because someone once helped me.”

He tested the wheel, spun it once, and set the cart back into the boy’s hands. The child grinned and ran off without another word.

Raven stayed there a moment longer, watching the crowd. In the laughter of a passing girl, he heard Lysa’s voice. In the stubborn set of a young merchant’s jaw, he saw Corren. In the way a woman adjusted her shawl against the wind, he caught a flicker of Marienne. And in the silver‑grey eyes of a stranger across the square, he thought — just for a heartbeat — that he saw Elyria.

He closed his eyes, letting the sounds of the market wash over him.

"This will not stand."

When he opened them again, the square was just a square, the people just people. But the vow was still there, steady as his heartbeat. Every life he touched, every wound he bound, every truth he uncovered — all of it was for them.

He rose, adjusted the strap of his satchel, and disappeared into the crowd.